Bobduh

We saw this same exact thing with Gone Home and Dear Esther - thousands of comments and reviews saying "HOLY SHIT WHY WAS THIS GIVEN A GOOD SCORE, IT'S NOT EVEN A GAME, YOU CAN BEAT IT IN TEN MINUTES." There's a pretty serious backlash against the new indie games that are less focused on providing "twelve solid hours of entertainment," and more interested in saying something, or creating some kind of emotional response. Many critics are /loving/ these games, because they're basically the first steps towards gaming actually becoming a full artistic medium with a wide variety of emotional experiences - they're the "games are art" argument finally reaping dividends. But to people who are strongly invested in purely play-oriented games, these things can come across as... a threat, I guess? Or maybe just an indicator critics no longer directly represent you. And if you don't understand why some critics want to see more games like this, then I guess conspiracy is the answer.

View more

You could talk about how it started - how all the claims of corruption related to Zoe Quinn were proven to be false, and yet the attacks on her continued relentlessly. You could extend that to talk about /all/ the results this has caused - how whatever people may say the point of this is, the only tangible results have been to shield people who are driving out independent game developers and freelance journalists, none of whom could realistically be part of a "vast conspiracy," and all of whom make very little money and clearly work in games purely because they are passionate about them. You could also say how "corruption in game journalism" has actually always existed, and that this recent criticism is actually reflective of a games media that is becoming /less/ of a gaming advertising wing - how we're now getting actual personal reflections and cultural criticism, and not just press releases. You could say how these problems exist in every form of journalism, and are really just a part of how journalism works.

---

You could talk about how all of the various elements of this controversy, from the Quinn stuff to the "GamerGate" title to "NotYourShield," were designed by either overtly sexist 4chan/IRC groups or opportunistic cultural conservatives like Adam Baldwin. You could try to dig at the "I don't like being told what I like is wrong" attitudes many people are admitting when it comes to stuff like Sarkeesian's videos, and talk about how the presence of feminist criticism won't actually take away a diverse variety of games, just like it hasn't in movies and books. You could ask them if their disagreements here are really based in political disagreements, which is a fine thing to admit (and a huge part of this issue), but isn't really a problem that's related to "journalistic ethics." You could talk about how "objective criticism" is impossible, and would really just be a listing of features - what we have here isn't a debate between "objective and subjective," it's a debate between people with one set of values and people with a different set, and generally "objectivity" as you see it is just a function of your agreement with one or the other sides.

---

These are all just general angles to take, and they're all relevant to different people with different perspectives on this conflict. One of the reasons this has been so persistent in spite of its terrible roots is that it's tapping into a broad variety of existing resentments and fears, and channeling them all under one banner that allegedly cares about whatever specific angle they care about.

View more