Polygon, Kotaku Revise Their Policies Amidst Controversy

[frigidmagi]

Cinemablend

Two of gaming's biggest websites have decided to alter their policies about how writers and journalists are allowed to interact with developers within the gaming industry field. The change follows from a very strong outburst from the gaming community for more transparency.

A Reddit moderator in the /r/Games section was contacted and asked if a very neutral, informative piece could be published regarding what the gaming community felt was a conflict of interests being exhibited by Kotaku and Polygon. The moderator, going by the handle of Piemonkey, acquiesced after a back and forth discussion with user F1renze. Eventually, this thread was allowed to go up, causing a lot of gamers to react very strongly to the information, as it helped add some concrete evidence to a far larger and more salacious incident taking place within the industry.

Following the Reddit post, as well as lots, and lots, and lots of feedback from gamers demanding explanations from Polygon and Kotaku, both sites decided to post public messages about how they will handle disclosure between the relationships of journalists and developers from now on.

Kotaku's editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo posted the following blog post on Kotaku, stating...
“The last week has been, if nothing else, a good warning to all of us about the pitfalls of cliquishness in the indie dev scene and among the reporters who cover it. We’ve absorbed those lessons and assure you that, moving ahead, we’ll err on the side of consistent transparency on that front, too.”

“We’ve also agreed that funding any developers through services such as Patreon introduce needless potential conflicts of interest and are therefore nixing any such contributions by our writers.”

Patreon is a service that enables users to support creators across the creative art field, from writing to music to video games to comic books and everything else in between.

Editor-in-chief Christopher Grant also made a post on Polygon, making it clear where his writers stand on the issues of supporting developers through charities, crowd-funding or other means, noting that...
“While I disagree that contributing to a game developer without holding an actual financial stake in their success is a violation of the spirit of that principle, I also think that disclosure is the best medicine in these circumstances. So starting immediately, I've asked everyone on staff to disclose on their staff pages any outstanding Patreon contributions and, additionally, to disclose the same on any coverage related to those contributions under that staff member's byline. We'll retroactively update any stories published in the duration of that support to reflect that, and I'll note those updates here.”

Opposite of Kotaku, Polygon will not be shutting down their writers' ability to contribute financially to those working within the gaming industry while also writing about their projects.

Gamers, at the very least, saw this as a very small step and a very small victory, given the media blackout surrounding the larger issue at hand.

In fact, the blackout includes another charity that suffered at the hands of a far more vicious scandal, The Fine Young Capitalists.

The game jam is all about helping bring more games to the industry and games made or created by female game designers. Unfortunately, major gaming media outlets refuse to report on The Fine Young Capitalists, why their were doxxed, why 4chan had to help revive the campaign (and donated $5,000 the first day the campaign started) or how The Fine Young Capitalists and 4chan came up with Vivian James, a new female protagonist for the gaming industry to celebrate. All I can do is point you to their IndieGoGo campaign here.

Inquiring minds would be keen to follow the rabbit hole on Google by searching up The Fine Young Capitalists and the ties that bind larger gaming websites from doing a full story on the incident.

I should note that the Fine Young Capitalist have made a come back and a truce has been declared between them and their attackers (I would like to take this moment to say shame on those attackers regardless however, you gave yourselves no credit there). You can read the reddit thread here, which points out that there are journalists reporting on people they used live with, give money to, or have other personal relationships with. Now, honestly friendship and such happens, but if you want to be respected you need to be upfront about it. Either don't write news stories about your friends or do full disclosure, it's basic ethics here.

[Hotfoot]

To call Kotaku a news site is...generous, let's just say, but regardless.

Yes, transparency in reporting is a good trend. It should be done. Hooray. Good on Kotaku and Polygon for finally getting the memo on basic journalism 101. If I seem a bit dismissive here, it's in part because these were basically blog sites that got more respected than the official gaming journalism sites because, well, gaming journalism is actually corrupt as shit. I mean taking bribes for scores and demo copies. They were unpaid advertising for gaming companies and we all knew it.

The reason independent review and news sites started up was because we couldn't trust what was coming from places like IGN, Gamespy, Gamespot, and others. Like, at all.

The idea that these blogs were filled with journalistic integrity though? Yeah, not really. The entirety of them consists largely of op-ed pieces and speculation. That's not bad, mind you, but that's what it is. There's nuggets of actual journalism in there from time to time, but they are few and far between.

Here we have a few instances of writers doing stories on friends. Or writers supporting (before or after is not mentioned) the patreons or other fundraisers of game creators they enjoyed/found interesting/whatever. To which I can only respond with a resounding "meh".

This isn't a scandal. This is, at best, a couple of minor fuckups that could have been handled with slaps on the wrist and a quiet changing of policy, which, to be fair, is basically all that's happening, it's just happening a little more loudly to appease the hordes of anonymous dickwolves baying at the door.

As far as the game jam, after doing some digging, I was able to dig up a few things, but as this is all basically internet gossip from start to finish, feel free to take it with a grain of salt.

Short version, someone decided to paint the person targeted by this whole mess as the mastermind who orchestrated the downfall of the game jam. When their account was hacked, when their personal information was spread around, so forth and so on, it was all laid at the feet of Zoe Quinn, who, at best, thought it was a scam designed to profit off of female game developers, and at worst, said as much to her friends.

VICE Article

This whole thing has left a foul taste in my mouth from the moment it started. It's a bunch of fucking assholes foaming at the mouth and they kept digging until they found something to dig their teeth into just enough to justify their torrent of bullshit that came before. Hell, the Reddit thread and other places even have the gall to talk about Zoe Quinn's harassment as "claims" of harassment. Like there aren't records of the tweets, emails, comments, and reviews that have been thrown around. This is absurd.

I'll admit this whole thing's a bit of a sore point for me right now and I'm not trying to bite anyone's head off here, but this entire thing pisses me off, and it's part and parcel with the other bullshit that's been happening recently too, the Feminist Frequency stuff and the 4chan celebrity nude leaks.

Hell, Anita Sarkeesian is only able to dodge most of the worst of it because the trolls can't find anything with sufficient meat on the bones to drag out into the light.

[frigidmagi]

Dude I kept Quinn out of it for a reason. You'll note I never mentioned her neither does the article I posted. I did for a reason. I'm asking you to do the same. Because while we both agree that harassment is out of line, frankly I have come to a different opinion on her than you do. That's fine, we don't need to agree on everything under the sun to be friends, but frankly I fail to see the point in having an arguement about it. I don't want the discussion hijacked into a fight over the actions of one person who frankly isn't even that damn important anyways. No, I don't care what 4 chan and reddit are doing. If you do, please by all means set up a thread and explain why.

Now on to the more important issue I have.

Meh? Meh?

No. I disagree on every fundamental level possible. These people have in many ways become a main source of gaming news, that means they have responsibilities. I'm not asking them to crawl under the wire into Gaza or Iraq, I'm asking them to be honest and open about their connections to the products and people they're reviewing. Their lack of transparency and honesty is a problem. As for their "Oh we're just blogs" shit, I've seen more than a few of them including the editor happily claim the title of journalist when it would benefit them. It is dishonest, hypocritical and deserving of ridicule and disdain. I'm tired of putting up with it. I'm not putting up with it. I deal with enough bullshit in politics and life, in this space, THIS ONE FUCKING SPACE, I will not accept it.

I mean for Christ sake, John Stewart is a fucking comedian, that doesn't stop him from from being open and honest! Havoc does a damn movie blog and he has been been honest and open beyond anything I've seen. Hell when I review Josh's book I will openly state that I am friends with the writer and I got a review copy. That's all I'm asking for here. The response shouldn't be Meh. Or if you don't care, please grant me the virtue of your silence.

[Hotfoot]

Yes, I know you left Zoe Quinn out of this, but it doesn't change the fact that had it not been for a dedicated campaign of harassment directed at her, this wouldn't even be an issue. It's barely an issue now, frankly. Some bloggers posted stories about friends or people they've given money to in the past.

And you know what? No. I don't care. They are blogs, not news sites. They have no standards for acceptability, they swear no oaths. To put those expectations upon them because the normal methods of media have failed is frankly insane. Should they choose to step up and embrace that role, fine, we can talk, but that's not happened yet, last I checked. Moreover, these are inconsequential blips in the radar. The only reason they've gained any notoriety AT ALL is because there are women involved and we can't have those things.

You want transparency? Fine, sure, that's a good thing. But you're going to sit there and tell me it's more important that we crucify these people for the grand sin of posting about a friend's stuff a handful of times on their blog? Or that we should have to know about everyone that they fund on patreon because they like their stuff? I don't fucking care. It's not important. NONE OF THIS HAS EVER BEEN IMPORTANT. NONE OF IT. Fuck man, if we held big media to these standards, we'd have to gut the whole thing, and they're supposed to be the ones with responsibility and respectability.

You know what Jon Stewart says when people criticize his "News"? That it's a comedy show that comes on after swearing cartoons and a show with muppets making prank calls and shouldn't be held to the same standard.

This entire thing is based off a campaign to harass a handful of people and try to drive them either to suicide or off the internet entirely, simply because they are women invading the sacred spaces of men's gaming, and how dare they. That they managed to stumble on a possibly relevant point that has some relevance only serves to try and justify their campaign. This has been brought forth as this great scandal and IT IS NOT. It's not great, but it's not exactly this grand issue.

Call me when they blow open the corruption of ACTUAL media and then the actual media fixes it. This is internet bullshit drama designed to make someone's life horrible.

[frigidmagi]

I disagree. I think this is a problem. You can hide behind "oh I'm just a blog" but when brag about being a big source of gaming news it doesn't hold fucking water. And if you don't care, then don't write huge screeds about not caring, because that sir, doesn't smack of apathy. As for the big media deal? Why do you think gutting them and starting over would be a problem for me? Seriously this is a knit together batch of excuses because you don't like how this got started. Well I don't care. I do care about cleaning this shit up. There's no cleaning up Fox News. There's no cleaning up CNN, but there is cleaning this up.

Frankly if you don't care so much... There's the damn door but don't try to lecture me in what I should or should not give a damn about.

[Hotfoot]

I'm not trying to set up for another round, I'm just trying to show you why I have the opinion I have on this.

These are some excerpts from the "journalism" and "reviews" they're talking about having problems with:


One of the Kotaku reviews that is causing a ruckus

Earlier this year I read about Loren 'Sparky' Schmidt and Anna Anthropy's game, Drink, and I immediately became fascinated. Get this: in Drink, you play a drinking game against a computer opponent. Yes, a computer opponent. It sounds kind of absurd, to try to out-drink a computer, I know. But, if nothing else, it's a conceptually interesting game—here is Anthropy talking about it on her blog:

We really liked the idea of a quantity that has different meaning in the game and outside of it: the virtual opponent's shotglasses stack up, but she's a computer and the same amount of drinks have a very different consequence to a human player. we liked the ambiguity of performing a physical endurance contest against a virtual opponent: how can you tell how close she is to losing, or if it's even possible for her to lose at all?
Very cool, but it wasn't until yesterday that I decided to actually try it out. I was joined by game developer Porpentine, which meant the game became a slightly more competitive thing: would either of us sport better endurance against the computer? Also, through her involvement I was able to suss out one potential partner should the world require us to go into battle against the machines.

But, um. Anyway.

I had a couple of rules going in to make sure the game was safe—didn't want to get alcohol poisoning or something. This is especially important when you consider that Anthropy says the computer has a 'high tolerance,' and may even be a 'massively socially irresponsible' game in its current form.

When I tested out the game beforehand—without any alcohol, to see what kind of tolerance we were talking about—the computer took 14 shots before passing out.

YOLO is not code for "let's be stupid," despite what you may have heard.
Four. Teen. Shots.
Fourteen shots!

I'm a firm believer in YOLO, but the game could be dangerous. YOLO is not code for "let's be stupid," despite what you may have heard. #truth!

So the rules were that we should be aware of our limits and must not be afraid to bow out of the game should we feel that we were crossing them. Also, the shots wouldn't be full. Personally, I also ate a heavy meal beforehand, which helps. And finally, chasers would be allowed, as would trips to the bathroom, dancing, or whatever you needed to do between shots to make the next one go down a little easier.

Which is to say, if YOU decide you want to play this game: proceed with caution and be careful. Hangovers aren't pleasant, nevermind alcohol poisoning.

We set up a projector so that the other folks at the party could look on while we played, though there isn't much to look at. All it involves is taking a drink, pressing a button, watching the alien-thing opponent take a shot, and then doing it all over again until one of you loses.

Honor system, obviously. The game has no way of checking if you're actually drinking. But if it helps to the veracity of the story, one of Drink's developers was in the audience, Loren 'Sparky' Schmidt.

SHOT ONE
Other folks who witnessed the game's creation/initial play testing become alarmed that we are playing it.

We also note that the alien looks like a dog with an eyepatch. Huh.

SHOT TWO
Still going strong. Porpentine starts Tweeting.

Im playing @auntiepixelante's drinking game with @patriciaxh....two shots in...fuck this dog!!!

— Porpentine (@aliendovecote) December 25, 2012

This is a "review". It goes on, but frankly I think you get the idea. There's barely anything there that constitutes a "review". It's, at best, a written "Let's Play".

Here's another "review"

It's so short I'll post the entire thing.

In This Game, You Search For The 'Gay Planet.' No, Not That One. A Different Gay Planet.
Patricia Hernandez

Filed to: GAY PLANET
ANNA ANTHROPY
1/15/13 7:30pm

In This Game, You Search For The 'Gay Planet.' No, Not That One. A Different Gay Planet.
EXPAND

The game isn't affiliated with Star Wars: The Old Republic, though it is a response of sorts to the recent debacle concerning a 'gay planet.'

Here is a Twine game by Anna Anthropy that's all about searching for an elusive gay planet. It's called, as you might have guessed, The Hunt For The Gay Planet.

The premise:

You've heard rumors of a secret paradise planet where people like you can be people like you, a glittering world where women walk arm-in-arm with women, where you can feel the heat of a lady's reciprocating gaze without having to feel the burn of a thousand judgemental stares on your skin.

Lesbionica. The gay planet. Let's find it.
Like other Twine games, it plays somewhat like a choose-your-own-adventure. And, like much of Anna's work, you might consider it NSFW. (Update: full disclosure...Anthropy was housemates with me and a mutual friend in the summer of 2012.)

I'd say this runs about 15 minutes, and it made me chuckle a few times—both out of the strength of Anna's writing, and also because the idea of a 'gay planet' is so absurd/silly/crazy.

If you were to tell me these were reviews of anything I would laugh in your face, because they are clearly anything but. One's just a play by play of a drunken night playing a stupid game and tweeting about it, the other is slightly more review-ish in that it spends a brief time talking about the game itself.

I'm not even going to bother with the Polygon thing. Contributing to someone's Patreon isn't investment, you don't ever get that money back. Hell, he could probably write it off as a business expense if he really wanted to.

But yes, these are the "reviews" everyone is getting up in arms about. Silly little blog posts about getting drunk and playing silly games. There isn't any real analysis of the games, it's just silly bullshit, much like the rest of Kotaku's fare.

This is as much news or reviews as anything else posted to Kotaku.

There is no cleaning up Kotaku, nor should there really be a call for it now. It was a shitty gawker blog years ago, it's a shitty gawker blog now. Shit, they even pulled an MTV2 a few years ago when they realized they were getting too much bullshit everywhere and people wanted them to just regurgitate press releases. That they call themselves news is laughable and is only true in the most basic of senses, as you can see. Heck, these days I get nearly all my gaming news from Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and even that can be spotty.

For transparency, here's the original "Gamers are Dead" post. Make of it what you will. There's a few others all around, each with varying opinions. It's all mostly aimed at the basement dwelling trolls who are giving the rest of us a bad name.

[frigidmagi]

Okay I read it twice. Tried to sleep, failed, got up and took a walk. Read it again. Including the links.

Saw nothing that made me change my mind.

1: The reviews only convince that there is a need to insist on some basic standards. We just need to insist on more than just basic integrity but also some stuff like no writing drunk, and some standards.

2: I am babbled at your constants demand that we ignore the swamp.

3: That article was damn insulting. It told me, I had never grown up, that what I thought I had based around experiences and acceptance was just crass materialism and I am silly for thinking otherwise. I had a belly full of people telling me what my life is like and what I believe.

4: I'd really like you just respect my opinion that we need to insist on some basic integrity from anyone who wants to claim the title of games journalist and any move in that direction is a good one. You don't have agree just stop telling me not to give a shit.

[Hotfoot]

I have a long response for this, but I'm going to cut it short for right now.

Dude, you're my friend, and times come where I try to be there for my friends, but the one thing I detest doing is lying to them. I hate lying to friends because it means I don't trust them and I don't want them to trust me.

I think you've been lied to here, I think you've formed an opinion based on lies that have been told to you. I think it's frankly disappointing that you have let yourself form opinions on articles based on what other people have told you rather than by reading the articles yourself and coming to your own opinion, because in doing so you've lost your objectivity.

I find it more disappointing that you dismiss nearly every point I make out of hand. If you want me to actively lie to you, I won't. I flatly refuse to lie to someone I consider a friend.

It's my position that you're right, we do need integrity in journalism, even in games journalism. I think that needs to be done from the ground up. Make new sites with actual journalistic integrity in them from the word go. There's been a few attempts at that, we'll see where they go.

However I don't think this movement is going to give it to us. It's got its roots in a bunch of shitheads who got their information by questionable means to start with who have engaged in a fishing expedition and witch hunt that, so far, has only targeted female game developers. I don't trust it, I think it's is trying too hard to make itself important and relevant to cover up the fact that it started from harassment and a desire to chase off female game developers and will likely continue to do so.

The fact of the matter is that if they were really interested in uncovering corruption in games journalism, they wouldn't be stopping here, and I promise you that they would be able to find more examples of it if they really decided to dig, and I mean all over. That they haven't seems to me that they're not really sincere in their stated objective.

[frigidmagi]

You know what, I'm disappointed in you to. I'm disappointed that you would try to excuse people insulting me to my face. I read that article 3 times trying to find what you were seeing, but all I saw was something telling me how my life went, what I felt, what I believed and what defined me. I'm disappointed you would swab this group with such a wide brush because you find some element of the drama distasteful. I'm disappointed that you would reject what is admittedly a tiny gain, but more than I've seen in years. Also did you read the reddit article?

But all that said, do what you think best, because that is what I will do regardless of your approval or disappointment.

[Hotfoot]

You're excusing the bad actions of a hate mob because they found a sliver of truth to attempt to justify their years of harassment. Worse, you're trying to pretend that everything that led up to this never happened, and then taking the response to it in that vacuum. If I thought you were doing it intentionally I'd just tell you to fuck off and do my level best to remove you from my social circle, but I don't. I do think, however, you want something you can easily be mad at, and I understand. Sometimes though, it's just not that straightforward.

As for the article, here's a quick litmus test for you. Do you meet the requirements of the individuals they are talking about? If not, they're not talking about you. They are talking about the assholes that claim to represent you while they make death threats and publish people's home addresses over the internet. Because they DO claim to represent you, they are making a lot of noise and they want your support.

Out of everyone here, if anyone has the "right" to the identity of being a "Gamer", it's me. Hell, I identify as that to most people, and I probably still will after this. It is, however, also used by a group of toxic shitheads who I have no desire to be grouped with. People who latch on to that title so fucking hard that they do heinous acts to defend it. That mentality is falling out of favor, and with it the need to identify as a "Gamer". They want that identifier, by all means, they can have it, and then I will find a new term to describe my leisure activities. I don't need it to justify my existence like they do. That said, neither do you. The article clearly talks about the people who are performing these marathon harassment campaigns as being the toxic part of the community, the ungrown manchildren who are saying "No Girlz Allowed". It's calling on the people who stand by and do nothing to combat them to actively move away from them and let them drown in their own bile, rather than give them the support and justification they crave.

[frigidmagi]

There were moments when I winced. There were moments when I nodded along and even cheered. There were moments when I groaned and shook my head at the behavior of people on twitter, 4chan and elsewhere.

Then there comes a time when a line is crossed

For those of you who don't know what Gor is, it's an awful mind blowingly sexist setting that promotes among other things slavery as the natural condition of women. I'm not a strident feminist, or anything like that, but that is honestly to damn far. This guy isn't just a Gor fan, I can live with people having bad taste. He's making an RPG around the setting and ideals, because he feels it's a setting that deserves to have influence and attention. That's who we're dealing with.

There comes a point where you have to ask if your goals are worth the cost. This is the point where I say no. They aren't. Gaming Journalism is corrupt and it'll be a cold day in the Earth's core before I trust anything from those websites or the major gaming publications. I still encourage people not to go to those websites. Trust guys like Total Biscuit, or Angry Joe not Polygon or PCGamer. But let's be blunt, it's not worth enabling people like this. That frankly is sawing off your leg to fix a splinter. Gaming Journalism isn't going to hurt society, nor cause damage to the republic. It's just a machine that ensures bad games made by the right people make more money then they should. That's a bad thing, but... Gor is worse.

If this is what the group is coming to, then I was wrong to rally behind that banner and I'm out.

[Lys]

Gor is basically trashy planetary romance written around the premise that women's natural state is slavery to men. Sure it's disgusting and anathema to the values we hold dear in our society, but if that were all it would just be some obscure shit nobody's heard of. Instead it has attained infamy because the premise gathered around it a small group of exceedingly creepy adherents whose main redeeming quality is that they keep to themselves. So long as they do so I'm inclined to just let them be. Their approach to addressing their particular desires isn't healthy, but neither is drug addiction and I'm in favour of drug legalization. Sometimes the cost of preventing people from being foolish is greater than the foolishness itself. So in my view if one member of this group wants to make a shitty little RPG for his shitty little cult, then he can go right ahead. He should not, however, expect those outside his group to lend their support. Tolerance is not the same thing as approval, and indeed I disapprove of a great many things I'm willing to tolerate.

[B4UTRUST]

Didn't they already make an RPG based on the whole Gor nonsense? I think it was called FATAL, wasn't it?

[Lys]

FATAL is so terribly bad I don't think even Goreans want to play it.

[Josh]

FATAL is such a weird little thing. It exists mostly to be mocked, but it also was created at a time before self-publishing was the norm. Some weird fucker thought that that sick shit was going to make the moneys and actually went to the trouble and expense of creating it.

As for the Goreans, they're like cockroaches scuttling in the shadows of the net. They tend to move in on dying MMOs, I heard that the old pre-KOTOR MMO was infested with the losers, along with Second Life and other settings.

[Lys]

The mockability of FATAL is the only reason why it didn't just immediately sink into oblivion. The best part is that it just wouldn't be so funny if it had been deliberately made as a joke. Part of the humour is that two guys not only made that thing, but went out of their way to insist it was a serious business, meticulously researched, historically accurate RPG. Then it turns out to be a horrifying abomination wherein "retard strength" is an actual thing and raping things to death is a viable and effective combat strategy. Also it gave us "roll for anal circumference" as a general purpose punchline, on top of being a punchline in and of itself.

[General Havoc]

FATAL is one of those things that could never be made, only found. If you set out to make the worst RPG in the world, you would not make FATAL, for only earnestly dedicated fans of the concept could possibly have created something like it. FATAL is almost sublime in its perfect awfulness. In its own, depraved way, it is transcendent.