The corruption of videogame journalism

[Smash Bro]

As of a few years ago, sites like Kotaku and RockPaperShotgun have been talking less and less about videogames, and more about some "political correctness" agenda, in an attempt to get more hits (which mean more ad revenue). As if the constant obviously paid reviews weren't enough...

This has allowed some people into this agenda to be recruited by videogame journalism sites (for example, Patricia Hernández), and eventually into the game-making industry itself.
You've seen Gone Home, right? The indie non-game that was strangely praised by "critics" all over?

This has allowed some people to monetize it by parading said "political correctness". For example, Anita Sarkeesian, who led the Feminist Frequency campaign and Kickstarted a series of vids about misogyny in videogames, which turned out to be of poor quality.

Anyone calling her out was considered a misogynist.
There's also EA, the notoriously evil publisher of Bioware's games, and many others. Most of the people who disliked games like Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3 and The Old Republic were called homophobes and the sort, despite mentioning the games' poor overall quality.




As of late (mid-August, 2014), a new controversy has appeared.



Basically, an indie dev slept with some journos to get good publicity for her game. It shows how easily manipulable videogame journalism has become, and the hipocrisy of the ones behind the "social justice" tirade.

So, what do you all think of this issue?
Are there any gaming news sites that aren't totally corrupted by SJWs?

[Val Ritz]

When I first clicked on this topic, I totally thought it was going to be about video game corruptions a la Vinesauce. Needless to say, I was woefully, woefully wrong.

I'm somewhat baffled at the conclusion that 'SJWs' are behind the corruption of gaming journalism, as opposed to, say, corporate bribery, slipping industry ethics, or any number of things that could actually cause any sort of corruption. Anita Sarkeesian might be an extremely popular hack, but she's kind of a hack nonetheless. Sure, she has rabid fans, that's kind of the nature of the beast, but it's hardly the attitude of *~SJWs~* (assuming, of course, that they're some monolithic entity with completely homogenous ideals, which, let me tell you, is not the case).

As far as EA/Bioware goes... what? Like, seriously, what? It was literally all the rage to hate on Mass Effect 3 for its ending, if I remember my Things That Are Ruined Forever history, and basically no part of the issue was people calling other people misogynist. I'll be the first to admit I didn't pay much attention to The Old Republic or Dragon Age 2 beyond a trailer or two, but any sort of misogyny accusations were far from front-page news as far as I could see it.

And a dev sleeping with journalists to get good publicity... welcome to the world? That's not exactly social justice anything, that's just a case of people with shitty ethics, AKA most of journalism as a whole most of the time.

Honestly, if your main issue with gaming journalism is a trend of people finally getting up off their asses to complain about how dull it is to choose between Grizzled White Man with 5 'o Clock Shadow #1 and Grizzled White Man with 5 'o Clock Shadow #2, as opposed to, I don't know, people getting blatant payoffs from games studios, I'd suggest checking out your priorities. Yes, people are publicly and vocally criticizing games that you like, because, shocker, they're not doing everything wonderfully that they possibly could. I'm kind of happy that games journalism is commenting on this sort of stuff, because it's an actual incentive for developers to do better in representing the people that do in fact play their games.

TL;DR, "social justice warriors" are not a problem for the video game or video game journalism industry, let's move on from whining about it. Pretty please.