The E-Mails that Prove Video Games Journalism Must Be Reformed

In light of our revelations about the secret gaming journalism mailing list GameJournoPros, few can doubt that damaging groupthink has taken hold of the video games journalism establishment.

[00]

this stuff just makes me so angry, absolutely ridiculous.

[JohnathanACE]

It makes me angry as well but at least many gamers are taking a stand against this crap and fighting back with the truth. These leftist think they can silence us but they're wrong!

[-Foxtrot]

Yeah same here because like what some of the big guys behind the Gamer Gate movement has said, if we let this slide then it's going to give journalists the idea they can do this even worse because nobody will give a shit.

I hope people keep fighting until this is all dealt with.

Milo Yiannopoulos deserves a lot of recognition for all this hard work he's put into this because this wouldn't of came to light without his help.

"These leftist think they can silence us but they're wrong!"

Long as we keep speaking out they won't be able to. It's happening all over, even here, my article from the same site was recently failed on here yesterday because it apparently wasn't gaming related (yeah I know...funny right)....luckily Cat managed to sort it out and get it back up, don't know about the other failed GamerGate articles though

Despite that though the damage is done, people are already talking about this site on the Facebook Gamer Gate page about the failed articles, with screenshots aswell. Shame but what do you expect.

I was scared that people were going to be silenced and have there comments hidden on here like other places but so far that hasn't happened.

Well done people for speaking out, if you think this is pointless then you are just going to be walked all over on again...remember these people are being paid to lie to you while they get free games, press kits, get to meet gaming icons in person, people who lie don't deserve that.

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[Makroyale]

It's not about left or right, it's about right and wrong...

EDIT: I don't think this article will be censored this time (last one was censored, then uncensored).

It's gotten to the point where this story is going to get major news attention.

[JohnathanACE]

@Makroyale

It kinda is. If you haven't notice all the SJW and the websites that promote them (such as Kotaku or Polygon) all promote extremely left-wing/Marxist ideas.The exact same thing happens in all other forms of media and the gaming media is no different (except for the fact that we're fighting back).

[00]

I dont think there leftist anymore,from all the stuff I've seen from them trying to silence minorities, trying to force a narrative etc. they straight up just want complete control and are more a cult then anything.

[Makroyale]

Agreed... I don't feel that this is about politics.

It's hard to believe, just a few days ago it was all fun and games as they chastised and criticized all the gamers (their customers).

Now that this list is out and these emails, most of their mouths are closed and they're not laughing anymore.

[viperman240]

@Foxtrot

Preach brother, preach it!

I would love to add more, but you pretty much covered it.

I can also just be lazy and copy and paste what I've seen in past related articles lol.

[user6540948]

Lefties? I'm a left-leaning Libertarian but it doesn't matter where my political stances fall--any lady who will blow strangers to get ahead in a career by fudging reviews is disgusting. No matter what. And the men who did it are dead wrong. Especially because she looks like she isn't much of a bather in many of her photos (you can count the pores in her skin due to the dirt in them causing said pores to stand out). Idiots risked getting STD's/Cooties and ruining their careers and the integrity of journalism for THAT?! Desperate...

[Clarence]

WTH are you talking about? It's about what's right and wrong.

[Dee_91]

Hopefully this article doesn't fail in a few hours because its " OLD" "Not game related " and "Lame"
http://n4g.com/news/1589343...

Sargon of Akkad had a great conversation with Liana Kerzner a journalist from Polygon and an actual reasonable feminist. Although she was there to explain the side of the "anti-" #GamerGate crowd, ( not the people that just throw misogynist and sexist around but the people with I guess,legitimate concern) it was kind of clear that she didn't know much about gamergate and its stance against gaming journalism because it seemed like she actually agreed with gamergate for the most part..He made a great point in the video when he said, gamers really wouldn't care or really be affected if these bloggers quit and there is really no coming back from this, and he is %100 correct.
I do believe there are still good gaming journalist, and I believe they don't talk about this because they value their jobs and connections with certain people, just like some developers have come out to say.

Its just baffling that those people in that group don't see anything wrong with what they did.They essentially wanted to use their platform to skew or alter views on the subject.I can sort of understand not wanting to write about her to bring more attention to her personal life, and not seeing the link that arose from her personal life to the lack of ethics in gaming journalism, because you yourselves don't value those ethics, so no harm done in their eyes..Instead of looking in the mirror, actually listening to our concerns and remember what you learned about journalism and ethics, you decide to spin this to make gamers look bad while pushing an agenda? That is insane.Not only because you talking ill of your audience on a generalized scale, but also using your platform to force your ideology on people..Lets not even talk about the fact they can dictate what can and can't be posted.. as if it wasn't already obvious. Like I said man its no coming back from that.They can all resign and let the journalist and editors that value ethics take over.

@M00
Yea.. thats what extreme lefts are. ie marxism.I get what youre saying that these people don't really represent the left, but it is still the left ideology.Just like how the right have their extremist that shouldn't represent the average right.

[AndrewLB]

This is not isolated to gaming journalism. You ever notice how reporters and anchors on NBC, CNN, MSNBC, NY Times, LA Times, etc all have very similar talking points and all seem to ignore the exact same stories? This is no coincidence. Since the 1960's, Journalism departments at Universities as well as newsrooms across the country have been taken over by Progressives and it's so bad today that if you show any sign of objectivity, you'll never get a job. Well.. unless you get hired at Fox News.

Why else would so few American's know about the Justice Department forcing gun shops to sell fully automatic rifles to straw buyers for the cartels in Mexico, then never tracked them? Then they stonewalled the investigation by having Obama claim executive privilege.
Or how about how the media helped the white house cover up the events that happened in Benghazi, Libya? Dutifully repeating the lies from Hillary and Obama about how the whole thing was caused by a spontaneous demonstration over an anti-muslim youtube video. They all lied to cover up the fact that it was a pre-planned terrorist attack on 9/11 causing 4 Americans deaths including the first ambassador in 30+ years. And after countless requests for air support, backup from Tripoli, or a simple flyover by F/A-18's... none came. Obama went to bed because he had a fundraiser in the morning in Vegas, and NEVER sent help.
Or have any of you heard about Seal Team 6, the guys who allegedly killed Bin Laden? Well 22 of them got killed when their helicopter was shot down in afghanistan. What the media covered up is they actually survived the crash and fought for hours on the ground against taliban forces. Nobody sent help, all of them died. Then to cover up the firefight, all the bodies were cremated illegally before being brought back to the US.

And the entire time, the corrupt media fed the public every single lie the traitor in the White House told them.

[donthate]

Pardon my interruption and intrusion, but I repeatedly hear "Zoe slept around to further her career and get more PR for her game", but so far I have yet to see any more articles or PR for her game as a result from sleeping around. Now the former is hard to prove, but the latter should be easy.

If anything, it just seems like she is just a regular ugly person that cheats, but there seems to be no evidence otherwise. Anyone?

[Dee_91]

@YouAreSalty I don't even feel like looking it up but there are a couple youtube videos showing how the people she slept with or had personal relationships with help further her career.Those videos show some of the people she had relationships with in the industry actually invested in her game.The videos also showed how the people she had relationships with in the industry used their platform to expose her game and make her money ( this doesn't automatically equate to articles and most of the "PR" was within the gaming industry IE advertising on the site and linking to it in other games articles) , and in return, make money off their investment, all of which is an conflict of interest which is against journalist ethics.Kotaku and polygon responded by saying they will not give money to indie developers anymore.. well kotaku did, polygon basically said we will continue to do so, but ask our journalist to disclose it, if they were to write an article about that person, in other words, they did nothing. There is countless amount of evidence.. BUT, it is indeed still not fact though all evidence leads to it.However as a result of this, it brought to gamers the concern of wanting more transparency in gaming journalism.

Maybe you should actually look it up instead of thinking it should all land in your lap or isn't true.
I'll help you get started.
https://www.youtube.com/wat...

(extremely dramatic but I guess thats the theme here )
https://encyclopediadramati...

[-Foxtrot]

If anyone is having trouble looking at the full email dump, here you go

https://archive.today/JFoxJ

[viperman240]

Thanks for this, I'll have to check this out tomorrow.

Kudos for Mike Futter for noticing not to get into this, and being professional.

[-Foxtrot]

No problem

The main one on Milo Yiannopoulos page was took down by him because he saw that he forgot to cover up one or two phone numbers and other personal infomation.

The original should be back up tomorrow with the new edits

[viperman240]

I saw that, I'm surprised he mad such an amateur mistake after he stated this himself.

http://i.imgur.com/j8XCnXG....

Well I guess we are human after all...

[Th4Freak]

Awesome, thanks! Care with cl1983 and Nineball2112 tho.

[SilentNegotiator]

"Ben Kuchera Aug 19
Yeah, I’m really confused and saddened that this is even a conversation."

-_-
Saddened and confused that a story of corruption is being discussed.

Lots of hate for The Escapist, too. Nothing scares them more than a website that's primarily games that doesn't get all of their money and stories from big publishing companies and allows free discussion amongst their members. Scary stuff for people like Ben.

edit: Wait, Aug 19?
edit 2: Nevermind, It's from UK :)

[LightDiego]

That incident shows what's gaming journalism is made of. Let's boycott this pricks until they go away. These corrupt journalists are not important at all for gaming.
We need professionals, not these hipsters pushing their agenda and trying to ruin games.
Kotaku, Gamespot, Polygon, Rock Paper Shotgun, Wired, fu** off.

[viperman240]

You said it, many people have the same sentiment. Check this up to date traffic chart.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.a...

Keep ignoring these sites, they will crumble and have to face the music soon enough.

[N1GHT_W0LF_X]

Is there a list somewhere of all the sites that have proven connections to Gamer Gate? I'd like to know exactly which to avoid. I know of a few but I'm not too up-to-date with all the new developments since there seems to be a new bombshell every day or two.

[SilentNegotiator]

A mod failed the high heat mailing list article ( http://n4g.com/news/1589343... - it got re-approved, but it's too late - it's not on the hottest news column where it belongs) just like someone failed the high heat Zoe Quinn article ( http://n4g.com/news/1569416... ).

Something tells me that some mods here on N4G are on the list. The idea that the way that game news is reported isn't game news (ESPECIALLY when it's about corruption) is completely preposterous.

[JohnathanACE]

A mod named Nineball2112 desperately tried to fail the article on the Kotaku sex exchange. Hmmm I wounder what he was trying to hide. ;)

[00]

I've noticed that a lot with this gamer-gate stuff, you would think a select group of journalist controlling what is news worthy and what is not, should be all over the front page.

[Makroyale]

Don't worry... This one won't get censored...

It's too late now. The movement has overcome the censoring (this email leak helped that happen).

[SilentNegotiator]

This specific post on N4G probably will if it manages to reach 300+ degrees.

[Makroyale]

This story will start hitting major news sites. I'm not saying N4G is irrelevent, but it's gotten to the point where it won't matter anymore and the mods will just look stupid for doing it.

[SilentNegotiator]

"This story will start hitting major news sites"

Don't be too sure. Game journalists EVERYWHERE attempted to snuff out the original "gamergate" affair (in exchange giving us simultaneously-released "OMG TEH GAMER IDENTITY R DEAD" pieces), WHETHER or not they were involved.

Major news sites won't want to bring attention to journalism corruption, either, in fear that it will bring more watchful eyes on journalism in general.

[-Foxtrot]

If you only know what I had to go through in PM's to get that back up.

I wouldn't be surprised to be honest

Probably why Kotaku haven't been removed on this site yet despite our down voting.

Think about it guys...same goes for Polygon and others

If this article and our comments where we are speaking freely ON TOPIC with the article is modded then we know something is up

[SilentNegotiator]

+1 Helpful
Forcing N4G staff to admit that it is legitimate game news is important precedent.

Cat's a cool cat, though; if anything, we can be sure that any sort of shenanigans don't go all the way to the top. ;)

[gigoran]

I've resorted to campaigning entirely on twitter. I was actually banned and unbanned twice on n4g for speaking out. I'm glad n4g is getting actual support posted for us at #gamergate, but I just don't feel comfortable talking about it on n4g since their censorship of my account.

[-Foxtrot]

Well I had some help, a few other people PM'd Cat and other mods aswell

I got blocked by one mod because he didn't want to know about "my little movement" and how it shouldn't be on the site.

You can all see it on the Facebook page in the comments, scroll down until you a friend of mine named Jay Roberts who put the screenshots up. He's also a member of the site so thank you Jay :)

I hope Cat isn't involved, I hope she writes a public blog post to address these issues because we need someone like her on GamerGate side. This site is a great way to get GG more exposure.

[viperman240]

@Foxtrot

Don't take all the credit now, I did my fair share if it really matters. :)

Edit: Never mind, you just said it the second I posted this lol

Double Edit: This is the post he's referring to.
https://www.facebook.com/ph...

[TheTwelve]

Great reporting.

[Remy_Chaos]

Bring them down, bring them all down. Every single one deserves to be exposed and curbed stomped into cinder blocks by Seth Rollins.

[Kingdomcome247]

This is just bad all around. With the exponential financial growth of the industry, corruption is going to become more prevalent. I wish this could be stamped out in it's entirety, but it seems that for every step the gaming industry takes forward, it takes two steps back. It kind of makes you yearn for the simpler times in the industry.

[BitbyDeath]

Is this really that different to I don't know, say X company handing out goody bags for better reviews or X company paying people to say good things on youtube about them or X company buying websites to secretly paint them in a better light?

[Th4Freak]

The thing has scaled up, its not anymore about conflicts of interest or Zoe manipulating and lying, the thing is that now it has come to light that a lot of reviewers and mainstream media "reporters" are involved in a conspiracy.

[47]

That industry(games journalism) needs to be burned to the ground and started over. Damn, wheres Ra's Al Ghul when ya need him?

[WilliamUsher]

This is good to see. I really hope we get more of these articles up and out there.

As a community-driven site, N4G is the perfect platform to make #GamerGate shine where it needs to.

[00]

That's if the mods allow it, we do know that they can control the heat of stories and they can fail stories they don't like.

[WilliamUsher]

Let them.

We screenshot the failures and compile them.

We bring N4G under the same scrutiny as the rest of the sites getting "Operation Disrespectful Nod".

No one is above reproach; no platform is above the consumer it serves.

One way or another, #GamerGate will bring down the institution if every single one of us have to fight tooth and nail through a horde of corrupt game journo scum and their clickbait websites to do so.

Let them bring their bias... we'll bring the truth.

[nix]

Stick them and burn them.

[house]

i highly doubt they will make this story go away because it further legitimizes whats going on, we need and must make this story the front page of N4G.

[-Foxtrot]

It's a shame because stupid things or actual non gaming related articles always become hot topics.

[house]

yeah, mostly because its click bate and easy.

[MasterCornholio]

We as gamers have to stand up for our right on have honest journalism in our hobby. I find it sickening that so many reviews are manipulated due to a deal with the author and the publisher. Sites that fabricate news to generate hits are horrible as well and must be dealt with (VGchartz).

N4G needs to take its site rating seriously and ban those sites for providing fake news and manipulated reviews. The only thing that type of news does is disrupt the comment section and make it a living hell for sensible people who enjoy reading the opinions of others.

[DJ]

Holy crap, the level of collusion is incredible. Plus the "Who hasn't slept with a PR person or game developer #AmIright" was hilariously disturbing.

Gaming media is in dire need of a Consumer Report style website. Where gamers pay for news (I know, crazy right?). And in return, no advertisements, no bribery from game publishers, and just normal journalism.

[Ocsta]

Ok so I've finally decided. I'll never ever base a buying decision on a review again. F*** these assholes.

[Gore-Content]

Give it a couple of month and no one will ever talk about this topic again - The state of gaming today.

[betcha]

We helped turn this industry, our pastime, into a multibillion dollar a year industry. I'll be damned if I let any so called "journalists", over glorified game critics turn it into complete garbage. Ignore these clowns and force them out of business.

[Clown_Syndr0me]

Okay I read it all but I don't understand why this is any of our business? Or what gamer gate is..

[Ch1d0r1]

Are you on the list bro? jk

I guess if you like gaming and frequent gaming sites often, what your reading might be influenced by the relationship between reporter/journalist and developer/publisher. They might be a little bit more bias to a review or subject.

[Clown_Syndr0me]

I though that much was obvious in all forms of journalism not just gaming. Didn't realise people took it so personally.
That's why when it comes to reviews I take everything with a pinch of salt, and read multiple reviews rather than just one or two.