Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: Politics is always going to be a part of reviewing. Hypocrisy doesn't have to be

[quote name="blackwater"]I agree that people should lighten up and stop trying to treat every game as a moral crusade. However, I think it's silly to set up this impossible standard of totally non-political reviewing and then say "gamergate failed" because nobody can meet that standard. For example, nobody is going to review something like Hatred or that concentration camp game without mentioning the theme, and probably getting totally repulsed by it. Similarly, nobody is going to review one of those horrible social justice twine games without at least noticing the politics and either approving or disapproving. The best we can ask for is that if you are repelled by the theme, or the developers' behavior, or the politics, or something else besides gameplay, that you are honest about what it is that you don't like. The big revelation from GamerGate was that there isn't really any such thing as games journalism any more. There's no subscription revenue any more. The advertisement revenue that replaced it is a pittance in comparison. Nowadays, websites like Kotaku or Polygon are just outsourced PR departments for the organizations with money. That's why they don't give a shit about gamers, and are willing to say stuff like "gamers are dead." That's why they don't even want to play some of the games they review, let alone get good at any of them. We are not their customers. The studios are their customers. To the extent that GG made this clear, it was a success. It would be nice if more of the fake journalism sites met the same fate as Gawker. But realistically, new shills would just pop up, and we'd have to start the same process of disillusionment again.[/quote]