Aram Zucker-Scharff

Hello: Videogames Are For Everybody | Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

It’s time for us to talk about a difficult and complicated series of issues which have affected the gaming community in recent weeks. This is one of those

No-one has responded to it this time, because there is so little coherent argument to respond to. In fact, most of what is out there seems to point more concretely towards a conspiracy of misogynists to silence progressive writers and their supporters, than it does towards a conspiracy to corrupt or destroy games as a medium.

While there are certainly people who feel alienated from the games press, or who are (for whatever reason) unhappy about how the games press functions, many of the people who have pushed their ideas and opinions during this furore are people whose views are extreme and sexist. There are numerous individuals criticising the games press who are simultaneously harassing and abusing women. Many of these people have a history of attacking women. Their main intention is to attack women, not to improve practice across games. It’s deeply ugly stuff, and has little to do with ethics or games. It has to do with politics and hate.

Payola: I Sleep Beneath the Golden Hill | Sufficiently Human:

An excellent look at why what is happening in gaming journalism is relevant to the entire field of journalism:

“Because the pieces themselves are worth peanuts, I was expected to produce like 10 of them a day. That may not sound like a lot, but believe me, you start to feel like you’re on an assembly line they way these articles are cobbled together. And because your labour is valued based on what you’re producing and not what it takes to produce it, you quickly start to feel overworked and brutally underpaid (I was making about $200/mo). On the other hand, the system is kind of set up to seduce writers shouldering for visibility into jobs like this, producing an enthusiast press that is willing to work more or less for exposure. As a writer working in this system, you’re basically a low-level functionary with no leverage to seek information beyond what a publisher wants on record. Being able to gain access to these companies is fundamental for games press to exist, so editorial isn’t really in a position to demand very much most of the time. As such, you end up with a press that mostly operates like cheap PR.”

Taking a Risk: The quiet end of re/Action, the digital video games zine that had the unusual idea of reasonable pay for its writers.