When #GamerGate kicked in, I strongly advocated for the people who actually cared about ethics in games journalism to use the energy to create a consumer organization (Initial proposal here, answers to criticisms here). The central, and perhaps most important part of the idea, was the website, something I called “GamesOmbudsman.com”, which would focus on basically reporting on games industry press – basically watching the watchmen. What I envisioned was something similar to Politifact, but centered on the games industry.
So it’s not a surprise that I am intrigued and cautiously optimistic about the website GamerGateFacts. GGF’s mission statement is in their sidebar.
GGF does not have an agenda against journalists, feminism, leftist politics or even the gaming press as a whole.
The only agenda GGF espouses is one that stands against lies, corruption, censorship and cronyism and any who choose to defend or further them.
And, well, these guys are trying, and are not that far off the mark. I do have some criticisms for them (see below), but what I see here is a very promising skeleton of an idea that could serve the game community well for years in the future. Here’s what I like (i.e. this is good, don’t change it).
- No attempts to criticize websites for taking progressive, feminist, or ‘SJW’ stances on anything. I should note that these tendencies by some gamergaters are, after the issues of harassment, the number one alienators of opponents of gamergate, and these tendencies are absolutely, 100% there.
- No real mentions of Anita Sarkeesian or Brianna Wu, both of whom are not journalists, and both of whom bring out the worst trolls from the underbelly of the movement.
- Even-handed, professional, non-inflammatory text. It’s factual, nonemotional and to the point, and doesn’t reach into some of the inflammatory rhetoric similar sites have used.
- No getting butthurt by ‘Gamers are Over’ articles, Gawker mockery or other editorial commentary that #Gamergate disagrees with. Editorial journalists are allowed to have opinions, and those opinions can be slammed, but it’s correct that these opinions not be addressed by a website such as this.
- No attempts to suggest that giving low review scores is somehow ‘corrupt’ journalism.
- No attempts to decry bad, weird, or esoteric journalism as unethical such as Polygon’s nonsensical kiss/kill Shadows or Mordor article.
- No attempts to paint bad publisher/developer acts as bad press acts (something frequent in this timeline, for example).
- GGF itself has no named journalists. The fact that the website is posting as just ‘gamergatefacts’ instead of people trying to famewhore as muckrakers makes it seem more authentic, and more authoritarian as well. In the future, they may want to have a named spokesperson, who could do things like give talks at shows, but in the short terms, such a person is probably unnecessary.
- Decent sourcing. In particular, the IGF article ignores a ton of the absolutely spurious bullshit that’s out there in favor of the one concrete allegation.
- Commitment to corrections. This is actually a pretty big deal. #GamerGate has a real tendency to throw smears around (Zoe didn’t give money to charity, Anita didn’t call the FBI) and never publicize nor apologize when those claims are proven false – which is a huge reason why the ethics of the hashtag is frequently questioned. If you take on this kind of endeavor, you’re going to fuck up from time to time. Correcting the record (and occasionally, having to eat shit and apologize too) is important to maintaining integrity.
That being said, I have some suggestions that perhaps the founders of this website might take to heart, if they really want this to be an important part of the industry moving forward (and if they want GamerGate to have created meaningful change in the industry).
1. Change the name (of the motherfucking website, not the organization/hashtag). I realize this is the most controversial thing I’m going to say here, but I’ve talked this over with a few people, and they agree. There are several reasons. First off, the word ‘Gamergate’ has a lot of baggage associated with it, fairly or not. People who have been turned off by it in the past are going to be disinclined to give the website a fair shake.
Secondly, there are still bad actors in gamergate – it’s just a hashtag, with no leader, organization or clearly defined ethos. Which means that the website will fully take hits from free agents in GamerGate opening their fat mouth in unfortunate ways that undercore the ‘ethics’ bent of the website. Such as here, here, here, here, here, here, and that’s just 3 minutes of searching. If you have #gamergate in your name, you’ll continually be having to say ‘these guys don’t speak for us’. Call yourself something else, like GameWatchdog or GamesOmbudsman, and this problem goes away, because you have 100% control over the actions in your name.
But the most important reason is that this website needs to come off as impartial, unbiased and fair. Meanwhile, Gamergate is selling itself as a full-blown army in an all-out culture war. This makes it much easier for the people on the other side to ignore GGF, and not offer feedback or respond to requests for comment. Having a new, independent identity will yield better results.
Lastly, at some point, gamergate will fade away. Even gamergate followers talk longingly about how they hope the tag will die. However, the website has a long potential life beyond gamergate, since I’m sure ethical concerns with games marketing and journalism will not fade. This is not to say that this website should disavow GamerGate. They should feel free to say they were inspired by it. They should print on their image macros that they are ‘proud partners of #gamergate’. But creating some distance from the main cause will increase their sense of authority and independence, and dramatically reduce the amount of time you defend yourself from utterly stupid bullshit you have no relationship to.
2. Define your charter precisely, and possibly expand it. It may be that ‘games journalism’ isn’t broad enough for what you want to cover. The IGF stuff, for example, is not really about games journalism. The Zoe Quinn and TFYC story is not really about games journalism. That being said, it may be that the GGF staff feels that they want their charter to expand to cover that stuff.
Which is fine! I think, for example, that the Shadows of Mordor payola scandal is something that definitely merits attention. TotalBiscuit disagrees, saying that Youtube personalities aren’t journalists. However, the issue of Youtube payola isn’t just about ethics, but about legalities, as Gamasutra has been tracking for a while now (and which TB pointed out). Even if YT personalities aren’t ‘journalists’, it sure seems like they are something a legitimate consumer watchdog should keep an eye on.
3. Point out the good stuff too. My ideal website would use both a carrot and a stick. Don’t just punish bad behavior, but reward good behavior too. Give out Gold Stars for when they do their freakin’ jobs and protect consumers. The Gamasutra article I cited is one great example. Another would be this Kotaku article on mock reviews. Another would be Jimquisition’s exploration into the Shadows of Mordor payola fiasco.
Look, Games Journalism isn’t going to change until good sites get rewarded with clicks and bad sites get abandoned. All of their money comes from publishers, and what publishers care about are clicks. So do what you can to drive the clicks to the good guys doing good things.
4. Ask subject matter for comment. Serious journalism means that you ask your subject matter for comment and response on your findings. As an example, this article about Polygon’s ethics statement would read a lot better if it noted “October 26th: We asked Polygon for a comment. They have not yet replied.” Note: that doesn’t make the article weaker, it actually increases the self-incrimination.
5. Improve inputs. I like that the individual articles don’t have comment threads on the same page – keep the base page clean and pure. That being said, the existing #gamergate crowd could be a powerful crowdsourcing engine for investigations. I do feel that there’s room to improve the web’s ability to help investigate issues. Having a seperate discussion style page (a la Wikipedia) for each scandal might be effective. It could be a link to an existing message board, as many websites do (including, I note, we do on SWTOR).
Also, the website could use more ways and invitations for members to point out and suggest new scandals and incidents that demand investigation. Don’t publish anything on your front page until it meets your standards, but by creating a forum and incentivising users to help flesh out stories that meet those standards,
6. Acknowledge response – because it means noting success! One of the more annoying things about GamerGate is reading about ethical lapses and/or mistakes that have long been addressed as best they can. GamerGateFacts, for example, buries the fact that the events of Gamergate forced Kotaku to add forgotten disclaimers to Patricia Hernandez’ games by Anna Antropy.
Don’t bury it! Celebrate it! Add a line of green text that says “Due to pressure from the #gamergate community, Totilo and Kotaku added a disclaimer disclosing this relationship on 9/X/2014.” This is a win – a scalp claimed in victory. Treating it as one instead of an unresolved battle (a) makes it apparent that the pressure is DOING something and (b) makes it so people like me who have awareness with the facts say ‘really? That’s been resolved as well as can be. Why are they STILL going on about that?’
7. Get Rid of Spurious Shit and Elevate the Big Stories. This is probably the other area we’ll disagree, but there’s still a ton of penny-ante bullshit here. The fact that all these stories are given equal weight makes it problematic. The EA data leak story is way more important than the Hernandez stories, but is effectively given equal weight. Even more so because there are more of these penny-ante stories. It makes it seem like the cause is more interested in playing gotcha than protecting the customer.
Serious thought needs to be given on the use of the friend standard. How friendly do you have to be for it to be a problem? How many drinks must I share before that merits a disclaimer? I’ve been working in the industry for 20 years now, and I have cultivated many press relationships. Should the fact that I’ve shared beers and latenight discussions at a trade show with Alex Macris mean that this interview I did should have come with a disclaimer? I mean, we’ve been Facebook friends for YEARS since that night.
The Destructoid and Anthony Burch story is interesting because it assumes that the press will always know where their writers end up. I don’t know if that’s always the case. Anthony had a high profile role for BL2, so in this case questions make more sense. But there are so many friendships made and so many people moving between development and journalism that I fear that GGF may be pushing for a level of disclosure that would result in disclosure statements being so common that they cease to be useful.
GameJournoPros is a discussion in its own right, but here’s the deal: forming a mailing list, facebook group or message board to discuss things with other people is not inherently unethical. Such constructs are fairly standard in the professional world (I’m member of several myself), and are incredibly useful for journalists who need to find sources and forge contacts for stories – i.e. social ties result in better journalism, not worse. It’s possible that some shady shit could go on on a mailing list, but so far, the leaked emails have shown nothing of the sort: they’ve shown the group in wild disagreement on most subjects, in fact. At any rate, if this story sticks around, it should definitely include links to this article and this article which offer more details.
Alex Lifshitz’s statement is inflammatory, but is out of context, and is not linked to any actual bad behavior. In fact, Alex is pointing out that this is fucked up in the context of the article linked. “Where do we expect the games industry to go if we let it grade it’s own damn papers?” he asked, specifically about these practices, immediately afterwards. In short, he’s doing exactly the sort of thing you would HOPE a AAA producer would on the subject of Ethics – speaking up about the need for better watchdogs.
Lastly, the attempts to include Zoe Quinn are so strained as to be obvious fan service. Remember, GamerGate is not about her, right? Trying to force stories like this one just serve to undercut the site’s otherwise decent veneer of impartiality.
Look, this is all just my opinion, and no, making these changes still aren’t going to make me sign up as a GamerGate supporter. In fact, my own personal takeaway is that, going through these articles just underscores that the ethics complaints that #gamergate has dug up, especially in the last 8 weeks, has been pretty thin gruel. Not enough to offset the blood on the balance sheet – the pure human wreckage – in the form of harassment that’s occurred (yes, on both sides, but most significantly women). Not enough to justify the pure anger and vitriol that has paralyzed dev relations while this plays itself out. And definitely not enough to justify me having spent two months of my life obsessing over it when I could be playing some awesome games instead.
But still, there’s a lot of passion about the ethics stuff, and that’s fine. As a developer, I likely see these issues in an altogether different light from y’all. If I were to make a list of the top ten worst things in the games industry right now, ethics in games journalism wouldn’t make the top ten. (However, anonymous harassment of other players, dev harassment, greater diversity in games, and reaching broader markets all would).
Still, there’s no question that lapses have happened in the past, and that lapses will happen again in the future. If this website, or another one like it, can build upon this to a place where everyone can agree that it is useful, factual, and unbiased, then maybe, just maybe, something that actually serves gaming well can come out of the wreckage of the cataclysmic events that started in August.
They still include sources such as this pic:
http://i.imgur.com/hE1US8k.png
And this KotakuInAction post:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2ejs7v/gaming_journalists_patricia_hernandez_of_kotaku/
but it is a start
A lot of good ideas Damien even if i dont quite agree with all of them.
I think there needs to be a prohibition of the inclusion of metacrtic scores or anything like it in contracts between publishers and developers of anykind. Since this stimulates corrruption and favors.
Erasing Metacritic only allows do its rebirth in another form.
Game Journalism should not direcly influence payment between developers and publishers.
A review should also have sort of criteria and a minimum of objectivity or its can turn propaganda piece of the authors biases. In this I belive TB has a excelent point.
Someone can write 10 pages article about a game sexism for example (I dont mind but I wont read it) But a review can and should aim objectivity display the game as a whole.
“I think there needs to be a prohibition of the inclusion of metacrtic scores or anything like it in contracts between publishers and developers of anykind”
—
First, how is this going to be enforced? The contract is between two parties (the developer and the publisher) about how the game will be critically received. The journalists have no more say in this than a groundhog does about whether or not a contract gives a bonus in the event of six more weeks of winter.
Second, you do realize that the “Metacritic clauses” are fundamentally developer friendly, right? They are a way for the developer to get money for critical acclaim, even if the game does not sell well. Banning these means that you are declaring that the only thing developers should be financially rewarded for are sales — effectively deeming McDonalds to be superior to The French Laundry in all cases.
Third, the party with the money (the publisher) ends up losing money in the event the game is well reviewed but does not sell well. The party who generally does not have the money (the developer) stands to gain. So the party who has the ability to corrupt the process (the publisher) has nothing to gain by gaming the system, and the party who stands to gain does not have the wherewithal to do so.
Put all these things together, and you’ll note that the payola went to the streamers to drive sales, not to the Metacritic-approved reviewers to boost the developer’s odds of a bonus.
” But a review can and should aim objectivity display the game as a whole.”
—
There is no such thing as a meaningful objective review. Reviews are opinion pieces by definition.
Well this topic is more complex than you guys make it out to be.
It’s true that there’s neither a objective set of criterias to judge a game upon, nor is there an objective answer for quite a lot of criterias. There is no way to judge if a character is well written, other than some feeling.
But there’s certainly an objective way to review games with a given set of criterias and within a singular institution of a gaming magazine. The position of editors exists among other things to make sure individuals use this sets and stay consistent with the overall way to look at games.
Though one of the few criterias i’d call nearly objective for reviews, is looking at a piece as a whole and not just concentrating on individual scenes. One of the others would be trying to help in decision making.
So for example calling Deadpool a visually lacking game, because there’s the part where they cut back on graphics would be false, while calling Maniac Mansion visually lacking in todays time would be right.
In the same way calling Duke Nukem chauvinistic seems right, while critizising Minecraft for it’s singular protagonist (who looks quite male) seems a bit off.
But there’s one major gripe i’ve got with quite a lot of the current situation.
A lot of gaming press seemingly chooses to do a huge proportion of oppinion pieces, that themselves are not subject to implement some set criterias or other formal specifications.
It’s them choosing not to define clear formats that one can easily compare to each other. That basically means it’s just arbirtrary which game gets called out for being sexist and which doesn’t get called out – and that’s not helping people in their decisions.
Then again i’m mostly reading a single german magazine (which itself seems okay), so i might misjudge the overal situation.
“Looking at a piece as a whole and not just concentrating on individual scenes” is subjective. E.g., how important the ME3 ending is to ME overall.
More than that, it’s a bad idea to choose a fixed set of formalized criteria to review media by. The criteria for reviewing should always be up for discussion. The most interesting reviews are the ones that argue for new ways of looking at and evaluating games.
A reviewer has to keep their audience in mind and different institutions have different audiences. That’s the editor’s job. But the audience is not defined by an formalized set of objective evaluation criteria. (Or if it is so defined, it is no audience I have any interest in being a part of.)
Pretty much everything that GG says about objectivity being a goal in reviews is wrong. It’s complicated in the sense that Intelligent Design is complicated–there are very complicated arguments in defense of something that is simply wrong. Dave Weinstein is simply correct.
Mind you, it’s not crazy to argue that aesthetics could be objective. The most interesting defense of that view I’ve seen is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT7DFCF1Fn8 . But if you’re going to take the idea of objective aesthetics seriously, it actually means that aesthetics becomes even more political–that there are objective truths about whether things are good/evil or beautiful/ugly, and that they are interrelated.
Yes there are important points within a story, so what?
Those moments doesn’t render any other moments meaningless. Just take Mass Effects ending and make it the first scene and people wouldn’t give a fuck about it. They complained because there happenend something beforehand. And i’m writting that as someone who hasn’t seen more than a few hrow-away trailers for said series.
“More than that, it’s a bad idea to choose a fixed set of formalized criteria to review media by.”
Am i’m speaking about a whole medium ? No.
I’m well aware that an individual medium might be to complex to find singular criterias, nor did i speak about it isolated from indivudal institutions or criterias. I made i clear that i was speaking of a system, which is something different than what you want to discuss.
“The criteria for reviewing should always be up for discussion. The most interesting reviews are the ones that argue for new ways of looking at and evaluating games.”
Again you’re arguing against something i’ve never said.
The point i made was that you’ve to commit to applying the same criteria towards comparable pieces or otherwise you’re no longer comparing those.
If you don’t do so, everything you can say about anything really is “I like/dislike it”.
And sure we need to discuss criterias to judge things on. And we can also change criterias now and than.
“Pretty much everything that GG says about objectivity being a goal in reviews is wrong. It’s complicated in the sense that Intelligent Design is complicated–there are very complicated arguments in defense of something that is simply wrong. Dave Weinstein is simply correct.”
As i pointed out he’s quite right about the inherent subjectivity of reviews. Which again is something different when we talk about a singular review or a set of reviews and comparisons – or better said a system and an institution.
Which also fits the philosophical view you go into next.
But let me first ask you if you really want to go into arguing how anything is just subjective and give me good reasons pointing out how your justice is just subjective and how no one shut give a rats arse about that? I don’t think we want to go there, even though that would be fitting to your whole idea of ingoring reasonable people with another oppinion…
We’ve found a nice little thing we call objectivity for science, which is mostly based in consistent behaviour while making observations and building a complex of rulesets to judge things. Which are in the same way discussed as reviews and such should.
With respect, no, you weren’t clear, and this doesn’t make it any clearer. I stand by what I wrote earlier, and so far as I can tell it addresses what you actually wrote, as opposed to what you may have intended to write.
<blockquote
But let me first ask you if you really want to go into arguing how anything is just subjective and give me good reasons pointing out how your justice is just subjective and how no one shut give a rats arse about that?
I never argued that ethics or justice was “just subjective”. Derek Parfit’s “On What Matters” makes what is probably the best defense of the Moral Realist philosophical position, and none of it implies or depends on there being such a thing as objective aesthetics.
I note that if you like what Deutsch was saying there, you should check out his book “The Beginning of Infinity”, it’s brilliant. But the thing about Deutsch’s argument is that it doesn’t really go any further than what you saw in that video. He thinks the existence of objective aesthetics explains the beauty of flowers. But he hasn’t offered any idea as to what objective aesthetics is. He kind of hints that it might require as-yet-undiscovered mathematics, physics, scientific method or philosophy to understand.
So my view is that either aesthetics is arbitrary (i.e. at most just a contingent fact about human biology, thus we can’t say someone is right or wrong for liking something) or it’s objective, but we aren’t yet in a position to explain why. Either way, human intuition is, for now, all we have to go on, and looking for simple formal rules is premature. It may very well be the case that the the true laws of aesthetics are infinitely complicated, and Occam’s Razor isn’t applicable (there are competing principles of scientific inference, despite what Bayesians would have you believe.)
Of course that means that humans can rationalize liking something for improper reasons–I like this because my roommate made it, I think the controls in this game suck because the story makes Republicans look good, etc. All we can do is compare reviews and our experience of playing games against each other and hope that collectively we get closer to the truth.
Sorry but you’re still not making sense if you argue against consistency in analysing anything.
Yes we could argue that the current format is bullshit, as it isn’t measuring the impact of picturen upon the brain of people and trying to discern the influences of composition and whatever. And we could, as i said before, argue that we’ll never find a definate answer to what beauty or a good game means or influences that.
But that doesn’t mean one should be free from any formal pressure now.
It simply doesn’t make sense to judge Civilization Beyond Earth based upon how much of the colour purple is in there and Civilization 5 on how loud the music is.
You can do both, and both are valid as reviews. But you’re inconsistent in your judgement when comparing those, which just means you’re not answering why one is/isn’t important for one game and not the other.
Again you’re basically arguing for a review that’s just able to tell us “I like/I dislike”.
And that even ignores how reviews are written to inform other persons, who might have different preferences and valuations, who therefore need some descritpion as to why we’ve got this “like/dislike” and might have different criterias. Which again would mean the inclusion of more criterias and some set of criterias makes it easier to understand for said people to understand your judgement or give them enough informations to form their own oppinion.
So we’re honestly facing a bit of internal&external validity of reviews. And while i agree that every review voicing the authors feeling about a game and his set of criteria is internal valid, it doesn’t mean it has any external validity.
“Sorry but you’re still not making sense if you argue against consistency in analysing anything.”
Good thing I didn’t argue that, then.
I am arguing against your claim that we should have some previously agreed upon criteria, or even worse a formal set of specifications. Our understanding of aesthetics is simply too hazy for that to make sense.
“But you’re inconsistent in your judgement when comparing those, which just means you’re not answering why one is/isn’t important for one game and not the other.”
I agree that, ideally, a critic be able to explain the discrepancy. The wrong way to do that is to expect shared evaluation criteria. The right way to do that is to let critics make arguments defending their opinions, and let readers decide for themselves whether the arguments are compelling.
The external validity comes from people reading the argument and deciding for themselves whether the argument is compelling. It does not come from sharing some previously agreed upon criteria or formal specifications, because he criteria for evaluation should always be up for discussion.
In fact, even if there is no consistency–if the critic has no honest reason to think purple is important in one game but music volume is important in the other–the reviews are still useful as long as each review states what criteria is used within that review, letting the reader decide for themselves whether the criteria matter.
I don’t understand why you think reviews NEED to be externally valid.
What, in your mind, is the purpose of a review?
And I would add: if civ:be has purple text on a purple background for all dialogues, and civ:v has barely audible sound no matter what you do, then they absolutely should be judged on those qualities.
@Consumatopia
Either you’re arguing against consistent behaviour, or against nothing i’ve said.
That’s really up to you at this point. As i’ve never written that here are criteria which fit everything, nor have i written that one always has to use the same set of criteria.
I’ve written that if you choose to use a given set of criteria for a game you should be consistent in the usage of that towards comparable games.
And how good you can compare games relys on how comparable their criteria are.
And just to make one last point.
Explaining why you use a certain set of criteria and ignore some criteria you’ve used in all of your other body of work, is actually there to explain the inconsistency and is in itself a framework and something we’ve foramilized.
So please note a last time, i’m not saying gaters are right. I’m saying that there’s some sort of objectivity in reviews, which basically means you shouldn’t arbitrarily choose what criteria to apply and which not.
This:
“Either you’re arguing against consistent behaviour, or against nothing i’ve said.”
is totally different from this:
“I’ve written that if you choose to use a given set of criteria for a game you should be consistent in the usage of that towards comparable games.”
or this:
“But there’s certainly an objective way to review games with a given set of criterias and within a singular institution of a gaming magazine. The position of editors exists among other things to make sure individuals use this sets and stay consistent with the overall way to look at games.”
or this:
“A lot of gaming press seemingly chooses to do a huge proportion of oppinion pieces, that themselves are not subject to implement some set criterias or other formal specifications.”
I argued against the last three statements. I don’t argue against “consistent behavior”, whatever the hell that means, I argue against establishing fixed sets of criteria or formal specifications for reviewing games. Not just industry or magazine-wide, but even for a given individual critic. The criteria for evaluation should constantly be improved. You shouldn’t assume that someone writes about games the same way today as they did yesterday.
What exactly makes two games “comparable” is itself always open to discussion. There is no way to make a formal process that can verify whether someone is inconsistently evaluating two different games.
“And just to make one last point.
Explaining why you use a certain set of criteria and ignore some criteria you’ve used in all of your other body of work, is actually there to explain the inconsistency and is in itself a framework and something we’ve foramilized.”
No, there can be no formal specification of “explanation”, because we can always invent new kinds of explanation. The only specification that makes any sense is “the critic speaks, the reader decides if the explanation makes sense.”
“I’m saying that there’s some sort of objectivity in reviews, which basically means you shouldn’t arbitrarily choose what criteria to apply and which not.”
Subjective does not mean arbitrary. There is no formal method of distinguishing arbitrary criteria choices from non-arbitrary choices.
Yeah go on with you’re whole act of swinging back an forth between “There’s no objectivity” and “I’m not saying there’s no objectivitiy”.
Please find someone else for that though. I cannot be bothered to discuss with someone who believes in objective ethics and denies objectivism and the need for formalization in human communication.
I’m not arguing for or against objective aesthetics. I’m arguing against formalization. I have been consistent throughout this thread on that.
“I cannot be bothered to discuss with someone who believes in objective ethics and denies objectivism and the need for formalization in human communication.”
And I, indeed, I don’t want to discuss anything with someone who thinks that “the need for formalization in human communication” makes any sense whatsoever. “Formalization” means to impose formal rules or standards. Humans can obviously communicate without official standards bodies.
“I’m not arguing for or against objective aesthetics. I’m arguing against formalization. I have been consistent throughout this thread on that.”
Yes and that’s simply something we disagree upon. As i’ve been consistently written throught the discussion, that analysis is best done in some formalized and structured way.
It simply stands to reasony why most likely every academic gets thaught to follow a set of rules on how to conduct his research papers and thesises…
And in a sense i think this also applies towards the reflection of ones own feelings and presenting how one came to some feelings.
“And I, indeed, I don’t want to discuss anything with someone who thinks that “the need for formalization in human communication” makes any sense whatsoever. “Formalization” means to impose formal rules or standards. Humans can obviously communicate without official standards bodies.”
We already have an answer to that. It’s called grammar. Now while humans don’t follow grammar in every way, every language is following a set of rules, which has been found by researching languages.
And if you don’t adhere to these rules, you’ll objectively be less understood.
Also you again seem to want to make this whole thing a discussion about some comitee which you think i’d in mind when i talked about anything. But i didn’t think of such a thing.
The thing that might have brought you to believe that, is when i spoke about how a gaming magazines should try to present a somewhat unified take on topics. And i stand by that, as that helps people to decide which magazine to read.
But again if you don’t agree on what i wrote now, let me simply now that you don’t agree. I think we’ve reached the point whereas we’ve again nothing more to discuss.
I’ll apologize though for getting angry and dropping the ball.
If you’re reading a written-down list of grammar rules, that list describes the language people use, it does not define the language. Although you can formalize a grammar, grammar is not inherently formalization. People can speak English relatively well without being formally taught the rules of grammar. So, no, there is absolutely no “need for formalization in human communication”.
I have a strong suspicion that you’re using your own strange definition of “formalization”.
Also, formalization of language does not imply formalization of the criteria for evaluating art, which is a bad idea because those criteria should always evolve. Even in academia, though there are formal rules regarding how academics interact (citations, peer review, etc), there is no unified tree of knowledge or epistemological system that academics agree to. Not even with a single university or department. Academics may try to build formal systems of one sort or another, but they inevitably talk about those formal systems informally. Informality precedes formality.
“Also you again seem to want to make this whole thing a discussion about some comitee which you think i’d in mind when i talked about anything”
Formalization means, at least, a predefined, static set of rules. Arguably, it implies an industry-wide standard. But at the very least it implies that the rules stay fixed and unevolving, and I have explained at length why that is a mistake, not just for an entire industry but even for magazines and individual critics as well. We should all be constantly evolving the way we evaluate art. We should all strive to learn new ways of seeing art. Formalizing a set of criteria for evaluating art would impede that.
“The thing that might have brought you to believe that, is when i spoke about how a gaming magazines should try to present a somewhat unified take on topics.”
And I’m very much against that. A magazine should be targeted towards an audience, but different critical viewpoints may be intended for the same audience. Readers and writers alike should be open to changing the way they evaluate games.
Since the two of you keep going back and forth on this point, some data: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com. He has reviewed about 165 games with a formal grading rubric, but:
* It’s done post facto: he’s reviewing games from decades ago in a well-established genre that he’s played for decades and retrospectively created a scoring system for.
* It’s a small part of his work: he writes thousands of words on most of these games, with the score being a summing up and a template for writing a final post on the game.
* It’s an incomplete system: from time to time he adds or subtracts some personal bias points to a game’s final total.
It’s worth reading the FAQ (http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html); perhaps the most relevant quote is “It has the illusion of being objective because it results in a number, but it’s still a very subjective system. My scoring hasn’t always been consistent over time, and of course plenty of other players value different things about RPGs.” Although he’s using a system similar to that proposed by Demon Investor, it seems pretty likely to me his sympathies would be with Consumatopia.
@Consumatopia
Formalization means applying a certain format/set of rules, but it doesn’t mean that this set of rules is set in stone for eternity for me. And for me rules are always up for some exceptions.
And we seem to differ in how we see that.
So let me go ahead and use ‘conventions’, as that might be a better wording? I don’t know…
There are conventions in language, and the leeway doesn’t mean they don’t exist or that they aren’t beneficial – it also is no direct contradiction to evolution taking place.
Some conventions have hold up for centuries and haven’t changed all that much. Which really means i see no final contradiction in having some formats, that evolve slowly.
It’s very important to note that while our society has evolved we’re pretty much the same biological beings, which just means that certain conventions which are based upon our biology (how best to present arguments) haven’t changed all too much.
So again, i’ve never intended to tell anyone that magazines or the whole industry should use the same set of criteria. I don’t think that should be the case. And i’m not a gater who’s crying that a review like the one about Shadow of Mordors problem with the emotional connection towards the Orks is too subjective. I’m saying that the problem arises because seemingly a lot of writers jump from review to review without trying to have any consistency in what they analze. As we’ve got a lot of games where the connection between player and NPC’s could be judged as problematic.
And as i’ve written for your Mass Effect example, authors have the right to point out things of special importance to them.
I mean i’m basically more speaking about methodology than criterias themselves. Even though i’m saying some consistency in criteria for _COMPARABLE_ pieces of art is necessary.
@Tom
I might have come across to strong, i really don’t know. As i’ve written in my frist answer, the criteria and even the judgement of a lot of criterias are subjective. One of the few non all too subjective criterias and jugements is the existance of bugs.
The link you gave is setting himself up to use a certain format. Going as far as setting up some rules by which he identifies RPGs or gives himself an option to ignore things.
He’s making up policies and such. And that’s really all i say is really needed in reviews. Him changing over time is nothing i see as a major problem. As long as he explains those changes it’s good.
What bothers me about both “formalization” and “convention”, is that both of them suggest that reviewing a game should be more algorithmic. I’m not saying it’s wrong to use something like GIMLET–GIMLET reflects how Bolingbroke and his audience experience CRPGs. But it’s wrong to expect something like that, or to insist that reviews without defined scores and sub-scores are inferior.
I only care about art that is more than the sum of its parts. So any demand that reviews be consistent in the importance they assign to the quality of the parts necessarily excludes what I care about.
I mean, would you insist on this kind of “consistency” in judging paintings or music? “You rated this painting X% but this other comparable painting Y%. Why didn’t you think the color harmony was as important in the second as the first?”
Or to put it another way, if a game can be solely evaluated in terms of how it compares to similar games, that’s a good sign that I have no interest in that game. Not that there’s anything wrong or shallow about other people liking that game, it’s just that it probably doesn’t offer what I’m looking for in a game.
We don’t want reviewers to decide whether they like a game by rolling a die or counting up how many friends they have. So honesty matters. But, to me, consistency doesn’t matter at all. Even if a reviewer is secretly replaced by a completely different person with different opinions after every review, those reviews could still be useful to me if they’re insightful and well-argued.
I’m not arguing for scoring systems as used in a lot of reviews. They can’t transport enough information and give a false sense of good/bad, as these are quite often not flexible enough.
Having a set 10 points weighting for graphics is something, what i’m not arguing for.
“I mean, would you insist on this kind of “consistency” in judging paintings or music? “You rated this painting X% but this other comparable painting Y%. Why didn’t you think the color harmony was as important in the second as the first?” ”
Yes i’d insist on at least a mention on color composition, if that’s of importance in your mind for paintings. As that’s showing me how you’re taking that into account. And it forces you to think about these apsects.
I’m basically thinking that there’s a sort of pay-off between flexibility and consistency. And between taking a general look on an art work and trying to analyze individual parts. Which means i’m agreeing with you, that we need to have some flexibility and that ‘carbon copies’ aren’t that great and also that a piece of art is more than individual parts. But i’d say (repeating myself somewhat) that a structured approach is quite beneficial to a lot of things.
Now about how consistent a voice need to be. A lot of consistency should already arise in individual behaviour itself.
Someone who dislikes scandly clad people in games, will most likely be consistent in mentioning how he disliked that in games.
But you don’t have that with teams. Which makes it somewhat important to find a set of values you can somewhat agree upon, which are of importance for your readers. And make sure that these points are mentioned and anything of importance beyond that, should be explained a bit more in detail within a review.
Just as an example:
If you make gender representation out to be of high importance, then you’re not helping your readers by ignoring that in some games, while making it a special point within others.
And yes it means i’m somewhat for inflating reviews by writting some criteria off as being of no real importance in a given case. Instead of just leaving said part out.
I’m gonna drop a bottom line. If a magazine advertised itself as one that prided itself on the kind of consistency that you’re talking about, I would immediately start reading elsewhere. I’m not misunderstanding what you’re asking for, nor am I saying it’s illegitimate for you to seek out reviews that offer it, I’m just saying that I plan to seek out reviews that don’t have it.
“Yes i’d insist on at least a mention on color composition, if that’s of importance in your mind for paintings. As that’s showing me how you’re taking that into account. And it forces you to think about these apsects.”
Yeah, see, I really, really, really don’t want that. Color composition is probably only of importance to my experience in some paintings. A viewer’s experience with a work of art is like a story, and sometimes color composition is important in that story, sometimes it isn’t. The viewer and the artist each have interpretations in their minds (except when they don’t), and color may or may not be part of those interpretations. Asking the critic to be consistent in their interpretations of two different “comparable” works doesn’t really make sense, because A) two different works probably don’t have comparable interpretation and B) two works can’t really be comparable because the later work was produced in the context of the earlier one already existing, and that context alters the interpretation.
I don’t want critics to be “forced to think about” aspects of a work that are irrelevant to the interpretation that they’re offering. I think, in practice, that those explanations would almost always be uninteresting, or even just get you a blank stare in response–like you asked for a kind of consistency that the critic in question doesn’t think makes sense.
Now if you decide that color composition is important, then your criticism should be broadly consistent with formal theories of color composition. I want structure at the low level, but not at the high level. You can build a formal theory of color composition, but not a formal theory of the importance of color composition to all works.
I agree that critics have to target an audience. There may be some values that the critic can take as given in an audience, but it’s perfectly reasonable for the the critic to argue for new values or against old values at any point.
There are probably some audiences in which it would make sense to offer the equivalent of Trigger Warnings for games. Sure, if there is something in the game that’s going to totally ruin the experience for a large portion of your audience, you want the audience to know that. But I think insisting on very much more consistency beyond that is a mistake–or, at least, not the kind of review I want to read.
There is zero chance for a positive contribution from such a site. We should remember that the whole idea of crowd-sourcing the “investigation” of ethical issues:
1. Was a made-up facade for attacking progressive critics and developers; and
2. Was based on the deranged idea that there’s a huge industry-wide conspiracy so the media wouldn’t investigate ethical issues themselves.
In the real world, the media is eager to expose and discuss these issues. The best way to have an ethical issue investigated and reported is to pass it to a real journalist, like happened with Jim Sterling and the Shadow of Mordor story. The best way to address an undisclosed conflict of interest is to point it out to the writer or their editor, who would take it seriously and correct the piece or their publication’s policy. To fix these issues in the real world you don’t need an email campaign, just an email.
Like you said in a past blog, Damion, the ethics of the media today are the best they have ever been, and it didn’t happen by itself, it happened because these issues are regularly exposed and addressed. The media keeps improving because they are open to criticism and want to improve, lunatic conspiracies aside.
An Internet mob with an axe to grind but zero knowledge of journalism will expose exactly zero valid stories – as they have until now. That’s even assuming they are approaching this with the best of intentions, which they don’t seem to be.
Well put.
I would only add that, realistically, the worst thing any site devoted to ethics of any sort can do is associate itself with Gamergate IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER.
The game devs and journalists I know find the very label absolutely abhorrent — they literally consider it to be a terror movement — and I promise you, they will never accept the authority of anything “Gamergate-inspired”. A website looking to become a respectable industry watchdog needs to start off by repudiating Gamergate in absolute terms if they want to be taken seriously. I know those inside the movement don’t believe this, but it is THAT toxic.
Sign me up for actually wanting to read a Zen of Design on top 10 issues you see in the games industry.
I also agree that the gamergate label is fatally compromised. It’s like trying to reclaim the swastika as a good luck symbol. Not gonna fly. The hashtag is hateful.
I was telling someone the other day that I see you as a true moderate of gamergate. Not someone like TB or Liana just pretending to be in the middle but someone who openly dislikes GG but still takes the time to offer up suggestions to the supports.
My stance is simple: I want #gamergate to stop being awful. They can do this by going away. Or they can do this by repudiating their worst elements and actually doing something meaningful about the one part of their platform that’s worth exploring. This post is an exploration on how the latter might happen.
Even if the harassment was on “both sides”, nobody on a particular side got doxxed, harassed, insulted, slandered, prank-called and got their nude pictures mailed to family, friends and frenemies alike for weeks on end. That’s why I personally can’t see any positive out of anything that even slightly tangentially touches Gamergate. That and the disgust I felt when one of these “concerned about unethical journalism” people had come to RationalWiki was trying to show me their evidence compilation and telling me to ignore the nudes.
Because ethics.
-nobody on *one “particular” side
Also, OffTopic. I read the exchange you had with @radicalbytes(Jonathan McIntosh) regarding Bayonetta. Both of you made good points. I completely dislike the oversexualisation of female attires in games, for example, why would a female warrior’s breastplate have cleaveage or why would a ranger dress in the skimpiest way possible? Makes no sense regarding lore or common sense and has no other reason than sexual titilation. I am still torn about Bayonetta though.
Well one of the major reasons for this sexualisation is what the society as whole idealizes. And beauty and being sexually attractive is something that’s highly idealized. It nearly always has been that way, you just need to look at what art pieces we’ve gotten human history and how much is about idealized bodies.
So narrating that as being service to just one gender is most likely quite wrong. It really just becomes a problem when you’re either sex-negative, interested in realism (damn oversized weapons) or the whole context of the game is being derrogative.
Though i can understand people who think it would be nice not to care that much about beauty and sexual attractiveness.
Not judging Bayonetta though – never seen much of that game. Looks to me though like a try hard game, that want’s to be called edgy and play being a curved ball…
Yes, disliking the oversexualised women in gaming(it’s always the women btw) is just me being sex-negative. Fuck off.
Now that I’ve calmed down. Yes, society does overemphasize beauty and sexuality (wrt women) and sometimes even go as far as to make women who are not beautiful invisible. There’s absolutely no need that we should perpetuate that in gaming. Or make everything sexualised so as not to seem like a sexist asshole, because newsflash, women also play games.
Anyway, it’s also not congruent with the other aspects of the game. Yes, you can say “it’s a game, it’s not supposed to be realistic”, FINE! FUCKING FINE! But it has to have congruency, which if you are needing to clad your male warrior in 2 inches of armor, you shouldn’t be skimping out your female characters.
Otherwise, it just makes it clear that you are using female sexuality as a selling point and backgroung decoration… And sorry, but “Oh, you are just sex-negative” isn’t going to cut it. Sex-positive people are even harsher regarding exploitation.
Ah and I forgot this, of course…
http://i.imgur.com/AERPDmi.gif
Just to repeat it, because it seem to have went over your head. Sexual attractiveness and beuty is something wanted by both sexes, which again means that we’ll see such protagnoists form both genders.
Other than that i’ll happily invite you re-reading what i wrote and how i pointed out that the overall content of the game and narrative still mattered.
By the way, society also makes tons of other groups invisible in gaming. When did you see the last paraplegic protagonist? Or mentally disabled?
Maybe some fat guy, bald head dude as protagonist? Or a decrepit person?
So again, we’re mostly facing idealized characters, which is nothing only one sex does or even wants.
Naturally people who know that they cannot fit said idealization will feel left out somewhat and it would be nice if there was more content out for those people. But blaming individuals for writting what they idealize is moronic.
Yeah i don’t get what your gif is supposed to tell me, neither do i know the context or anything of that whole thing.
It seem to me so as if you’re trying to grap a singular scene (like Ernies abuse of Tommy in The Who’s Tommy) and tell me this instance means the whole piece is aimed upon rapists or something like that.
But again i can’t judge Bayonetta that much, because i’ve not seen much of the game. From what i’ve seen it’s trying to be edgy and have the typicall false depth of japanese games…
I admit though that one has not to be sex-negative to want less boobies in games and that i failed to adress quite a few other reasons for a dislike of such portrayals.
It was me being pissy about GGers trying to appropriate words like “abuse” “opprssion” “sex-negative” etc.
Anyways.
“Maybe some fat guy, bald head dude as protagonist? Or a decrepit person?
So again, we’re mostly facing idealized characters, which is nothing only one sex does or even wants.”
Off the top of my head, I can name 3(if this was the Colbert Report, I’d be good). Max Payne 1(butt-ugly face, although that is due to graphics, fair, but still an ordinary dude), Max Payne 3(bald and got a gut) and the entire GTA series (just ordinary dudes).
“Sexual attractiveness and beuty is something wanted by both sexes, which again means that we’ll see such protagnoists form both genders.”
Then why the fuck are only female characters sexualised? If both genders play games and both genders appreciate it, why not? Why aren’t we seeing the camera zooming in to Snake’s crotch, ass or bulging biceps when we are playing? Even when the male protagonist is semi-naked like God of War, sexuality isn’t their defining aspect. Unlike fucking Bayonetta, who gets naked while attacking and has every movement sexualised. Also apparently when instakilled by the boss, they let you know she was raped(wtf?). Or you get an achievement for getting an upskirt shot of Lollipop Chainsaw etc etc.
This sexualisation of characters, clothing and movements is solely done to female characters. Yes, male characters may also be idealized, but they are never sexualised. It is just cheap tittilation for male gamers. Which is not a bad thing in itself, but when you think of books or TV shows vs games, the ratio of which is meant to tittilate is highly skewed and to one gender’s side.
(Which is a parallel to Anita’s point regarding violence. Yes, obviously male characters are also the ones that get attacked and it would be stupid to say female characters shouldn’t be attacked. But only female characters are the recipients of sexualised violence.)
Which are nice examples, even though i’d still say you’re not finding much examples for anything else. And with GTA it has been a mostly mixed bags and is not representing your standard protagonists but clear anti-heros, who are defined by not being that idealized.
Honestly i think you’re a bit off if you think there’s no male sexualization. You can take a look at the example pages on tvtropes.org to see that it exists.
It’s not as dominant as it has been the other way around, but it simply exists.
( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/MrFanservice/VideoGames just as one example).
By the way, ever looked into those “visual novel” things on Steam? You can definately find sexualized everyone there and i dare to claim that these are mainly aimed upon females. And i’d say even the Witcher (which has a lot of sexualized females) as an character himself is quite sexualized.
Than again i just realized how your most extreme examples are coming from japan and i can’t comment on them all that much, as there really seems to be some cultural border.
And i’m not even denying that there are some over the top examples. Some playing with that image (the latest Duke Nukem – a series i always found to be pretty idiotic), while some just failing to get it.
There might be some skew.
See i’m not denying that we’ve got an industry that was (and still is to some extent) dominated by males. Which will lead through their inability and their personal taste to some skewed content.
A male who’s just writting for males, will spend his limited time more on catering his fantasys, than on a wider representation.
You still might want to take a look at RPGs though. RPGs have been one of the more female consumed genres and you’ll still find that most female characters are idealized.
And as said you’ve got games more aimed upon a female audience that goes the other way around. Which really means the sexualization is not something just done by one gender or aimed upon another one.
What i think is important, is pushing for females to follow their wish to become creative and write characters or produce them. As that in the will lead to more diverse games, while slamming male developers for writing idealized characters or doing what they love feels counter-productive to me.
Companies will only hire more diverse talent if they realize that they need to produce more diverse products. Content creators should realize that when they add certain kinds of sexualized content, they turn on some players and turn off others.
“Companies will only hire more diverse talent if they realize that they need to produce more diverse products. Content creators should realize that when they add certain kinds of sexualized content, they turn on some players and turn off others.”
I agree quite a bit.
We’ll only see companies realizing such a need if indiviuals fight their way through the typical grind of not being able to push their perspective into art in big projects, until getting a shot on something with their perspective. And if this things becomes a big enough success, companies will start listening.
In the anita and Wu thing.
I really agree with you really the problem is we cant control it in a leaderless moivement after so much fingerpoint each side feels unwrongly accused and Wants to bash verbaly the other. Only fuels the fire of anger more, I could ask any and all proeminent opposition to gg to stop any offense to gg could you do it?
Many us try to dowscale it then a troll or someone in either side throw another offense and the fire rages on.
In many ways this looks like the worst election race ever.
Metacratic opinion is my own, and i stand by it. It has to be forbidden to put such a clause in any contract between parties involved in game development.
Its a huge incentive to corrupt game reviews, and to me consumer rigths should come first.
Forbidden by whom?
Whats are acceptable terms of contract , there are somethings that regulates , who has legislative power I dont know.
Th industry could self regulate but I doubt it.
So, you want the various legislative bodies of the world to pass a law that says that it is illegal for game developers to get a bonus if their game gets good reviews?
Seriously?
That is some communist crap right there. There are actual limits on what the government can control, and for good reason, you know.
I dont know who determines what can be in a contract can there be anything opn it? Are there trade laws?
What?
Ricardo, it’s not about trade laws, but about not interfering in business. The fact is, there are some things that cannot be in a contract, and they are few- such as clauses that you have to work with no pay (violates the laws and amendments that outlawed slavery and indentured servitude), and in some states, non-compete clauses are limited or thrown out in court because the client has a “right to work” (I have, in fact, signed several contracts with non-competes, simply because I knew they could not legally enforce it).
So where does a clause like the metacritic one stand? Well, the clause itself would state something to the effect of the publisher agreeing to pay the developer more money if reviews for the game were high, even if sales were low. Basically, if it’s a really good game and only a few people buy it, they get a bonus payment for making something that game critics generally agreed was good.
There are no laws being broken there. No collusion, no conspiracy. It’s a clause rewarding craftsmanship recognized in reviews of the product. It’s the same as when an employee gets a bonus at the end of the year for doing their job better than expected.
I’d hate to live in a country that made that illegal.
And please I will stay away from Anita, Wu and suggest you do the same even if you are against gg.
The fingerpointing is not productive. Its that simple. Despite lot of gg rallying against Damien article, Im really trying to help this end in a positive way with as few shots fired as possible. And live outside my echo chamber as someone once wizely wrote.
GamerGate doesn’t get to tell anyone to stay away from the victims of GamerGate. Sorry, but the harassment, the threats and the bile directed at women is infinitely more important than anything else GamerGate wants to talk about. In fact, if it weren’t for all that negative crap, none of us would be paying any attention to GG at all.
Anyway the whole “ethics” even of there are real ethical issues debate right now is the least important aspect of GamerGate. And the least of the Gaming industries problems.
“It’s reasonable for people to draw conclusions from timing. If, immediately after the shooting of Michael Brown, I started a vigorous campaign calling on society to protect convenience-store clerks from assault, people would reasonably suspect that I had a political agenda related to the shooting, not a sincere concern for the welfare of convenience store clerks.”
We are seeing an crystallization of the deep-rooted misogynic and the gategeeping/exclusionary tendencies prevalent in Gamer culture (also existing in every other geek based group of people). What is happening is the emanation what many have called “a war on women”. Right now being a woman in gaming is frightening. What’s more the effects of this are going to be felt for years to come. Women officially know they are unwelcome in gaming.
What were need to do is make sure that video games and video game spaces are never again a safe haven for abuse ridicule and targeting. This is the hard stuff. This is what is in front if us. This where the conversation is at.
The ongoing improvement of ethical journalistic prevaricates which always evolving is not the matter at hand
http://gamergatefacts.com/post/10-29-14/
Seems the site is very tinfoilhatty. I’m not inclined to trust anything that thinks that the opposition to gaters is because of a conspiracy-against-people-against-corruption and not, say, because of the hatred against women that drips from it.
If this site actually had any new material on it, except as a repository for what’s been impotently hashed out again and again.
You don’t have to do your own journalism to criticize journalism, though. But you ought to do more than just spitball.
We don’t need GamePolitifacts as much as we need GameSnopes.
We don’t need or care for your approval Damien.
The name will never change.
It was always about ethics and censorship.
The only person “trying” but still off the mark is you with your bigoted opinions.
Seriously lay off the hate, it’s not good for you.
Who is “we” again? You can’t have a “We” if no one knows who anyone is.
Gamergate was never about anything other than chaos and noise.
Didn’t you realize it’s the pope of gamergate?
So could you authoritive figures decide already what gamergate was about? My simple peasant mind is getting more and more confused by what it has been all about and i really need you guys to tell me what it has been about!
;D
Sure. Chaos and noise. That’s what gamergate has been about from the beginning. All other topics have been debated and griped about for decades, and will continue to be such. Only difference now is that we now have Twitter, and 4chan leaked.
Damion, excellent post.
Wow, glad I came across this. thx. This sort of thing is what makes sense. I agree the site name should be changed but then again if it is credible it may not matter as time goes by.
I also agree that the site should try to be as objectionable as possible. I’m not a big fan of Anita Sarkeesian opinions on the gaming industry but writing about them should not be grounds for ‘attacking’ a website.
I feel strongly that periodic grading of sites/publications would make sense. Maybe bi-annually or annually. As you said to reward and discourage through clicks.
How that grading should work I think is a bit tricky. I don’t think it should be all user votes or all admin votes. Presents problem of ‘internet flash mob’ if just users and presents potential bias (or perceived corruption) if just admins. Maybe an aggregate vote over time or a combination vote of admins and users that is weighted to admins.
Also they could have well….. high standards. You don’t see this sort of thing much for entertainment media but gaming always seems to be a bit ahead of the curve, so perhaps this can be done exemplary.
This is definitely the best thing I have heard out of the whole gamergate thing. I will follow the website to see what is happening.
Actually if they wanted help I would do so. Just ask.