A little over four years ago, before I joined Ars Technica (and while I was working as a freelance writer), I started a Google Group called "Game Journalism Professionals." As I stated in an introductory post at the time, the group was intended as "a semi-private way to connect and talk" with colleagues based well outside my home base of Pittsburgh and whom I saw in person only a few times a year.

Yesterday, that group came under fire for being a secret clearinghouse where "elite" journalists discuss how best to collude on covering the video game industry to "shape industry-wide attitudes to events." In reality, the group was and is simply a place for business competitors (and journalists are definitely competitive!) to discuss issues of common professional interest.

Unfortunately, in the wake of initial attacks on game developer Zoe Quinn, I wrote one message to the group in which I said several things that I soon came to regret. In private conversation, we've all had the experience of throwing out ideas, only to realize after further thought that they weren't appropriate or productive—and life moves on. The bad ideas are forgotten. Thanks to the Internet, though, such conversations can now be archived and then dredged up for display to the public weeks or months later.

Since that's now happening, let me explain a bit more about what this not-so-"secret" group is and why I started it, then address some more specific concerns about the post in question.

A place to chat

GameJournoPros, as the group is known, was created as a place to "talk about that awful PR person that's giving you trouble and ask for a way around the problem," as my introductory post says. It was to be "a place to discuss your impressions of that embargoed game you're reviewing and maybe find a multiplayer partner to help test it. A place to bounce ideas for editorials before committing them to digital paper or discuss possible angles for a news piece." It was meant as a way to spread the word about reliable freelance writers looking for work or to discuss ethical conundrums. And for the last four years, that's exactly what GameJournoPros has been.

The group is "private" so that posts are only viewable by other group members. Members are encouraged not to share internal material outside the group in order to create the safe environment needed for professional discussions among peers. That said, everyone in the group knows that anything could be easily copy/pasted and made public at any time—as the list's introductory post noted explicitly.

I didn't do much to promote the group after initially sending invites to dozens of colleagues I've known and respected over my career, but neither was the group a secret. Indeed, GameJournoPros has grown from 52 members in that first month to 150 members today; if someone met the "professional" criteria (i.e. they made all or part of their living writing about or publicly discussing games) and asked to join, they were in, with practically no questions asked. The group has never had litmus tests, partisan slant, or other viewpoint-based membership criteria. Many group members have mentioned its existence on Twitter and other discussion forums in the past.

(Ars Technica management did not know of the list's existence, and while a few other writers at Ars were nominally members of the list, they rarely participated in discussions—and as far as I know, none participated in group discussions of Zoe Quinn or "GamerGate.")

This led to a diverse membership that I'd like to think engenders a sense of camaraderie and plenty of friendly (and sometimes less-than-friendly) arguments between peers. Far from colluding on some kind of coverage agenda, the 2,000+ threads and many thousands of posts in the group are more often heated arguments about issues like the correct way to handle the very kinds of ethical and coverage dilemmas that have been so in focus in recent weeks, and which I had already been writing about publicly and frequently since 2003.

The death of print media was a frequent topic of discussion. So was the rise of popular video content, various media monetization methods, how to handle tricky embargoes, how to handle tricky interviews, how to handle anonymous sources, comment moderation approaches, layoffs and hires at game journalism outlets, job opportunities, the rise of Kickstarter, the rise of Polygon, what to do with swag donated by publishers (Ars gives it away), links to quality examples of writing around the Web, efforts to organize multiplayer sessions for pre-release game builds, and—much to my chagrin—pro wrestling. (Game journalists who are not me seem to love pro wrestling.)

In other words, the group fosters the kinds of "inside baseball" discussions that colleagues in almost every field have over drinks at various conferences.

Members don't share coordinated roadmaps for coverage or discuss how to best present a unified front for or against any product or person. Members often make suggestions of what they think "should" be done regarding some issue or another, but these are rightly taken as off-the-cuff opinions to be considered or ignored, not marching orders from some grand cabal. The group is made up of opinionated people in competition for the same scoops and the same reader eyeballs—not people usually inclined to share secret information or undercut their own independence.

I won't betray the group members' trust by sharing their messages or their membership, but they should feel free to discuss their own involvement in any way they wish. There are no dark secrets here.

Regarding Zoe Quinn

As far as the specific allegations and interpretations that a Breitbart writer made based on one of my posts, a few comments of explanation are in order (along with a mea culpa or two):

The post in question was written in the immediate aftermath of Eron Gjoni's lengthy blog post detailing many alleged and quite salacious details of developer Zoe Quinn's private life.

At the time, I was skeptical that there was any merit to the actual journalism ethics question raised in the blog post regarding Quinn's relationship with Kotaku writer Nathan Grayson, who never reviewed her game and only mentioned it in passing as part of a "game jam roundup." I was appalled, however, at the kinds of doxxing attacks and threats Quinn said she was already receiving, and about the publication of intimate details from her life.

I did want to write about these kinds of attacks on a game developer but decided it couldn't be done at the time without drawing undue attention to Quinn's private life—which seemed unfair, as she was far from an important public figure. (Recall that this was well before #GamerGate was a thing and exploded into a million different directions, many unrelated to Quinn.) These are the kinds of tough coverage decisions journalists make every day, and this was the issue being discussed with colleagues in the thread.

In the heat of the moment, I suggested that gaming journalists organize a "public letter of support" for Quinn. Later in the discussion thread, cooler heads prevailed and made me realize that this would be overstepping our primary role as reporters and observers (which is exactly the kind of productive, self-correcting debate the group engenders). No such note was ever sent.

I had been playing Depression Quest , with the intention of reviewing it, a few days before the Zoe Quinn saga broke online (as I said in the thread, "I've been meaning to review Depression Quest since its Steam release"). As I wrote in our review, I was inspired to take a look at a game dealing directly with depression in the wake of Robin Williams' suicide the week before, which coincided with Depression Quest's Steam release. I had no plans to spike the review once the Quinn allegations surfaced.

, with the intention of reviewing it, a few days before the Zoe Quinn saga broke online (as I said in the thread, "I've been meaning to review since its Steam release"). As I wrote in our review, I was inspired to take a look at a game dealing directly with depression in the wake of Robin Williams' suicide the week before, which coincided with Depression Quest's Steam release. I had no plans to spike the review once the Quinn allegations surfaced. However, suggesting that Quinn's work deserved extra attention because she had been attacked was, again, overstepping my proper role as a critic and journalist. It was an emotional reaction. No one else in the group took this suggestion seriously, as the game still has only one scored review on Metacritic. While I was wrong to suggest it, the utter lack of response clearly disproves allegations of "collusion" among game journalists. Instead, it shows the independent spirit of those who participate in the group.

In short, some of the private thoughts I shared in the wake of Gjoni's blog post crossed the line, and I apologize for airing them. It was an error in judgment.

I want to be clear that none of this affected Ars' other coverage. I don't have any kind of final say about what gets published on Ars Technica, and the two posts that Ars did on the "GamerGate" controversy were separately suggested by Culture Editor Casey Johnston, who had tracked the issue on her own and worked directly on her pieces with senior Ars editors. As noted above, the decision to review Depression Quest had already been made before any controversy had arisen. (Due to my lapse in judgment on this matter, going forward I will refrain from writing about or providing editorial support to any further pieces published on "GamerGate," Quinn, or Depression Quest at Ars.)

As to the broader issue, though, allegations of "collusion" among group members are badly misplaced. Indeed, I see nothing wrong with or even particularly interesting about discussing matters of professional importance in a private Google Group with competing peers. GameJournoPros has been a healthy, robust forum for debate among a community of competitors who can rarely agree on anything—much less collude to alter the course of the game industry.