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).

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.