As a GamerGater, we do a lot of calling out of gaming journalists who don’t disclose being friends of people whose games they lavish praise on, but if you ask me, that’s only half the equation.

Let’s go back to the Zoe Quinn shitstorm for an example: While I’ve come to largely reject the anti-GG platform as BS, I will side with them on one thing: I do NOT care about Zoe Quinn’s sex life and do not consider any aspect of it relevant to discussion of ethics. It’s hers and whomever she slept with’s business, I will not shame them for it. That aside, I see the problem with what happened as everyone involved lacking integrity.

Yes, Quinn included.

All the people involved for said nice things about Quinn’s work, fine, cool, no problem. Quinn and these parties being friends, fine, no problem.

The problem is that NOT ONE OF THEM COULD STEP FORWARD AND ADMIT THE CONFLICT OF INTEREST.

Before I get told it wasn’t Quinn’s job to do so, that’s not true. Quinn was partial to everyone who said nice things about her work, so someone should have had the integrity to admit they had a bias or enlisted the journalism of someone with a bias favorable to them.

Why, you ask? Because the public would know their view was affected by that bias. If the product is good despite your bias, fair enough. If not, still fair enough, we just knew you were saying nice things about the product or you spoke with someone you knew would deliberately say nice things about your work in advance.

The Quinn shitstorm would have likely never happened had anyone involved told the truth.

Instead, they doubled down, the soggy knee crap came up, and the whole thing exploded in a shit storm that rages to this day.

All because no one could tell the truth.

Corruption and honesty are a bilateral street in the context of the relationship between creators of a product and those that cover it, but as long as one or the other is honest enough to admit their biases up front, they can keep the public from being pissed when they find out they were being shilled a product not entirely on the basis of an untainted point of view.

In short, to the parties that think GamerGaters are full of it, fine, whatever, I’m just saying you could have avoided all this.

And, to put what I said into practice, I’m developing a game where I prominently feature many of my friends with in universe avatars and they have all said nice things about my work, feel free to read the credits for the game for the deets, and if you feel I have not disclosed anything, you have my word I will come clean about any COIs so you know who is biased in my favor, and I’m confident they will do the same.

I probably didn’t need to say the above, but I did it anyway because I have nothing to hide as a game dev (except for the source code of the work for obvious reasons) and believe I should be every bit as transparent as those who review my work.

And it’s my opinion that if everyone who has been accused of corruption had been far more transparent about their biases and COIs in advance, GamerGate would have never happened.