"Hey, game journalists. Look over here!"



There are a lot of things that can be said about the way Palmer Luckey's newly revealed political donations were covered by the game press this week. I could talk about what makes some political action by gaming execs is newsworthy and some is not, but I could talk about how Luckey's apology generated some fascinating pushback from Daily Beast reporter Gideon Resnick on Twitter , wherein Resnick basically publicly accused Luckey of lying about his involvement with a controversial Reddit account. But the evidence there pretty much speaks for itself.



I could talk about how the media's role in amplifying the small "boycott" of Oculus by many developers relates to previous consumer-led boycotts of various gaming companies, but



Instead, I'd like to focus on one outlet that took the story past the professional and into the realm of the personal in a way that made me uncomfortable. There are a lot of things that can be said about the way Palmer Luckey's newly revealed political donations were covered by the game press this week. I could talk about what makes some political action by gaming execs is newsworthy and some is not, but Patrick Klepek has that pretty locked down I could talk about how the media's role in amplifying the small "boycott" of Oculus by many developers relates to previous consumer-led boycotts of various gaming companies, but I already addressed that a bit on Ars Technica . I could throw shade at the many outlets that rushed to report Insomniac was joining the "boycott" of Oculus over the donations when the company's statement said nothing of the sort, but most of these have since been updated to be more accurate.Instead, I'd like to focus on one outlet that took the story past the professional and into the realm of the personal in a way that made me uncomfortable. Over to you, Gizmodo

Luckey is also in a longterm relationship with Nicole Edelmann, aka Nikki Moxxi, a cosplayer, vocal member of the GamerGate movement, and active Trump supporter.



Edelmann, who according to a New York Observer article from 2015, lives with and has been dating Luckey for approximately five years (as recently as this past spring, Luckey and Edelmann appeared to be in a relationship on social media). Edelmann’s social media accounts are rife with GamerGate support posts. She frequently shit-talks feminist Anita Sarkeesian, mocks “SJWs,” and tweets pictures of herself at Trump events. She’s cosplayed as GamerGater mascot Vivian James, and been photographed at GamerGate meet-ups around San Fransisco.

The relationship wasn't exactly a secret (Gizmodo

), and the piece only cites public Twitter information, so it's not technically revealing anything that's private, either.



Still, putting any sort of focus on Edelmann seems to me to fall heavily on the negative side of the balancing act between informing readers and avoiding harm to innocent parties. As the multi-millionaire founder of Oculus, anything Luckey does is at least potentially newsworthy, thanks to his position of power in the industry. As someone who just happens to be dating Luckey, Edelmann's actions need to reach a much higher bar for newsworthiness.



Reporting on Edelmann at all starts to get into a rumor-mongering guilt-by-association mode that's not becoming for a journalist. This isn't punching up... this is punching sideways at unrelated targets. It would be a shame if we started trying to analyze our subjects by the company they keep, rather than the actions they take and the views they espouse.



As far as I can tell, the "Luckey dates a Gamergater" part of this story doesn't seem to have spread much farther than Gizmodo. Even so, Edelmann has taken her Twitter account private and faced all sorts of attacks since being a large focus of the Gizmodo story. That seems like a pretty heavy price to extract for reporting a tidbit of questionable news value in the first place.

Odds and Ends

This CJR report on the state of journalism employment in the digital age is pretty grim -- in short, online journalism jobs aren't growing fast enough to replace even a small fraction of the disappearing print newspaper jobs. I can't help but wonder how true this is in the game journalism realm, though. Compared to the "just magazines" days of the early '90s and before, I feel like many more people can make a living commenting on games these days (especially if you count YouTube stars). That's thanks in part to the improved reach and immediacy of the Internet, but thanks more to the fact that the industry is much bigger (and much more focused on adults with actual disposable income) than it was 20 years ago. Interesting cross-currents at work on the business side, here.

There's lots of fascinating tidbits in this presentation on the history of Japanese game development, but this section made me realize just how bad much of the Western games media has historically been about reporting on many corners of the Japanese industry:

One interviewee described how the problem came to a head in 2000. "Sega would put employees alone in a room and give them nothing to do, to make them resign. Former Sega employees sued and won, and were issued a public apology. They didn't just put people behind a partition, they sent them to a completely different floor. Sega didn't just lose a lawsuit over this, their image was completely tarnished. Nobody wanted to buy games from a company like that." Despite the significance of this landmark court case, which happened around the time of Sega's near bankruptcy and cancellation of the Dreamcast, this event went almost entirely unreported in the West. I could only find one news story online, from IGN. Searching online for "Sega" and "kakuribeya" ( 隔離部屋 ) brings up Japanese articles - but why not any coverage in English? This was a clear abuse of staff, upheld by the courts.





We've all heard the complaints about adblockers and the like hurting journalism revenues, but this heartfelt Reddit post from Kotaku UK's Rich Wordsworth puts a very human face on the cost of rehosting article on "archive" sites. Read the whole thing.

The reason I bring this up is because with small offices come small budgets. Shittest alternate-universe Spider-Man arc ever. But in all seriousness: this Star Citizen project took a huge amount of time (seven months interviewing dozens of people, including Chris) and a - comparatively - huge amount of cash. It would have been much easier for my editor - were she so inclined - to run clickbait stories (she doesn’t) or just leap on SC and stab at it for being delayed (she didn’t). As you might have seen, Julian Benson’s second article (the first is now near the all-time top of the sub) is doing rather well here in the Reddit SC community. But it’s been rehosted on archive.is, which means even if people like it, Kotaku UK doesn't get any recognition for it in terms of traffic. That means the next time they want to spend seven months and thousands of dollars doing proper journalism, it’s harder and harder to convince the people who have to pay the bills that it’s worth it. ... And when people rehost investigative articles like this SC series on archiving sites, it just means there is less incentive to do these sorts of things in the future. Which you’ve all been quite lovely about. I (and without speaking directly for anyone else, WE) want to do more of this stuff. Like the Spotlight team if they thought Mario was up to something.





Finally, this Vox video about how the Mona Lisa became the most famous (and overrated) piece of art in the world is a good reminder of the ever-changing nature of taste, and of how news events and press attention can drive attention to old criticism.

Tweets of the Moment

The piece goes on to cite more of Edelmann's tweets that show her outspoken support for Donald Trump and her strong right wing views on immigration.Sure, there is some defense for including this reported detail in a piece about Luckey's controversial political activity.Edelmann's opinions, and her relationship with Luckey, could arguably give more context to his own political views, which are at the heart of the story.