Video Game Journalism Corruption Complaints Results in Extreme Ethical Disclosures

wow. very review. much reporter. such ethics.

Some of those in Gamergate who are sticking to the ethics story no matter what else happens under their banner, are happy to see some video game websites updating (or at least publicly posting) their internal ethics guidelines. But what does that mean for your regular video game reviews?

Steve Hogarty of PCGamesN.com wrote a review of puzzle game Infinifactory but before he told readers what he thought of the game, he felt it behooved him to disclose some things which some might think cause ethical dilemmas for a journalist when giving their opinion on a thing.

He wrote, “These days, in this horrifying new era of ethical games journalism, it’s important for writers to be totally upfront by divulging every aspect of their personal lives, everybody they’ve ever been friends with, every secret they’ve ever held and anybody they might have kissed along the way.”

But what were these shocking disclosures? Here’s one:

As a prehistoric multicellular cyanobacteria, I shared the same primordial puddle with an anaerobic organism who would later go on to work in the QA department at Sega. For several million years we produced free oxygen together through a primitive form of photosynthesis and ultimately triggered the global oxygenation that precipitated the largest extinction event in Earth’s history. As such I have not reviewed any Sonic games since. And whenever Sonic comes up in editorial meetings I turn my back so as not to subconsciously raise Sonic’s profile among the team using my compelling range of facial expressions.

Also:

Did the Lady and The Tramp kiss scene with some guy from Games For Windows Live, except instead of a strand of spaghetti it was one of those twenty foot long Subway sandwiches they do special for catered parties and it took us both forty five minutes to reach the middle and start making out.

Oh, and he struck and killed the CEO of Ubisoft with his car back in 2002, but for that story and more lols you should head over to PCGamesN.com.

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Jill Pantozzi

Jill Pantozzi is a pop-culture journalist and host who writes about all things nerdy and beyond! She’s Editor in Chief of the geek girl culture site The Mary Sue (Abrams Media Network), and hosts her own blog “Has Boobs, Reads Comics” (TheNerdyBird.com). She co-hosts the Crazy Sexy Geeks podcast along with superhero historian Alan Kistler, contributed to a book of essays titled “Chicks Read Comics,” (Mad Norwegian Press) and had her first comic book story in the IDW anthology, “Womanthology.” In 2012, she was featured on National Geographic’s "Comic Store Heroes," a documentary on the lives of comic book fans and the following year she was one of many Batman fans profiled in the documentary, "Legends of the Knight."

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