In the past the gaming media facilitated buying decisions by acting as trusted purchase decision agents. Now there is a lot more reviews of games that explore them as artifacts of culture. There is a culture split between people who want game reviews and people who want game critique. When gamers say they want "objective" reviews this is what they mean. Yes they use the term wrong, but it's not hard to figure out what they mean. Saying that these people are asking for nonsense is a subtle form of class-signaling, to indicate that these people are uneducated but you are smart. This is an example of why some gamers think that some games journalists are contemptuous of their audience.

The other day I was on Polygon. They had syndicated a story from Hollywood Reporter about the Jennifer Lawrence nude photo hacking. Why is this on a video game site? It is guaranteed to enrage people that just want to read about video games, the first group I mentioned. The other reason was again, to send a message "get out, Reddit filth. Get out, philistines who only want to talk about games." They have been ramping up publishing articles about harassment rather than directly talking about Gamergate, as Plant has said in this article. They can do that. It's their site, and if they think its an important issue that needs exposure, they can do that. But they are not right and the people who disagree are wrong. They are simply making a choice and need to accept the criticism with the praise. Some people don't want that stuff on a game site. They just want to read about games.

The article. A writer reviewed Bayonetta 2, and docked it for uncomfortable levels of sexism. He was accused of not being objective, of being unethical. Again, these are incorrect usages of the terms, but you can figure out what some people are mad about if you listen to them. Bayonetta gets a 7.5. But GTA5, a game that is overloaded with sexism, gets a 9.5. First, any reasonable person would at least want some sort of an explanation. But beyond that, why the hell is a social critique assigned a numeric value? That doesn't even make any sense. Guernica with its topical political themes is a 9, so it barely edges out the Rape of the Sabine Women, which while artistically superb was an 8.9. What? A bunch of people are mad because that doesn't make any god damn sense.

Maybe Polygon needs to figure out if its reviewing games or if it's critiquing art. Or maybe it needs to change nothing because it knows exactly what it's doing. Maybe it makes sense to always have a score, because then your score gets put on metacritic. It's free advertising. And some game companies apparently assign bonuses based on metacritic scores, so it's a great way to boost or punish a company depending on how you feel about them. Game is 9s across the board except for one guy who dings it because it gave him pain in his swimsuit area. But I'm being harsh. If it made him uncomfortable, his feelings are valid in a criticism of a game. But the fact that it's an opinion piece doesn't mean that a person's statements can't be tested for inconsistency and stupidity. This is the same guy who defended simcity's shitty always-on network requirement because the company said it was literally impossible to do offline play, despite the fact that there was a working offline play hack and they finally buckled and officially released that feature. The guy is just shitty at his job and it's not hard to notice.

Finally, back to the politics thing. They are not unique, it is not because of sexism and pissed off manbabies. It is because of that same group of people that have never wanted that shit on the sites to begin with. My evidence is Slashdot. In the period leading up the Iraq war, Slashdot slowly started adding in political stories. Many people absolutely hated these, but they started giant flame wars and these posts consistently got the most comments. It finally culminated in a dedicated politics section. Many people hated it then, and continue to hate it now. But controversy brings the clicks. Polygon canned their long-form writer during a staff shakeup, which is doubly sad because a better form of game journalism was why Polygon was supposedly created. What are they good for now? Stuff that brings the clicks.

Issues dealing with representation of women in games, or harassment in the community are legitimate concerns, but many people go to the sites because they want to read about games. I just want it recognized that many people didn't want to talk about politics waaaay before the politics were about the game community itself.