Okay, so corruption in video games journalism is a serious issue. Well, not as serious as actual problems like Ebola, or political corruption, or whatever but any lapse in journalistic ethics is cause for concern. There have been problems with bribery, backhanders, payola and the like when it comes to game reviews for yonks, with writers routinely shipped out to glitzy galas for the announcements of huge new titles or consoles designed to butter them up. It all came to a head when people started losing their jobs for trashing games that companies had paid a lot of money to advertise on their site. This is not the sort of corruption #GamerGate started out wishing to dispel. It began because, allegedly, a journalist for Kotaku had a relationship with developer Zoe Quinn, and then gave her game preferential treatment. Except he never actually wrote anything about her game, Depression Quest, only mentioning her briefly in an article about a failed TV show she was involved with; oh, also, Zoe Quinn is an indie developer with very little pull in the industry compared to, say, EA or one of the other AAA publishers who do throw their weight around and demand better review scores etc. Not the strongest starting point.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
