Before I start this article I believe it’s time to put forth my credentials. It’s far too easy to sound off and just be another ember in the sea of flames scorching its way across the video gaming internet. I’ve been professionally trained as a journalist, a media analyst and a filmmaker. I’ve used these skills for well over a decade to seek out stories in the world at large and create documentary films from the grassroots level up to the large network television divisions. I know how to find stories, I know how to tell stories, and perhaps most disturbingly I know how to manipulate stories. In documentary you can either remain wholly objective, such as the 1970’s film Hospital, or you can create it for entertainment and bending consensus, such as any work by Michael Moore. Though no matter where I’ve been, what I’ve done, the hobby that’s always remained close to me is video games.

You may have heard the cries by now. The “gamer” is over, they’re last weeks news, out the door and those of video game journalism no longer have to cater to their needs. This is a little bit of a head scratching concept as the video game industry makes video games, video game journalists report on video games, people buy and play those video games and those that take it up as a hobby are often referred to by the title of “gamer.”

We seem to have a schism between this concept of the gamer and a community of indie developers and video game journalists. There is no need to recite exact events that lead us here, however there has been a long string of vitriolic treatment towards the other on both sides. Gamers are often associated with individuals who can be aligned with any number of “isms”, none more-so than sexism and in some cases racism. Meanwhile the buzzword thrown around for the other side, journalists in particular, is “social justice warrior”, meant to be taken in the negative for someone who holds a leftist stance that is sometimes informed, sometimes not informed, but is diametrically opposed to the hatreds of the other side.

It is a real conflict that exists, waged through out social media, on anonymous message boards and in the comments sections of news sites. It’s a fairly nasty conflict, there seems to be no sensible “middle ground” for anyone and you’re either for or you’re against. There are no real positive thoughts and opinions, no attempt to resolve issues, just anger and battle lines.

Getting into the details of the conflict is exhausting, and Enemy Slime has done its best to distance itself from events that have nothing to do with reporting on news with direct impact on the business and hobby of video games. That hasn’t changed, in fact this article will remain true to form. Video game journalists, indie developers and yes, gamers, are the news and business of games, and making a statement that you will no longer address a certain crowd even if they are your core demographic isn’t only impactful, it’s sure to have echoing consequence.

The idea you can declare the gamer over as a journalist is not only absurd, it’s factually wrong. The working theory seems to be that these days games are for everyone, that the market has expanded to include so many demographics the core gamer has become irrelevant. This comes right after a statement by Shigeru Miyamoto, in some ways the grandfather of this brave new world of gaming, declaring that he’s done catering to more casual attitudes. Microsoft and Sony have displayed no interest in breaching other markets, rather they’ve boosted efforts to support online play and indie game development, displaying a focus on, not a distraction from gamers.

Now we have actually seen a rise in women that play video games, ESA number’s showing us 48% of people playing video games are female. Another report also shows women are the most active consumer of video game cellphone apps. So maybe you can declare the gamer over, but then can you call someone who spends 150 hours in a game, on any platform, not a gamer? Are we just mincing words for the sake of making a point? The Flurry report also displays men, typically assigned to this recent idea of what constitutes the gamer, which I’ll get to in the next paragraph, as still being passionate about and supporting specific genres of cellphone apps remaining the top supporter of Action, Strategy, Tower Defense, Sports and RPGs.

Now I’m not misunderstanding the move to declare the ‘gamer’ over and done with. In fact I understand it very well. We’re focusing in on a stereotype, a person that dresses a certain way, maybe has questionable hygiene, hates feminist movements and embraces a video game driven perception of masculinity as their heroes. There are several things very wrong with this declaration. Stereotypes have some basis in reality but that doesn’t make them automatically true. It’s generating an unhealthy attitude between professionals who should in frank honesty know better than this, and I suspect in some cases actually do. Now I’ll break down why.

We live in a world where such a thing called “gatekeeping” exists. This isn’t conspiracy theory or rhetoric, the gatekeepers are the ones who cull the news, decide what gets out there and what stays behind closed doors. Not to raise fear, rather it’s because there’s “far too much information out there” and has to be narrowed down, though the secondary worry in this is that since you can control the information being disseminated you can also control facts, thoughts and opinions. Journalists are often agents for these gatekeepers, who are typically the editors, researchers and executives, delivering what information they’re allowed to out into the world. In the world of video game journalism it seems the line has blurred between gatekeeper and free agent. Often video game journalists appear to report on whatever they feel suits them, and therefor the onus for accurate reporting and the risk of affect on the individual falls squarely on them.

The gatekeeping function is an important one, it needs to be taken seriously. There are people out there that look to you or your articles, be they opinions pieces or objective reporting or developer interviews, to formulate their own thoughts on a matter. You can shape information, trends, attitudes and discourse all with a few key strokes. When you become a journalist you need to be prepared to take on these responsibilities. You may start out day one reporting on something banal such as the new twitter hashtag trend or the local high school anime group, but before you know it you have a following, you have a readership, you have the contacts and the means to report on the big events, you now have power. Something Spider-man, something power and responsibility.

Objectivity used to be the key center of journalistic integrity. A center that has weakened and all but crumbled in recent times. Objectivity means distance, setting your personal thoughts, biases and upbringings aside so you can address the truth of the issues at hand. Objectivity is probably one of the most guiding principles of proper journalism, but it’s not the only one. For this I would like to refer to what I believe to be one of the few publications on the planet left that reports with journalistic accuracy, Reuters.

You can see here their handbook of journalism. A handy reminder for anyone in any journalistic field. The most interesting is perhaps The 10 Absolutes of Reuters Journalism, which I’d like to point out used to just be the absolutes of journalism and wasn’t the mark of any one publication, rather shared by them all:

The 10 Absolutes of Reuters Journalism

  1. Always hold accuracy sacrosanct
  2. Always correct an error openly
  3. Always strive for balance and freedom from bias
  4. Always reveal a conflict of interest to a manager
  5. Always respect privileged information
  6. Always protect their sources from the authorities
  7. Always guard against putting their opinion in a news story
  8. Never fabricate or plagiarise
  9. Never alter a still or moving image beyond the requirements of normal image enhancement
  10. Never pay for a story and never accept a bribe

Now Reuters does say aside from a few points they hold absolutely sacred, such as taking bribes or plagiarism, that the rest of these are not so much rules as hard guidelines. In that vein I would like to say one can choose to not be objective and establish personal opinion, you can choose to make yourself a character in the events you are reporting on, however you must make it absolutely clear to the reader you are coming from a personal place and not asserting your power as a journalist.

Enemy Slime is an imperfect website, we’re hobbyists first and professionals second when it comes to video games. We have a wide range of intelligent individuals from different industries, but none of us is exactly coming into the website from the New York Times or Washington Post. While we do let personal opinions and humor drip in our articles we do our best to make it clear we’re doing so, we also hold ourselves to the standards we have set. We check our work, we check our information, and we get called out if we slip into journalistic taboos. This is something we take seriously because we’ve seen gossip and rumors put forth as news on other websites, and it’s been disheartening as honest enthusiasts for video games.

When you stand with a specific group of people, a small subset of an overall larger population, when you decide as a group you must rebel against others, consent with one opinion and disallow for outside discourse this is not called news media, it’s called a clique. More accurately “a small group of people, with shared interests or other features in common, who spend time together and do not readily allow others to join them.” Cliques are not by nature sinister, in fact they’re a normal part of society that can be found in every facet of life and among all age groups. You are allowed to belong to a clique, as a journalist you should not be allowed to let a clique define what you report on and how your report on it.

Finally there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting a healthy, I can not stress this enough, healthy change in video gaming culture. However if this change is to happen it must come from both sides, and someone has to be willing to take the first step. If you hold as a core value that women in video games need to be supported, you should be capable of objectively reporting on the moves both by and for women in all facets of the industry. The internet will always give you detractors with no censor, anonymity doesn’t matter here, there’s always an individual who will want a voice and it might be a nasty one. That doesn’t however absolve you as an individual or a professional from taking a higher road and holding yourself to better standards than the one errant, sometimes overwhelming voice that will want to drag you down. The internet is also a place you can find whichever consensus you like, a million voices that will chime in and agree with your politics and social stances, a news media outlet just is not the place to do it.

If the job really is too stressful to continue, if you are either unable to extend an olive branch towards resolution or incapable of choosing to hold yourself to higher journalistic standards, the answer isn’t to throw more rocks. The answer is to simply exit and find an industry that better suits you. If everyone rebelled against their core audience we wouldn’t have an economy. You don’t have to address those you don’t want to address, FOX News certainly doesn’t but we’ve also achieved a level of transparency that tells us FOX News is polarized to one narrative and if we don’t agree with it, we can go somewhere else. Video game journalism does not have that level of transparency. There are ways to positively impact the community and tout what you believe to be socially right without also being combative. Take a look at Coca Cola’s America the Beautiful commercial, which celebrates multiculturalism. When Cheerios created a commercial featuring a mixed race family, and they met strong criticism for doing so, their answer wasn’t to declare “cereal eaters over”, it was to create another commercial starring the same family.

In conclusion as a journalist, as a gatekeeper, whether you like it or not you are choosing to take on a great deal of power. The gaming journalists are also, whether they admit it or not, outnumbered by the gamer. The gamer however is more than just the vocal stereotype, they are any number of denominations, races and genders. They are even the straight white male who might not want anything to do with the vitriol spreading on both sides and just wants to play video games. You might be tired, gaming journalist, so walk away, take a breath and come back to it when you’re ready, but don’t abandon the values you should be concerned about holding yourself to.