The GGers who genuinely thought it was about ethics in journalism were completely missing the point though. I want you to imagine we were talking the defence industry. Imagine it was public knowledge that billions of dollars were being skimmed by defence contractors. Then imagine someone shows up and says “Hey, this guy’s been telling people to go to gun store A and getting $20 store vouchers.” Then imagine that turned out not to be the case.
Now, here’s the point: you could spend the next year meticulously documenting every last store voucher the guy had ever received from gun shops B to Z and still no-one would care, because everyone knows that, even if it was true, it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference in the grand scheme of things. If you then announced that this was part of a larger campaign for “Clarity in Defense Spending” people would conclude that either a) you were truly clueless or b) you had an axe to grind with this guy that was nothing to do with gun store vouchers.
Anyway, that’s what people mean when they say “It was never about ethics in computer game journalism.”
Now, here’s the point: you could spend the next year meticulously documenting every last store voucher the guy had ever received from gun shops B to Z and still no-one would care, because everyone knows that, even if it was true, it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference in the grand scheme of things. If you then announced that this was part of a larger campaign for “Clarity in Defense Spending” people would conclude that either a) you were truly clueless or b) you had an axe to grind with this guy that was nothing to do with gun store vouchers.
Anyway, that’s what people mean when they say “It was never about ethics in computer game journalism.”