>>331734
Just submitted my comment. I did reference Leigh Alexander, so it's possible that my comment loses some of its teeth for being less timely. That being said, it's an honest evaluation of the current state of affairs, and I directly link the sort of scummy behavior exhibited by her to why Kotaku is seeing such lousy readership now.
Full text below this line:
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To whom it may concern at Univision,
I would like to express my disappointment in one of your properties, Kotaku. I have been an avid videogame player my whole life, and I used to enjoy reading Kotaku articles about my hobby, my little corner of the world.
Several years ago, however, it seemed that Kotaku was moving in a strange direction. Instead of covering events that gamers would find interesting, Kotaku started insulting and antagonizing its own audience. The prime example of this is a piece by author Leigh Alexander, released on August 28th, 2014, titled " Gamers don't have to be your audience. Gamers are over". Within this article, she refers to game culture as "embarrassing", and says that it's full of people who know "little about how human social interaction and professional life works". She refers to the people that disagree with her as "people who are okay with an infantilized cultural desert of shitty behavior". Finally, she closes out this article with the inflammatory statement that, "These obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers – they are not my audience. They don’t have to be yours. There is no ‘side’ to be on, there is no ‘debate’ to be had."
Univision, I'm sorry, but me and my friends dealt with enough immature bullying in middle school and high school. It is completely unacceptable for a publication to treat its primary audience this way. Otherwise, they will rapidly find that they no longer have an audience. I stopped reading Kotaku articles after that, and I made sure that all of my friends did as well. I don't have a single gamer friend now that reads any piece by Kotaku.
In addition to insulting its audience, Kotaku has also engaged in some other questionable behavior. For example, writer Kirk Hamilton released an article on 5/23/2012 titled "How Diablo III's Always-On Internet Requirement Makes it a Better Game", discussing why a requirement that was limiting the ability of players to make use of a product they purchased improved the product, in his eyes. His opening paragraph, on the always-online requirement, includes the quote, "It was a reminder that consumers have lost a portion of their ownership of the game, that we no longer have complete control even over whether or not our game will start". For him to go from this statement to the point of the article, that this requirement improves the game, seems like a difficult case to make. It's certainly possible that there is just an honest disagreement between author and audience here. Except, as Kirk notes himself in his own article, he had released a different article just the week before that stating that always-online requirements are a big problem. So what changed? Well, readers noted that this article was written in the midst of a large ad campaign for the very same game that was the topic of this article.
The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) has published a Code of Ethics that journalists are encouraged to abide by. Some selected items from this code include:
- "Avoid stereotyping. Journalists should examine the ways their values and experiences may shape their reporting."
- "Ethical journalism treats sources, subjects, colleagues and members of the public as human beings deserving of respect."
- "Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Disclose unavoidable conflicts."
- "Deny favored treatment to advertisers, donors, or any other special interests, and resist internal and external pressure to influence coverage."
Comparing this code of ethics to some of the actions taken by Kotaku, I'm inclined to think of the organization not as a journalism outfit, but instead as a clickbait tabloid, run by opinionated bloggers.
Some of the events I've described above, as well as many more that have occurred over the years, are why I and many other gamers that I know find Kotaku to be a deeply unethical organization. Accordingly, we refuse to support it in any way, and are highly apprehensive about supporting organizations affiliated with it. As the parent company of Kotaku, it is my hope that Univision is able to right some of these wrongs.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
a human being deserving of respect from the SPJ, and an alleged "obtuse shitslinger" by Kotaku