#Gamergate

Personally I'm on the side where reviewers are part of the community, know what's out there and who's making it, and has opinions about what's a good game. I recognize that this means reviewers aren't completely unbiased, and will probably ending up talking to game developers. Because I want to see dev interviews. I want the reviewer to be able to go to PAX and talk to the folks making a game and not feel like that disqualifies them from reviewing it.

Just talking to game developers doesn't automatically disqualify them from reviewing it, that's just silly. It's fine and dandy to know devs and talk to them; that doesn't inherently cause a conflict of interest. I don't see this as mutually exclusive with the concept of journalistic integrity; you can write friendly endorsements or scathing opinion pieces, but don't try to pass it off as an objective review (as reviews should be, though that isn't to say you shouldn't still at least try to be objective).

What is a conflict of interest is telling everyone how great something your best friend (or something similar or deeper) made is and, most importantly, failing to disclose, or even actively hiding the fact that you know them, even worse when money is involved. As if that weren't enough, when you get called on it, you decide that the best move is to scapegoat some of your consumers, throw them right under that bus instead of just owning up to it, which is at least admirable on some level. It's a super good idea in terms of self-preservation, I admit, if you can rebuild your consumer base, but that places you firmly in the realm of deceit and I don't know, I'd say I'm a fairly honest person and that rates fairly high on my "things that are wrong" meter.