"Expressing ideologies, however, is not a form of corruption, it is the basic foundation for criticism and debate that keeps the world turning, and keeps our brains from turning to mush. As long as your opinions aren’t actively harming people, they’ll always be welcome in gamer culture." 

While that is true, there is a place and time for everything. You want to express your social views? That is perfectly fine. Make an article about it, post on forums or social networks. In a game review? No, thank you. That isnt the place or time for social debate. Journalists job is to report the news, unaltered. Report what is there, dont make a social statement while at it. Dont drag personal agendas into your work and your readers lives when they clearly dont care.

Starting the article by associating gamergate and the threats is a very good way to loose credibility.

There are hateful people on each side, everywhere actually, justifying any doings with any ideology.

I think it's implied. There's a socially responsible side, and there's a bunch of reactionary harassers. Fox causes harm; the Guardian doesn't. So it's okay for the author to write a piece about how "morons" are crowdfunding an anti-Sarkeesian documentary, but I suspect that he'd see the same invective being bandied about regarding Sarkeesian supporters as encouraging harassment.

In these sorts of tribalistic affairs anyone from your side who does something reprehensible is an outlier, but anyone from the other side who does it is indicative of the whole. What's innocuous when you do it is often threatening when someone else does.

But games themselves contain ideologies, same as music and film. Infact one of the most enriching things about final fantasy for me when I was younger was how they referenced and reflected things in the real world. I'd hate to see a score hugely deducted because someone thought Beyonetta was too sexualised, but making mention of it is highly informing of the game and its style, tone approach to characters.

Is it sexualised because she makes sexy poses? The problem is sexualisation in not a concept easy to define. What is? What isnt? Stick to the facts. The character likes to flaunt and the game systems were designed around her in an effort to please the player. That is reporting fact. Saying its sexualised is an opinion.

If the social statement, themes or values are expressed in the game, its up to the individual player to interpret and reflect upon them. Theres no need to have someone else think for you.

Well there is certainly plenty of evidence that a lot of women do suffer from internatlised misogyny. So the presence of females among the gatersis evidence of nothing without knowing the internal thougths of these female gaters. Every advance society has made through the last century andf a bit in the quest for gender social equality has been opposed by a sub-set of women.

You are no doubt right that grievances about conflicts of interest between developers and critics/"journalists" have been bubbling away. But what brought it to a head was a false accusation of sexual favours for positive press. So the anti-corruption boil was burst by a hot poker of lies and misogyny which tainted the movement from the get go. But the problem is it required something sensational ans salacious to wake the sleeping social media giant. It's a shame the movement didn't start under better circumstances because exactly no one disagrees with the notion that there needs to be much less conflict of interest and a lot more transparency of relationships in the gaming media; except for the benificiaries of those conflicts of interest of course.

I must say though, that in the original Quinn thread on this site I talked about the broader issue of corruption in gaming media and that there was a helluva lot of false moral outrage going on against Zoe Quinn because she had been accused of using her female assets to corrupt rather than more traditonal pecuniary, or at least gender neutral, methods. And what reaction did I get? "What corruption, there's no systematic corruption here, it's just a slut bitch spreading her legs for favours" or words to that effect. Gamergate would not have been predictably confused and messy and ugly if it hadn't coalesced around false accusations and the resulting cruel and misogynistic attacks.

I think whats more eluded to here is that there isn't harrasment and threats coming from their side. That maybe is an ignorant stance, but we certainly haven't seen a lot of it in the media, nor have we seen people from that side dismissing or cosigning that behaviour. Even in the case of Boogie2988 , from what he tweeted there was no direct correlation between the threats and gamergate opponents. The video the comment was posted in response to was actually opposing people on both sides of the fence. In opposite cases people have threatened and harrassed the likes of Anita S and very clearly aligned themselves with Gamergate.

This is not about this Quinn character, this is about SJW and their crusade against some nebulous conspiracy against women. Basically these folks are actively trying to make escapism as boring and politically correct as reality (which is what we're escaping in the first place) with the help of journ-o-lists. These martyrs, Quin and Sarkeesian and others, are simply a way to distract from the real debate and to smear the anti-SJW.

The fact is the hardcore liberal neo - feminist SJW and their enablers cannot take off the political lens. They see the world through it and everything they do or say is affected by it. In order to combat the PC creep we, the community at large, need to be vigilant

BTW why a picture of Romney and not Obama who is actually the president?  

I'd argue it is quite easy to define, ''to exhibit character of an overt sexual nature'' but its subjective in what you consider to be overtly sexual. But not to get sidetracked, the point of the review is to review the contents of the game, how can you personally reflect on something you haven't played yet? As a reader you cleary have the intellegence to discern what is opinion (most of the game review) and what is factual, so you pick what applies to you and what doesn't.

 I would personally be disatisfied for someone to just say that the jumping in LBP is floaty, I want to hear how it effected their experience. It may not be the same as mine, but at the same time I know I'm not the reviewer. Most people hated it, I love the way it works in conjection with the physics system making for a somewhat unpredictable experience, especially in the game usercreate levels.

Again the video games industry is the only entertainment medium where the lack of objectivity in reviews is considered a problem. If all reviews are objective wouldn't they all look the same? I'd say this was the case not too long ago and that made a lot of them useless. As this article is saying people should find the places for them to just get ''facts'' even if most things aren't factual like breaking down how good the controls are, or the appeal of the visuals, characters, story, mechanics....

From what I've gauged lack of objectivity is only a problem when social issue's are brought into the front and their in opposition to what the reader believes. Also fanboy and metacritic culture causes people to attack the reviews which they dislike even if they're not a visitor of that site, as opposed to simply referencing the ones belonging to the sites they actual visit and trust.

I think this could only apply if we were still playing 2D, 8bit sprite games with no story and characters completely divorced from reality. A lot of games nowadays have their own politics so it would be weird for people not to be able to talk about it.