Game journalists have developed a nasty habit of attacking game developers over political opinions on social media.
Recently an IGN journalist went after the Tekken producer for making a joke about SJWs. Now Polygon co-founder and current editor at The Verge Chris Plante has attacked games developer David Jaffe for saying that Hillary is more dangerous than Trump.
This totally professional ad hominem attack followed a series of tweets by Jaffe lamenting Clinton’s corrupt nature and how she will be “psychologically” damaging to the country.
Jaffe formerly worked on the God of War franchise and is currently developing Drawn to Death.
And it’s not like Jaffe is some kind of conservative firebrand opposed to Plante’s values. Jaffe is as SJW as they come, even castigating a bunch of teenagers at prom for perceived sexism in a Facebook photo.
Nonetheless, someone who writes about video games professionally should not be personally attacking someone who makes the games he writes about. And especially not for longwinded, perhaps wrongheaded, political opinions.
But it should come as no surprise that a co-founder of a site such as Polygon, which has drifted so far from apolitical coverage of games it may as well be Salon, is capable of such behavior. Just add it to the million other reasons why game journalism sucks.
Vox Media did not return a request for comment.
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Update: Plante apologizes.