There was a perfectly apt games media before the year 2000.

Before games went 'mainstream'.

You still had Nintendo Power and Sega Visions during the console wars but gamers, for the best part, stuck to their own communities and if that was a computer system you had lots of smaller communities with hobbyist magazines and online billboards to try and find out about news and events from.

Once games were earning rock and roll bucks they tried adopting the music scene model to dispensing news and glamorising it with people who looked down on the role and had disdain for their audience.

This affected the whole scene and with people coming into it for the first time, both as players and as people being paid to talk about gaming, the quality took a nosedive and any ridicule normally associated with bad products got shelved behind mockery and derision.

Then the talentless art school rejects found footing and now we have Gamergate.