Cuphead Reignites the “Game Journalists Should Be Good at Games” Debate

[Edge-]

https://venturebeat.com/2017/09/08/t...-runneth-over/

This is a not-really-an-apology where he completely misses the point. I mean, fuck anyone who is actually harassing him (I haven't followed this beyond this thread and a few articles, but that shit's unacceptable), but he's so incredibly lacking in self awareness.

Though if Gamesbeat, and Dean specifically, weren't still bringing up Gamergate a few times a month (usually largely out of nowhere), I'm sure he could have avoided a lot of that nonsense. He keeps poking that hornets nest long after everyone else has realized that doing so yields no benefits other than keeping that nonsense in the spotlight, what does he expect to happen in return the second he trips up on something like this?

I feel bad for any harassment directed his way, but he's really not doing anything to make himself sympathetic with this post : /

[solinari6]

I think this video could actually be useful to the developers, if they still have time to change the game. Obviously, the tutorial could be a TAD more clear. Maybe the very first level should ease the player into things a bit? Most notably to me, was near the end, when cuphead was jumping off a ledge, and got hit repeatedly be something that wasn't even on the screen yet (it was hidden behind a tree). That kind of cheap shot junk would totally turn me off of a game like this. It would make me think "if that kind of crap is in the very first level, just imagine how cheap it gets before the game is over!" and I would pass on Cuphead completely.

[Edge-]

I think this video could actually be useful to the developers, if they still have time to change the game. Obviously, the tutorial could be a TAD more clear. Maybe the very first level should ease the player into things a bit? Most notably to me, was near the end, when cuphead was jumping off a ledge, and got hit repeatedly be something that wasn't even on the screen yet (it was hidden behind a tree). That kind of cheap shot junk would totally turn me off of a game like this. It would make me think "if that kind of crap is in the very first level, just imagine how cheap it gets before the game is over!" and I would pass on Cuphead completely.

...how can you ease players in more than they already have? The tutorial level has nothing to distract you from learning the basic movement/combat mechanics at all, and written instructions on how to do everything. Stuff like a jump-dash shouldn't be challenging for anyone who covers games for a living, that's routine shit.

[solinari6]

...how can you ease players in more than they already have? The tutorial level has nothing to distract you from learning the basic movement/combat mechanics at all, and written instructions on how to do everything. Stuff like a jump-dash shouldn't be challenging for anyone who covers games for a living, that's routine shit.

Well, for one, the tutorial doesn't actually say "JUMP DASH":

Actually saying "JUMP then DASH" or having a little squiggle line implying a jump first would have helped immensely. "quick evade" is a really weird way to describe this. Logically, how could something described as "quick evade" get you over a tall obstacle? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I've actually worked on a game tutorial before, as well as written lots of documentation for programs. Something you learn really quickly, is that what is completely obvious for some people, is totally obfuscated for others. So videos like this are very useful, because they can show you that there is something in the tutorial that isn't as clear as it could be.

And by ease the player in, I mean for the very first level, there's way too much going on, and too many cheap shot kills going on here.

[Edge-]

Well, for one, the tutorial doesn't actually say "JUMP DASH":

Actually saying "JUMP then DASH" or having a little squiggle line implying a jump first would have helped immensely. "quick evade" is a really weird way to describe this. Logically, how could something described as "quick evade" get you over a tall obstacle? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

And by ease the player in, I mean for the very first level, there's way too much going on, and too many cheap shot kills going on here.

So you mean the player needs to take what they just learned, how to move horizontally, how to jump, and how to dash, and put it together? O heavens be, making players think for a second!

Is this how low we want the bar to be in gaming? I mean, I'm not a "HARDCORE OR GET OUT" guy by any means, that's nonsense. But this is literally the developer giving the player all the tools they need to figure out a jump-dash, something that any gamer who's played platformers should be pretty familiar with, in a the first screen and letting them put the few pieces together.

Just as the tutorial teaching players how to shoot clearly indicates that no, you don't jump on enemies to defeat them, something that's reinforced in-game when jumping on them only serves to harm you. But despite this, Dean still struggled to realize something so painfully obvious as the fact that the whole reason the tutorial taught you how to shoot is because you're supposed to shoot enemiesto defeat them, not jump on them.

Do we need to virtually have the developers appear to verbally walk you through each and every step of every mechanic, slowly and painstakingly?

[solinari6]

Do we need to virtually have the developers appear to verbally walk you through each and every step of every mechanic, slowly and painstakingly?

On the other hand, what do you lose by the developer saying IN THE TUTORIAL, Jump then dash?

I mean, really, who is looking for puzzles in a tutorial? Tutorials should be clear as possible.

Here's how it should have worked. The jump tutorial. Then a tutorial that shows how the dash works. Then, finally a tutorial that shows how you can use them together.

[Deleted]

They absolutely should have played 1 other game to completion of the same genre of the game they are reviewing or showcasing to understand to some extent what makes a good platformer a good platformer, good fps a good fps and so on. They need to have a reference point to be able to give info to other people who have played games rather than giving that to people who don't know what they are doing.

[Edge-]

On the other hand, what do you lose by the developer saying IN THE TUTORIAL, Jump then dash?

Again, do we really need this level of hand-holding in every game? Is there no more room for players to take the basic mechanics they've learned and put them together to learn slightly (only very slightly) more "advanced" mechanics?

It's completely unnecessary, and absolutely insulting to the intelligence of the player if the developer doesn't think that they're capable of such basic critical thinking an problem solving. This isn't Super Meatboy or I Don't Want to be the Guy or some super hardcore platformer making huge demands in terms of precision execution, this is basic shit.

I mean, really, who is looking for puzzles in a tutorial? Tutorials should be clear as possible.

...this isn't a puzzle, dude. This is literally "Take the two things you just learned, movement and jumping, and add in a third thing!"

It's the most basic and fundamental of critical thinking.

Here's how it should have worked. The jump tutorial. Then a tutorial that shows how the dash works. Then, finally a tutorial that shows how you can use them together.

Should there be a tutorial on how to press buttons? What every enemy looks like and how to deal with them before you encounter them in-game? A tutorial for turning the game on/off?

I mean, how dumb should the developer assume their players are when designing games?

[arandomuser]

https://venturebeat.com/2017/09/08/t...-runneth-over/

Basically he says what every rational person knew, that this was just the gamergate crowd targeting a games journalist that happen to be a minority, when he has done good things for gaming industry that everyone who criticized him ignored the other 14,000 gaming articles he did and crucified him for one video he uploaded for fun, sad.

". I am foremost a business and technology writer who focuses on the game industry. I’ve written 14,882 stories in my 9.5 years at VentureBeat. That is 30 stories a week. But I do about a dozen or so game reviews per year. I go to a lot of preview events where I play, but most of my job is writing about game and tech companies. I have 21 years experience covering games, and 26 years covering technology. My own view is that a lot more people should be paid to play games."

"Before he got to it, my video had maybe 10,000 views. Afterward, the Gamergaters, or hardline reactionaries — or whatever we would like to call them — believed this narrative fit into their views about game journalists just fine. They called for my head. They said I should fuck myself. I should be fired. I had brain damage. I was retarded. I should kill myself. A couple of comments were racist. I’m not trying to overplay my victimhood, but you get the picture."

[unholytestament]

God damn, remember back when people were making fun of how tutorials were too extensive to the point of hand holding?

[Nurvus]

I think game reviewers need to be more than just invested, they need to be knowledgeable and reasonably good at the kind of games they review or compare.

Worth nothing that you shouldn't have to be good at FPS games to properly review an MMO.
On the other hand, you can't properly review a game like WoW by doing nothing but questing.

[solinari6]

I mean, how dumb should the developer assume their players are when designing games?

Well I guess it depends on how many people you want to play your game, and how much money you want to make.

Again, nothing is LOST by making the tutorial more clear. They have a whole game to come up with fun and exciting ways to combine player's moves.

[Edge-]

https://venturebeat.com/2017/09/08/t...-runneth-over/

Basically he says what every rational person knew, that this was just the gamergate crowd targeting a games journalist that happen to be a minority, when he has done good things for gaming industry that everyone who criticized him ignored the other 14,000 gaming articles he did and crucified him for one video he uploaded for fun, sad.

". I am foremost a business and technology writer who focuses on the game industry. I’ve written 14,882 stories in my 9.5 years at VentureBeat. That is 30 stories a week. But I do about a dozen or so game reviews per year. I go to a lot of preview events where I play, but most of my job is writing about game and tech companies. I have 21 years experience covering games, and 26 years covering technology. My own view is that a lot more people should be paid to play games."

"Before he got to it, my video had maybe 10,000 views. Afterward, the Gamergaters, or hardline reactionaries — or whatever we would like to call them — believed this narrative fit into their views about game journalists just fine. They called for my head. They said I should fuck myself. I should be fired. I had brain damage. I was retarded. I should kill myself. A couple of comments were racist. I’m not trying to overplay my victimhood, but you get the picture."

Except that's completely missing the point of pretty much everything that's being discussed in this thread. He's just focusing on that because it allows him to avoid addressing the actual criticisms while highlighting his victimhood (which I'm not trying to dismiss, fuck the people who harassed him - though he's been poking the Gamergate hornets nest for years so it's not as if he hasn't made himself super known to them).

His piece completely ignores the core criticisms that anyone covering games for a living shouldn't be completely incapable when playing games. Nobody is expecting MLG 360 noscopes, folks are fine with media being bad at games that they're getting hands-on with for the first time, but someone who has spent decades covering/reviewing games and gets paid to write about them professionally should have a basic mastery of the most fundamental mechanics of common genre's like platforming.

[Acidbaron]

I don't think game reviewers need to be good at games per se, but they should be upfront about their skill level. Like, if you know a reviewer sucks, and they breeze through a game easily, you can reasonably infer if you're good at games that the game will likely not have a satisfying level of difficulty for you. It's useful information to the consumer.

However, I do think reviewers should finish games when applicable, especially story based games, so you may need a minimum level of proficiency to do that.

Probably the most sensible approach, expecting reviewers to be great gamers is nonsense. Since plenty of people who play video games aren't good at them and so they should get people reviewing it from their perspective also.

[Hyral]

I dislike TotalBiscuit but agree with his method. He is upfront about being trash at some games/genres and when he personally dislikes them, trying to be as objective as humanly possible. I think reviewers don't need to be good at games but could follow his example.

[Auxora]

It's hard to be too tough on him for this one. Cuphead isn't even released yet, so the reviewer probably spent no time with it. And as a "bullet-hell" (sort of) game, dying a lot is part of the deal. A game journalist needs to be somewhat capable at games, but it's not like this is a game that's been out 6 months that people have all kinds of practice at. If a reviewer was a lvl 1 orc trying out wow and couldn't find the cactus apples, I'd say they probably shouldn't be a reviewer. This doesn't seem to be that bad of a situation though.

Everyone is better at some types of games than others too. There are streamers that are top 10 e-sports players in 1 game type that are absolutely awful at other types of games.

[rasako]

What I think is hilarious is how everything with even a modicum of difficulty is called/compared to Dark Souls.

I mean, dark souls is most definitely one of the most difficult games out there if you're new to the series and only know a little about it. People who have played it extensively (myself included) just find it easy because once you learn to game the system the game becomes trivial in no time at all. A quick google search can be the difference between crushing dark souls in your first playthrough or getting stomped and quitting in the first couple of hours.

But to be fair I've been playing shit like Donkey Kong Country on the SNES since I was two years old, so difficulty is a bit skewed for me.
I still believe ninja gaiden sigma is the hardest game I've ever played though.

[Faroth]

I tried to come at this fairly. Read the article, wanted to give him some leeway as he mentioned jumping on enemies ala Mario. Fair enough, thinking of it as a platformer rather than Contra-esque run & gun at first.

But...he doesn't learn in the 26 minutes. He does the same thing repeatedly and just runs into enemies, jumps on enemies, goes back to run into enemies.

And then there's the side by side video where the pigeon figures out to move a block and climb on it to get the reward faster than he figures out to jump off one block to dash over the second in the tutorial. Again, there could be lacking context. He could be fiddling around with the controller while talking to the dev that's looking over his shoulder. He could be not actually playing for part of that so much as just hitting buttons while asking questions about the game design, etc. But if that's the case, it should be mentioned and it's not, so I can't simply disregard it out of hand.

It's hard to justify this level of play, but at least I'll give him credit of being an industry reporter more than a game reviewer, though he's done those too. I think the best option would be for him to move away from game reviews/previews and focus on the industry reporting.... which I have to still acknowledge he got the developers wrong by linking them to MeatBoy as well. So eh... yeah. Yeesh.

Final Score: /facepalm


I'll have to agree, though, that people blew it way out of proportion, as though every game journalist is incompetent or even as though this guy doesn't deserve a job. Clearly he doesn't deserve a job focused on games review, but as he himself notes, that's not the bulk of his annual work. It's barely a fractional blip on his work load.

[Yarathir]

It doesn't require them to be good, just adequate, which means playing better than someone's 90 year old grandfather. If you spent 10 years being a game journalist yet can't play a basic platformer somewhat competently, then it's fair to question: what makes you a game journalist? Because watching a Youtube video on a game and then writing a garbage political essay that has very little to do with the game topped off with a "this is like the Dark Souls of <insert genre/year> because it's harder to play through than the Life is Tumblr." is not game journalism.

[Wondercrab]

They don't need to be good at video games. If all reviewers were skilled gamers then that's the only perspective we'd ever get, and that's never a good thing when you're trying to inform a very diverse audience.

What causes problems is when reviewers don't acknowledge their bias. You can be an unskilled gamer and still recognise the difference between a game that's simply too hard for you, and a game that's poorly designed. The same is also true of reviewers who lambaste games purely for being too easy.

As a general rule reviewers probably shouldn't publish full reviews of games they can't beat, but they can still comment, critique, and provide useful impressions even if they're not particularly skilled. As long as their bias is acknowledged and you know where they're coming from, a good reviewer will still be able to put out informative content.