Isn't it Ironic that in 2017, a year in which 4k gaming makes a big push with the Xbox One X,
-that one of the most popular titles is a throwback to the 1930s?
The time before gaming even existed!
Obviously I'm talking about Cuphead, a literal love letter to the earliest days of animation.
But not only is it retro in its aesthetics, it's also retro in its difficulty.
Cuphead comes at you hard and fast, testing the limits of your reflexes and skill from moment one.
You could say, it's the Crash Bandicoot of run-and-gun games, the Dark Souls of boss rush platformers.
Cuphead is satisfying in a way that only the hardest video games can be.
And it happens to be in a way that not alot of game journalists will ever be able to experience.
You see, recently VentureBeat published a video of one of their longtime journalists playing the game, less than skilfully.
And that video went viral, reigniting a debate that's been raging since the earliest days of gaming.
Do video game journalists need to get good at video games?
Do people speaking as experts in gaming need to play like experts as well?
Of course they don't.
Jeff, you're supposed to wait until I say the thing.
Sorry, Matt. I'm just really excited to be here.
Ladies and gentlemen in the internet, welcome to
DeadLock!
*Music Intro*
Seriously Matt, I am super sorry about coming on early in the intro.
Well , and now you're starting the debate late because, the camera is on.
What? Oh- sorry,
Seriously Jeff you gotta tone it down with that Canadian politeness man; This is DeadLock.
It's gotta be snarky and mean- that's the whole shtick of the show. It's an online debate man, for crying out loud.
It's take-no-prisoners; get brutal and vicious. Just like the brutal and vicious canadians who made Cuphead.
Or like the comments on your Undertale videos!
#BurnMatPat
Ooh, Sorry.
Okay, you gotta at least stop saying that
Absolutely just as soon as you stop making fnaf theories.
*DOUBLE BUUUUUURN!!!!*
Ladies and gentlemen this is Jeff from the anime focused Channel mother's basement
Speaking of Jeff, This is a gaming channel- don't should you be off hugging a body pillow of your waifu?
*Critical Counter*
I can do both. Besides, I've actually got a lot of experience in this field.
Before I analyzed anime for a living, I wrote for several different video game websites- including one where I was the features editor.
And I went to school for game design, which-
I think makes me a little more qualified to talk about this than you are buddy.
I mean your neuro science degree is impressive and all, but games aren't exactly brain surgery.
Okay, you tell that the Dean Takahashi; the journalist who made that cup head video.
It takes him nearly a minute and 30 seconds to get a dash jump in the tutorial.
The channel X stickfiga X had his five-year-old play the game,
and did a side-by-side comparison of the two gameplay videos-
The same jump took the five-year-old kids seven seconds.
Nobody who plays games for a living should play that poorly.
it is-
painful to watch.
It is and you're right.
Great, I am? it's usually go out in for like 10 minutes at least.
Sorry Matt. You're right that nobody who plays games for a living should play that poorly,
but game journalists don't play games for a living; They write about games for a living.
and writing is the single most important skill that they can have.
I mean, I can ghost all of the levels in Hitman: Blood Money on the hardest difficulty,
But that's not gonna fill my writing portfolio-
and it's not gonna get me a job.
The same goes for YouTube and twitch. Even lets players and live streamers whose job is
literally to play video games draw in their audiences with
personality and production values not with their hard core skills look at how many fail compilations
There are for the game grumps or PewDiePie or the super best friends and everybody loves those guys
I mean why do you think so many people watch GT Live?
Are they there to see you S rank all of the bosses in cuphead, or are they drawn in by your winning personality
Huh flattery isn't gonna help you win this debate Jeff
It was worth a shot the point is that game journalists like everybody else in the gaming media are just that
Media, they are entertainers all they need to do is write
Entertaining and informative articles, that's the key word there though informative
I mean obviously playing games is only part of a game journalists job, but it is still part of it
And you can't write anything informative about a game if you yourself aren't informed about how it works
There are subtle
Nuances to games like how they feel when you play that you can only understand by you know playing a bunch of games
You wouldn't trust a review of a book from someone who can't read half the words
So why should we trust a review for a game from someone who can't do something as basic as ask the?
Tutorial that is like the bare minimum
We should be expecting of these game journalists otherwise everything just becomes the dark souls of its genre
Okay, Matt. You're talking a lot about reviews
But that's actually a very small part of what game journalists do
Most writers before they ever get a chance to write a review or editorial
Get their start writing news pieces based on press releases and for that job
All you really need is an ability to turn in
Readable work quickly and with few errors for your editor to correct and for bigger pieces like dean
Takahashi's expose about the xbox 360's red ring of death problem the most important thing to have is
sources within the industry who can give you reliable information
And an ability to write to keep people engaged for a long period of time
Sure, I'll concede that not every article written on a gaming news site requires an author who can actually play games
It's the same thing with writing theories actually you have to be great at research and telling a story first and foremost
but there are articles that gaming websites publish like reviews or
Previews or guides that need to be written by someone who is able to pick up
Understand and beat games if they can't do that
We as the audience can't trust what they have to say about those games
Especially if your job is boiling a game down to a single number for a review for example
You need to play a lot of platformers to get a feel for little things like whether games controls are precise or loose and flowy
and also the big things like whether or not the difficulty in the game is even fair an
Experienced player and a total newb will probably be equally frustrated with a level like say crash bandicoot's high road
but the
Professional will understand that it's because of cheap trial and error game design and crashes new hitbox and the remaster
Rather than their own inability as a gamer
Ah now who's making excuses sure it took me a while, but I fully completed all those new crash games
And that's the point here. This isn't just about one specific game or one bad play session
It's about overall experience journalists may not need to be pro, but they do need to be proficient
When I was in theater
I was expected to sight read music get handed a sheet of music and do a decent job of singing it on the spot based
on my knowledge of intervals and patterns the same thing applies to gaming, it's
Actually, my proudest skill as a gamer not that I can speedrun one game in world record time
But that there are certain genres of games that you can throw me into like rhythm games or platformers
And I can burn through them really quickly on a first playthrough sight-reading the game just based on my experience as a gamer its
proficiency, and if you look at venture beats cuphead video or the infamous polygon plays doom you just don't see that coming out of the
Game journalist, you're right genre specific experience is important for writing reviews and previews
But the key word there is genre. Games require lots of different skill sets and
Nobody is going to be good at every single one
I mean Daigo Umehara is the best Street Fighter player in the world?
But you wouldn't expect him to dominate an overwatch the very first time he picks it up and the same goes for game journalists
I mean, I'm great at RPGs puzzlers stealth games and platformers, but put a rhythm game or an RTS in front of me
And I'm hopeless everybody has different areas of expertise
Absolutely, I'm not saying that hardcore FPS guys should be reviewing Mario Odyssey
But what I am saying is that writers should be matched up with the games that fit their knowledge that I remember this old
Nintendo Power review of the Zuna the unemployed ninja where the reviewers that the entire article
complaining that the random levels and loss of progress on death were unfair but
Basically he was just complaining about the fact that the game was a roguelike
That's not useful for anyone especially for people who know and enjoy roguelike in a perfect world
Yeah, every game would be assigned to an expert in its genre, but in the real world
you often have to make compromises game previews happen at events like conventions
I mean that cuphead footage came all the way from Gamescom in germany
And it's expensive to send reporters to events like that especially
If they're on a different continent from your publication game site traffic mainly comes from exclusive coverage of big
high-profile game releases
So you really can't afford to have any of the reporters that you have in an event like that
Not cover all of the big games and timeliness is also a huge factor here
reviews are often written on strict deadlines needing to come out the same day a game is released or a few days before so it's
Even more important that a writer be able to write quickly and write well
Then it is for them to be great at a game or even finish it sometimes
Wolfenstein 2 just this month came out seven days before Call of Duty World War two and three days after
Destiny two hit PC if your site only has one
first-person shooter guy then you're gonna have to kick it down the line to your
RPG guy who barely plays shooters at all to pick up the slack because at the
the day you can't afford to miss any of those if you're a serious gaming website for big-ticket games a review or
Preview from a writer who might not be that
Experienced with the game is a lot better for business than one that comes late, or doesn't come at all
Is it is it Jeff for whose?
Business is it better is it better for the site sure they may get a few extra
Clicks off a popular game title but once I'm on that article their integrity is getting thrown out the window as they showcase how?
Unprepared they are to do real coverage of the game in essence
They're choosing to get a few cheap clicks in the near term while
Sacrificing the opportunity to build trust with the reader by showing that they do good work
Encouraging that reader to be a part of their community and becoming a loyal source of clicks for sometimes years to come people
Wonder why gamers on YouTube are skeptical of gaming news outlets? This is why?
Quantity of coverage over quality of coverage thus making them unreliable and as a result these sites are hemorrhaging
Readership or wait Jeff maybe you mean it's better for the readers business who gets a hastily slapped together
Preview written by someone without the chops to deliver the information I as a fan of the genre
Care about that's just gonna leave me looking for coverage elsewhere
Or worse it's showcasing the game poorly reducing my excitement for something
I may have been interested in hey or maybe Jeff you mean, it's good for the game developers themselves
But I don't know how when writing a game preview or review a journalist job is to inform readers
purchases first and foremost in reviews
They are literally boiling down an entire game experience into one number
If writers are delivering lackluster coverage of the game and their previews or don't have the experience necessary to review the game
Accurately relative to other games they're misrepresenting
That game and in the process risking not only my money as the consumer
But the millions upon millions of dollars of investment that game makers have put into actually producing the thing in the first place
Activision's vice-president of marketing has gone so far as to say that quote for every additional five points over an
80% of average review score
Sales may as much double for that game. Well Matt
You know what they say all
Publicity is good publicity and the developers who can afford to spend tens of millions of dollars making and marketing their games
Aren't the only ones we need to worry about sure you might lose a bit of depth of coverage
Overall if a reviewer can't spend the hundred hours that it takes to finish a game like Final Fantasy 12
But the flip side of that is that that reviewer will be able to cover many more games much more quickly which is
Increasingly important in a world where more and more games are coming out every single week
What would you rather see Matt a review from a guy who spent 35 hours collecting
834 power moons in Super Mario
Odyssey or a review from a guy who spent 10 hours on Mario and then 30 hours playing a bunch of different indie games that?
Would have never gotten any coverage, otherwise the way that the industry works right now certainly isn't perfect
But when the alternative is hiring on a bunch of different under skilled writers who mainly get paid in
Exposure and free video games or letting indie games languish in obscurity because the skilled writers you have on staff
Aren't qualified to play that particular genre?
I think that the way things work right now is the best possible solution at least what we have currently for the
Overall health of the industry honestly I have to disagree
I think the best thing for the health of the industry has been sites like YouTube and Twitch. They've created a system
Where you get to know the gamer their likes and their dislikes?
So that when they actually say they're excited about a game you can believe it
They are pretty excited about that game and online gamers are less dependent on advertising dollars directly paid to them by the gaming companies
traditional websites rely on selling ad space
Directly to those companies so making sure triple-a games get good reviews is imperative sure those relationships still exist on YouTube via paid
sponsorships
But those sponsorships have to be disclosed and YouTube is the one selling the ad space to all sorts of different companies
So if I say that I don't like a certain game
It doesn't mean I'm gonna go bankrupt when they suddenly pull out their ad there's on me long story short game
Journalists aren't just representatives of the industry
They have to represent the players as well
And as such they need to at least be good enough to give the games they cover a fair shot
There's a lot of money on the line if they're not up to that task and hundreds if not
Thousands of gamers might be mislead into missing out on a game that they would absolutely love
simply based on a bad review or a bad preview game journalists
Can't just play games for the sake of their own enjoyment
They have a job to do and they have to do that job well
They absolutely do but there's a lot more to that job than just twitch reflexes and high scores and getting those things
right needs to come first
Ladies and gentlemen on the Internet, we have reached a deadlock now the decision is in your hands
do reviewers need to get good or does control over the English language top control over a
Controller click the eye icon at the upper right hand corner of the screen to cast your vote
Last time in the Battle of weather crash bandicoot is overrated
200,000 people voted and 60% said no crash bandicoot is good
No matter how many cheap deaths you might have on the high road?
hehehehehe, if you can see this, then i'm impressed.