Is incompetent Game Journalism okay?

Incompetent as in blatantly biased and aversion of proper arguments and "This is good/bad because I've decided it is" nonsense, that I need less of.

More people like Shamus Young or John Walker or Jason Schreier. We got too many Tumblr-journalists and those need to rebrand to "media enthusiasts" or something.

JusDoIt said:

Should hoops journalists be able to dunk?

Should art critics know how to draw?

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Book reviewers should probably know how to read though.

Of course that it is okay to not be the best at playing video games. :)

im not good at games so i dont want everyone writing about games to be some ridiculous god tier gamer

Your Cousin Vinny said:

99% of game journalists are not covering the far-out competitive extremes of games, so high skill level is not a prerequisite for writing a competent game review.

The point of a review is constructive insight (mixed with a bit of entertainment). If a review isn't providing that, it's useless.

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I don't think anyone is asking for reviewers/writers to all be a high skill level, only that they show a basic level of competency.

Honestly, the perspective of someone who suck at a genre playing the genre is more interesting to me than some dude playing his 1245th FPS

Is incompetent Game Journalism okay?

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Define incompetence.

Being "competent" journalists should be about how they know how to write/express themselves, how to formulate their experiences in a game so that readers may be able to extract information from their articles/videos/whatever.

It should not be about being able to complete Dark Souls one-handed while blindfolded.

glaurung said:

Inexcusable.

I recall an incident with 1UP reviewing Bladestorm on PS3. Bladestorm was this weird-ass Musou game knockoff, set in medieval Europe and during the 100 year war. The reviewer clearly had not played the game more than 30 minutes, which is shorter than the tutorial elements. He instead blathered on about how this is a reskin of the Dynasty Warriors games and omitted all troop control interaction mentions. In fact, the screenshots in the review were from the latest Dynasty Warriors game that got released before Bladestorm. The comments section ripped the author a new body cavity and that led to some rewrites and edits, but not nearly enough. It was evident that even after being called out on his bullshit, the reviewer did not bother booting up the game/review code again to recheck things.

There have been some other examples over the years too. It always feels like some hapless and poorly motivated reviewer gets assigned a game they clearly do not find even remotely interesting (give an addicted moba player a JRPG to review and see how they break down) and this ends in shitty content, nonsensical verdicts and stupid argumentation.

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what you're talking about here is different than what others are saying. your dude was just lying and being lazy. there's a difference with being lazy and a low skill player who puts in the time to convey their thoughts and experience.

A rather important question in this context:

Should reviewers tell you on what difficulty they played the game?

Because some games can be radically different from normal to hard, or from easy to normal.
And if someone only played it on easy, you can be pretty sure that he/she didn't even bother to learn the systems of the game.

I will always prefer watching reviews of critics who are good at the games that they're reviewing.

regawdless said:

Should reviewers tell you on what difficulty they played the game?

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They should include any information they deem relevant.

Being good at video games and being good at journalism are two very different things and people need to stop conflating them.

Woah... being bad a game does not make someone an incompetent journalist.

I don't think they NEED to be skilled at all to review a game, but I think they need to upfront with their interests and viewpoints. In a perfect world, an FPS enthusiast would review an FPS game, and RPG enthusiast would review and RPG game - but sometimes deadlines and publication line ups get in the way and someone might be saddled with review or covering a game they may not be particularly enthused about. As a professional, they will do their job and it is not up to the reader to call them incompetent for being bad the game as long as they are honest in their appraisal and their state of mind going into the review.

In my opinion:

Incompetence in journalism is presenting wrong facts, making grammatical errors, not being able to communicate effectively in written form, or not doing enough research before covering a topic.

Malpractice is when they make false claims, lie, plagiarize, or give biased coverage or take payment for coverage. This doesn't make a person incompetent (they may very well do these things very competently) but does make them an asshole.

For me, I don't mind unskilled gamers or people without in-depth knowledge of game development covering games, but what irks me is when they peddle bias or unsubstantiated views in their work. What really, really bothers me is when a "journalist" or anyone who takes it upon themselves to "review" or "cover" a game makes assumptions on development and offers ill-researched or made up "suggestions" as to how a game developer should "fix" their game.

"All they needed to do was make more maps, geez all it takes is to put a point here, a point there, and you're done." "Why couldn't they just add... *insert anything some jackass fancies* I need it! This game is garbage without it."

Sword Familiar said:

That's being a bit too hard on the reviewer imo. They should just find another game more suited for them to review instead.

I would assume most reviewers these days are generalist gamers, as you unfortunately need to adapt to what games are released more than being able to choose games that you are good at. Some genres need a certain level of expertise before reviewing them though, and maybe when these things happen it should mark a red flag for the company to look for people with experience in certain genres (to complement the staff they already have, not to replace them).

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Oh don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying he should be an expert or even super-skilled. I just meant when a person is reviewing a game, they should know and understand the mechanics, the content, the changes in progression, the full package if you will.

I've seen several cases where the reviewer makes mistakes, mis-judges things and makes absurd conclusions. Even if or when they are confronted or proven wrong, they rarely own up to it and make proper changes. For instance, I remember the reviewer who did Tales of Symphonia 2, and erroneously claimed you could not skip cut scenes and went on a rant about it, and how it affected his time with the game negatively. A poster told the reviewer how it was done, by which buttons allowed for skipping scenes, but they never responded or altered their findings. Can't remember if it was Gamespot or IGN.

They can do whatever they want, but a perspective that doesn't to in depth into a game isn't valuable for me. On a face level, most games are similar to each other and a lot of the aspects that your average review cover about the game are mostly self-evident from watching footage of the game. I'm more interested in in-depth technical dives like Digital Foundry or mechanical/thematic analyses like Joseph Anderson or Noah Caldwell-Gervais provide. Which take a lot of time on part of the critic, so they can't pump out hot takes in 1-2 weeks of playing a game before release. So traditional games journalism is inherently worthless to me.

Others may feel differently, so they can consume whatever media interests them.

Alastor3 said:

if it's written article, it doesnt bother me, but watching a journalist playing a demo on the showfloor and doing very very badly is painful to watch

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Having participated in quite a few of these demos over the years, here's what I have to say:

Showfloor demos are terrible, and will make you bad at any game. Okay, so this isn't the case for all demos, but from my experience, most. To make the games look good, publishers bring out huge TVs for you to play on, but you don't have space to step back from it and you end up so close to the screen that most of the time you can't even see the HUD without turning your head. It's like playing a game you don't know with a FOV of 10 and no HUD, it's ridiculous. Also take into account that this might be the first time the journalist is playing that particular game, there's no introduction to the gameplay that is being recorded and it's usually not the start of the game. There also distraction absolutely everywhere, noise blasting in form every direction, developers walking up and down asking you if everything is alright, other journalists watching you; sometimes you are even conducting a half-assed interview while playing the game. PC demos that use mice can be a nightmare too when you cannot change the sensitivity of the mice, we all know haw bad that can feel. This year at GC, the Forza demo I played had a half second of input lag, that shit was unplayable, how is anyone supposed to be good at games like that?

More on topic:
The thread title is terrible. Incompetent journalism is not okay, but we are talking about journalists that are not good at games which is not the same at all. Being bad at a game over all the games they review does not make them incompetent, it's frankly quite insulting. Incompetence should also never be tolerated in a professional environment, so the question kind of answers itself or makes the question very skewed.

CritiestBunny said:

In a perfect world, an FPS enthusiast would review an FPS game, and RPG enthusiast would review and RPG game

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In a perfect world, both FPS enthusiasts, FPS agnostics, and FPS haters should review an FPS game. Same with every genre. One of the main issue with the current reviewing system is that FPS games are reviewed by FPS fans, Final Fantasy games are reviewed by Final Fantasy fans, etc.

We need opinions from differing viewpoints. If anything we should encourage more reviews from people who are not-interested by the game (at least at first glance), by people who don't play those kind of games on a regular basis, etc.

Like, how would someone who never played an "Ubisoft-game" think of an "Ubisoft-game" nowadays? They can't be burnt by the formula, so what would be their opinion now?

CritiestBunny said:

Woah... being bad a game does not make someone an incompetent journalist.

I don't think they NEED to be skilled at all to review a game, but I think they need to upfront with their interests and viewpoints. In a perfect world, an FPS enthusiast would review an FPS game, and RPG enthusiast would review and RPG game - but sometimes deadlines and publication line ups get in the way and someone might be saddled with review or covering a game they may not be particularly enthused about. As a professional, they will do their job and it is not up to the reader to call them incompetent for being bad the game as long as they are honest in their appraisal and their state of mind going into the review.

In my opinion:

Incompetence in journalism is presenting wrong facts, making grammatical errors, not being able to communicate effectively in written form, or not doing enough research before covering a topic.

Malpractice is when they make false claims, lie, plagiarize, or give biased coverage or take payment for coverage. This doesn't make a person incompetent (they may very well do these things very competently) but does make them an asshole.

For me, I don't mind unskilled gamers or people without in-depth knowledge of game development covering games, but what irks me is when they peddle bias or unsubstantiated views in their work. What really, really bothers me is when a "journalist" or anyone who takes it upon themselves to "review" or "cover" a game makes assumptions on development and offers ill-researched or made up "suggestions" as to how a game developer should "fix" their game.

"All they needed to do was make more maps, geez all it takes is to put a point here, a point there, and you're done." "Why couldn't they just add... *insert anything some jackass fancies* I need it! This game is garbage without it."

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I think I agree with most of this. As someone who's not great at many genres of games and frequently plays on Easy, I certainly see the worth of reviews by people who aren't as adept at play. Being more open about this sort of thing would be nice though. In an ideal world, we'd have a wide range of viewpoints, and consumers would accept that a lack of consensus is not a bad thing. Things do become an issue when misinformation is being put forth, but I think that can happen just as easily from a novice as it could from an enthusiast. It's easy to update an online article, but I understand that it's not as easy to update a video.

Maybe this is an area where publisher contacts can extend a hand. If reviewers aren't rushing, they'll have more time to fact-check and ask questions.

Such a shame that the German gamepro review video to Dark Souls isn't online anymore. I searched it, but nothing. Only the written review is left.

It's one of the perfect examples of incompetence. The reviewer played the game without using the lock-on feature at all because he didn't knew it existed. He didn't even mention the online coop.... in fucking Dark Souls.
Doesn't help that he was a bad player as well. Stuff like this from a rather big outlet shouldn't be happening.

I think reviewers should always try to "beat" a game, although what that means varies. you wouldn't review a book, a movie or an album while not having read, watched or listened to the whole thing, and i don't think it's right to do that with games either unless they are somehow broken

while the doom video is a little embarrassing, it isn't really journalism and, if the player did later go on to review room, I imagine they improved their skills

A variety of opinions from a variety of people with different interests and skills is nothing but fantastic. If all reviews came from masterful players then the consensus of game reviews would be misguided for consumers.

Also a lot of these gameplay demos are not put together by game reviewers, they're often recorded on busy showfloors while playing the game for the first time.

Quote said:

what you're talking about here is different than what others are saying. your dude was just lying and being lazy. there's a difference with being lazy and a low skill player who puts in the time to convey their thoughts and experience.

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So... What you are saying is that I should be banned with the reason "Downplaying incompetence and laziness. Advocating Bladestorm being not Dynasty Warriors"?

Where in this thread did I go wrong when discussing the notion of incompetence? The OP referred to lack of thumb skill, but the issue of general lack of skill as well as negligence is equal evidence of incompetence. Do you even know what the definition of incompetence is? Do you know what the Dunning-Kruger effect is?

If a game isn't fun or good enough to finish then I don't see why that should stop there being a review, that's basically a major point of the review in the first place - "Game isn't good"

Zem said:

"Game isn't good"

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It should definitely be explained a tad more than that though :p

And by that I mean stuff like "at which point did the reviewer give up?", "was there a specific trigger?", and of course clearly indicating that they gave up in the first place. Not like so many reviews which you can't really know if they only played half an hour or 250h straight.

But I agree of course.

That Doom video was pretty terrible. You don't have to be great, just competent. If lack of skill is finding its way into reviews and creates inaccuracies, probably shouldn't do that either.

It's about presentation, that video was like a poorly written article, something you should probably avoid. Not a huge deal.

Yes, everyone is allowed to buy and play video games, so everyone is also allowed to review them.

Preventing someone from expressing their opinions, because of their skills with the game, would be gatekeeping.

I though this would be about real incompetence in journalism, like being living PR machines and ignoring the real issues in the gaming landscape

The way you've framed the thread is completely wrong. If someone is incompetent at journalism, they shouldn't be a journalist. But being bad at games does not mean you are incompetent at games journalism. They are completely different things. Some people are great at games but would be terrible journalists. Do you expect someone covering NASCAR to need to be an expert driver? Should someone covering aerospace need to be a great pilot? The skill sets are different.

I'd rather a competent journalist than a competent game player

I feel like I bang on about this a lot on ERA but these sort of overblown examples and the language that surrounds them, is all part of the confusing antagonistic relationship gamers have with journalists.

It feels like there are a group of capital G "Gamers" who are constantly trying to tear down the credibility of all major outlets. This reached a nadir in GG and has only accelerated with the rise of youtubers and streaming.

It also totally flattens the review landscape as any deviation from the perceived narrative, is taken as sign of gaming skill failure and pounced upon by the gaming hordes.

i'd take a review by someone who only learnt how to use a controller 5 minutes ago but writes like James Baldwin over someone who is innately talented at everything they pick up but their only conception of what games writing consists of is mid-2000s IGN reviews.

every day of the fucking week

is anything incompetent ever 'ok' ?

i'd say no but since testing is not up to us, all we can do is take notice and look for opinions elsewhere if you think said proficiency is required

The context of the thread and the title are different. I thought you meant game journalists being bad at writing articles not being bad at playing games. On topic, I don't think game journalists need to be good at the games they cover, but I still think they should have a basic grasp around the game, for example I remember that polygon video covering DOOM in which it felt the journalist hadn't even played another FPS game in his life. They don't need to be pros but they shouldn't be completely out of touch with what they are reviewing either.

As long as a reviewer is accurately describing their experience with a game and isn't reporting information that's objectively incorrect then that's all that matters. You don't need to be skilled at a game to review it because it's still going to be played by people who aren't skilled at it. For someone who is new to Civilization or something, a review from someone who is also new to the series is worth more to them than the review of someone who has invested serious time into it.

tulpa said:

The way you've framed the thread is completely wrong. If someone is incompetent at journalism, they shouldn't be a journalist. But being bad at games does not mean you are incompetent at games journalism. They are completely different things. Some people are great at games but would be terrible journalists. Do you expect someone covering NASCAR to need to be an expert driver? Should someone covering aerospace need to be a great pilot? The skill sets are different.

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These analogies don't work because there is no interaction involved in NASCAR or aerospace. The critic is purely a viewer.

Someone who is blind shouldn't be reviewing paintings just like someone who doesn't know how to use a controller shouldn't be reviewing a game.

Liam Allen-Miller said:

But like, serious question here, how often does a lack of skill result in a genuinely misleading review? Both of those games were scored very well on their respective sites.

This bit's not directed specifically towards you, Thorn, but in general, I just wonder why people have such a problem with the occasional badly played gameplay video coming out? I kind of feel like people lack perspective a bit in some cases. Like, if you go to any major gaming convention like PAX and you just watch people play the various demos, the majority of gameplay you will see is a bit shit. Good gameplay footage being released is something that should be the publisher's responsibility. The responsibility of games journalists is more in line with presenting real gameplay, warts and all.

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Personally I don't think it has ANY effect on reviews, so im not really too concerned about this issue, its just when you see some bad preview footage, it does make a game look poor.

Thank Goodness we have multiple sources these days.

jem said:

These analogies don't work because there is no interaction involved in NASCAR or aerospace. The critic is purely a viewer.

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Distinguish criticism from journalism then. Someone can report on the gaming and do very good reporting and understand the operation of the industry very well without being able to play games well. Take it from NASCAR to consumer automotive then. Someone doesn't have to be an excellent driver to understand how to properly review a consumer vehicle, how to evaluate its systems and mechanics. In fact, I know some mechanics who really understand cars but are terrible drivers. I actually get scared being in a car with them.

jem said:

Someone who doesn't know how to use a controller shouldn't be reviewing a game.

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Almost anyone can use a controller, so it's not really a valid point.

So many agendas on show in here!

Would you have made this thread if the videos showcasing those games were top-tier skill - but incredibly poorly written, terrible logic and thought process, and poor actual journalism? I suspect not.

No, being 'incompetent' at your job is never a good thing. However, not being great at a game doesn't make you a bad journalist. Being a bad journalist makes you a bad journalist - and people really need to stop confusing that.

Not everyone who buys games is good at them - you only need to check out the achievement list of any AAA title to see how quickly folks fall off and don't get the second, or even first, achievement.

These people should be catered for in reviews as well. If I'm shit at fighting games and RTS/management games - I'm not interesting in reading the review of a fighting game savant. However, if someone is a bit rubbish at fighting games and can explain to my why that game is good, and why I, as someone who is also a bit rubbish, should buy it - then I'm in.

In an ideal world we would have both - hardcore/enthusiast reviews by folks who just get it, and then reviews by people who aren't as good but can appreciate the game.

jem said:

These analogies don't work because there is no interaction involved in NASCAR or aerospace. The critic is purely a viewer.

Someone who is blind shouldn't be reviewing paintings just like someone who doesn't know how to use a controller shouldn't be reviewing a game.

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Their review would be worthwhile to someone else who doesn't know how to use a controller but was considering picking one up for that specific game.

It's not as if there's limited space on the internet, anyone who has played a game is in a position to review it. It's up the audience to seek out reviews that are worthwhile to them because what counts as a worthwhile review is going to be different for everyone.

jem said:

Someone who is blind shouldn't be reviewing paintings

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Why?

I mean besides the fact that they'd need to touch it to experience it and as such may damage it (not because they're blind, but because paintings are not made to endure lots of touching).

OP's just another gatekeeper for nerd shit. Only capital 'G' gamers are allowed talk about games from now on people, shut it all down.

At the end of the day reviews and previews are just opinion pieces. You don't need to finish a game to know you don't personally like it and previews are even less important because you're just doing a quick write up of like an hours worth of play.

It's not your job to police this stuff anyway, if the site publishes it then they're fine with the opinion of the writer.

The Devil May Cry and camps the is definitley an issue stemming from the journalists lack of skill/awareness.

They claimed a feature was missing when the feature was there and the only reason they didn't see it was because they weren't even good enough to raise the combo score.

Sure, it's good to get an Everyman type review or preview sometimes as not every consumer is skill at all games, but when it means the person reports mis-information and/or scores low because of their own problems then it's not good journalism.

The above sample is compounded by the fact that had the journalist done a little research/asked questions from their contacts etc... they would have understood.

So not only were they lacking in skill enough to no undderrtajr the game they were playing they also failed to research properly.

The Doom example is just funny. I have no idea how someone who works playing video games for a living could be that bad. It really did look like someone trying a FPS for the first time. As a preview though, it's fair as people of that skill level bought the game to try so a hearing feedback from someone or similar skill would be useful.

Incompetence in any professional field is never okay.

However, I don't think the instances listed in the OP are particularly good examples of journalistic incompetence.
Severe incompetence in that field can manifest as plagiarism, lack of impartiality, or reporting hearsay without verifying secondary sources -- and we've had examples of all of those.

Comparatively, not being particularly skilled at a game is a rather minor issue. However, I do generally believe that a reviewer should be sufficiently familiar with a genre to provide a valuable perspective for prospective buyers -- which means appreciating its nuances, which requires some level of familiarity and skill. If you want to do an "outside perspective" review, which might be valuable, then this should be marked as such.

The examples given in the OP really vary , if a reviewer couldn't complete a souls game under a time crunch before the test server was taken down it's entirely different from making a gameplay video of Doom and not using the right analog stick.

People who work in games media don't have to be good at videogames, they should probably be good at producing games media though. Espessially if the problem people are having could have been fixed by paying attention to the game you're playing or checking a wiki to make sure the facts in your article are correct.

Perspective is important. As long as the writer makes it clear that they're new to the series/game, their input can turn other newcomers onto the series or let them know it isn't for them. Likewise if they're a fan; they can go more in-depth. As long as it's made abundantly clear in the article their skill level and investment, I have no problem with journalists being 'bad' at a game.

Spreading misinformation and worthless hot takes is never acceptable.

1. People that write about video games ARE NOT JOURNALISTS. They are just writers.

2. Nobody... absolutely nobody gives a single fuck how good you are at video games

I don't think the thread title matches the post. For the thread title the answer by definition (of incompetent) should be no, it's not OK.

The post though talks more about a lack of gaming skill. That alone doesn't make anyone a bad journalist/writer.

And as far as bad gamers writing reviews, I think it's mostly OK because they're writing as an average gamer like me.

Obviously though it can and does sometimes create issues where writers can get information factually wrong because they are not skilled at a game.

In those cases I guess you just get called out and hopefully fix it immediately. I don't know what else you can do other than verify first...but that might not always work when they're trying to get a review out.

well I have to cringe every time I see a review about a fighting game where it's absolutely obvious the person does not know how to play them at all.

I'd much rather read/watch reviews by an experienced player as long as they are decent at writing a script because if a game gets my attention and I possibly want to buy it, why would I trust someone who is a mediocre player?

There is absolutely no reason to shame someone though. It sickens me when people do it.

Two Things.

First Thing.

I think there is a really REALLY weird divide between the community that purchases, plays and discusses video games and the outlets and journalists that produce video game related content. This thread is a good example of that from our side. It comes off as an attack on games journalists but actually makes some good points too.

My impression from a lot of the main gaming outlets is that the writers are far more comfortable writing about drama in the community than they are writing about actual games and far more willing to antagonize "Gamers" than they are to write balanced reporting. Maybe this is down to the need for clickbait or something I dunno. I bet the more controversial articles get more clicks. (Like, what's with Polygon's little obsession with Logan Paul, Pewdiepie and other Youtube drama?)

In my view, that's the state of the situation. In the blue corner we have clickbait driven sites that antagonize people or sensationalize stories for clicks while not offering much game related content. In the red corner we have an audience that can't stop themselves from clicking but who also seem to hold games journalists in complete contempt because they don't display a satisfactory interest in games.

Second Thing.

If >> I << were in charge of a video game related website of magazine or whatever then I'd want to make sure the people that I employed were actually able to play the games they would be covering. Then I wouldn't be sending the person who can't play an FPS to save himself to cover Doom. I'd send someone who like can actually demonstrate the game competently. On top of that I'd just use different footage or record new footage if it's all that bad. The Cuphead footage for example should have just be re-recorded or something (unless it was streamed live). Just releasing such embarrassing footage seems lazy to me.

I mean, you would think that a video game journalist would be someone with a pretty intense enthusiasm for games. Especially modern games. Especially if they are going to be doing this as a career. If you were the boss at Polygon wouldn't you want folks who are actually good at the games to report on them?

For example, Polygon's (not a) review of Star Fox Zero. https://www.polygon.com/2016/4/20/11466308/not-a-review-star-fox-zero

To me this is utterly unacceptable for someone who is freakin PAID to cover video games. I was able to play and complete Star Fox Zero both on my own and also playing co-op with my OH. We had a great time and while I would probably only call it a "6 out of 10" game it is certainly nowhere near the unplayable mess described in this article.

My guess is that in this case and in many others the writers passion is for something other than video games. Maybe they really are into music or drawing or politics or even just writing.

Do you need to be "good" at games to cover games? Nah. It would definitely help though.

In the end I would say that there is obviously an uneasy, and sometimes outright hostile, relationship between the consumers who buy and play video games and the journalists who are paid to create content about video games.

Some of this lies with the consumers for being too demanding and a bit too entitled at times. Some of this is down to many in the gaming press seeming to not really have a passion for gaming and only really perking up when there is some drama to report on or some controversy to stoke up.

A games journalist being a skilled player is not a valid prerequisite at all.

A games journalist having basic hand-eye coordination, however, is.

I would agree with you though that reviewers should finish a game before reviewing it. I personally will dismiss any review where the reviewers clearly didn't finish the game. Their opinion becomes meaningless if they didn't even give the game enough of a chance to see it through to the end.