Recently, a Polygon employee recorded a gameplay session of DOOM to go along with their review. Unfortunately, the person playing the game wasn’t really good at it (You can check out the video above). This prompted a lot of people to poke fun at that person (at its best) and question Polygon’s credibility (at it’s worst). The entire reaction to the video got snowballed into ‘Git Gud’ hashtag, and soon there was a wave of counter-reaction from the internet (as is natural in this day and age), condemning the toxic nature of the video game fraternity. Soon Polygon’s DOOM video was white knighted by multiple publications across the world, most of them banking upon the fact that you don’t necessarily need to be good at video games to be a video game journalist.
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I cannot with a healthy mind support or defend Polygon. From where I stand it looks like an excuse to let amateur writers handle topics which are out of their leagues. Gamers with proficiency will naturally have more educated opinions than those without, by sheer virtue of having actual experience and familiarity with the subject. When you exhibit your lack of skill and knowledge in a publication geared towards a hobby with certain skill requirements, expect to be heavily criticized and mocked for your ineptitude (like the ones below).
https://twitter.com/notch/status/732863038441787392?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
That last part got me thinking though. If being good at video games wasn’t needed to be a video game journalist, than what is. According to David Wildgoose from Kotaku, it only takes good writing. But I am not so sure. So between the time I spent playing Uncharted 4 and slugging it out at the office, I decided to do some introspection and find out why and how I became a video game journalist myself.
Games critics don't need to "git gud" at playing games.
The only skill the job requires is being a great writer.
— David Wildgoose (@davidwildgoose) May 19, 2016
I was always interested in writing. Throughout my school and college term, I wrote and read a huge amount of fiction, non-fiction, fantasy and editorials not limited to video games (Shameless Plug: I even have a Wattapad account), and one day I hope to get my own book published. When I started working, the amount of time I needed to pen down something substantial reduced exponentially; and so I found myself scratching my writing itch by putting down video game related articles which were comparatively easier to create and publish. So in that way, I kind of align with David’s assessment.
But that’s not the entirety of it. The one thing I did more than writing while I was in school and college was playing video games. I devoted entire nights and sometimes weeks to games like Prince Of Persia, Need For Speed, God Of War, Halo, CS etc. I knew how to bunny-hop, I knew how to no-scope, I knew how to go beast and I knew how to camp. I also knew what AOE, Crowd Control and Tank meant even when I heard them for the first time. And because I knew all of that, I also knew the amount of skill, effort and discipline it took to execute and master all this. It made me respectful of what others gamers did, and made that multi-kill even more revered.
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What I also understand thanks to that knowledge is that not everyone is good at everything. I am great at RPGs, FPS and adventure games. On the other hand, I down-right suck at sports game, and I rarely enjoy twin stick shooters or 2D platformers. With that in mind, every time our team at Indiannoob gets a new video game to review, I tend to pick the games which I will enjoy, and my team does the same. That way, not only are we able to ensure that the game is reviewed by its target audience but also that the reviewer has a certain level of skill and affinity for that game.
The above 2 paradigm are in my mind the most necessary, and if those 2 are met, I think it indirectly means that the reviewer would have a set of skills good enough to be showcased along with his writing. I mean do you really want to know what your friend thought about ‘Civil War’ when he has never seen any of the earlier Marvel movies and had just came along for the free popcorn.
Finally I don’t need to look beyond my own team to debunk the ‘Good writer, good gaming journalist theory’. We cobble together words that convey a certain idea, not necessarily in the correct grammatical format. That swarm of word is then read and re-read multiple times before it gets published, and we still make mistakes and get called out for them. But that has never stopped us from starting work on the next one. If having good writing skills was a mandate for video game journalism, this site would have closed down a lot earlier.
I started writing about video games not because I was good with words, but because I had words that were about video games. My word building skill gave me an edge sure, but so did my day time job as a software developer (which helped me understand release cycles), and I don’t see that tweet getting any traction. I became a video game journalist, because I had to share my expertise with like minded people, because I was good enough to write about it, but mostly because I was good enough to play it. What’s your excuse?