I debated bringing this up, but I think it’s worth discussing:
This is a conversation about Dean Takahashi’s cuphead video:
Dean Takahashi is an infamously poor journalist in the industry. He’s someone that gave Mass Effect a low score because he didn’t realize you could upgrade your squad, and who has accused Warhammer 40K of ripping off Gears of War. This playthrough is also… well it’s a level of competence that I would see from my parents playing a game and not someone who has been on the beat playing games for decades. It’s something that was immediately defended and attached to this thread of how bad gamers are because they don’t respect professionals, but the threads immediately lept to defending Dean Takahashi and deriding Jim Sterling basically solely because one works for a corporation and the other is on YouTube and a personal site.
In my opinion, Dean’s worth digging into (not the level of shit he gets because again, gamers are in fact toxic as hell). I also think he’s a victim of the extremes that games journalism must go to which are the same as any corporate media but with no “golden period” where journalism required subscription and that came with an expectation of quality. Games Journalism was always a method for the industry to make more money by charging its customers for the only ways to get past parts of games (which hit its peak in the 2000s with things like FF guides costing $30 and being a hard requirement to get the full story of a game). So while Dean playing Cuphead like he has never played a video game before is probably more likely due to the 5-6 articles he has to publish a day while maintaining a social media presence and schmoozing publishers for access and less to do with actual ability. He was probably more concerned with his gear capturing the video as a decent frame rate in his window that his could capture during knowing that he has to get somewhere else to keep his Gamescom schedule. So the real flaw is in the industry, and industry simultaneously barraged by toxic gamers who also refuse to support quality journalism or even pay for games (the f2p market is driven by a refusal to even pay a few dollars for smaller games).
Now, what they really wanted to talk about is this:
https://twitter.com/MrDrMedicman/status/912375113713979393
Which is referring to Polygon’s Doom cold 30 minutes of gameplay done on easy by Arthur Gies on a console:
Now this video got infinitely more shit and the gameplay is bad but leagues above the Cuphead gameplay. I suspect the 2016 election meant the GGers have moved their impotent rage onto something else, as well as Polygon inciting a special level of political rage from gamers for their coverage. Even in the well-meaning reaction videos to this Doom gameplay you will see comments or hear the video mention that they would be more forgiving to anyone except Polygon and it seems that sentiment is absolutely true.
I don’t have an issue with this gamepay, it’s obviously playing cold with a controller when the guy is probably used to a different controller or a mouse and keyboard. I’ve also heard a lot of people complain about switching gun requiring the right bumper on a controller which means it’s super awkward to control the rapid gun switching you see at high level Doom play. What’s more is that Arthur said on Twitter that his gameplay was fine and not very good, and I think that he tried to show the game’s mechanics for melee kills and capturing the animated scenes without moving and focusing on the game’s cut scenes.
I also know Arthur was explicitly targeted because he purposely lowered Bayonetta’s score because the hyper sexualization of the main character, so the group that actively harasses people already were analyzing everything he did and trying to incite the mob before this video.
A long rant, and it doesn’t even have a point. But I thought it was at least an interesting side to the conversation showing that the industry tends to circle the wagons quickly and universally defend itself over something as simple as video games (which I know is a very passionate subject for many) which is sort of the default of all industries. Not a criticism of what Charles’ point, which I feel my posts illustrates - just the same refusal to look inward at all that really grips many passionate conversations.
