Are games journalists awful at video games? The answer may be yes. I purchased a brand new first-person shooter during the Steam Summer Sale, and I did such a terrible job on the first full level, the game straight up called me a slur. That’s right: “Game Journalist.”
At the tail end of a four-hour Twitch stream Sunday night, a fan recommended I pick up Catland’s first-person stealth game The Spy Who Shrunk Me. The indie title is intended as a parody of Cold War spy thrillers, and it immediately caught my eye. Why? Because you play as a female spy who can shrink people and become a massive, gigantic woman to them. Duh. Long-time readers know I love giantesses. So anyway, I dropped $2.99 on the game, fired it up, and began advancing through the opening tutorial level and the first mission.
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A giantess game told me I’m bad at video games
Now, I’m not sure if you’ve ever streamed for four hours straight. But late at night, it can become kind of exhausting. Also, I heard this game (technically) lets you be a giantess, and I wanted to exploit that opportunity as much as possible. So during my Twitch stream, I proceeded to spend the entire first full level running around, shrinking every Soviet guard I could find. And it was hilarious. My quaint female spy picked them up with her finger and thumb like they were disgusting vermin, and I proceeded to throw them them into toilets, trash cans, even against the wall. Just to watch them disappear or explode, for some reason.
Also, I got legitimately stuck on a puzzle where I had to input three Cyrillic letters because the game told me to use the “F” key to interact, when I actually needed to press “Enter.” My chat thought I was very tired and very stupid. Which, I mean, I am. But this was an exception to the rule. As a result, the level took me 14 minutes, I killed seven people, I was caught sneaking around (failing the “Ghost” criteria), and I ruined the “Pacifist” category (“A great spy never has to kill anyone”). The game thus gave me a “Spyscore” of F. Or, in other words? “Game Journalist.”
I proceeded to crash out on stream, much to the delight of my fans. As one viewer put it: “Damn called out!” You can catch the clip below.
Should games journalists be good at video games?
The general gaming public seems to think games journalists are awful at video games. It’s something I like to play for laughs among my friends and fans. Struggle with a game? Ah, “games journalist moment.” But where does this idea come from?
Ambivalence over games journalists’ reviews, previews, and news stories have always existed. Games media has traditionally struggled with varying quality from publication to the publication — even publication writer to publication writer. But in the 2010s, there were several high-profile incidents where gamers collectively panned a games journalist’s gameplay. Consider Polygon’s cringey opening DOOM playthrough. Or the iconic Cuphead video, where industry veteran Dean Takahashi struggled with the game’s tutorial and opening level. Nearly a decade later, both incidents are burned in gamers’ minds as prime examples of “games journalists being bad at video games.”
But it’s worth noting that Takahashi’s playthrough was massively ripped out of context. As he wrote shortly after the video’s viral reception, the gameplay footage uploaded reflected the first couple minutes learning a video game. Takahashi “intended” the video “to be funny.” “Unskillful gaming,” he wrote at the time, “is authentic.”
“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,” Takahashi wrote. “In a 15-hour work day, I’m lucky to get an hour of game time. But I don’t hate my job, as some critics have said. I’m not waiting to give my job to someone who is more eager and enthusiastic. I love this job. Not because I am a skillful or prolific gamer. Because I have fun.”
Personally? As a queer journalist, I was expected to read LGBTQ studies and watch queer documentaries to write authoritatively. So why is gaming any different? I believe games journalists should be given paid “recreational skill-building” time in their work week. That is, they should be paid to play games for eight hours a week, practicing, learning, and perfecting their understanding of the medium. Ideally in a genre or specific game they cover. Technical mastery (or at least, advanced competency) is an important part of games journalism, one games journalists should be encouraged to improve. And that’s not solely their responsibility.
Games journalists need resources to ‘git gud’
If you’ve ever worked with experts at a game, then you know why games journalists should demonstrate advanced competency toward the games they frequently cover. Back in 2022, I worked as an Editorial Strategist with Dot Esports, and I was amazed by the beat writers I worked with. They were incredibly knowledgeable on the games they discussed, far beyond average in games journalism. Why? The site’s writers religiously played the games they covered. Many had a sports-oriented mindset, focused on skill-learning over time, so they studied the games they played to improve. This made them really good competitive gamers — and authoritative voices on the games they covered.
Dot Esports convinced me that games journalists should be good at video games. But how do you “git gud?” Beyond the general skill of “games literacy” (how to bunny hop, how to crouch jump in various engines, etc.), it’s not like being good at one type of video game means someone will automatically be good at other types of games. I once watched a professional League of Legends player struggle to surpass low-ELO play at Valorant during his first 100 hours. At some point, I thought, “yeah, I could body this guy in a server.”
Certainly, this very same player could destroy me in League. But in Valorant? Well, genres have skill curves, and so do individual games. He needed time to “git gud” at Val, time I had already put in.
Technical competency is important for games journalists, but largely for the games and genres they wish to actively cover. Not the games they report on because of some brief relevancy in the news cycle. I had to read books on trans rights to be a good trans journalist, but I didn’t need to read books on 19th century lesbian relationships to generally conclude that 2019’s Gentleman Jack provided good lesbian representation. The same rule applies to game mastery versus casual industry awareness. And even then, games journalists have lives. They should be supported (and paid!) to get better at video games, just as journalists in other fields traditionally have their research material comped or conference travel funded. Games journalists are supposed to be experts in the field of gaming, that means they need support to get there.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s really funny to watch me act incompetently in a stealth puzzle game on Twitch. If I’m dogwater at a genre I rarely play, make fun of me all you want. But I think it’s a completely and utterly fair ask to request a games journalist demonstrate technical competency at League of Legends if they wish to write news stories and features discussing League of Legends’ gameplay. Doubly so if they wish to write guides or analyze high-level play.
Just don’t blame games journalists themselves if they’re bad at games. Most games journalists still work for a company. A company with money. If a company can’t provide adequate support to “git gud,” then that’s the fault of a journalist’s employer. Not them.
