The Super BunnyHop Thread

[Alienman]

Disgusting practice.

 

[Akratus]

In before "why he is reviewing this shit" comments.

Any reason why he shouldn't be reviewing that particular game?

This reminds me of something another youtuber has said that really stuck with me. This guy who's very autistic about stories in games, Smudboy. He said: Why analyse a shitty story of a shitty game you ask? Because there is one.

 

[Edward The Mediocre]

This guy who's very autistic about stories in games, Smudboy. He said: Why analyse a shitty story of a shitty game you ask? Because there is one.

That's like eating different pieces of shit to review the taste of them, sure you can do it, but it doesn't really add anything of value, unless you have scat fetish.

 

[fantadomat]

It is amusing how many people live in their own bubbles and don't know about such things.This is just a normal thing of live,it is like making video about "People becoming fat because they eat too much sweets" or about "How incompetent and useless are the journalists".

 

[Durandal]

This guy who's very autistic about stories in games, Smudboy. He said: Why analyse a shitty story of a shitty game you ask? Because there is one.

That's like eating different pieces of shit to review the taste of them, sure you can do it, but it doesn't really add anything of value, unless you have scat fetish.

There's something to be learned from even the worst examples.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Sure but... opportunity cost. He could have been reviewing something else instead.

 

[flyingjohn]

 

[J_C]

And he got almost 5 thousand a month already.

 

[felipepepe]

Yup, quite amazing. They usually fall down after 2-3 months, but that's still A LOT of money. Shows how actual journalism still matters.

 

[Archibald]

Sure but... opportunity cost. He could have been reviewing something else instead.

Or he simply reviews things that he finds interesting for one reason or another. If it ends up being shit game, oh well, at least we learned something in the process.

 

[fantadomat]

I do enjoy his journalistic shit but the japan thing was forgettable.I do hope to see more journalistic shit.

 

[Archibald]

What makes his Japan stuff different to some game reviews that would make it not journalistic?

 

[fantadomat]

What makes his Japan stuff different to some game reviews that would make it not journalistic?

Well it was too much,the first clip was ok and interesting and the rest was more of the same.I don't say that it is bad,just meh.Also i find it too american if that make sense.

 

[felipepepe]

Bro, he only made 4 Japan videos in total - Arcades, Pachinkos, Games Restaurants and the Metal Gear Pachinko like a year later.

That's really just a tiny part of his work - there's just as many videos of him going to Dragon Con as there are of him in Japan - dunno why people get so upset about it.

 

[Akratus]

 

[fantadomat]

Bro, he only made 4 Japan videos in total - Arcades, Pachinkos, Games Restaurants and the Metal Gear Pachinko like a year later.

That's really just a tiny part of his work - there's just as many videos of him going to Dragon Con as there are of him in Japan - dunno why people get so upset about it.

Being upset and don't caring about something is not the same thing.

 

[Edward The Mediocre]

It's hard enough to portray sarcasm through text, let alone that subtlety. I mean after all, if one didn't care about x they wouldn't talk about it right? Normally I mean.

 

[Mynon]

I do enjoy his journalistic shit but the japan thing was forgettable.I do hope to see more journalistic shit.

I hope to see him doing more videos about stuff he enjoys and finds interesting, whatever it is...

 

[PlanHex]

I hope to see more videos with felipepepe in them. Who cares if it's in Japan?

 

[flyingjohn]

https://www.patreon.com/posts/14270750
So game journalist don't need to be competent about video game mechanics because muh journalism?
It is no wonder his content started declining and now with that sweet patreon money he doesn't even need to put anymore effort or do something interesting ever again.

A quote :"Why? Because basic game literacy is less important to journalism than basic journalism skills".
Not if you are a game journalist considering it is your job for fucks sake.

 

[Somberlain]

Why? Because basic game literacy is less important to journalism than basic journalism skills

Typical games journalist has neither.

 

[Edward The Mediocre]

Serves him right, he trusted George!

 

[Infinitron]

That's a good article, read the whole thing: https://www.patreon.com/posts/14270750

He doesn't mean previewers and reviewers. And he ultimately concludes that Takahashi is a hack anyway lol

Cuphead: It still isn't easy

It's cuphead's racist old grandpa or something

A 26-minute gameplay video of VentureBeat reporter Dean Takahashi failing to grasp the fundamentals of Cuphead during its first few minutes has re-surfaced the ever-frustrating stereotype of game journalists playing like four year olds. Matters weren't helped by videos of actual four-year olds supposedly outwitting the adult professional (even though a more fair comparison would include the kid actually playing the game,) rude tweets lumping this guy's abilities into the entire profession of "game journalists" (which I consider myself to be a part of,) and my least favorite: this dehumanizing video comparing a pidgeon's problem-solving abilities to Dean Takahashi's. The joke's probably funnier if your job isn't in its crosshairs, so I apologize for being salty.

What frustrates me about this controversy, as well as Polygon's equally-frustrating-to-watchDoom footage from last year, is that this fan anger is always directed towards the very first seconds of these people playing these games for the first time in their lives. Skip fifteen minutes ahead in either video and it's clear that while the players still aren't good, they've suddenly developed skills that haters swear they never had. Please don't hate me for it, but I'm sure I've played just as poorly during the first few seconds of any game genre I'm not immediately used to. If you do hate me for it, oh well. I still love you. This is the process of learning controls, everyone does it and I don't doubt that game developers actually appreciate seeing footage of people learning their games for the first time. The opening rooms of these action games are usually empty and safe so you can figure out what each button does, gauge jump heights and distances, and experiment with the game's sense of movement and feel. Dean is seemingly doing a lot of this while pressed against those tutorial platforms-- while all the while, admittedly not being any good at platforming games. Seriously don't get me wrong, he's awful.

First of all, the footage should've been edited. A professional publication expecting to put in hours of work into each piece should at least have edited away the first few seconds of their worst gameplay, which are just going to be frustrating to watch (and apparently controversial.) The footage could've used commentary and context, too. According to a reddit comment claiming to be one of Dean's co-workers, the whole video was a joke. Dean is said to have a sense of humor about it, but none of that is shown without audio commentary alongside it. Was he deliberately missing his jumps to hammer the joke in? Or was he having trouble concentrating while talking to the developers at the same time? Or was he actually, truly, that bad? I guess we'll never know without knowing more, but don't assume. Here's a phrase beat into me during journalism school: "assuming only makes an ass out of you and me." For this and many other reasons, I am very skeptical of just about every conclusion comment mobs come to.

But ultimately, I think the release of Dean's piece is really not that offensive. Why? Because basic game literacy is less important to journalism than basic journalism skills. People have conflated the two because of bad online business models blurring the line between opinion and reporting pieces, and that's a line that ultimately means a writer's skill (and how it affects their opinion) at a certain video game is completely irrelevant to the facts they can report on of the same game. In journalism school, skills for writing reviews and criticism are entirely separate classes from skills taught for research methodology and interviewing, which make up the majority of semester credits and newspaper pages. Opinion and review sections were usually small corner columns compared to the bulk of a newspaper's articles, which would be boring, dry "inverted pyramids" listing basic facts about the local crimes, fires, politics, and so on. News articles are written to drly list the most important facts at the top, and the less important facts at the bottom.

So, second of all, I think the footage should've been placed below Dean's text. If you scroll below the footage and read through Dean Takahashi's actual writing, you'll find an inoffensive, extremely basic description of the game seemingly written for non-gamers, listing a bunch of facts (and thoughts) he observed while playing. But a hastily-interpreted 60 seconds of footage is what stole the spotlight instead. Though he does make a lot of assumptions that will strike hardcore gamers as poorly-informed (he tries jumping on enemies like it's a Mario game, but to the trained eye it's obviously more of a Mega Man/Contra/Metal Slug instead,) this isn't off-brand of his style or his outlet. It serves a purpose to a more casual audience. VentureBeat is a general tech news site that doesn't specialize in gaming, and I doubt anyone from my own audience is relying on them for news and reviews. Indeed, the few reviews he's ever written would easily be considered embarrassing.

Yet despite all that, I still gained something from his Cuphead article. Did you know Cuphead was inspired by a 1936 Japanese propaganda cartoon about evil American Mickey Mouses bombing innocent Pacific islanders? Me neither. That's weird! That's fascinating! I love knowingthat fact, and that's the kind of fun interview-mined factoid you usually get from news, not reviews.

For those curious, you can see the cartoon here. Cuphead's racist old grandpa shows up just after the five minute mark.

Thirdly, Dean's bosses are evidently not playing to his strengths here. Dean's published some good stories every now and then. Here's him interviewing that weird Chinese chicken company that bought Digital Extremes. Here he is covering the asset outsourcing farms that really make AAA games. These are good stories that no one else was covering, and his published articles build a profile of a writer that wants to do interview-driven news articles, not reviews nor previews. He's fine at the former, but meeting all the negative game journo stereotypes at the latter. But the distinction between these two halves of Dean is something that seems lost on the angry gamers mad right now.

The review/preview mill used to be an entirely separate school than journalism and reporting, and that distinction is breaking down as more specialized online publications have their writers juggling both jobs.

In Kovach & Rosenstiel's "Elements of Journalism," the introductory chapter defines journalism as an independent monitor of power, obligated to the truth and disciplined through tough verification and fact-checking. One-hundred and sixty six pages of lofty idealism later, they finally list Journalism's "sixth principle or duty of the press:"

"Journalism must provide a forum for public criticism or compromise."

In William Zinsser's "On Writing Well," chapter 18, page 195 he says:

"A distinction should therefore be made between a "critic" and a "reviewer." Reviewers write for a newspaper or a popular magazine, and what they cover is primarily an industry...""As a reviewer your job is more to report than make an aesthetic judgement. You are the deputy for the average man or woman...""Obviously you will make your review plainer and less sophisticated than if you were judging a new production of Chekhov."

In other words: the old-guard traditional journalists consider reviews far less important than criticism, which is still less important than news. "Reviews," as Zinsser defines them, are more casual that criticism. Critique is what requires that deep love, respect and expertise for the medium that we'd all like to see more of. In either case, a publication's bread-and-butter money-making articles were usually neither.

The few "real journalists" I admire and follow in this business didn't earn their reputations off of reviews, and the stories that made them big weren't reviews. Ten years ago, Geoff Keighley made it big writing lengthy interview-driven feature pieces documenting the development of Half Life 2and Portal 2 before they were even out. Four years ago, Danny O' Dwyer was making flashy video essays boiling industry-trend criticism into common-person polemics on Gamespot. Last year, Laura Kate Dale released a string of infamous leaks revealing future Nintendo plans before the company could control the release of that same information. That's what I consider "journalism," and it has nothing to do with how good they are at games.

My videos about motion sickness, tax avoidance, the sabotage of Kojima Studios; ie: any videos or pieces revealing truths about a subject rather than opinions is, to me, a far greater effort to practice "journalism" than reviews. Yet all of the above writers, and myself included, have published tons of crappy, quick, easily-written reviews to pay the bills. Game media websites publish reviews alongside news articles because controversial opinions on popular games will always garner clicks. High-effort journalism is far more of a gamble, but the conflation of the two is rampant enough that tweeting about it is a danger.

For all the above listed reasons, I don't often read game reviews. I barely even think about them, usually judging my purchasing decisions from forum board word-of-mouth and quick glances of post-release gameplay footage. I do, however, read tons of game news. When I think of the word "game journalism" and "game reporting" in my head, I don't think of reviews. Therefore, I made the assumption that Dean Takahashi's gameplay footage was for the purposes of reporting on the game, not reviewing it. From that perspective, I tweeted my hot take:

https://twitter.com/superbunnyhop/status/905808086920777729

"Hot take: gaming journalists don't need to be good at games, just good at reporting on games. The end."

Bad idea, apparently. Seems like everyone thought I was talking about reviewing games, because that distinction has apparently been lost. Which left me confused, but I can deal with these definitions changing as time goes on.

Anyways, responses ranged from the incendiary (pardon their language)...

"this take is stone-cold and fucking retarded. Of course they need to be good, so they can experience the game properly. Jesus fuck""Hot take: Doctor don't need to know medicine to perform a surgery""You're fucking stupid. At least be able to play it at a decent level. I won't ask an RTS reviewer to play an FPS but come on."
... to the more mild "sure but at least be competent at them" angle, which is one I don't disagree with at all. Still, I feel that response misses my intention:

"Except reviewers. Reviewers need to have a level of basic competence in the game.""No one is asking for amazing skill out of game journalist. But you should have fundamental understanding of how to play competently. The end""Ok, but in regards to the cuphead footage, it's not about being bad or good. That footage shows lack of basic problem solving."
And for high-profile responses from the Super Best Friends, we have Pat. I can't believe he's agreeing with me on something for once, but I still had to clarify:

" What about critics?" (My response: "Yes. Totally. But my confusion is coming from someone who went to j-school. Reviewing things are different classes from reporting on them. I think the big damage that's been done to this guy here is a) conflation of the words "journalism" with the review/preview mill")(His response "I completely agree. There are almost no actual journos." "The best part of this is that you get to be one of the only real journos and have John's to be bad at games too."

Meanwhile, Woolie's also thinking "reviews" when I say "reporting:"

"George, we're JUST leaving the age of 'vs CPU only' fighting games reviews, 3/10 Godhands & mediocre Vanquish. Stop."

In most of these responses, we're not arguing anything near same page, yet I'm sure none of us would disagree if we both had more time to explain ourselves. Twitter sucks for that and I should stop, but please remember that game journalism is far more than just reviews, and if you want to see more good game journalism you should support the writers and articles that answer questions more important than "do I like this game?"

Anyways, as I finished scrolling down Dean's article while struggling to give him the benefit of the doubt and come up with reasons to argue that the entire profession isn't hopeless because of one guy's bad work, I see this:

GOD.

DAMMIT.



This isn't going to be my hill to die on. I want to do a video about this someday, but not until it's in defense of a reporter worth defending.

 

[Archibald]

Yeah, people are taking quotes out of the context here and missing his point.

 

[Edward The Mediocre]

And your missing my point, when the chips are down and he has to take a side with journos or consumers, he will always, always, side with the journos. One that's his profession he would see as an attack on him rather than a attack on folks who are shit at it, two because he was on the gamejournopros list, you know the mailing list of all those corrupt motherfuckers? Honestly with his pateron money he doesn't need to be loyal to those brain dead motherfuckers.