nrvalleytime
Member
He asked if journalists should be good gamers not game developers.
The question itself is loaded. Do they need to be successful at playing the game in every way?
No, because a good journalist will know enough about design, structure, implementation, expectations and their own limitations to recognize a poor game from a game that forces them to play well.
We can't separate the two, and this conversation isn't as simple as you might want it be, unfortunately.
Every profession requires you to be good at what you are supposed to do. Would you want a person who likes telling stories but can't write for shit work for your favorite news company? Could you imagine a college kid who loves to play basketball, but can't manage to shoot any damned hoops, end up in the NBA?yeah, hyperbolic comparisons, but it's ludicrous to imagine game reviewers should just "like" video games instead of being good at them
I have thought extensively about how certain reviewers, when bad at certain (or all) video games, will actually allow this to negatively affect the score. This is a serious problem, and it's similar to the topic at hand.
No. We're placing too much emphasis on the interactivity of gaming in this discussion. If we want to make it that, then we draw attention away from the aesthetic, artistic side of gaming that has an objective and grounded history. We can compare those areas to other mediums, and simply being "good" at a game makes you no more qualified to talk about game's merits as watching a movie makes you a movie buff.