Whether you've heard about the somewhat recent event with journalist Dean Takahashi, this event has sparked the debate about gaming journalism once again. Back in August of 2017, video footage of Takahashi "playing" Cuphead surfaced. The only reason "playing" is in quotations is because Takahashi was unable to get past the tutorial for about three minutes. Many people criticized him and others took his side saying that this is a tough game. Cuphead, although looking easy, does pose some level of difficulty to newer gamers, but that doesn't mean that the tutorial should take three minutes to pass. Tutorials are easy things that teach you the mechanics of the game, so it should only take you a short time to get through this even if the rest of the game is fairly difficult. This isn't just in Cuphead though, many journalists and critics sometimes don't know how to correctly play a game or simply don't have enough time to properly review it within their given deadline. So the real question is, should journalists learn how to play better or focus on their deadlines?
The argument that journalists need to learn to play better doesn't mean that they should be complete pros at whichever game they are writing about, but it does mean that they should be able to know how to play the game at a decent level of competency. Speaking from experience, I am better at some games over others most definitely, but I am able to play a game and learn the mechanics in order to play the game for around thirty minutes to an hour. While others definitely do have their strengths in some games everyone should be able to play a game for a small amount of while and be able to know what they are doing. Journalists who are playing and reviewing games should have a minimum requirement of playing the game for about an hour in order to be able to write anything about it. Deadlines do approach quicker than most realize but this doesn't mean that the author of an article shouldn't have to play the game for a short while in order to write a review that makes sense and gives the correct credit to the game.
While the side of journalists playing better does have a lot of valid points, so does focusing on deadlines. Deadlines are something that everyone in their life has experienced, whether it be for writing an article, doing a project, or even completing a task in class everything has a set time for when it needs to be finished. And when you don't submit something by that deadline there are occasionally consequences for this. The arquement that writers should focus more on their deadlines makes a lot of sense. Sometimes they might not have enough time to pour hours into a game or they might not even have time at all to play a game they need to review, this is understandable as there are only so many hours in the day and a lot of other things to do other than play a game for a review. This is sensible logic, a journalist shouldn't have to pour a dozen hours into the game in order to give it a correct review, but as I said in the paragraph above, even thirty minutes to an hour in a game can help give the game the review it deserves, good or bad.
Having played Cuphead, this is a difficult game and I can definitely see why Takahashi had a bit of trouble. That is the whole purpose of the game though, to be a throwback to older styles of games and be slightly more difficult. And yes, like I said before, not everybody has the exact same skillsets as others meaning that there are some people who are better at gun-and-run games than others. This doesn't mean though, that if you are unable to play it because you can't understand the controls, that it is a bad game and that no one else will be able to play it. If you would like to watch the video of Takahashi playing it the link is here and for those who want to hear a much more in-depth version of this argument you can watch Game Theory's video linked here.
