For the TLDR verison.
It is totally fine for you to be bad and still enjoy the game. Though people here are questioning if you are familiar enough with a game/genre to be reviewing the game because you know its your f**king job as a reviewer. Also no one really gives 2 f**ks about if you enjoy playing a game or not. Neither do people care if you need to tell the world about it. I don't think you should care about people thinking if you are bad either.
ok now with those people in hurry out of the way.
I like to point out some things I have some issues in the article.
John talks about people being hostile for the video of the person showing footage of the DOOM play. First I will say that I agree that the comments are at times really hostile. At the same time looking at the more sensible comments. They almost all noted that this level of play is kind of bad for someone who is reviewing a game.
The main reason for that comment is that people want someone who is familiar with a genre/game to be reviewing a game. You most certainty expected a car reviewer to least be able to tell the difference between a auto-gearing car over a manual gear shifting car right?
Defending his play as enjoying the game makes even less sense as the reason the footage was uploaded is to showcase the game. You again don't expect a car review to go "Well that was a great joy ride and....what did I need to do again? Oh right review the car."
The whole point of the footage is to help people see and understand how the game is like. Putting out poor footage does not help the player who wants to know the game. It does not help the company making the game and ultimately it does help the image of the web publishing company.
It simple amazes me that the editor allowed this kind of footage up. The video footage is not a live stream capture of a first look either.
Next, he stated that even though some people take longer to clear a game. They can still give expert opinions on the game. That I cannot agree. If that statement is true, as long as I can build a table even though the table can barely stand I would be able to give an expert opinion of the craft of making a table.
Seriously though the only kind of opinion I can give at that point is really just a beginner's opinion of building a table not an expert one.
A job of a reviewer is as the name says, review things. We do hold some expectations of a reviewer as someone who is least above average in the knowledge of the thing or subject. Not another regular Joe who merely fiddles in the thing as a hobby. It is a paid professional after all.
You cannot pretend to be a professional and pretend to be a hobbyist at the same time. Paypal does this. You want to be like Paypal who at times pretends to be a bank and at times pretends not to be bank?
I agree with you it is wrong to shame people who not being good at playing games. The issue here is you are not playing games on a personal capacity. You are playing games as a paid writer/reviewer. You are required to least give an opinion of someone who knows more than the average Joe in that particular subject.
If you cannot even manage that, please consider another working in another profession.
P.S. Telling people to Git lost in the article is definitely not helping with the whole image for you as a professional writer.
I have some opinons about the need to Git Gud and the whole idea of games needing to be fun. Most of them are already talked about by Kayin. So I point you to his article.
Link here (https://kayin.moe/?p=3021)
