Oh I'm gonna have me some fun with this: "Dean: I've watched the comments on this thread just to see how mean they would be." Oh boo hoo. Welcome to the real world. It's a mean and cruel place. Deal with it. "I think it's useful to show my gameplay experience." Oh you bet it was...this combined with Polygon's DOOM debacle, it's useful in exposing just how fraudulent the gaming media is. "I did not intentionally play poorly to "troll" anyone." Pretty sure nobody is saying you did. I don't think even a troll TRYING to suck could play as badly as you "But it serves as an interesting social experiment." Don't try to play some stage managing mastermind by implying this was done to expose the nastiness of people over the internet. All this has accomplished is exposing the fact that Venturebeat, as well as other gaming journalism outlets, hire people that are not qualified to be gaming journalists. "I walk into a game cold, and this is the play that results." Even novice gamers wouldn't be getting stuck on TUTORIALS. "The video shows it's a notch more difficult than your typical Mario game. In fact, if you are expecting Mario, as the story says, then you are thrown off." And you just buried your credibility even more. First of all, the term "Mario game" isn't a real genre term or even sub genre term. They're called Platformers. They've been called Platformers even before Mario existed. If you knew even the slightest bit about video games like you're SUPPOSED TO seeing as how you're a GAMING JOURNALIST, you'd know this. Second, NOBODY has EVER expected this game to EVEN REMOTELY play like Super Mario Bros. When this game was revealed 3 years ago, not a single person was comparing it to Mario. You saying "the story" makes it seem like Mario means you're either a liar or really inept. "And it shows that the developers are going to leave a lot of people who are worse than me behind." First of all based on this footage, the only people that would be worse than you are severely physically handicapped people that can't play video games to begin with. Second, again, this plays NOTHING like Super Mario Brothers. This was evident in the game's reveal 3 years ago and has only been made more evident with the footage seen since. You're a gaming journalist so it's YOUR JOB to know these things. Third of all, BECAUSE everybody other than you, a gaming journalist, knows and has known that Cuphead doesn't play anything like any game in the Mario franchise, we all can tell what type of audience the developers are trying to appeal to. The fact that you, a gaming journalist, are oblivious to this is quite alarming. "Maybe they're fine with that. Maybe they want to target gamers with a love for difficult games. That's fine. But I think they should signal that." They did...when the game was first revealed 3 years ago. "How many games actually come with a tutorial these days? They're not popular. But if it's necessary, that is a signal this is going to require some skill." What? Did you just arrive on planet Earth a few days ago or something? Pretty much EVERY game nowadays has a tutorial. Back in the day, games came with instruction manuals that gamers were expected to read before playing so they knew how to play the game. Because of this, old school games didn't have tutorials and started with the game itself right off the bat. Most games nowadays don't have instruction booklets like that cause now they teach the player how to play the game at the beginning. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with how difficult a game is. Get a clue, Professor Plum. "As for other comments on this thread, I wonder why they are hostile to someone who is viewing the game as a beginner?" You're a gaming journalist. You SHOULDN'T BE a beginner. Even if you're attempting to play a game you've NEVER played before, you should STILL have the fundamentals of how video games AS A WHOLE work so you can better learn and understand how a SPECIFIC game is meant to be played. It seems quite evident you don't have those fundamentals cause you're not a gamer, yet you've been a gaming journalist in some form for a little over 20 years? Oh yeah, I looked up your LinkedIn profile. "Are we that intolerant of people who are not "gamers"?" If you're not a gamer, you have ZERO business being a gaming journalist. That is the first BASIC prerequisite to even be a gaming journalist. Yes, even before knowing how to write articles/columns. You can know how to write articles/columns all day, but if you don't have any actual knowledge of what you're writing about, it doesn't mean much. "Should I have played the scene over and over again until I was good at it, and then turned the recording on, like so many of those perfect video walkthroughs you see?" You shouldn't have even attempted a JOURNALISTIC recording of this or ANY game for that matter until you had ACTUAL gaming experience. "I believe that games can be made accessible and inviting to people who are not hardcore fans, and these people can be accommodated inside the same game that is appealing to hardcore fans, through difficulty levels." Except you kinda indirectly admitted that you're not even a gamer at all even of the novice kind, and this footage kinda backs that up, so therefore NO game is gonna appeal or be accessible to people like you. "So when people tell me that I shouldn't be playing this game because, on my first play, I was pretty lousy -- that's an attitude that argues that games should be shut off in their own little corner, only played publicly by the masters and the experts." Nope, nobody is saying this at all. What they ARE saying is that somebody who is a gaming journalist, and who claims to have been one in some form for a little over 20 years according to their LinkedIn profile, has no business being this bad at playing ANY game, first time or 20th time. If they ARE that bad with basic gaming fundamentals such as following tutorial directions and noticing level design cues, then why and how are they a gaming journalist? "I disagree with that view entirely, and I believe it leads to elitist attitudes that allow gamers to look down on other people, and that only leads to a more fragmented world of haters." If you would have taken just a moment to stop playing the victim like some SJW, you would realize that based on your performance with this game that shows you don't know how to even play ANY games, you're in a somewhat important employment position you're not qualified to be in. THAT'S where people have been taking issue. If the majority of us average normal folk have a better grasp at how video games work than somebody who is supposed to be covering games FOR A LIVING, there's a problem. I don't care if you're not a game reviewer/critic. If you're gonna be covering them AT ALL, you need to know something about them. Nobody would hire somebody that's not a plumber to fix their defective toilet/sink drains. A restaurant wouldn't hire a car mechanic to be a chef. If you're not qualified to do a job, you shouldn't have that job. Period. This is why gaining employment based on WHO you know rather than WHAT you know is a practice that needs to be abolished. "I'm good at games! I do this for a living!" Alex Navarro (Giant Bomb/formerly Gamespot...a REAL gaming journalist)﻿

Read more Show less