Journalists Shouldn't SUCK at Games?

To be fair, some people create entire careers around sucking at video games.  Take Achievement Hunter....

What game reviewers need (in the same way as book reviewers and film reviewers) is to have experienced enough of the game approximately how it was intended to be experienced and have enough experience in reviewing games and of games in general to give a balanced review of the game in question... the problem is that (unlike a book or a film) if you're bad at games then you often can't experience much of the game and are doing so in a way that was not intended (e.g. like watching a film on a noisy New York subway train on a miniature screen or reading a book in a language that you can barely read)... so if you're bad at a game genre then, no, you should not be reviewing games of that genre until you get better at them, sorry but that's the be all and end all as far as I'm concerned.

I think it's one thing to be bad at video games in general (the problem people are talking about) and being bad at one type of video game (most likely the problem at hand). Platformers are a world apart from shooters or action adventure or even sports. I don't mind if the people that talk about games aren't great, but they do need to be competent. They need to be able to move around the environment without stumbling and if presented with a conflict, they need to at least resolve it once. Beyond that, I want an opinion on the core mechanics of a game, how stable it is, a general feel for the story (not much tho), and just a couple things that will make it engage me instead of fruitlessly playing something because it's challenging just to say that I did it.

The guy gave mass effect a negative review because he forgot to use his skill points... I like a lot of games, but if I were to have a hands-on of a genre that clearly is outside my skill set I wouldn't publish it, because it's misrepresenting that game. I play fighting games, I would never ever use my gameplay to show what the game is about. On the other gladly show off grand strategy games. It also depends on the content you're providing, let's plays with games you suck at can be entertaining. This was not the case here, it was clearly a preview of a game he had no business previewing.

I think with video games being so hands-on, unlike other forms of media that are simply watched or viewed, in order to accurately depict what an "average" or "typical" experience would be like, the reviewer does need to have at least "average" levels of skill. And that's what it really comes down to: playing video games is skill-based. There's no skill in watching a movie, TV show, sports game, looking at art, listening to music or reading a book.

If a reviewer lacks the skill aptitude that an average gamer would have, then their opinions, while honest and forthright from their point of view, do not accurately reflect the experience of playing the game and run the risk of misrepresenting things. Then the review just has a giant asterisk next to it with a footnote that will ultimately say, "I suck at games (or games like this), so nothing of what I said regarding the way the game plays is accurate." And just like that, the value of that review in the eyes of the consumers becomes worthless.

Sure, everyone has their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to specific genres of games, but to be this bad severely hampers a reviewer's credibility and potential for work. If this particular reviewer has to forego reviewing 2D side-scrolling platformers because he's terrible at them, then that is work passed on to someone else. Individual reviewers become pigeon-holed as reviewers in very specific niches, which then limits their workload. Not to mention that it can create a reverse situation where a reviewer is particularly good at one type of game, so what he considers to be "easy" might be more challenging to an average gamer.

That's the ultimate problem: with video games being a skill-based medium, difficulty is subjective, yet the goal of reviews is to be objective as possible, particularly about the nuts and bolts of the gameplay, so when one particular review's skill deviates so far from the objective norm of the hypothetical "average gamer", it has the potential to misrepresent things about the way the game plays.