Suburban Killbot Year 4

It’s time to celebrate (?) another year of Suburban Killbot! I was hoping this edition of my yearly update would allow me to share some good writing related news. But unfortunately, there’s nothing to report. I’m still working on my new book, which is progressing more slowly than I’d planned, but you can’t really rush these things. I’ll probably do a post about that soon. Instead, I’m just going to use this update to rant about stuff. Enjoy!

I’ve said before that I don’t visit many gaming related sites these days for ‘various reasons’. Those ‘various reasons’ primarily being that so many of these sites seem to be staffed by clueless, incompetent bloggers who demonstrate a lack of interest in or even a basic understanding of the medium on which they are supposed to be reporting.

But on occasion, I do visit these sites as they may have gameplay videos of upcoming titles I’m interested in playing. And, just recently, I was watching some Total War: Warhammer videos. These were preview videos showcasing battles from the game. And in the videos posted by two different gaming sites, all of the people playing were f**king terrible.

You might say my assessment of their skill isn’t fair. Maybe they’d never played a TW game before? But why would you send someone who had never played a title in a series running for over 15 years, to showcase the latest title in that series to your audience? Hell, based on these videos, I’m not sure the people playing have even played any kind of strategy title before. In one case, I’m not convinced they’ve even used a mouse and keyboard before.

I later watched a video of the new Doom being played by another site, and based on the video and their inability to aim, move and shoot at the same time, I’d guess the person had never played an FPS before on either console or PC. It was painful to watch, and it does a disservice to both the game and the audience.

How the f**k are people so incompetent being employed to write about and report on these games? Sure, there’s genres I’m not particularly skilled in, but if I was going to be recording preview footage of an upcoming title in a professional capacity, I’d at least try to familiarise myself with the basics beforehand, to ensure I give my audience content of value, to demonstrate the game in a way that wasn’t entirely inept.

Because people want to learn about the game, and they won’t learn anything watching someone struggle with basic camera controls or WASD movement. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect people working at gaming sites to have at least a rudimentary understanding of the basics. This is the equivalent of someone sitting down to eat a meal, holding the knife and fork upside down and then jabbing at the food with the blunt end. It’s embarrassing to watch, and a waste of my time.