Are there any gaming journalists who are good at playing video games?

[CM30]

Because I've always noticed how bad they seem to be at playing the games they make videos of.

 

[Zexis]

Really? I haven't noticed this much, but I guess it depends on the group. I generally only watch videos from individual players or groups like RoosterTeeth and IGN. Dunno if I'd consider the guys at RoosterTeeth to be journalists, but still.

 

[kunino-sagiri]

I think bad may be a bit of an exaggeration. But really reviewers should be no better than mediocre at playing games, as it makes their talents a better average of the gaming public, and thus allows then to write a more relevant review.

 

[CM30]

I dunno about that, they're not doing that good a job if that's their aim. Remember, IGN and the like basically get the games sent to them by the publishing company, so in theory a more accurate review could be done by you know, going out and buying the game when everyone else does, out of their hard earned money.

 

[kunino-sagiri]

Yes, but these things are all cumulative; you don't need all of them. Each individual effort can still make the review more representative. It's just that more of them would make it (in theory at least) more representative.
Besides, it's easier to take into account the price of something, knowing the RRP, even if you did not pay for it yourself, and then draw a conclusion on whether you deem it good value for money or not (although this judgement is rather subjective, since value-for-money is a very personal thing), than it would be to work out how difficult genuinely is if you are a super-talented gamer, and thus find everything easy.

Also, i've just remembered the reason i was given by a reviewer on why most reviewers have decidedly average gaming skills. He said it's because as a reviewer you are always playing a wide variety of games of different styles and genres, and always alternating them, so you can never spend enough time with one style of game (much less one individual game) to actually become particularly good at it. You can naturally be a reasonably proficient gamer, but to become really good takes a lot of dedicated practice on your specific game of choice.