Serious
Added 2021-09-03 19:41:21 +0000 UTCYears ago, a fellow content creator said something that stuck with me. "Whenever I upload, I think… is this the one that's going to make people hate me?" It's a common sentiment. I'm sure I don't need to name any names for you to come up with people whose reputations were shattered overnight.
It's something we all worry about, even in a topic like video-games. Games are often a quite serious topic, whether it's about the ethics of their economies, the concerns of their workplaces, or the complexity of their creation.
I do take my job quite seriously. I'll stay up 'till 3am to double and triple check my paragraphs, re-record lines to say that a game has three modes instead of four, or play a level half a dozen times to collect my thoughts on it.
Thing is, writing the opening for Metro: Exodus, where I decided to delve into the War in Ukraine, I really taught that video-games are a vacation.
It's easier to write thirty minutes of gameplay analysis than three minutes of a real world conflict where thousands of lives have been lost. You can't afford to spread misinformation, not only out of journalistic integrity, but for the respect of both viewers and subject.
You know, I got a lot of shit in my Orange Box video for how I described the airblast ability with the Pyro class, and understandable so, I was completely ignorant and wrong on its importance. However… I don't lose sleep over that mistake. Not just because it pleased me the rest of the coverage of a game I hadn't played in 5+ years was good, but because at the end of the day, I made a mistake about one game mechanic. It doesn't paint the rest of the game in an overly negative fashion, it doesn't taint my overall outlook, and most importantly, it doesn't hurt anybody.
Misinforming thousands, potentially millions of people about a war that's going on right now?
That does.
There's an expectation when it comes to art, or talking about art, that not every subject is easy, but at the end of the day, it has a safety net you just don't get in the real world.
I expect future projects to be easier.
