Dunkey, AKA videogamedunkey, is a YouTuber widely known for his videos on video game criticism. But you probably knew that already. I’m a viewer of his and have been for years, and while I do find his content entertaining, a lot of his videos leave me confused and perplexed.
I’ll just jump straight in to an example. Take his video on Metroid Dread, for instance. I don’t understand the point of this video. Within the first 30 seconds, he’s going on about how literally nobody likes the Metroid series – observably false, I don’t even know what the joke is supposed to be here. At about 3 minutes in, he says that while parrying is the way to defeat every enemy you can’t parry the E.M.M.I. enemies, both things that are just untrue. Again this is just misinformation and I can’t tell what the joke is supposed to be. I could go on and describe each of my reactions to everything he says in this video, but I think this comment captures my point:
This is the top comment on the video, and I couldn’t agree more. I have no idea what Dunkey is trying to say about Metroid Dread, if he meant anything that he said in that entire four and a half minutes, or if it was all supposed to be a joke.
I think the Metroid Dread video is not one meant to be taken seriously at all in the first place. The video’s title is just the name of the game – it’s not a “dunkview” (review). However, I have observed a similar type of “humor” is blatant throughout his “dunkview” videos.
I find that he constantly misrepresents small issues with games and blows them out of proportion, as a “joke”. This is a deadly sin as a “reviewer”, because he is informing the opinions of millions of people who haven’t played the game in question. For instance, a recurring bit in his videos is cutting game dialogue out of context to make it seem like the game repeats parts of dialogue over and over and over (examples 1, 2). When you go out of your way to collect each instance of a word and super-cut it all together and present it as a problem in a game where it isn’t a problem, you are just being inauthentic. I constantly get the impression – especially in videos on the topic of games that I’ve played – that his nitpicks are not sincere.
That’s not to say he never makes legitimate criticisms; there’s plenty in his dunkviews, and he isn’t afraid to be harsh. I’m fond of how he doesn’t shy away from calling out games for having anti-consumer elements. However, these legitimate criticisms are often interspersed with inauthentic claims and over-exaggerations for the sake of being funny. If the video is on a topic of a game I haven’t played before, I don’t know how I’m supposed to tell what’s an actual criticism, what’s a playful jab, or what’s just a nonsensical joke. I do not know what he is actually trying to say and I have no way of knowing.
Humor and criticism do not mix. Or, rather, they can mix, but you have to be extremely careful with clearly separating the two. Dunkey doesn’t care. He wants to make entertaining, five-to-ten minute videos while pretending to be a video game reviewer. His goal is not to make videos that genuinely seek to comment on a video game’s design from an objective standpoint.
When it comes to praise for games, I find that while he sounds good and what he says makes sense, it doesn’t actually… mean anything. At least as far as game design goes. He uses a lot of buzzwords like “fluid”, “smooth”, and “polished” and doesn’t really elaborate on what that means or why. I don’t actually understand what Dunkey is trying to say about the game. It’s surface-level praise – which don’t get me wrong, isn’t bad – it’s just that if I wanted a review of a game I would expect more than surface-level buzzwords. I can go into more specific examples of this, but I would like to point to a blogpost by Celia Wagar that explains this idea much better than I ever could. Please actually read that post, it’s very good!
I like Dunkey’s content. As I said, I’ve been a subscriber to his channel for years, and I really appreciate when he brings up pro-consumer arguments in his videos. But he’s not a reviewer, and never has been. Dunkey’s videos should not inform your opinion on a game’s quality.