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The DeanBeat: Our growing piles of video game shame

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 6 min

My Cuphead social storm lasted about eight days. During that time, gamers near and far criticized me for playing a demo of the upcoming video game Cuphead so poorly. I’m still absorbing the lessons of this hate-filled episode, where complete strangers by the thousands insulted me because I wasn’t qualified, in their eyes, to review video games. I can’t see what lies beyond the Cuphead video about “my 26 minutes of shame.”

But a few lessons have crystalized for me.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.