Every so often, someone sends me a link to this image:
It’s an old scan from an old GamePro, before my time there. The house rule at GamePro has always been to caption each screenshot with a ProTip — actionable strategy advice, so the player gets a little something extra whenever they read the review. I always thought that was a good idea and enjoyed writing them, even though sometimes you had to balance “useful advice” with “dynamic/interesting/important screenshot.” In this case, Major Mike wanted to show a screen of the end boss, and realized there was no strategy, so he did this caption as a joke. He showed it to me, proudly, because he was happy that he had gotten something so obviously silly into the magazine.
Apparently, gamers have gotten dumber, because nobody seems to realize it was a joke. Now people send it around to each other, hold it up as evidence of how stupid GamePro is.
No, look at how stupid the audience is. Seriously. If the game magazine-reading audience really takes everything at exact face value, where there can be no winking aside, no subtext, no jokes…that leaves us all in a very sorry state.
Then and now, gaming is simply not that serious, guys. Here’s hoping you will be able to download a sense of humor from Marketplace soon.