There is something of a sickening trend of blind acceptance among consumers on the whole and Gamers are no different.
Before we actually stand together and say "Hey! wtf, developers?! This is some next level bullshit!" we need to experience No Man's Sky levels of fuckery and that's after we've bought enough copies to make it one of the game industry's best selling titles. Much like looking at a 2 year-old's crayon copy of the Mona Lisa, it shouldn't be hard to see what's wrong with that picture.
We love our games and many of us bare a torch for our favourite developers as well. CD Projekt Red garnered many a doughy eyed follower after the release of their veritable titan of the western RPG genre; The Witcher 3, despite the majority of that new fan-base having no clue that the Polish development team even existed before May 2015 and despite the fact that TW3 isn't without its issues.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that either, that's how fandoms are created - they just pop up accordingly, organically out of society like weeds out of a cracked pavement when they see a bit of sunlight - often the imaginary glare emitted from developers asses seem to be easily confused with this... and that's the problem.
Once you put something on a pedestal and a fierce network of over-attached fans latch onto to it like a 14 foot carpet python it becomes very hard to challenge the status-quo and publishers and developers know this, and exploit it.
If a game has a strong enough fan-base it doesn't even matter if it's total bollocks or about as well optimised across platforms as Greece's economy was to the German financial takeover or if it's game mechanics are as reliable as Windows Vista, if there are enough people to make the developers and publishers rich then who gives a fuck... right? Well, YOU should give a fuck. It's your money after all.
You need to understand that it's OK to say that a game is shit and if you like a game you need to understand that it's OK for other people to hate it, that you don't have to defend it beyond all reason and logic - because you know what? busty Jill from marketing at Blizzard isn't gonna pop round your house and give you a blowjob for your continued championing of their game.
And for the love of GAWD stop pre-ordering games!! You're not helping yourself, besides being conned out of day-one "bonuses" than mean absolutely DICK and paying extra to have your pants pulled down by the retailer as well as the publisher before they go to town on your virgin ass with shitty servers and day-one patches and paid DLC. Yet there you are, $60 bucks short, with your pants round your ankles and that blank stare on your face like you've been there before but you keep coming back; you know you've only got yourself to blame.
More importantly it's also OK to realise that pretty much no development team or publisher is poor enough to actually justify turning out a sloppy or underdeveloped product, besides some indy devs, though frequently they seem to do a better job than many triple-A teams. Oh that's right, they still actually care about the games and the fan-base more than rinsing you for every last cent.
It's OK to demand more for your money, it's OK to complain about micro-transactions on a game that cost you $60 in the first place, it's OK to complain about paying full price for an early access or beta, it's OK to say that Metal Gear Solid is badly written or that The Last of Us' controls were clunky as fuck, it's OK to get mad at day one patches and overpriced DLC.
What is it NOT OK to do is explain away all the bullshit that developers and publishers do that fucks you over because you've got a boner for them.
This isn't an abusive relationship with a burly alcoholic Russian named Viktor that keeps you chained to the bed, you can say no if you want to.
I'm sorry if that's a little less cordial than you're accustomed to as you roast someone on Reddit who dared to raise an issue with your favourite game, supported by other <insert title of game here> groupies who love nothing more than to tongue the developers' collective asses and stroke each other's inflated egos like some fetishist cult that shuns anyone that doesn't conform to their world view.
If you don't think that's how it is you must be very new to the internet. People are fiercely loyal to their products and in being so are blind to any faults it may have or simply try to rationalise them away with logic that would raise eye-brows in a room full of Creationists.
I've even seen people try and explain away Hello Game's handling of the No Man's Sky fiasco, within that room these people are literally wading through the elephant shit to make their justifications which typically revolve around some sort of projected victim-complex on the developers/publishers because they're all so hard-done-by and we should all be gentle and lenient with them like delicate little flowers, not the stomping giant multi-billion dollar companies most actually are.Well for your $60 and the 3.5 million other 60 bucks that everyone else paid you're happy to accept that the half finished, bugged, day-one patched, micro-transaction riddled games are the best you can get for that
TWO-HUNDRED & TEN MILLION dollar investment?
You should never accept anything blindly and unquestioningly, especially when it's your money that paid for it in the first place and you certainly shouldn't defend a faulty product or one that's not even finished. You should be critical, scrutinise it and field the unpopular opinion so that it becomes the popular one and then maybe developers and publishers will be less inclined to pull the wool over your eyes, bend you over, and go in dry.
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Net Worth data as of 2014
Well said Sir! People now believe smaller purchases are as much part of their identity where previously those feelings were reserved for cars, designer clothes and electronics. To see how much of their identity is tied to a game, criticise it, it's as if you pointed out a major character flaw. 10 years ago it was consoles, as far back as the 60s it was music and sports. Paying extra for early access is amazing when you consider that 15 years ago software houses were paying people to test their products, I kind of admire the dicks for pulling that stroke while at the same time when I look at certain sections of the consuming population a little part of me thinks that maybe the eugenicists had a point.
ReplyDeleteThank you, and thanks for taking the time to read it. I think you're right in that people seem to attach a great deal of themselves to a game and saying anything about that game is like a personal attack almost. It makes me wonder on the state of society when youngsters have to validate themselves via that fact they got a game on day-one. When I was that young I didn't give a flying fuck when I got a game, the point was; I had it, my mates would come round we've have a good time, everyone would go home happy. The week after i was my mate's turn to host the "check out my new game" meeting. There was non of this rampant hostility. I'm sure it existed but it wasn't as prevalent or such a big part of gaming.
DeleteWhen I see those polls about which gaming community is more toxic it always makes me laugh that they thing there are gaming communities that AREN'T toxic cancerous cesspools of weak-minded fanboys who would literally let developers take a dump in their mouth if it got them an exclusive attachment for a gun, a new character or a temporary buff a month before everyone else got it.
I think saying eugenics might have had a point is about as unstated as saying I suppose the smallpox vaccine wasn't THAT bad of an idea.
You're most welcome. Just brought me back to my teens and the Amiga 1200, My best mate had an ST and a couple of others had PCs, Master Systems. Similar thing, we didn't even give a shot of sloth's spunk even as to which system we played on, it was all about the "you got ....? I want to play it", even if the premise of a game was like a shite taco to my eyes I'd give it a try with relish, because I didn't have the buy the bloody thing, which incidentally is how I ended up addicted to Sensible Soccer for a while despite having about as much time for ball/field/mud sports as I have oppression/misogyny/patriarchy videos.
ReplyDeleteThe communities are basically cults, but unfortunately the requisite coolaid is in short supply. Additionally I find myself suffering from fanboyism at times, particularly when it comes to DCS. I have internal dialogues along the lines of "Why do you enjoy this so much? Is it just that they're less shit than the other sim producers? Is it because FSX and X-Plane devs are like child molesters who charge you by the stroke and threaten to return and fuck your cat, while ED give you a bar of Fruit & Nut and a tenner to keep quiet?".
I've kind of come to the conclusion that the skies of ED are like Western Europe, lots of problems, things broken and the odd arsehole blowing himself and everyone around him up because he read the FSX guide rather than Chuck's, but it could be the anarcho-capitalist world of FSX or the post-Trump US of X-Plane where insularism has reduced global awareness to copy-pasting every generic American middle class housing estate to every corner of the world. So, I'm always a little conflicted, but the planes coming out genuinely excite me in a way that little else in gaming does.
Actually, I find this community more like HIV than cancer, not fatal, but one has to take a lot of medication to stop it turning so. I suppose it's the diversity that does it for me, there's everyone and their dog, granted a fair few may be surprised if they took some tests for high functioning autism, but it's not the COD set who are strictly divided into 2 camps - the ones who have fucked everyone's mum and the "faggots" who's mums they fuck. I generally like Hoggit,because I always look at things as an outsider. I like the noob friendly attitude, early experiments with some exotic flavours of Linux made me very genocidally disposed to boards who answer questions with "mine works" or "go search it". I love posting on r/flightsim as there are more of the dad's trainset crowd there which leads to a little more "tut tut" in the comments and brings to mind the picture of a 50 something in a wood paneled room wearing a smoking jacket spilling sherry over his leather bound copy of "Twink of the month" while exclaiming "my word!". That's my particular bias and I make it obvious that I am biased in that area.
As for games in general. What is the point in defending something that is either completely wank or even play-ably average but charges for every advancement? It's like a rape victim convincing themselves that they had an unexpected romantic encounter with a socially unconventional go getter.
A few days ago I met a friend who's big into cars, he recently bought a top of the range Audi with all the trimmings. I could see the anger in him as he spoke about the 2017 model and it was actually eating him. This guy is the same about everything he buys, if he reads a negative comment on something it loses any value it previously held for him or he will go into hyper defense mode. The thought struck me, if I were more cruel I could simply send him links to reviews and watch him continuously flog and re-buy the same items over and over like a WOW character after an expansion. Speaking of which, did you ever get sucked into that opiate?
Ah those were the days weren't they? I think my poison back then was Adidas Power Soccer, mainly for the completely brutal 'secret' tackles you could do by mashing various button sequences at the opportune moment to send your player's stud clad boots careering into someones face. Much like when Vinnie Jones used to play for Wimbledon.
DeleteCommunities as cults, hmm, a rather accurate way of describing them, I would agree. I used to be a big MGS fanboy back in the day. As an adult I read an interesting article that dispelled my illusions about the literary acumen of Hideo Kojima and certainly knocked me off my high horse about it. I am glad of that.
I suppose as one gets older you also tend to get wiser (well, some do) and you begin to see through things that your young mind was wholly sold on - fanboyism is replaced with logic and reason and then sometimes tinted with cynicism. I tend to view new games sales much like the Trump campaign; playing on the fears and wants of idiots in order to secure the poplar vote and then delivering very little of the advertised product on getting into power.
They know gamers as a group will never be smart enough to figure out they are actually the ones with power and that if we truly desired it we could put EA or Ubisoft out of business. It's exactly the same as politics. Maybe that's why it grates on me so much. I use gaming as a little escape from some of the grim realities of the world, but now everything is permeated with the same stench of wanton greed and lies - there's that cynical tint.
I like Hoggit as well, I like that noob friendly approach and I think that's important when it comes to growing a playerbase. Nothing like being put off a game when you enter the community and realise that taking a walk around Pripyat in the late 80s would probably be less toxic and hazardous.
It also seems that - unlike one might think - the level of idiocy is not in fact negatively correlated with the average age of the community; that it is not beyond anyone to act like an entitled 12 year old despite being double that age.
Simming communities have this strange air of constant internal conflict that emanates from the fact that you have large group of self-proclaimed experts who are alarmingly aware that they are not experts and forever feel anxious that one day they might be called out on something by someone who actually IS. My remark on Hoggit about the odd cry for absolute accuracy and realism in flight instruments being largely redundant because the majority of people flying in DCS have never even been in these jets let alone played with the MFD/radar etc; it's all very well saying "I wouldn't accept anything less than total realism!" but no one had a response for the question "but how would you ever know?".
You see it all the time though - as I said, I've even seen people defend No Man's Sky. It's hard to bring up faults with a game when the fan-base basically jump all over anyone who raises and issue faster than a group of junk skinheads who just spotted a gay man walking home alone at night.
Much like walking into a pub deep in the west country you can be expected to be ejected pretty quickly should you're loud conversation turn to something other than turnips and and how much cider you can drink, being told at the door that "we'll 'ave none o'that 'reasonable conversation' here. Be arf with ye!!"
I had a lucky escape from WOW; when all my friends were getting into it and ruining jobs and relationships I didn't have a system that could run it. Plus I'm quite lazy so I honestly don't think I would have lasted long having to feel like I 'had' to play to keep up. MMORPG's just seem like a lot of hard work.