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
