Anyone who follows the game industry and reads as much about it as I do should be able to see a popular trend amongst “indie” sites like Joystiq and Kotaku. They pride themselves on a snarky tone and juvenile “humor” which seems to consist mostly of lame strikethrough text jokes. Bloggers, lazy that they are (and given the frequency with which I update this site, I am including myself with) go with the simple and the easy. They’ve all come to the conclusion that the best way to be noticeable is to write spiteful and nasty things about every topic as often as possible. This morning, after reading a particular article I’ll reference later, it occurred to me that this is a pretty lousy state to be in. Frankly, I’m ashamed it took me so long just to think about it and it’s been begging the question to me ever since — why is it so hard to find some joy in my favorite hobby?
Part of it is the reality. There’s a lot of suck in games these days. And, when I spend my time and money on something that sucks, I want to get back at it somehow. Since I can’t go slap around some programmer, I’ll summon my best hate-demon and unleash 500 words of bile all over what wasted my freakin’ time. And y’know what? That’s a little too much fun. It’s a trap, something that can cause me to think that it’s the best way to handle everything I see. Eventually, I envision getting to a point where that’s all I do until I turn myself into an internet pariah.
Why is it becoming so prevalent? Maybe it’s something cultural, like how we’re conditioned to be nice to everyone so going against the norm sets off a primal rebellion nerve, which both feels good and gives you cred with the kids, as it were. Maybe it’s that some people believe all enthusiasm and positive buzz is evidence of fanboyism and scrutinize it to death, yet those same readers will accept the same writer saying the opposite in a blink. Whether it’s in a sarcastic review on Kotaku, or in one of Ben Croshaw’s Zero Punctuation videos, or even just the number of hits on 1/10 reviews on GameSpot, it’s clear that people love themselves some hate.
This article on Rock Paper Shotgun is what I was referring to earlier, specifically where Kieron Gillen talks about how anger is essentially an infantile reaction to something we don’t like, which eventually turns into (or grows up to become) bitterness. Whether you agree, or even whether you draw any value statements from it at all, I think it’s hard to argue that there aren’t a lot of pissed off people who have been angrily writing about games for far too long these days. That in turn made me realize just how many of my reactions to games are negative, and how that really isn’t how I’d like to feel about something I spend so much time on… and profess to love, besides.
My immediate response to this realization is one I’ve been banging on about for quite some time — I’ve already played a game that I consider to be the ultimate, quintessential gaming experience, and it will therefore take an awesome effort to surpass it, assuming it ever happens. Unfortunately, the economic reality and expanding demographics of video game players are forcing developers to make games designed to appease only our most fundamental entertainment triggers. Put another way, the games that most people will buy will consist of burly men blowing up a ton of shit on their Xbox 360s. Given the ridiculous cost these days of making a game that people will care about or even notice, I completely understand why the bet being made by investors is not to bet at all. “Play it safe,” I hear. “Don’t take any more risks than you have to,” they say. The result is becoming clear: As my mum puts it, “a whole lot of shooty-shooty bang-bang.”
The worst thing about all this is that part of it is my fault. I’m spoiled rotten! AAA games look amazing, but are often just a pretty shell on a very mediocre experience. The games that are really doing something innovative almost always have a junky feel to them. It’s so hard for me to play a game whose style is fresh and exciting when it has poorly-designed menus, lame music and sound effects, or archaic graphics. A recent example: I’ve heard some positive things about Culpa Innata and always wanted to give it a shot since I really enjoy adventure games. I picked it up during the Steam holiday sale for less than ten bucks and decided to sit down with it last week. The first thing I did was check the graphics options, and there are only two — “Resolution: High/Low” and “Antialiasing: On/Off”. And just what is “high resolution”? 1024×768. Eesh. And then seeing the janky characters, wonky animations, static backgrounds and wooden voice acting just in the opening cutscene? Even the first two minutes couldn’t keep my interest. Even if it does something amazing (which I’ve been assured it does) I may never see it, and only for bad reasons.
What it comes down to is this: I need to do a “reboot” of my thinking, my standards, and my perspective just to see the good things again. While I realize that very bad games are out there, and can even deserve the things people say about them, there really is more to gaming than that. It is so important to have some balance in the things you say, as that directly influences how you think. Without balance, you’re just a bitter old man yelling about the proverbial kids on the lawn. Having come this far, I think I know the answer to that question I asked myself this morning. Despite the masses screaming for nothing but sequels, insisting that Halo is the finest thing in all Creation, stealing games with a self-entitled smirk on their faces, I truly believe that there is still something to like. I only wish the folks at Joystiq would do the same.
February 10th, 2009 at 8:53 am
(Sorry I got a bit rant-y, long comment)
I’ve been tired of the hate for a long time. I never really noticed it from Kotaku or Joystiq articles, I always figured they were just trying to be funny. Reading the comments to any of the articles/posts though is painful. For every positive post “Gears of War 2 was a lot of fun”, there are 20 negative ones “Your as dumb as those meat heads in the game if you liked it”. Of course, almost all of those commenters ran out and spent $60 on the game. Among reviewers and players, there are a number of things everyone seems to agree on when it comes to GoW2, yet everyone still seems to get in fights or write nasty words about the game.
I can’t do forums either because of the mass hate. One of my favorite video games is Ar Tonelico for PS2, so I decided to check out the official forums for the US publisher (NISA). Ar Tonelico II came out in Japan, and people on the forums started begging for it. Soon enough though, people started getting in to fights whether it will ever be published here or not. People started spewing hate at NISA for not announcing whether they have the rights to the game. Anyone who said “Just be patient” got roasted. Everyone was happy when the game was finally announced. Then it got delayed a few months, more hate towards NISA. Then NISA opened the official site, and got even MORE hate because names, places, made up words from the fake language in the game were not translated the way these “Japanophiles” aka (fanbois) thought they should be.
In summary, hate hate hate hate hate.
I figured out many years ago that gaming is a personal thing, to me. When I brought my PS2 to college, I had a lot of people recommend games to me. I tried GTA3, Tony Hawk 3, Gran Turismo 3, and a slew of other types of games I never played before. I had some fun, but over all my level of satisfaction didn’t wasn’t as high as when I was playing RPGs or Adventure games.I didn’t tell people I hated the games they recommended, I just said it wasn’t my type of game. I don’t need to defend my gaming tastes to others. I also don’t need to berate others for their tastes. I enjoy discussing games, and why I liked or didn’t like a certain game. Though most people won’t give me the time of day when I want to tell them about I’m currently playing and loving the hell out of (55 hours into Mana Khemia). I couldn’t put up with 55 hours of GTAIV or GoW2, yet others can.
People also hate because they are playing crappier games on purpose, even if they know fully well they are bad games. These things called “Achievements” and “Trophies” have forever altered how people game.
Blah blah, rant rant, moan moan….
February 10th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Weird, the comment thing cut out some of my text. Let me format it differently:
Though most people won’t give me the time of day when I want to tell them about “insert niche JRPG here” I’m currently playing and loving the hell out of (55 hours into Mana Khemia). I couldn’t put up with 55 hours of GTAIV or GoW2, yet others can.
February 10th, 2009 at 10:08 am
@Tigershard
Really? They look okee to me.
Anyway, yeah, I actually realize that Joystiq and Kotaku aren’t always the worst offenders. I singled them out due to how much exposure I have to them, and how almost every day they post something that drives me up the wall. In the past, I thought the focus was on reporting trivia and other niche-y things (which I love), but now they’re trying to be sorta like, nu-wave journalism sites. I just find that silly given how low their current journalistic standard is.
You’re absolutely right on forums, though. They’re absoluty infuriating, and just lately I’ve noticed a new trend that’s really got me feeling sick and angry. I recently decided to look something up for Mirror’s Edge on PC. I went to the the GameFAQs forum for the game (I know, I know) and before I could even search I came across a dozen posts on the front page of people saying the same thing — the game was dumping them out to the main menu at the first elevator load time instead of continuing normally and they wanted to know why. After a little research, I found out. This is something that only happens when running the game with a cracked executable. The worst thing was that instead of people responding with “Well, maybe you should buy the game instead”, they were actually trying to help the person get their pirated game running better. What the hell?
Scrolling down, seeing post after post after post about this, all these people indicting themselves as thieves (most without even realizing it, at first), it got me so mad I couldn’t even bring myself to search for what I came for. It reminds me of hearing several first-hand accounts of developers talking about how somewhere around half of all the support calls they were getting were from people stealing their games. That’s like the ultimate fuck you, isn’t it? I want your game, but I don’t like X that you’ve done with it, so that means I get to have it without paying for it, modify it, and then when it doesn’t work, I get to cost you money trying to help me fix something that you didn’t even break.
It’s one of the things that killed Titan Quest — that game’s copy protection would drop people out of the game after going through an early section of the game by just crashing to the desktop. It wouldn’t say anything about what was going on, it would just crash. So, all these pirates flooded messageboards shitting on it because of how unstable they claimed it was, which then became this known thing about this game. Eventually, the community managers and tech support people had to start doing damage control on their forums to try and prevent all this misinformation from spreading any further, but for many it was too late.
It got to the point where they took it upon themselves to deal directly with one of the most vocal guys on the forum about it crashing. He admitted he pirated it, and then said he went out and bought the game and was still having the same problem. As time went on, and they kept asking more questions, it finally came out that he was using the same crack to play the retail copy, which would of course give the same result.
*headdesk*
The solution? A game that uses these kinds of copy protection should just flat out say what it’s doing when it does it. Mirror’s Edge dumping you out to the main menu after the first elevator? I wanna see a message come up saying “Stop stealing our shit, asshole.” Titan Quest crashing to desktop? I want the error report to show “The real game would never crash here.” No ambiguity, just smackdown.
‘hem. Anyway! Not sure how all that happened.
As far as these JRPGs that you’re talking about go, I’ve always had an interest in the good ones, but for every game I think I’d like there seems to be ten more that’re pretentious, badly written, and filled with that chibi anime art that pedophiles love so much. Not sayin’ that’s you, hun. =P
So yeah, I know we’ve talked about some of these games before, but I’d actually like to see them instead of just talk about ‘em and have you show me what you like about ‘em. JRPG used to be my favorite genre, and being that I’m all about regressive behavior these days, it’d be rad to rekindle that flame. ^_^