What's wrong with gaming now and days

First and foremost this post is credit by MrPancakesMcgee on Reddit.

We all want to blame devs and publishers on how the industry is "going", when in reality we are to blame (to a degree). I know people are gonna **** and complain how they might be the cause of something, but this is starting to become a problem.

People spend more time whining about games than actually playing them, a prime example is Black Desert Online and Blade Soul just got a lot of flak for releasing content/expansions too early....YES TOO EARLY, people are literally complaining about the dumbest **** now. "Oh this games has bugs it sucks arse, but hey this game has just as many bugs but everyone loves it so I'm gonna love it too". I can rant all day about the dumb **** people post on forums (Reddit, GS, Gamefaqs, IGN and every forum out there is a form of cancer).

Title of the topic "I'm glade I grew up on games in the 80's and 90's" Link to the original post

"So, games now are awesome. They're in depth. The graphics are amazing. There's a ton of different genres. There's multilpayer capability. There's a ton of money in the business driving real innovation. Games now are awesome. I love being a gamer.

But the Internet has cast a long shadow over games, and I think it's working AGAINST gamers more than it's working for them. Don't get me wrong, it offers major benefits....but overall, subreddits like this seem to be more of a joy suck for players, rather than a joy add.

The Internet gives people an outlet to complain and whine. We didn't used to have that. And without it, you just sort of adjusted your attitude mentally and chose to play games with a positive mentality, because why complain? Who's going to listen or care? Either you'd stop playing a crappy game and move on, or you'd choose to find enjoyment or challenge in it.

The Internet inadvertently causes jealousy. You see a player with a "god roll" on a weapon, or you see their crazy (inflated) stats, and you think, "I want that." You think they're getting more out of the game than you, or that they're having a better experience. You think you're on the short end of the stick and that other players are having all the luck. It's upsetting and frustrating and leads to an overall shitty attitude. In short it's a joy suck. That didn't exist back in the day. You had no idea what other players were experiencing, except maybe what you read in Nintendo Power. There was nothing to be jealous of, except the kid who won a full NES package and 20 games on Double Dare. You only had your own playing experience, and without jealousy, there wasn't any anger. Games were producing joy, not taking it away.

The Internet allows everyone to share their opinion, and because people in general have a sheep mentality or group mentality (in general) that starts to spread and influence individuals' thoughts. Gamers listen to Angry Joe. If he thinks something sucks, people also start to think it sucks. Sure they may have thought it wasn't amazing to begin with, but once they see Angry Joe yelling about it, it makes them feel like they should be yelling about it. Their opinion becomes more and more negative the more they read and see other negative opinions. The people with positive opinions are called fanboys, and are voted down on subreddits, just because they're saying something positive. Most of what I read online (whether, subreddits, comments, over overall opinions) are usually more negative than positive.

Gamers today seem to be jaded. They seem to want everything to be perfect. They seem to think perfection = fun, when it doesn't. You know what game was crazy hard and was crazy imperfect? Bionic Commando. I never came close to beating that game as kid. You know what's one of my all-time favorite games today? Bionic Commando. If I'd read a "review" of that, I probably would have become frustrated at the game, and probably would have quit playing altogether because the experts all agreed the game wasn't "good". Without that though, I just played it and had a blast even though I never beat it. I chose to believe it was good and fun, and that made all the difference. My mental choice was the strongest factor in what was fun. Much more so than actual game design. I think that understanding is what's been lost in gaming.

Ok, I know I sound like an old man ******* about how the good ol' days are gone, and how kids today don't appreciate anything. That's not what I'm aiming for. I'm saying while the Internet does offers gamers and the gaming "community" some benefits, it's also the single greatest joy suck in gaming.

TL;DR - The Internet is wonderful. It's also an outlet for negativity that didn't use to exist. I think a lot of gamers are allowing that negativity to ruin the simple joy of gaming. The gaming world before and during the early Internet was less robust, but it also seemed a lot more fun. I wish gamers who've grown up on games the past 10 years could understand that your own, personal attitude choices will provide or detract fun far more than actual game design and mechanics.

/rant. Now get off my lawn ya damn kids!"

What are your thoughts on the matter

Gamers......... They have ruined everything.

1. Fanboys

2. Graphic Whores

3. Video Game Journalism and Media

References: See Uncharted 4/Quantum Break reconstruction threads.

To be honest, the internet makes pretty much everything look bad.

The biggest thing gamers killed is couch multiplayer. Now all the fun games are online multiplayer only except for Nintendo stuff.

Pixel counting and the my dog's bigger than your dog kinda stuff.

Seriously, I noticed since I started being a regular SW reader/poster, gaming isn't as much simple mindless fun as it used to be.

Now, with that outta the way,..... Xbox Won. lol :P

Giving gamers such a huge voice was a mistake.

Hardware

Advertising

Hype

To much emphasis on graphics

DLC and Season Passes

Stopped reading at the word 'Reddit'

OK, so I've read the whole thing you posted and want to post my opinion about it.

Everything in the world have set of pros and cons. Nothing is perfect and nothing is absolutely useless (except some very rare cases). You take medicines to cure your diseases and even those medicines can have their own bad side effects on you.

So, internet is not just a place that spreads negativity. It's also a place where you can easily find fixes for your game if it's broken or if you are experiencing some bug that is affecting the "fun" part. Now I understand that there are a lot of whiny little kids out there on internet, but there are also gaming enthusiasts who tell others about great games in threads/forums like these, that are often overlooked by press or magazines, due to lack of marketing resources or some other reasons.

It's also a place where one can tell others to avoid a broken game that was marketed as the best thing ever by developers, so you can save your money or at least try the game before purchasing it. Now, I understand and agree that gamers have become whiny and want everything to be perfect.

It's also true that a lot of gamers cry about everything without even playing them or doing enough research, and we see a lot of these folks on internet, but as I stated above, there are also great people here who talk about games and discuss their aspects in great way. So, because of internet, now we can share these experiences with others more than ever before, which is a good thing,

Long story short: Everything have its pros and cons.

@Ballroompirate: I agree with some of your points but since i witnessed an age without Internet i beg to differ. There are tons of sheep out there , always were. Its not about Internet its about Human nature. If you are open minded enough and keeping it real though , youll stop being a sheep. Thats all there is. How to do that ? Use your brain thats all .

Great op. I agree with the main theme and try to stick to it. You create your own reality to a large degree. Old cliché like when someone gives you a lemon make lemonade, explain exactly that.

Shakespeare said it as "good and bad exist not; conscious thought makes it so". In other words nothing is inherently good or bad. It is one's assessment of the thing that makes it so. I too had games I never finished as a kid but they were fun games to play.

That word "play" is the key for me. And when all this in your own head paralysis by analysis is going on how does one have fun or play?

I find people like to show how critical they can be as if it shows great insight or knowledge of the subject.

I wouldn't squarely blame the internet in this case. A large collective group of gamers just have a piss-poor attitude when it comes to a multitude of things. Hipocracy and double-standards are commonplace among gaming forums, and their broad immaturity is partly playing a hand on why this medium is artistically stagnant.

We want original games, but the moment we get something that's against the grain, we'll dismiss it because it's not to our very particular liking.

We want critiques to be honest and thorough. That is until, it negatively impacts a game we've been hyping to hell and back. We'll bash critics and question their credibility over a game that we've yet to even play.

This level of mentality is nothing short of poisonous.

I think gamers have every right to be upset, and they should be. Developers and/or publishers are taking things out of games and adding them in later as DLC, or disc-locked content. They are adding restrictions like requiring an active online connection, even for single player modes. It is becoming common practice to release incomplete games while charging full price, with the promise that they will finish and release it later. Consoles are becoming less dissimilar. The indie market is flooding the digital realm with a lot of clutter. Gamers, especially those who started in the late 90s, and before, are getting fed up of all this crap. Of course there is a lot of negativity.

I agree so much with this and I think all of System Wars should, too.

Who's angry joe?

Microsoft is to blame for dlc especially on disc dlc

It sounds like the OP is having a hard time reading into what a review should be interpreted as.

Still thanking the internet for recommending me some of the best games though.

Fanboys and the bickering and arguing over nonsense and things they have no control over. People want to argue about game rather than play them and have good conversation about it.

I want to blame the internet, but I just can't. I have to blame the people expressing themselves over the internet just for the sake of creating controversy. Sure, if you take the internet out of the equation, that wouldn't be a concern any longer. But the problem stems from the people behind the keyboard.

True words, it's akin to blaming the gun, not the person pulling the trigger.

The same tired complaints bitching and moaning about people bitching and moaning. What do these people who write these posts hope to accomplish? If you are tired of the complaining, the negativity, then LEAVE THE NET. Find something that will grant you a more positive environment. It annoys me people sit around and moan about what they choose to partake in, yet remain.

Go away, grow a thicker skin, or learn to deal. But ****, to sit there and continually bemoan whiners is no greater or self-righteous than the whiners themselves. This is just the nature of the beast. It's not going to change. Adapt yourself around it. Complaining about it, over and over, accomplishes nothing and is no more admirable than what they hold in contempt.

Yes, exactly. We don't want to take away guns, and we don't want to take away the internet. So how do we resolve the problem? Maybe there needs to be a point where everyone educates themselves through self abuse. Just let them rage and rage and rage until they notice that nobody cares anymore.

That happened in another forum I visit. Every NPD brought the forum to its knees. It happened so much so, that now the NPD is barely talked about, and new threads are no longer made. There just wasn't anyone taking the bait anymore, and nobody cared to rehash things over and over, and nobody found the insults productive. It wasn't taken away, it just went away.

Bring back and make fashionable again, personal responsibility, self constraint and honor and viola, problem solved though easier said than done since that toothpaste left the tube a long time ago.

Not much to me. I don't waste my time reading little tidbits about a game that's not out yet. As far as I'm concerned, a game is vaporware until it's out.

I don't treat companies or developers like they're rock stars. To me, they exist to make games, nothing more. If they want my seal of approval, nothing says it better than $60 changing hands. I also don't waste my spit putting down companies who make bad games. I simply don't buy their games, period.

I'm also the kind who doesn't ruin people's parades. If people like CoD, so what? They like it, then they like it. Who am I to tell them what to like? There's so many games out there. Of course, this being SW, it's customary to put something down. But, what's in SW stay in SW.

I also don't rely on fanboys whining about certain games. Their opinions are their own and means nothing to me. I've been gaming long enough to know I don't always have the same tastes as everyone. I have to rely on my own research to know whether I will like a game or not.

The only thing I lament is the dropping of offline LAN support in many games. I quit MP because of it and I stuck to it.

@SOedipus: while your at it complain about a bar of snickers not being 50 cent anymore. If your even old enough to remember that. Time is changing bro. Quality and methods are bound to change. The avg 1st level of a game is 100 time bigger than previous gens and you guys still find ways to be over the top wit bitchin

FTFY

I definitely agree that there is a huge problem with regards to "hive-mindedness" when it comes to gamers, or how toxic gamers can get when it comes to hearing different opinions from them. To be fair though, I'm sure you could find this same bulls*** with any kind of fandom or large group, and obviously not all gamers are so narrow-minded or pricks.

Also something tells me things weren't so peaceful during the pre-internet. I wouldn't disagree that the internet only helped to escalate the issue, but beforehand I'm sure Nintendo fanboys and Sega fanboys still came across eachother somehow (school for example) and still had some dumb exchanges.

Sega has that BLAST-PROCESSING!

Pre-Internet Backyard talk was pretty much just us with our Gameinformers, Nintendo Powers, Playstation Monthly, etc talking about what games are coming out and the rumors. Those that did have the internet in the mid 90s - early 2000s had the most power, but it was still the same shill we got on our monthly magazines. Heck one article in these Magazines had predicted that Street Fighter 3 was being developed for the N64 EXCLUSIVELY. Guess Capcom missed that memo. Another Capcom related note was the creation of Gouken and Akuma came from an April Fools Joke from Electronic Monthly.

Pretty much nothing has really changed. Just the Backyard is now...."Bigger".

I preordered Star Fox Zero. I'm part of the solution.

The playground getting bigger is pretty much how I see it too.

And the bigger the playground gets and the more attention it gets, the more likely you are of getting some bad eggs in the bunch.

The positives still heavily outweigh the negatives, though. Even though everyone has a voice now, as they should, it doesn't mean we should all be listening (reading) those thoughts, especially the super negative ones that do nothing more than sh*t on everything. It serves no purpose, and therefor should be ignored like a squeaking door.

The problem with that idea is that people are negative by nature, and tend to flock around the nastiest things they come across. Ultra-negativity should be punished instead of celebrated, but the internet has exposed the core of the human soul, and we now know just how awful a lot of people really are. Hopefully, the rotten ones can exhaust their hatred on the net so it doesn't affect them and others irl.

Those of us with hearts of gold can still manage to find the good in all things, and the net has made the world a joyous and wonderful place filled with information and convenience that is unrivaled by just about every other invention.

Now after reading this post, it's like the same tired complaints bitching and moaning about people bitching and moaning about people bitching and moaning. How long does that chain go?

@kvally: well after reading your post, one more apparently.

:) xoxo

and OP think this only limited to gaming? lmao

internet ruined pop culture, not just gaming, similar thing happened to music, movies, other popular hobbies and mainstream tech based utensils/gadgets.

Gamers get mad at "unfinished products". You wouldn't buy a car that was an unfinished car would you? I wouldn't go to a dealership and pay full price on a car if it was missing a transmission. The dealer would tell me well that transmission will be installed after a factory recall. C'mon now. Gamers have a the right to be pissed when an unfinished turd is released. This thing called "DLC" is making me sick. Back in my day you could go to the store and buy a "finished product with all DLC included on the cartridge". As gamers we should unite and boycott this DLC garbage. If the developer wants to make more money just charge more money for a "finished product". I'm not whining and complaining I speak the truth. I'd say 9 out of 10 games that are released every freaking month has a day one patch for the game when it is released. That is because it's an "unfinished product". Gone are the day's you can go to the store and buy a "finished product" from the store.

@Ballroompirate: This is what happens when they open up gaming to the mass market. You get all of the idiots coming in as well.

In the past gaming was somewhat an exclusive club. Or at least a self contained one. You needed to be pretty savvy with a PC to get into that and pre-internet you were pretty much playing games in isolation with whoever happened to be sat next to you on console.

Then you start making games for "everyone" like the big publishers are doing now and suddenly it becomes "trendy" to play games because anyone can just pick one up and play for a bit. Which brings with it all of the sheep that can't think for themselves and in the dawn of the toxic culture of the internet the people who just want to shit on everything.

Which is a problem because traditionally gaming was for people who WANTED a challenge and people who could ACTUALLY problem solve.

Personally I think in order for gaming to REALLY keep improving it needs to segregate itself back off again. Big publishers and developers can continue making games for the mass market if they want to. As long as SOMEONE somewhere makes games for the hardcore gamers. Games that are actually difficult and which require problem solving and skill to finish.

We don't all need to play the same games and we DEFINITELY don't need old school genre games being watered down just because the sheep millennials can't work out simple game mechanics by themselves.

Unfortunately right now gaming in general isn't really big enough to satisfy everyone. Which CAN be blamed on publishers because they were the ones who bought out all of the mid tier developers and destroyed them.

My first thought is that "now and days" doesn't make sense at all and you should feel ashamed for the thread title.

But yes, the internet can be a bad place.

Yea it' starting to get old fast, I understand the need to complain but it's gotten outta control lately, people can't even come up with their own opinion anymore when it comes down to games and other entertainment like movies. It's gotten to the point people will back up someones opinion, preach it like it's from the Bible and claim -said game- is a 5/10 w/o even playing it. Reviews are meant to be taken with a grain of salt but they aren't.

I highly agree, hell I remember when LoL was actually a pretty decent community back in 2009. Games with online communities tend to have this shroud of "I'm gonna say something cause you have no idea who I am". The internet is bringing out the D-bags in people on forums and games. I can See why devs are taking a step back in pr aspects specially after what happen over at Bioware/Swtor (gamers were actually threatening a devs family).

Games will always have bugs, there's no such thing as a perfect game cause every game has it's faults, hell games have so much coding now and days compared to back in the day (FF7 which had 4 discs is about 700mb, the TLOU for the PS4 is 55gb, the size difference is fraking huge). While I'm not a fan of DLC people are forgetting what DLC is suppose to do (this is the cancerous hive mentality that's plaguing gaming), it's purpose is to make you come back to that game 6 months after you've beaten it, they're suppose to be like mini expansions but companies like Capcom are releasing DLC costumes which add 0 replayability which is giving a bad taste in peoples mouths.

DLC is copying what expansions were doing for PC games, not all companies are forming that opinion cause of greed but a few companies do release some pretty good DLCs and that's what DLC's are suppose to be (like Fallout 4's Automatron DLC is a prime example of what DLC is meant to be).

Reviews should be taken with a grain of salt, hell they shouldn't even have a scaling system cause the reviewer could love Blondes while the reader loves Red Heads. Even reviews are becoming click baits to get more hits.

This is why I love you like a Broseidon -fist pump-

On topic: I don't usually miss any opportunity to point out that gamers are shit, because get real they are shit.

But while I get the general gist of his argument, and there is a lot of truth to it, part of it is just the typical brand of generalization (self aware it's coming from Mr. Gamers are shit). Were there sexist social rejects that had no leg to stand on criticizing Anita? Yeah, but there were also people making well informed criticisms of her work as well. Are there people that just tear something down with no real nuance to their argument? Yep, but in the same context there is actual well thought out critique. Criticism, especially constructive isn't a bad thing, simply put a lot of game productions skate by on feature set or look at how pretty it is or look at how it functions, and way too many apologize for shit they shouldn't apologize for.

I mean being buggy and not performing up to par day 1 is a valid criticism, about as valid as you can get. It shouldn't even be debateable, if you are selling me this product (and it's not under some early-access label), you should at least hit the bare minimum of make sure my game works. Can't speak to the Black Desert example, but Street Fighter V launched missing basic shit a Street Fighter game should have. That's not complaining for the sake of complaining, that's not even an argument that doesn't have merit, it's an argument that if anything doesn't have a reasonable counter for justification.

So general idea of that the interent is why we can't have nice things, it's an echo chamber, it's a joy suck, and all that stuff? Sure, it's the nature of most, most things are shit, most games are bad, most people aren't actually all that educated, and most people can't actually articulate a complaint. That's how most works, the good stuff is inherently on the rarer side. It's part of the problem, and gamers biggest short coming is

A: not putting their money where their mouth is enough

B: Simply put not putting in the effort to find the stuff that is making the games the way you want them to

But, the rest of his take, especially the one on reviews is a bit much. Not the least of which is, I would argue gamers, the internet, and people in general can't fucking handle criticism.

Too much homogenisation and imitations. Too expensive, no demos anymore.

Oh yes I just miss the days in hoping that one of the few gaming magazines will review a game that looked interesting I saw on the shelf.. Or if it doesn't I decide whether I should take the gamble in buying it to find out if it's good or not..

@Ballroompirate A good example of cash grab DLC is Battlefield series they charge you extra only to unlock what is already on the disc. Same with Star Wars Battlefront they do the same thing. Don't even get me started about Evolve that game is DLC cash grab. As far as games not being finished this is the day and age we live in. We the gamer is duped into a "finished" product before release and get an "unfinished" product at release. It's a fact. If you think DLC is just made to expand the game your wrong. Especially, since most of the DLC is on the disc which you need a season pass or DLC pass to unlock it. Your part of the problem not the solution making excuses for these companies to charge a hefty fee to unlock what's on the disc.

@getyeryayasout: Agreed

@kvally: Too true. From the tech support side: It is a PEBKAC issue.