Today, it was announced that EA has taken home the gold. For the second year running, they have received Consumerist's 'Worst Company' award, ( http://consumerist.com/2013... ) beating Bank of America by nearly triple the votes. This is also the second year in a row that I shook my head in awe at how childish and narrow minded the gaming community can be.
Don't get me wrong, I love my fellow gamers. It is a passionate group, one that takes pride in the hobby, outside judgement be damned. But they can also be an irrational bunch, often blowing situations out of proportion and making a mess out of otherwise inane things, things that are minuscule in the grand scope of society. This is where Consumerist's poll comes in.
Take a look at Consumerist's bracket. Go ahead, I'll wait. You back? Now, when you looked at that bracket, did something seem a little off to you? Maybe the fact that they edged out two banks, a credit card company AND a mortgage company, all of who have reputations for being scum and having an overall poor operation ethic? It seems that Mass Effect 3's crummy ending, the SimCity debacle and online passes are somehow worthy of more disdain than a bank that doubles interest rates on customers paying their loans, and a mortgage company that takes away family's homes. The fact that Consumerist users (the ones that voted for EA most likely being gamers) overlooked such scummy practices and decided that EA's transgressions are somehow worthy of greater ridicule than Wells Fargo's and Bank of America's is baffling to me.
I often see comments complaining about society "looking down upon gamers", that "we should be taken more seriously" and that "we are intelligent too and not just tunnel visioned game junkies". Oh really? Is that how you feel? Want to be treated as mature and well rounded individuals in discussions about the economy, politics and other topics? Then act like it.
Not only does it disgust me to see that a group I associate myself with is so shamefully narrow minded, but it also makes me wonder if I am not the same way. Of course I have been infuriated by gaming related issues before. Of course I will take a stance in such debates. It isn't the fact that gamers take issue with the things EA does, it's the way they go about it. Spamming message boards, making petitions and whinging all over the internet just gives everyone a poor impression of gamers, and ruins otherwise good conversations.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, get some damn perspective everyone. If SimCity's botched launch/DRM, Mass Effect's (subjectively) poor ending, Origin and online passes are somehow worse to you than the pain -both financial and emotional- some of these banks and mortgage companies inflict upon people, then you need to reevaluate your priorities. The best way to describe my feelings towards this situation are contained here. ( http://1.media.dorkly.cvcdn... ) If the minutiae of EA's policies really bother you more than the horrible and in some cases downright evil things some other companies do, I don't want to know what you think IS worse.
AFK Journey is one of the best games I’ve played this year, and comes close to being the perfect idle RPG.
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This is beautiful bro. How much for your brains?
This is so true EA is pretty bad at times but not as bad as gamers make them out to be
I'm sorry but your blog is completely flawed. You can't call gamers narrow-minded because of this. For starters, The Consumerist is a site for consumers to complain about companies and that doesn't necessarily mean only gaming companies. You may not have intended this, but the implication that only gamers are narrow minded is incorrect based on the premise of the site.
Second, this is an online poll that can be easily abused. EA may have won Worst Company thanks to a relatively small amount of people spamming votes using bots and various other means. The poll is in no way a direct correlation to the attitude of gamers because there is no way to verify that every vote was from a legitimate person with legitimate complaints.
Then there's the fact that of the Banks and Credit Card companies you mentioned, it's very possible that the voters had no problems with those companies because either A)They don't use them and have no experience with them, or B)They have actually had GOOD experiences with said companies and wouldn't vote against them.
It's also entirely possible that people hold a different standard for companies that are supposed to provide entertainment and yet pull scummy moves the way EA does so they voted EA the Worst Company in America because life is sh*tty enough, your entertainment shouldn't be as well.
And Peter Moore's letter doesn't exactly help your cause. It's riddled with a smug arrogance characteristic of EA for years now, and he even calls his own companies games mediocre, in response to that, I offer you this.
http://pcgmedia.com/moore-m...
That's a concise explanation at how childish Peter Moore is. His response to this smacks of butthurt and it shouldn't considering A)He apparently doesn't take it seriously, and B)He's an executive and responsible for a certain image which he tarnishes with his actions.
EA is not, in actuality, the Worst Company in America. But to the people of The Consumerist, based on their own life experiences (which is what the poll is about since the site is about consumer relations with companies), they are. And that has nothing to do with gamers being narrow-minded and ignoring real world evils, that's just an online poll that could have easily been abused in the same way Metacritic user scores are. Do you take those user scores as seriously?
If this award won't change a company like EA after winning it twice, what difference would it make if a more atrocious company actually won it? The world would be better off without any of these companies as far as I'm concerned. But if a simple gaming entertainment company is too prideful to change, then maybe that should put things into perspective.
If you're really disgusted by the gaming community over this internet incident, maybe you shouldn't go outside anytime soon. Some other communities might leave you bedridden.
"Don't get me wrong, I love my fellow gamers."
Why?
Why would anyone love those brainless idiots?
EA is worse than Bank of America,Monsanto,Big Oil...lmao