Closing Ranks: Why We Need To Be Like BSN

Chris Matyskiel of Screen-Shaped Eyes is mad as hell at apathetic gamers and he's not going to take it anymore.

[MikeyDucati1]

The problem is that if you tell gamers you need to do more "protesting" or ranting, gamers won't use wisdom to pick and choose their battles. For instance, the ME3 ending. What was really the problem behind that? Gamers didn't like that Sheppard died no matter what they chose? So how could we ask the author of a story to go back and change the ending because of a beloved character who has died? Imagine writing to Arthur C. Clarke about you not liking Children's End and the aliens who were described as devils. Most gamer complaints stem on personal experience and do not affect on a whole. They hardly ever get to the significant root of the problem. Another fine example is Skyrim. Multitudes of gamers were complaining about it being a buggy mess before Bethesda did something about it. But in my experience and in my friend circle, we weren't seeing the problem. Was it gamers just hopping a bandwagon to be keyboard revolutionists?

Often times than not, gamers come off as a bratty bunch and when it comes to complaining, it hardly is ever done in a constructive way.

That's why you can almost say that the industry has become stagnant in the aspect of creation of new IPs (it's looked upon as a gamble). Why we have so many clone games with different names, colors, and settings. Yet its the same game. All due to gamers complaining about the miniscule. So now, devs take a different approach. It's like a parent who has a bratty child that complains about everything. If it takes a certain act or certain item for him shut him up, it will be given to him just to avoid hearing his mouth. Is the child learning? Is the parent learning? What about the relationship between mother and child? What are the affects?

Yes, when games like Simcity, come along we do need to say something about it. There's no excuse for releasing that game on DRM and just letting it bomb itself on Day 1. But when you have gamers complaining about E3 video presentations on Aliens that didn't make it to the final product, you gotta ask yourself, what were they really expecting? I know personally that an E3 presentation does not represent the final build. It's only a progress/'what we are trying to do', report. How will it change the dynamic of demo presentations? Is it truly a valid argument or are gamers bitter about purchasing a game that didn't meet their expectations?

If gamers were a responsible and mature bunch, I would be all for it. But like the guy on The Losers said, "It's like giving a child a loaded weapon. You're not sure what's going to happen or how its going to end, but it's going to make the news." I'm just not sure about telling gamers "you need to be more like BSN and complain more about your games".

[Godmars290]

People weren't pissed that Shepard died, they were pissed that a game supposedly about choice didn't offer any real choices at its end.

I cannot believe that such still isn't understood. But then maybe that's the problem.

[zeal0us]

"Gamers didn't like that Shepard died no matter what they chose?"

It wasn't the fact of Shepard dying, it was how it was done. You work your butt of across three titles only to be hit with three colorful endings. It seems cheap and lazy compared to Bioware past titles.

I played other games that had sh*ttier endings, so I just move on. I didn't even bother protesting or signing any petitions.

[Hydralysk]

Mass Effects fans weren't pissed because Shepard died. The entire ending was the problem, what with how they used insane logic to explain the Reapers and solve the plot with an almost literal Deus Ex Machina. Believe what you want about whether or not the audience has the right to try to correct the author, but the reason people got mad was much more complex than fans going "Shepard died! I DON'T LIKE SAD!".

In terms of Skyrim, I bought it on PS3, and it was almost unplayable after my save size reached 4mb. I would walk into a town and my framerate would drop to what looked like 5 fps. $60 on launch and I couldn't play it for more than 15 hours without it turning into a powerpoint presentation, a problem they obviously knew about since all the review copies sent out were 360/PC versions and not the PS3 one.

Let's assume you're right though, and I was part of a very small minority who was affected. How does that invalidate the decision of people who didn't get this problem to be vocally pissed about it, keyboard revolutionists as you put it? Are you okay with developers knowingly releasing games to retail that couldn't function on the hardware they designed it for as long as it didn't happen to you or your friends?

[aliengmr]

1. Mac Walters is no Arthur C. Clarke.

2. Happy or sad, the finale to a trilogy needs to be coherent. It needs to actually resolve things, none of this "leaving-it-to-interpreta tion" crap. You make a lore heavy trilogy like ME, you have spend much more time resolving it, which is why most successful trilogies are planned well in advance. ME3 wasn't.

3. You are over generalizing gamers. Basically saying any criticism at all is just whining because all of us (you included) are a bunch of babies.

4. And, Wow, with that parenting analogy. I love how you think the kid will actually have some catharsis and reevaluate his/her life when you deny them that which they are complaining so much about. They don't, ever, they just keep going and going.

Regardless, "parenting" isn't a product purchased by the kid. We don't get games for free and we (on the PC) are for the most part, forced to buy it on faith.

[cyguration]

How come only no-name sites have the balls to be pro-consumer?

Is it really that hard for larger sites to stop sucking on the hairy scrotum of publishers to at least pay attention to what's happening in the consumer community and find out WHY gamers are pissed off?

Sad, but this article needs to steamroll over all the pro-corporate greedy douchebag pieces that GameInformer and other top sites have been writing recently to defend Sega and Gearbox.

You can always count on the clowns who masturbate their egos and back-pat themselves in this joke known as gaming media to run to the aid of their corporate pimps, no matter what anti-consumer measures they take.

[ScreenShapedEyes]

Thanks, I think?

Small sites have the freedom to do these sorts of articles. We're not going to get exclusives and we're not invited to press events, so there's fewer bridges to burn.

More importantly, big sites have to pay their writers a living wage, unlike a volunteer site like ours. If a big publisher refuses to deal with a site, it can take a major hit that affects their ability to pay their writers.

But who knows. Just glad you appreciate our stance, even though we're a no-name site.

[cyguration]

Well keep up the good work. It may pay off in the end, just like with Angry Joe.

I don't even bother visiting places like IGN or Gamespot anymore (though to be fair, some of Gamespot's news writers aren't always quick to write-off consumers).

I also understand about large sites having to pay the living wages for a full time staff...it just seems counterproductive to piss on the consumers who contribute to the pageviews that also pay the wages.