I joined this site a year ago, a youngling fresh on the gaming scene, intrigued by the growing world of social online gaming. What I failed to realize is that I had walked onto a battlefield in which a war is being fought, a war without sense or purpose. but a war that will continue for the foreseeable future. So I have a simple question to pose to you, the denizens of N4G.
When did you throw yourselves away?
When I was 14, my best friend got a new PS2 and gave me his old one, which was in great condition. I was ecstatic because I'd grown up playing great games like Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, SOCOM, Sly Cooper, and others with my friend on the PS1 and 2 and now he was giving me my very own. Also, because my parents never saw the worth in buying me a console, so I was left to drool after the neighbors.
Prior to my emergence on the online gaming scene, I was unaware that people fought over things like games. Was it too much to assume that people had different tastes and that they'd play that which pleased them?
But boy, have I come to several revelations while on N4G. Never before have I seen people go after each other so aggressively for preferring a specific thing on the internet. On this site particularly, there's been a vicious brawl for the past few years between rival "factions" over which console is the "best" which game is the "best". Things like Graphics are now in some people's eyes what decides if they'll buy a title or not.
What bothers me the most is the fact that these disturbing mindsets aren't just influencing the rank and file gamers that frequent this site and others, but also the journalists that we go to for news. Things have now gotten to the point where Reviewers and so called Journalists will mark down games simply because they are popular or well loved on a particular console.
Why is this happening? Are we not all brethren, united under one banner, which is gaming? Don't we all find pleasure in this our hobby? Why have we fallen to disparaging one another based on inevitably varying tastes?
This site seems to be the seat of corruption, but this can only be expected as it's the largest if not the only gaming news aggregation on the web. Fanboys spoiling games for other people, trolls spewing useless caustic remarks about a game that they don't care for, and possibly can't even play, and Moderators doing absolutely NOTHING about keeping the peace.
It seems this issue has come to an especially fierce boiling point in the advent of the long awaited Gran Turismo 5. And it has finally hit close to home to some people that their actions are like a never ending cycle.
360 Fanboys approving ridiculous reviews, PS3 Fanboys denouncing those who would comment on a game which they do not own and vowing revenge for Gears of War 3, and on, and on, and on.
Is it that you all are devoid of common sense? Why is it that before this, PS3 trolls were content to troll games they didn't own, yet they didn't anticipate that the same thing might be done to a game in the future? Has this not happened in the past?
I've heard things from members I won't name akin to "They hit us first! So we're going to hit back!"
Are you three year olds? Are you not aware that an eye for an eye means everybody loses? Where's the mature leadership that says, "Looks guys f*ck what anyone says, this is what we want to play, and we'll be damned if we let what anybody thinks about it affect us".
Instead, what I see is a tit-for-tat attitude. I hear folk all the time salivating for the day when the PS3 will surpass the Xbox 360 in worldwide sales. They say, that then the 360 fans will be put in their places and will finally shut up.
HA! Fat chance. You think for a moment that this constant fighting is going to let up just because of a small change in sales leadership? Hell no. They'll keep on trolling, and you'll keep on feeding them, and you'll keep on trolling and they'll keep on feeding you, and so a never-ending cycle will continue.
Do you throw gasoline on a fire?
So, what exactly am I trying to say here? It's simple. Aren't you tired of fighting N4G? Aren't you tired of having your big releases marred by bitter squabbles over these petty issues? Don't you think you're taking things just a little too seriously?
"MS, Nintendo, or Sony don't deserve any of my loyalty. They make stuff I want and I'll give them money for it. The relationship need not go further than that"
WTMG's Leo Faria: "Zombies, Aliens and Guns is probably one of the least ambitious and memorable games I’ve ever played, but oddly enough, it was far from being bad. It fulfilled its reason to exist, which was to distract me for about two hours in a Thursday afternoon, entertaining me with its accessible controls, easygoing level of difficulty, and easy achievements. I played it, beat it, had a bit of fun with it, and will now probably forget about its existence. There’s nothing wrong about being competent but largely disposable. This is the equivalent of grabbing a tasty but unmemorable hamburger on a discount in a fast food joint."
It's time to add two more games to your library for free from the Epic Games Store.
GSC Game World has shared a new gorgeous trailer of STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl, as well as a few screenshots.
Thank you Xbox for saving this game from development Hell.
This is what contributing to gaming looks like.
Keep doing this. THIS is good for competition. *This* is good for all gamers, regardless of platform.
I gotta say that I had a similar reaction when I first discovered how volatile the forums and comment sections could get on these gaming sites. So much prideful ignorance. Unfortunately, I don't ever see it coming to an end. 2/5 of the community do it for fun, an other 2/5 are too sensitive to notice they someone is messing with them, and the left over 1/5 try to stay in the middle of it all.
The part about the "journalists" or "reviewers" poses an interesting question, that we as a community need to (but probably never will) answer. Why do we allow these writers to show so much bias? We regulate the news but at this point, with little to no moderation, any story seems to pass approval because some fanboys want to piss some other fanboys off. All these stories with titles like, "10 Reasons Why Halo: Reach Sucks," or "Gran Turismo 5 completely fails," are pointless. They have no other purpose other than to irritate the fans of the game and validate it's haters.
We allow reviewers to slide dais into reviews, whether it's scoring games too high or scoring them too low. Reviews are more than opinions, they are a review. There is a different between a review and an opinion. That's why opinion pieces have their own section on this site, they are different from reviews. Reviews are supposed to judge a game on it's merits and inform the consumer/reader about the quality of the product. Often times we get too much of someones bias to get a real idea of what a game is about or whether we would like it. Reviewers will complain about colors or some other small part of a game and ignore the redeeming qualities of the title. Or on the other head they'll do the opposite and will praise the colors and ignore glaring issues in a game.
We also have these reviewers that really have no idea what they are taking about, and if a game isn't a shooter they don't know what to make of it. They loved Call of Duty but hated Bayonetta or Heavy Rain. How many time has the community here determined that the reviewer either just sucked at the game or didn't even finish it before writing the review? It happens all too often and I find it funny that so many off us have complained about this yet no one can seem to figure out what to do about it.
I guess we're all just stuck with the fanboy war, and trying to figure out which stories are crap and which actually ad something to the conversation.
EDIT: Wow sorry... /endrant
I agree, well said Clizzz. Genuine gaming news (especially from the PC scene) frequently gets buried in the mess of rampant knee-jerk fanboyism on this site.
In the big picture, I suppose that console rivalry does help to inspire developers to make better games. It's fine in theory, but it's still ridiculous to see. Especially in an age where gaming has literally never been as good- for every console.
well said kid... well said indeed
i will command my troops on the ps3 frontlines to lay down their arms we must no longer battle for the supremacy of console leadership. We shall make peace with our enemys and maybe one day become allies if ever there is a greater threat
Back when I first started gaming, being a gamer wasn't a way of identifying yourself that was socially accepted. Nerds and geeks played video games, not the 'mainstream' kids. Now that gaming has become more mainstream, and more people are gaming, it's fallen into the same kind of tribalism that is found in fans of other things - like sports, for instance.
Games have always been more important to me than the platforms they're played on. But I'm most likely older than the average person who posts on Internet game boards.
It would be great if we could focus more on the games rather than on the consoles, but I doubt that change will happen any time soon. The tribalism of the "console warrior" mindset seems to get stronger with each passing year.
Good stuff. I like a blogger that can provide ideas using mostly-okay grammar, and you don't typically see that here.
You might want to look back into the history of video games and the businesses behind them. Check out Atari, E.T.: The Game, and the crash of 1983. This is what brought about the need for editor-controlled reviews - no one knew what to buy because there were way too many shovelware games out there, and a marketing campaign pulled gamers to buy total crap. For a while, it worked, even though the whole reviewer's tilt on "16 Meg" v. "24 Meg" file size thing and the Bit Wars were a bit much... pun intended.
Brand loyalty, which is what you're really getting at here, goes back much further than just PS3 vs. Xbox 360. Look way back to Ford v. Chevy for a good USA analogue to what's going on in electronics right now. And we're not alone - it's Apple vs. the world in the computing industry, with Android fans ranting about Apple's walled-garden system, while MS still has a stranglehold on the dying PC gaming market.
For video games, check out the Genesis/Super Nintendo and Game Boy/Game Gear rivalry (there are commercials that state outright that the other product is no good!), PS1 v. N64 (the PS1 was the result of Nintendo and Sony breaking negotiations over creating a new console together), even stuff like Colecovision v. Intellivision, both of which thrived on mostly copied games.
These were corporate-controlled rivalries, many of which were fueled by combative advertising campaigns. We're kids of that generation of marketing. We didn't throw ourselves away; we were hard-wired that way in the first place. So much so that we hardly see any competitive ads on TV anymore, just a few jabs from Kevin Butler and not much else. We've taken that over, as it's part of our upbringing.
You did not experience a rivalry because the PS2 absolutely dominated the market. It was one-sided: the thing was cheap for a DVD/game player, and it was out early on the competition so it had a nice lineup of games by the time Gamecube and Xbox arrived on the scene. Third-party publishers mostly looked only in the PS2's direction due to the huge market share. Gamecube and Xbox were these "buy-also" luxury items that were there for only a few reasons - GC for the Nintendo first-party lineup, and Xbox for the online play and some outstanding and overlooked/underrated Sega titles.
The thing about the present time is that not only do we have two competent rivals in the PS3 and Xbox 360, but we have tough economic times globally. Kids can't get both consoles, and neither can most adults either.
Therefore, when a console has an exclusive game, and we don't have that console, it's not the "killer app" anymore - that game that's so good it makes us buy the console - it's an exclusive game that we'll never play. It's that feeling of exclusion that's sent kids up a wall debating about which console and game is better, all for vindication of their own more-limited purchases that they're agonizing about on the inside. The killer app died with our acceptance of frugality as the norm.
So what do we do then? We look at any sales news, hoping that our console gains the most market share, and therefore gets the most companies to make games for it. We hope that exclusives turn to "the dark side," going multiplatform so we can play them. Are we going to admit to the world that it's because we're broke? No, but it's there. You'll see it in every troll post you read.