Here We Go Again? How About Not?

Alright N4G, let's all take a quick step back from the front lines of confrontation, and a side step to view the big picture.

As many of you remember, at the beginning of this console generation, whether you were a Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo Fanboy, as we awaited the new consoles, and thereafter, the smack talk, blind loyalties, and gamers cannibalizing ourselves hit a fever pitch. As time went on, N4G kind of became one of the central 'battle grounds' for such things.

Now we all know that as humans, a provocative article title can be intriguing. We all know that a provocative post in a thread can be tantalizing. And we all know that just about everyone at the least has moments when they are certain beyond certain that they are correct, in spite of the fact that they are mistaken.

Take all of those circumstances, mix them together, add a new and upcoming console generation, and what do we get? The same atmosphere as before, reaching new heights of absurdity since it stands on the proverbial shoulders of the one before it.

I personally realized this a while back, but even so, lately, I continually find myself at odds with people intent on talking bad about Nintendo. This in spite of the fact that I own a PS3, and a 360, in addition to my Nintendo products. And I've 'defended' each of them here at N4G when I see the cannibalism thing going on. I just love games.

But at my core, I admit that I'm a bit of a Nintendo fanboy. I mean I have a Pokemon avatar, and wear it proudly ya know?

The Wii U is at the center of this latest controversy in large because of three major things that most everything else stems from as far as I see it:

1. Some gamers are EXTREMELY frustrated with Nintendo, and are at or near their breaking point with the company due to choices that fly in the face of what these gamers want.

2. Some gamers believe that Nintendo can do no wrong, and like their counterpart fanboys of other consoles, 'preach the gospel' every chance they get.

3. Some gamers just hate Nintendo and/or are so loyal to another company that they cannot believe that Nintendo can do any right. Nor do they want them too.

Think about it. This is the opening salvo. When Sony or MS announce their next respective consoles, the intensity will ratchet up - and that intensity is already too high. Don't you think?

When people view gaming in a poor light, it is in general because lack of respect for the medium, and a negative attitude about gamers. Because of the extent to which the above shenanigans go on, even developers and publishers are irritated with N4G type gamers.

I consider myself a gamer because I not only own hundreds of games, and most consoles ever created, I play all kinds of games. I don't even watch T.V. much at all anymore. If my T.V. is on, it's to play games. And there are so many of us like that, who see gaming as a legitimate primary source of electronic entertainment. Unlike most people, we see no difference between watching 3 hours of t.v. or movies, and 3 hours of gaming.

We love talking about our favorite games and consoles, why we're excited about an upcoming game, what happened when we were on such and such part of such and such game, etc.

And yet for some reason, our love of talking bad about games and consoles that aren't our favorites, talking bad about people who are excited about games that we are not excited about, and being dismissive and inflammatory toward others who want to talk about the things that they like sometimes trumps our love.

Do we really want another, even bigger console generation of b.s. 'wars', and 'alliances', making other gamers miserable, and attempting to 'sink' games that we personally don't want? Again, I go back to the cannibalism analogy. Just because my foot isn't a hand, doesn't mean that my foot isn't important. It doesn't mean that I don't need it. It doesn't mean that whatever happens to my foot will not in some way affect my hand.

There will always be SOME element of the negative things I spoke of here at N4G. There will always be times when even if we try not to involve ourselves in such things, we'll slip up. But we have a chance here near the beginning of this next generation to nip a lot of this in the bud, and be civil.

I know, I know. The next generation doesn't start until (insert favorite company here) releases their new console... ;P

[LostDjinn]

Yeah, I took a look at your comment history and there's a recurring theme. I'll leave it at that but don't think you're foolin' anyone.

OT: Zealots on all sides make things tiresome but let's be honest here. A large part of the current mess surrounding the Wii U is of Nintendos' making. They could end a massive amount of speculation, BS and smear by simply providing the specs to the public.

Unless of course there's a reason they don't want the specs known. In which case what right do they have do demand trust from anyone? Let's face it. After they used the same strategy for marketing the Wii do you really blame "core" gamers for being cynical?

Now I don't have exact WiiU specs and don't believe everything on the interwebz but one thing's for sure. The WiiU will be striped down and its' specs posted within seventy-two hours of release.

I'm waiting till I see specs and test an actual unit for myself before I decide. I bought a Wii at launch and regretted it. I think I've earned the right to take a wait and see approach. Don't you?

[TruthbeTold]

Recurring theme? What, that I tend to defend Nintendo with my comments, and sometimes take part in the behavior I described in the blog post? I admitted that. Not sure what you mean by suggesting that I'm trying to fool people.

[thorstein]

They are zealots. But unlike religious zealots, I don't really believe anyone will kill swaths of people because they play on a different console.

I think that with Nintendo (and I had all except a gamecube) it was a feeling of betrayal: (Let me explain) THE Nintendo Seal of Quality really meant that you were getting a Quality Game. It is the one thing that really made Nintendo stand apart. There weren't game breaking glitches and errors in coding.
Now, with the Wii (which I like) we were promised more of this amazing formula: but a new term came into use: shovelware. There was so much shovelware for this console that they lost the trust of many of their diehard fans.

I will be the first to admit that graphics really don't matter to me. I place gameplay, story, characterization, fun, and replayability above graphics. But the wii promised us much of the same but didn't deliver. The Last Story will be good, but I didn't buy a $250 for only a few great games. Certainly their older consoles were juggernauts that put out games that were completely amazing. Metal Gear started on Nintendo. As did Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.

I wish, instead of the U, Nintendo would have given a few more years to R&D and came out with a truly killer console that doesn't have shovelware, make the Nintendo Seal of Approval mean something again.

[TruthbeTold]

I don't know that they could afford to wait since 3rd party developers and many gamers really abandoned the Wii at the end.

I totally agree about the Nintendo Seal of Approval, and the shovelware problem though. Personally I just ignore the shovelware and buy what I believe to be quality. But sometimes people get tricked and buy games they wish they hadn't. True. Also, the fact that so many crappy games were allowed to be released on Wii caused many people to just have a more negative attitude toward the Wii in general.

Also, regarding games like The Last Story, and Xenoblade Chronicles. I'm glad we have them/will have them now, but personally I'm very tired of, and even a bit offended by the fact that IF we get such games, we get them 2 years and even more after the fact. AND to get them, people have to beg. Namco with Tales of, and Nintendo with these two games shat on us a bit imo. I hope that trend doesn't continue.

I mean even though it was a 2 year old game, I bought Xenoblade, and Tales of Graces, and I'm enjoying them for what it's worth. But not only was I not anywhere near as excited about playing those games by the time I got to play them, I also felt absolutely obligated to buy them at launch in spite of the fact that there were New games I also had on my list at the time.

Even further, there was the obligation to buy a game like Tales of the Abyss for 3DS even though I'd already played it many times, and still own it for PS2 since there's that perpetual threat of not getting future games if you don't buy whatever they release...

Yeah, I got off on a bit of a tangent regarding localization, and NamcoBandai, etc. sorry, but since we're talking about issues I felt like venting a bit.

[ThePsychoGamer]

Those who say one company can do no wrong are the worse kind of fanboys. In my attempts to spread awareness of big issues like region locking, I've been attacked by several of these Nintendo fanboys who try to downplay this issue, even had one person say that a feature that the other systems had for years would magically eliminate this issue for the WiiU. The funny thing is that when I, and all the real gamers who ask for quality polices from game companies win this fight, those who try to downplay or even deny the issue will benefit like the rest of us, and yet they will never thank the people who made things like region free gaming on a Nintendo home console a reality.

Not to say they don't exist for other two systems either, My point is that it these kind of gamers that except stagnation over progression, never asking companies meet our expectations, and giving them no reason to exceed them.

Break the locks.

[JD_Shadow]

Think about something else, too: this is the internet.

You see, the internet, in of itself, has conceived something else equally as frightening and very annoying: the trolls. It's one thing when you have one or two people that you can easily ignore, and the rest act like adults.

Thing is, though, you have some sites in which everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, says something just to see who they can catch in the web of endless trolling, and tries to push the envelope, seeing what they can get away with. And it's VERY hard to ignore a large group of people who do this on one site (seriously, how many people on one site can you put on an ignore list before you see that you're ignoring pretty much the entire site?). It gets to a point where we beg for authority on said sites to have better control over who posts and of the rules of the site.

Sad thing is, there are trolls who KNOW what they are doing, and they know how to get you to respond to them. We try so damn hard to ignore them, but there are trolls who know that by posing as someone who is legit about the views they post, but adds that one one-liner that gets someone to say something to them. That's all it takes. Or they insert that one personal attack.

I've seen it happen on this site, and for very malicious reasons. I've seen a few people make personal attacks that were JUST within the rules of the site (so bad that you HAVE to respond), and then someone responds with no other alternative than to cross the line. Why? To see the latter get banned from the site because the former cannot find any real way to counter the person opinions. The best way is to get them to do something that makes them unable to post said opinions.

This is all while they insist you either let them get away with whatever the hell they want, or you're infringing on their rights, with no in between.

All of this is because of anonymity. They know that no one will really know WHO they are in real life, so that apparently gives them the pass to do WHAT they want, WHEN they want, HOW they want, and to WHO they want. How are you going to stop them?

IP banning? There are ways to circumvent that.

Account banning? How many accounts have they made? You're also underestimating how DEDICATED some of these people are (how many trolls have we had here? How many different dupe accounts have each of them had? For how long now have we tried to get rid of them?).

Real names? You get into privacy issues, and risk that debate flaring up in a heartbeat.

Then you add how derogatory the fanboy term has become and the many reasons WHY, and you have a recipe for complete disaster.

[TruthbeTold]

I agree. Anonymity is THE major reason why some people act so boldly in their inappropriate behavior. Even so, I'll deal with that and Trolls all the time, everywhere before I'd rather the internet become some overly regulated and babysat place.

As long as we have humans living together in communities, there will always be idiots who intentionally try to ruin things for everyone else. Once we change our own way of doing things too much in order to counter them, they've won. 'War on Terror', SOPA, etc.

If say for instance (and I'm just throwing this out there from off the top of my head), places like N4G, in addition to the bubble and agree/disagree system also had a code element that created a base behavior profile aspect to each user, then when the code found it apparent that the individual is always being negative and trollish on say for instance a Sony thread, that person would get fewer bubbles in Sony threads in general, until finally losing posting privileges.

Sure people make multiple accounts, and sure some people absolutely don't care. But those people are relatively few. A hardline approach to them would (after a while) send them back to 4chan or whatever other bridge they were born under. Ya know?