"Contrarian" Gamers Suck Says Treyarch

[Greg Tito]

"Contrarian" Gamers Suck Says Treyarch

When asked if he could change anything about the game industry, Treyarch's community manager said he would stop all the bitching from fans.

The gaming industry, similar to many other pursuits, has a very vocal community of fans that post endlessly on forums about why this or that game sucks. There is nothing wrong with speaking your mind in a clear and concise way, but as the Community Manager for a major developer, Josh Olin thinks that such complaining isn't helpful. Part of his job is monitoring the Call of Duty: Black Ops community, and he finds reading the constant negativity and vitriol to be the worst part of his job.

"Personally, as a community manager who lives in the media or social media world every day, I think the social culture of video games is moving in a more negative direction as technology and social media continues to grow," Olin said. "Rather than growing with it, the trend seems to be devolving. More and more gamers seem to forget what this industry is all about." Which is ostensibly bringing fun and entertainment to millions of people, something that many so-called fans forget.

More than that, Olin believes the reactions are actually holding the industry back from taking risks. "It's a creative industry - the most creative form of entertainment in existence," he said. "Too many developers who try new things are getting burned by 'pundits' and angry entitled fans who look to be contrarian, sometimes simply for the sake of being contrarian. The only thing this attitude aims to achieve is stunt that creativity and innovation even further, which is something that no rational gamer looking to be entertained would want to do."

I may not be a huge Treyarch fan, but I think that Olin just perfectly expressed something that I've been considering for a while. Why are so many gamers quick to ***** about a game that exists solely to provide pleasure? It seems that the more popular a game is, the more people "hate" it, while they still play it every day.

Can't we all just get along?

Source: Now Gamer [http://www.nowgamer.com/features/1185/black-ops-first-strike-dlc-treyarch-interview?o=2#listing]


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[Daemascus]

This is too true. It really pisses me off to see someone says a game is bad, just cause they dont like it. For example, i dont like Deadspace, but that doesnt mean its a bad game.

 

[MrHero17]

I think that a large number of people complain since they think the game would simply be better if it was changed the way they wanted it to be. The thing is that there are non-bitchy ways to do that, a lot of game forums have "suggestion" boards where you can propose an idea in a polite manner.

 

[Woodsey]

Just a couple of days ago I read a news story about how Treyarch's latest BlOps patch has broken theatre mode (whatever that is), whilst a number of people still can't play the game in spite of their perfectly-capable hardware.

Whilst I agree that gamers are needlessly negative for the sake of it... Is this guy fucking serious? With the problems on his own game?

I'm also starting to notice these sorts of comments coming from certain types of developers. I've never seen people like Valve or BioWare say this sort of thing.

 

[Trogdor1138]

Well the gaming culture has always had a very large amount of negative commenting, but the same goes for every other medium I suppose.

I agree with this guy. I wish people would concentrate more on the great things.

 

[Legion]

I can see his point but there is a flip side to all this.

If developers/publishers stopped:

- Adding new DLC for games so quickly, even on release date for some; they are discussing Dragon Age 2 DLC already and the game isn't out for over a month yet.
- Stopped tacking on multiplayer to every game series, even if all it's prequels were single player only.
- Stopped churning out sequels like there is no tomorrow, while changing practically nothing.
- Stopped with the failed DRM.
- Waited until games worked fine before releasing them.
- Stopped shipping multiplayer games with 5 maps so they can intentionally wait for a month or two to release new maps that have to be paid for.

Then they'd get a hell of a lot less complaints.

Hence why the only complaints Valve gets are when games not released as soon as people would like. Basically Valve are loved so much that all people want is more of what they are selling.

 

[KefkaCultist]

This guy just made Treyarch gain a few respect levels for me.

Criticism of games is good as long as its constructive, but I've seen multitude of game forums and its just pathetic some of the things people ***** about.

EDIT: Just got reminded of all the people bitching to Blizzard because the WoW Cataclysm dungeons are "too hard". Oh, I'm sorry that they're trying to make the game a little bit more of a challenge than pushing a few fucking buttons. Here go play Barbie Horse Adventure, seems like the perfect game for you.

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

If you want the bitching to stop, perhaps you should make a game that doesn't suck. Black Ops deserves all the bitching that it gets, because it's a horrible game. How hard can it be to study CoD4 and copy what it did well? Honestly, Treyarch.

 

[Jumplion]

To an extent, I agree with Olin here. It's never nice to see a game you've worked hard on get lambasted with bitching and moaning of all sorts. That doesn't mean we should get rid of them, as some fans may genuinely want the game to get better and put out genuine criticism.

But the problem then, however, is it gets to the point of trying to separate the bitching and moaning to the actual criticism, which I think could be dangerous if it is not discerned correctly.

I think, deep down, every gamer wants their game to be as perfect as it can be, and constantly listing off the bad things among the endless praise is a way to do that. This reminds me of a recent discussion I had with an Escapist, he (you know who you are ;P) absolutely hated Heavy Rain and all it's flaws but I disagreed. I told him that, while I personally loved Heavy Rain despite it's flaws, it's a great thing that Quantic Dream had the balls to go out with it, and that he had the balls to criticize them otherwise nobody would want to improve upon things.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Sadly, the online community for games is all-too-often incredibly immature, short-sighted, unreflective, and outright obnoxious... and that drives me crazy, because we could be so much more with very little effort. The really crazy-go-nuts-making bit is that it's universal; every game's "fan" base seems to have the same mix.

I'd love to see less petty fault-finding and Platform Warz and more real discussions about the give-and-take that comes with creating games.

-- Steve

PS: reCaptcha must die, mixing latin (faituit) and english (excavating) like that.

 

[DustyDrB]

Can't we all just get along?

As long as there are Yanks fans and Sox fans...no.

Seriously, though. This is just a case of everyone wanting to be a critic. In this day where the occasional blogger can be viewed as a credible critic, everyone wants their opinion to have more weight. The internet gives people an audience, even if it is a tiny one. Give someone a soapbox and he'll likely make a speech.

 

[The Lunatic]

People have different opinions?

Holy shit.

 

[Outamyhead]

I kind of agree with Olin, but then most gamers don't know how to make a constructive criticism, they can only throw insults, and briefly mention the problem.

And where is the fun in a game that suffers from lag or just hangs up the system?

 

[Armored Prayer]

I now officially love this guy.

As I've been constantly stating I'm really sick of everybody bitching and demonizing games they don't like. Nothing wrong with not liking something, and its perfectly fine not to favor the game but enough with all this negativity! It seriously needs to stop.

This goes for us here as well. People, quit bashing, demonizing, and bitching popular games. It now pisses me off seeing a hate post or thread.

(Sorry for this rant, and if this was slightly off topic)

 

[Palademon]

"Rather than growing with it, the trend seems to be devolving. More and more gamers seem to forget what this industry is all about."

Not trying to be a troll here, but that may just be because about half of CoD's demogrpahic isn't gamers, and don't care about the industry.

 

[DVS Storm]

I agree with this community manager. Still I understand that people want to express their opinions but when one doesn't have nothing better to say than "BLACK OPS SUCKS HUGE DICK", then maybe that person could just remain quiet. This isn't really a problem here in the Escapist(thank god) but for example in Youtube(perhaps a pretty bad example but the first that comes into my mind) most of the comments are just childish(trolling I know but thats part of the issue).

 

[spartan231490]

Am I the only one that is a little angry that treyarc basically asked for feedback so they could improve the game, and now complain because they don't like it. It's the internet, of course your going to get whiny bitches, no reason to become one. Treyarc, Cry me a river, build a bridge, and get over it.