"Contrarian" Gamers Suck Says Treyarch

[Grabbin Keelz]

It's not the game itself I get upset about. It's when I find out that the game isn't very good AFTER I've payed 60$ for it. If I buy some cheap on sale game from Steam and see that it sucks, oh well thats like 20 or less spent, but 60 isn't just just a sum that you can afford to shit out every time a new game gets released.

 

[secretsantaone]

Treyarch representative says: Fuck free speech, gamers shouldn't give their unwanted opinions and should just let us tell them how to have fun.


nope.avi

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

If your creative super amazing game-evolving idea is stopped by people online whining about it then it must have not been that good or you are an extraordinarily weak-willed person. Truly creative people stand behind their ideas with conviction and defend them until the end.


That's my $0.02 at least.

 

[PhiMed]

This is too true. It really pisses me off to see someone says a game is bad, just cause they dont like it.

lolwut?

Yes. I, too, hate it when people express an opinion. Stupid free speech.

OT: While I agree with the subject of the original article that game forums are getting really negative, I also have to point out the irony here. An employee of Treyarch, a subsidiary of Activision, is bitching that gamers are stifling creativity.

No offense, Mr. Olin, but your employers (among others) are the ones that fostered the practice of actually listening to random people ***** about games. Random internet people, collectively, are stupid. Your company could easily ignore the bitching and support creativity with their wallets, putting their considerable marketing funds behind games they believe in, rather than behind games they already know will sell due to the sheep factor. Sure, you can sell a sheep game to support the genuinely creative efforts, but your company seems to do little else.

Your CEO has also gone on record stating that he isn't particularly interested in creating new ip. Ever.

So, Mr. Olin, your job is to monitor social media to listen to random noise and use that as legitimate input, and you seem to think this is a valuable enterprise. Thus, you're part of the problem. Shut up.

 

[Frotality]

i can definitely picture what the black ops fanbase what look like to a community manager; you have my sympathies mr olin. such is the way of competitive multiplayer in general ive noticed; multiplayer used to be about, ya know, having fun with another player, not just trying to be better than them, and with many games trying to topple CoD with their own competitive multiplayer, very few modern games can risk trying to be fun instead of perfectly balanced. fans will always complain about SOMETHING, but when it comes to competition, there is no change you can make that wont be heralded as an unfair nerf or overpowering. the best multiplayer i can think of is super smash bros; no one i played with ever played just to win, we played to have kirby send donkey kong into the sky with a mighty smack of an absurdly large hammer while princess beach uses her exploding ass cheeks to send bowser down a pit. competitive multiplayer is all well and good, but without games like smash bros, people get way too attached to the competitive philosophy; the fact that smash bros has some equally whining competitive players should show just how little the industry should be encouraging it.

i would advise trying to the make multiplayer fun first and perfectly balanced second....then maybe people might stop RAGING about it...but that will of course never happen as long as the CoD/halo formula is considered the moneymaker.

 

[kurokenshi]

Actually Developers forgot what it's all about!

 

[R0cklobster]

I'm surprised that after what the guy from Treyarch said, there are people still whining about how terrible the COD games are.

Take a step back. If you look at each of the COD games since 4 by itself, have they all been better than the majority of games out at the time? Yes, of course they have. Sure they aren't perfect, and just because they don't live up to being the 'greatest game that will be made between now and 2050' as some people seem to expect, it doesn't make them completely shit. I can't think of many other games, if any, that I can play for 4 days collectively before getting bored.

 

[Kroxile]

I think what the Community Manager's problem is is that he's being forced to stay in touch with a bunch of kids who play an online FPS. Because kids and online FPS games are never a good combination.

 

[Unspeakable]

I'm going to have to disagree here.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

I'd be inclined to believe him on the self-entitlement part... the Minecraft forums are a pretty good indication of that. Honestly, you'd think that being able to play the beta of one of the most original games of the decade for just under twenty bucks might make people be happy with what they've got, but no. Most of them seem to believe they paid for a constant stream of MMORPG style updates and a direct line to Notch so they can personally berate him for taking leave from work.

But that said, this guy works for Treyarch. Pointing out that these people need to grow up is one thing: blaming them for the stagnant games industry is a step too far. What about the fact that you work for Activision, a publisher who mercilessly churns out sequels year after year? Who refuses to grant their developers new IPs until they've satisfied some completely arbitrary probationary period? Who pulls the plug on projects halfway through development because they don't think anyone will buy it, and then sues the developer when they go to a different publisher who is willing to invest where they weren't?

At the end of the day, this guy isn't a designer, he's a community manager. He knows nothing about what it takes to make a good game, and by speaking in this capacity he's overstepped the boundaries of his position. From what I hear of the long list of problems surrounding Black Ops, I can't say that this kind of undisciplined response reflects well on Treyarch: by branding their critics 'contrarians' they've essentially resorted to name-calling in this debate.

 

[Susurrus]

Conversely, developers feeling that they can release bugged games because "we'll just patch it later", and marketing utter garbage from yester-year as the new must have is also annoying.

Additionally, he doesn't want criticism? So, it's our fault if he makes terrible terrible games? (CoD 5, I'm looking at you).

 

[Imbechile]

"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.

This.
Not trying to sound like a jackass, but a large part of the COD community are morons who can't even put a sentence together without insults and big spelling errors, let alone say anything constructive :-(

 

[Frostbite3789]

Is it just me or does this guy not sound exactly like the dude who was freaking out at critics saying they didn't get 'Epic Mickey' but since this is BlOps people agree with him?

Don't work for the games industry if you can't handle it. I mean, isn't this him...doing the exact same thing he's complaining about? He's being negative about the community. I'm sorry, your game is kind of broken from what I hear. Fix it, then people won't *****.

 

[MassiveGeek]

People need to learn the difference between "I don't like this" and "this is bad".
Seriously. Just because you don't enjoy something doesn't automatically mean it in itself is of bad quality - you're not the only customer, there are probably tons of people that love it, and others who don't. It's the whole different strokes for different folks thing. If you're insisting on hating something, at least give valid reasons as to why and don't just ***** about it - and if you insist of holding something up as the beacon of light that saves starving children, valid reasons for why should be presented.

It's perfectly fine to love a bad game - and it's perfectly fine to hate a good game. Just please explain your stance so you can adequently defend yourself from opposing viewpoints wirhout falling into a fit of immature rage.

 

[SpiderHam666]

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.

Now that may be a little harsh... nah

 

[Danish rage]

Im with Josh Olin on this.

And all you winers,IW fanboys, and sad people complaining. Don´t go away angry, just go away.

If we want to enjoy what is in gaming equvalent to junkfood, then let us. We don´t come into you´re basement complaing about the shitty wallpaper.

 

[9Darksoul6]

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

He forgetting that fans pay his salary.

Too many developers who try new things are getting burned by 'pundits'.

New things? Meaning the CoD franchise? Is this some joke?

Isn't lack of innovation is what CoD fans are complaining about in the first place? It's like everytime they release a game, they're doing MW1 over again, but worse.

Black Ops is all over the place, both in SP and MP: the game's constantly breaking and lagging, there's bugs everywhere, the story is a mess (worse than MW2), there's a non-interactive set-piece every 5 seconds, AI is DUMBER (how's that even possible?), MP still has the same balance issues, maps make no sense...
...and they want us to praise them?
Fucking do some work, like changing changing your game's engine (which is gets uglier every year) or thinking of gameplay different than shooting countless waves of enemies till you pass an invisible line, or even upgrading in some meaningful way MW1's multiplayer system; and then you'll have to right to ask us to stop bitching.

 

[cynicalsaint1]

I have to agree with a lot of what the dude is saying. I used to hangout at BioWare's message boards for ME2 and Dragon Age, but stopped because I eventually got sick of every other thread being someone complaining about something - seriously it was absolutely ridiculous!

I just wanted a place I could hang out to talk about two of my favorite games ... but the constant stream of whining and bitching about "Why couldn't I make this choice" or "I don't like how this plot point was handled" ... ugh!!!

Though I will add that I find it quite ironic that a rep from Treyarch is talking about innovation in the game industry, seeing as pretty much all they do is churn out sequels for Activision. But then again, perhaps its because they're frustrated by it too and want to try out their own thing.