"Contrarian" Gamers Suck Says Treyarch
- Thread starter Greg Tito
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This. I mean honestly what does he expect? He is reading comments on the internet? Isn't their an equation that explains this? internet + anonymity = being a dick or something along those lines?Cingal said:
Though he does bring up a lot of valid points, I think he is really not paying attention to WHY people are complaining. For every "This game sucks" on a forum, there are probably some people who articulate it better and have valid reasons as to why they think so. Otherwise you're just being trolled Treyarch. Figure it out.
Haha I am a Halo dweeb and that's a great guess, sir. Though I guess I didn't give enough indication that I was kidding and now everyone can stop sending me hate mail. Oh, and a extra special sorry to the mods if you're reading. Sarcasm isn't welcomed or well detected around here I s'pose.Mcface said:
"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."
Funny, seeing as how the CoD games HAVEN'T evolved, just a new packaging for the last 4-5 games. I do agree on people labeling anything they don't like as horrible. You need only look in a customer satisfaction section in any big online store. One person has a problem that maybe isin't so bad, yet they instantly label the company as the worse thing since the holocaust.
Funny, seeing as how the CoD games HAVEN'T evolved, just a new packaging for the last 4-5 games. I do agree on people labeling anything they don't like as horrible. You need only look in a customer satisfaction section in any big online store. One person has a problem that maybe isin't so bad, yet they instantly label the company as the worse thing since the holocaust.
He's not so much asking people to stop criticizing games, he's perhaps more imploring people to take on a more intelligent and decent approach to criticism - people trolling community forums with little to virtually nothing constructive to add is not doing the gaming industry any favors; and it's true, if you take a look around, it's virtually inescapable - there are forums here and there full of people who have nothing to say but "shit is shit", "fuck your games", "quit life, you can't make games for shit", "oh look, another game crapped out of your assholes", "I picked up a copy of your game and pissed on it because I fucking hate your games" - etc, some may sound ridiculous, but you would be surprised to find that people actually say these things.Grampy_bone said:
Games are a media platform that have a spirit instilled within them - they are made by socially aware people - for social creatures (of varying degrees, but social nonetheless) who look to be entertained. It's a relationship that actually goes both ways - good game designers through and through look to please and make us happy, and they look to us for inspiration, the next big idea/s and a reason to exist and keep making games apart from just earning their daily bread.
When it comes down to it - the games industry has a self-esteem (at the very soul: the designers, artists and writers), in fact, it needs it - it always seeks our approval and looks to us for guidance - and when it is not just solely for the purposes of just seeking profit for their corporate overlords and publishers; they still have to put some soul into their games even if they feel they are limited and restricted by genre and dare I say, release deadlines.
What Treyarch says is true - this negative community spam only serves to stifle creativity and innovation. I have seen an exponential decline particularly innovative or genuinely original and creative games since say... global net communities gained popularity and power. The faceless hordes of negative and vitriolic consumers have only served to weigh down their spirits and have totally forgotten that games are made by people too, but even the consumers forget they are people themselves when they can say anything they want as a faceless entity on a community forum.
Why would the soul of the game industry feel like it should put any heart and soul into their games when it seems like everything they make is just fuel for an ever growing fire for the hatred of the seemingly faceless and soulless mass they had aspired to appeal when they first decided that making these people happy was what they wanted to do with their lives.
His statements weren't so much: "waaah, I can't handle your criticism anymore" - it's more of a "your shit flinging pisses me off because I think you guys can be so much more to us, and in turn we can do more for you - we're trying, but you're the least inspiring people to work for; we want to care, but you're not letting us". It's a big wishful call, I know - and I doubt it will change anytime soon, but I am glad he's putting it out there instead of just taking it and resigning himself to becoming like what most other game publishers have become - money-making cookie-cutter game producing soulless megacorps.
If we want better games, there is a better way to do this than doing nothing but dissing the people who make them. We, as a community, already face a relatively harsh and apathetic reception by society and the world - the fact that the soul the community is a thick vitriolic and hateful cloud looming everywhere it goes is not helping it any.
It'll be the day when we can see the gaming industry become more enlightened and innovative than any other media. Big dream, I know - but I know I'd do what I can to push it in that direction, no matter how little I could budge it.
I'll read yours (post #284 ; http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/7.262196.9945059 ) if you read mineTherumancer said:
(post #290 ; http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/7.262196.9950271 ).I see we have some widely differing perspectives on this, and I'm glad this community doesn't devolve into mindless bashing, trolling and general mind-numbing behaviour; and it lets people like you and me feel more willing to post the what we do the way we do.
I think a lot of people feel like they are "above" other gamers by being more discerning when it comes to the big name titles like Black Ops. There's this idea that their opinion, even if it goes against the majority, is right.
I think it's an issue of authenticity. Call of Duty probably seems like a sell-out by now; it's like a summer blockbuster movie that nobody will be watching come next summer, let alone a few years down the road. It's purpose is to make money - there's nothing unique "being said" or revolutionary being done by Call of Duty. In this sense, the series' games are "bad". (I would like to note that, in the case of call of duty, it's the idea that the title can be replaced in the future rather than be timeless like Zelda, Half Life, etc.)
Thus, these contrarian gamers have a legitimate reason to complain. Series like Call of Duty are making it impossible for developers with unique ideas to compete. This is compounded by the ridiculous amount of resources required to get a AAA video game into production. In fact, I would argue that it's more difficult for a unique video game to make it to market than it is for a new band. Think of Call of Duty as the Nickel Back (or whatever generic, overly popular band you likely hate) of gaming.
And yet, Call of Duty is still pretty damn fun. It gets the job done so well that it's absurd to complain. The reality is also that complaining won't likely ever change the core economics of the risk of a games "uniqueness" to it's ability to make money. It's pointless, in short, to think the minority of us who are contrarians can get the developers to alter the game to a satisfiable extent. And yet we're not wrong, but, from a business aspect, ignoring us is probably right on the developers part.
I think it's an issue of authenticity. Call of Duty probably seems like a sell-out by now; it's like a summer blockbuster movie that nobody will be watching come next summer, let alone a few years down the road. It's purpose is to make money - there's nothing unique "being said" or revolutionary being done by Call of Duty. In this sense, the series' games are "bad". (I would like to note that, in the case of call of duty, it's the idea that the title can be replaced in the future rather than be timeless like Zelda, Half Life, etc.)
Thus, these contrarian gamers have a legitimate reason to complain. Series like Call of Duty are making it impossible for developers with unique ideas to compete. This is compounded by the ridiculous amount of resources required to get a AAA video game into production. In fact, I would argue that it's more difficult for a unique video game to make it to market than it is for a new band. Think of Call of Duty as the Nickel Back (or whatever generic, overly popular band you likely hate) of gaming.
And yet, Call of Duty is still pretty damn fun. It gets the job done so well that it's absurd to complain. The reality is also that complaining won't likely ever change the core economics of the risk of a games "uniqueness" to it's ability to make money. It's pointless, in short, to think the minority of us who are contrarians can get the developers to alter the game to a satisfiable extent. And yet we're not wrong, but, from a business aspect, ignoring us is probably right on the developers part.
Well, maybe if they'd focused on making Black Ops a little more fun then we wouldn't have these problems.
Sure, the game's balanced, but balanced doesn't always equal fun.
Maybe I'm just burnt out on COD, even though I haven't played either MW2 or BLOPS nearly as much as some other people I know.
Sure, the game's balanced, but balanced doesn't always equal fun.
Maybe I'm just burnt out on COD, even though I haven't played either MW2 or BLOPS nearly as much as some other people I know.
Watcheroftrends said:
The problem here is that the industry brings this kind of thing upon themselves, largely from being corrupt, greedy, and arrogant. Understand this is an industry that does things dancing on the edge of legality as a matter of course. You'll notice that with the gas companies they are under constant federal investigation nowadays for things like price fixing (everyone setting the same prices, within a cent or two of each other, rather than them directly competing to set the lowest prices they can while making a profit). You'll notice that all new games cost the same $60, whether they cost two million or twenty million dollars to develop. On top of this rather than directly competing with each other, they set release dates so that the games have as little direct competition as possible at a given time, that way nobody tries to undercut one another, and everyone can keep the same set price. We're recently seeing this with games like "Homefront" having it's release date pushed forward so it won't compete directly with "Dragon Age II", and the newest "Pokemon". In principle what should be happening is them deciding "well, we can lower our prices $20 and still make a profit, so we'll do that and hope people will buy our game instead". Now, there might be some technicality that allows the game companies to act as a cartel (which should be addressed) but honestly I don't think they have attracted notice from the goverment yet, because simply put the games industry isn't that big a deal financially. This may or may not change depending on how the content-censorship crusade currently goes.
Right now, a big part of the dislike towards the industry is that they have become so much of a big business/cartel in their operations, that all protests from game-makers aside, it's no longer about the games. It's literally about crapping out one turd after another in a lot of cases based on a formula about what sells. On one hand the developers say "hey stop treating us so badly", but on the others you see cases with them justifying themselves by pointing out what a huge profit-oriented business the industry has become.
The lack of REAL competition in the industry is also why you see so many games released as buggy messes. I've been in Beta tests for MMOs where I've seen big time bugs remain in the game for months before release despite the developers being told about them, and then also last for months later after release. Right now since everyone is setting prices and not competing directly, producing a quality product isn't as big a deal because it's far less likely that someone is going to say "wow, these guys release huge messes, I'm going to buy from someone else". The attitude is increasingly "we can fix it, if the game proves popular enough after release to justify the effort".
I think the real issue is that contrarians are NOT a minority of people, it's just that the game industry charges on ahead figuring that since everyone does the same things, we're either going to "take it", or stop gaming, and so far we're dealing with whatever they choose to hand us.
When the gaming community was smaller, and the industry didn't demand constant monster profits, I think it was a lot more positive. What's more I also think the community is at a point where I think they can engage in real design, rather than the current "paint by numbers" approach, even the casuals aren't quite as casual as they once were having gotten used to gaming. If the game industry wants the community to change, it needs to reform itself in a major way since it's really bringing a lot of this onto itself.
What's more, most of the people saying negative things are not unique, and special flowers each with original complaints. Typically you see community outcry around the same basic points, and it gets worse the more the game industry chooses to ignore what people think.
The game industry asking for feedback and then ignoring what they don't want to hear is also a big deal. What happened with "Hawke" in "Dragon Age 2" is an example of this. Bioware pretty much decided that is what it was going to do, but asked the community, got hammered with a resounding "no" and then decided to do it anyway, while pretty much claiming they received a positive response. With occurances like this, is there any question why the gaming community has an increasingly negative attitude towards the gaming industry? Right now I expect a majority of fans to be saying "yeah, Dragon Age 2 is cool, but it would have been better if I could make my own guy and have some differance in origins", which means that the reaction is going to be negative despite a lot of people playing it. Bioware could have adverted this by listening to the community response, especially since they ASKED.
Let's be honest, people rarely see themselves in a negative light. The gaming industry has done enough talking where it's easy to see things from their perspective (not that it helps their case in a lot of ways). On the other hand the gaming industry has not really viewed itself in a mirror to see what a group of corrupt, greedy, prima-donnas they have turned into. I doubt most of them even realize it. The gaming community however is going to continue to call them on what they do, as long as they keep behaving that way, even if a lot of people in the community can't itemize the problems the way I tend to.
I know many people disagree with me here, but that's how I see things. I think the gaming industry needs to drop acting like it's the victims and acknowlege that it's responsible for a lot of it's own problems and criticism. The problem isn't really the community since we're the customers and by definition always right since we're the ones paying the money.
Of course the general lack of consumer advocacy among gamers mean that we don't do much except whine. You'll notice very few gamers reinforce their attitudes with what they choose to spend their money on. "Black Ops" sold a ridiculous amount of copies despite the general hatred of Activision and Bobby Kotick. The only way to really influance the industry nowadays is with our money, and the biggest failing of the gaming community is it choosing to NOT buy games, rather than handing over the money and whining which hardly encourages the companies to change anything when they are making massive piles of cash.
I agree with the community manager that more and more criticism on game forums is simply coming in the form of angry mouth-breathing and not actual constructive criticism. It's all good and well to dislike a game, and it's better to suggest how that game can be made better, but simply jumping from one forum to another talking about how said game does rather unspeakable acts to ones mother is not doing any favors for the game or the community as a whole.
This. Such meaningless negativity has become much too common among gamers.shadowmagus said:
Err...I mean.....
Portal sucks 'cause everyone likes it! I don't care WHY they like it, that it was a budget title out of nowhere that actually dared to innovate, it sucks 'cause it got popular and your all mindless Valve slaves!!1111oneone
NOTE: I edited a bit.Palademon said:
This is actually pretty accurate.
You're not trolling, buddy.
I have friends who've bought an Xbox and only own the Call of Duty series from '4' onward.
It's pretty strange to see folks who've never mentioned gaming before leap into conversations about Kill/Death ratios and spew jargon.
I almost had a fit when I saw this.
A man who works for a company who just released the 6th sequel to a game talking about how the fans have ruined creativity in gaming.
Well you're right the fans have ruined the creativity but not by complaining, they're ruining creativity by BUYING these games every year.
Even if every person that plays COD:Blops starts a separate thread on how much they hate this game and COD in general, Activision will release another one next year because everybody still bought the game. Then other companies who are trying to develop successful games of their own see how well COD is selling and develop their own "COD" to try and hedge in on Activisions profits; it's a vicious cycle.
I realize that the phrase, "You vote with your dollars" has been used constantly and everybody is sick of it, but it's true. The people who ultimately decide what games get made and what games don't usually are only looking at how profitable the games can be.
Let's enter a hypothetical situation, let's say I work for a developer and I go to Activision with an idea for a game I want them to produce. This game is about taking on the role of a camel; you wander around the desert looking for fruit and other such edibles and you need to maintain a certain level of hydration while avoiding bedouin and other such people that will enslave you and not allow you to wander to your camel hearts delight.
Because there is no precedent for this type of game they would probably throw me out immediately because they see no way they can make money on it. I consider this game idea, if nothing else, creative and unique for the purpose of making a point.
If for some reason they decide to fund this game (say I change it so the camel has mounted machine guns and a friend who was put in a zoo and you have to break him out) and it sells 50 million copies, you can bet there will be at least one sequel and three knockoffs and they will keep making them so long as they can profit(see Madden).
Now if one day my hypothetical camel game stops selling after 13 sequels they will have to come up with ACTUAL NEW IDEAS for games, this means creativity, change, fresh air in a drab market smelling of camel!
The long and short of it is that if we stop buying Call of Duty games, they will actually have to exercise the long lauded creativity of the games industry for once instead of churning out the same game with two new features every year and making boatloads of money on them
A man who works for a company who just released the 6th sequel to a game talking about how the fans have ruined creativity in gaming.
Well you're right the fans have ruined the creativity but not by complaining, they're ruining creativity by BUYING these games every year.
Even if every person that plays COD:Blops starts a separate thread on how much they hate this game and COD in general, Activision will release another one next year because everybody still bought the game. Then other companies who are trying to develop successful games of their own see how well COD is selling and develop their own "COD" to try and hedge in on Activisions profits; it's a vicious cycle.
I realize that the phrase, "You vote with your dollars" has been used constantly and everybody is sick of it, but it's true. The people who ultimately decide what games get made and what games don't usually are only looking at how profitable the games can be.
Let's enter a hypothetical situation, let's say I work for a developer and I go to Activision with an idea for a game I want them to produce. This game is about taking on the role of a camel; you wander around the desert looking for fruit and other such edibles and you need to maintain a certain level of hydration while avoiding bedouin and other such people that will enslave you and not allow you to wander to your camel hearts delight.
Because there is no precedent for this type of game they would probably throw me out immediately because they see no way they can make money on it. I consider this game idea, if nothing else, creative and unique for the purpose of making a point.
If for some reason they decide to fund this game (say I change it so the camel has mounted machine guns and a friend who was put in a zoo and you have to break him out) and it sells 50 million copies, you can bet there will be at least one sequel and three knockoffs and they will keep making them so long as they can profit(see Madden).
Now if one day my hypothetical camel game stops selling after 13 sequels they will have to come up with ACTUAL NEW IDEAS for games, this means creativity, change, fresh air in a drab market smelling of camel!
The long and short of it is that if we stop buying Call of Duty games, they will actually have to exercise the long lauded creativity of the games industry for once instead of churning out the same game with two new features every year and making boatloads of money on them
I would like to say, that yes, we are far too vocal about small issues. Comes with the angst of immaturity and anonymity - deal.
That being said, perhaps if devs are tired of hearing people *****, have they tried to catalog what people are bitching about? 90% of all the people who ***** about games are just noise and can be filtered out. But 10% actually have constructed criticisms or well deserved gripes that if listened to might help you out on your next project. Just a thought.
That being said, perhaps if devs are tired of hearing people *****, have they tried to catalog what people are bitching about? 90% of all the people who ***** about games are just noise and can be filtered out. But 10% actually have constructed criticisms or well deserved gripes that if listened to might help you out on your next project. Just a thought.
You know, this has actually made me rethink the way I criticize games. Rather than saying "I hate it when it's down to a 1-on-1 fight between me and someone else, which happens a lot", I could say "I love big wars between groups of people, maybe you could try to have more of that?" Constructive criticism, rather than INTERNET RAEG (the best kind of raej).
The problem is they deliberately fuck with us by placing a few imba weapons, DELIBERATELY , into the game. Take the FAMAS, for example. If you look at it from a stats perspective, any retard would tell you that it's overpowered before inserting it into the game. It's got the same per-shot recoil of the other AR's (Unlike the TAR-21 which had very high recoil for balance). It takes the shortest time to return to the center of aim. It fires faster than the other full-auto AR's. Much faster. It's got very nice and clear iron sights, allowing you to forgo attachments to make it usable. 99% of the time the damage is the same as any other AR.
There's no WAY they were intending to make the balance there when they put these weapons into the game.
There's no WAY they were intending to make the balance there when they put these weapons into the game.