Watcheroftrends said:
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.
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.
