"Contrarian" Gamers Suck Says Treyarch

[Motiv_]

Do I agree with this guy? It depends.

What constitutes "Bitching". Does Treyarch just take all negative feedback and file it under "Bitching"? Because that's a very sorry excuse for developer support if so. If you make a game, you've got to expect hate and negative feedback, it's just par for the course.

You have to sift through the hate and find the constructive criticism inside, that's needed to improve your game. Just shutting your ears and yelling "Lalalalalala" is not only childish and stupid, it's extremely detrimental to a game's future.

Just an idea.

 

[Jopoho]

Do developers shy away from innovation because of complaining fans, or do fans complain because developers have moved away from innovation?

I don't feel like every game and game company is subject to the whining that Treyarch likely receives on a daily basis. I'm sure part of that problem is that they are riding the wave of success that is CoD and a big target for people who like to be negative, but surely that's not all there is to it.

Incidentally, I have only played about 15 minutes of Modern Warfare 1, none of Modern Warfare 2, and about an hour of Black Ops (Shooters generally aren't my cup of tea, but the crossbow was awesome), so I can't really speak to the quality of their games or the samey-ness that is apparently present. However, if so many people feel that way, something must be off.

 

[JoshGod]

If people can complain there is something to complain about. Granted most of the time complaints are from ignorant people, idiots or trolls, however this does not mean your game has not earned it. Also how can you talk about people getting burned for new things, except for zombies there has been nothing improved on since cod4. They're complaining from lack of creativity or technical issues.

Why are so many gamers quick to ***** about a game that exists solely to provide pleasure?

I thought that after cod4 they existed to generate money, due to a lack of improvement in quality.

 

[Char-Nobyl]

More popular game --> more people have opinions on it --> more negative opinions will be heard.

Here's another thing: people are dramatically more likely to vocalize negative reactions/opinions than they are positive ones.

Take both of those into account, then do the math. Of course you're going to hear more negative opinions of games. Hell, the same would be true simply because of population growth even if gaming weren't such a rapidly growing industry.

 

[DoctorObviously]

Man, I love Treyarch's boss!

 

[Alphavillain]

Well, new media like the internet attracts a lot of trolls, because there is a lack of responsibility for the comments an individual makes. You can say something on the internet that would get you punched in the face in real life knowing there's virtually zero chance of getting caught for it.

Seeing as the gaming community is very young, and therefore au fait with new media, with a fair amount of free time and lots of opportunities to not only play games but to post on forums and other sites, it's not surprising to get lots of people slagging games off. If people regularly go on Youtube to post the worst racist shit imaginable, moaning about a game they have actually bought is pretty tame.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

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.

Those are all perfectly valid and reasonable basis for complaint but I strongly suspect these sorts of things are not what the gentleman was referring to. If you change your aiming system, people piss whine and moan. If you keep the same aiming system another group does the same. If you game is absurdly popular people complain that "it is too derivative". If it is incredibly niche people complain that it reached to far and fell short.

Each of these points could be based on logical reason and experience but all too often it is simply because bitching gets clicks quicker than praise, and, as ever, complaining about a problem is easier than doing anything to resolve it.

 

[dfphetteplace]

I'm sure this has been stated before, but I think the negativity is due to the fact that it is easy to be negative instead of coming up with suggestions on how to improve something. These people can point out all the flaws of a game but never some up with their own ideas. I'm not saying this never happens, but it is certainly the exception to the rule.

 

[Cropsy91]

The problem with this guy's statement on 'negativity holding back creativity', is that it works the other way around too.

When you make a new game with new ideas, there are two things that are likely to happen.

If you release the game and people love it, the developer may very likely go "Hey, people love this! Lets pump out 10 more titles just like it."

If people don't like it, the developer's reaction would likely be "Oh crap, lets ditch this new stuff and pump out 10 more titles that are just like the last successful game we did"

 

[tehroc]

I bet he doesn't complain about incessant brown-nosers and fanboys.

 

[mitchell271]

Can't we all just get along?

NO!, COD fucking blows.

....who's up for some gay ass fag mother dick sneezing black ops, bros?

I really hope you mean that ironically

 

[Dastardly]

"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."

And there you have it, emphasis mine. They feel entitled. To something in a game. For entertainment. Because that's how the Western world works:

Step 1: Something is created as a novelty.
Step 2: It becomes a more common luxury.
Step 3: It takes its place as a modern convenience.
Step 4: It is touted as a necessity.
Step 5: IT IS A RIGHT, GOD DAMMIT!

(One of the more recent examples of technology doing this? The cell phone. Really think about it.)

Too many gamers think that because they've spent their money on a game, they're suddenly shareholders in this virtual corporation, and their opinions are now a mandate. They've learned over the years that people have gotten what they wanted by threatening to "take their business elsewhere," and they tend to use that threat over and over and over, because it's their newest toy.

Also, because "gamer" has emerged as a sort of social status. So these fans want their particular, exclusive, elitist gameplay desires to represent the majority of the gaming market--because any game that is not exactly what they want is obviously stealing resources away from the creation of those things they want. Video game accomplishments are real, and anything that might erode the value of those accomplishments is met with hatred, and its proponents mocked as Noobs.

 

[Direwolf750]

The person is Community Manager for a series of games whose most popular feature is multiplayer. Versus multiplayer. As John Romero put it, Deathmatches. The entire community is trying to kill each other at one point or another. It's no big surprise that there is negative feedback of the forums.

Before anyone asks (or doesn't) I despise the call of duty series. They contribute little to nothing to video games or even first person shooters as a genre. The games are pretty much the same game in different hats. Yes, I'm sure a lot of work went into them, but it doesn't help that the most distinguishing feature of a game is that you can do almost exactly the same things that you did in the previous one.

 

[Naturality]

Bitching has got worse in some cases because the games have got worse, but generally I agree with Treyarch. Every focuses on what a game has done wrong rather than what it got right.

I mean, when was the last time you played a truly god-awful game? Most of them nowadays would have been killer 5/10 years ago.

 

[Naturality]

Oh please, I did this with a large fresnel lens years ago.

Hardly news...

 

[acidtechnologic]

Even though i agree with Olin to an extent, he is dealing with the Call of Duty community. Treyarch is known for taking Infinity Ward's success and running with it, attempting to add little differences here and there, but overall sticking with the same experience that the previous games have given. I don't think the COD community is being "contrarian", they're just nitpicking because there is so little that is different between all the entries in the series. And besides, gamers in general don't hate on games that are innovate/different. Look at Angry Birds, for instance. There wasn't a game like it beforehand, and everyone seems to love it.

 

[Legion]

Those are all perfectly valid and reasonable basis for complaint but I strongly suspect these sorts of things are not what the gentleman was referring to. If you change your aiming system, people piss whine and moan. If you keep the same aiming system another group does the same. If you game is absurdly popular people complain that "it is too derivative". If it is incredibly niche people complain that it reached to far and fell short.

Each of these points could be based on logical reason and experience but all too often it is simply because bitching gets clicks quicker than praise, and, as ever, complaining about a problem is easier than doing anything to resolve it.

I agree.

Although what irritates me the most are companies that listen to all these whiners.

Epic with Gears of War 2 is a perfect example.

- They made smoke grenades that knocked you down.
- People complained as it could knock you down for too long if you were standing on a gradient.
- They changed the grenades to have a very specific timer so you always got up after a certain amount of time.
- People still complained.
- They removed the ability for smoke grenades to knock people down.

- They made the shotgun slower than Gears of War so it wasn't overpowered.
- The people who loved the GOW1 shotgun complained.
- They sped it back up again.
- People complained that the Shotgun was too powerful in combination with the melee.
- They made the stun from being meleed shorter.
- People complained that now people just meleed people down instead.
- They made melee's weaker.

So what are they doing for Gears of War 3? Making all these stupid changes standard because the minority of whiners wouldn't STFU about how the game changed to stop them using their tactics from Gears of War 1.

 

[Canid117]

Can't we all just get along?

NO!, COD fucking blows.

....who's up for some gay ass fag mother dick sneezing black ops, bros?

Haha I see what you did thar.

 

[Asehujiko]

TL;DR - If given global mind control, Treyarch would shut down all forms of criticism over their work?