Do fans ruin everything?

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

During a recent conversation with a Valve-loving friend of mine, I made a fleeting remark about anxiously awaiting Portal humor to become passé. His first reaction was disbelief. He immediately asked me what I have against Portal.

Let me be clear. I LOVE Portal. I think it was a very successful experiment in the way a game can be made...and while I won't say that it's my favorite videogame, I will say that it is one of the very few titles (perhaps the only title) that I can think of with absolutely no outstanding flaws.

Unfortunately, as I see it, Portal falls under a despairing category of subjects that have been cheapened by the fans. Maybe it's just me...maybe I find it easier to love something the more obscure it is...but because of the fans of Portal, I simply can't bring myself to make another joke about cake or companion cubes or 'Are you still there?'

If I may tangent myself into another brief anecdote, I remember exactly when referential Portal humor was ruined for me. It was a potluck sort of get-together in the first floor of my dormitory, and even a few of the school's instructors came to enjoy it and socialize with the students. I'm regarded by the people I know as a lover of cooking, so I felt kind of pressured to bring something people would really like. I made several small hors d'oeuvres but for the big dessert, I cheaped out and got a storebought peanut butter chocolate cake. As I was shuffling through the awkward lines of my hungry peers, one of the older professors nudged my shoulder. When I say 'older'...well, I mean old. OLD! The kind of guy with a chest-length beard, suspenders, and a bowtie. The kind of guy that hadn't watched television in twelve years and still did all of his assignments on paper because he didn't know how to use a computer.

Straight-faced, he politely asked me..."The cake isn't a lie, is it?"

He didn't really understand what it meant. He just assumed it was some new hip lingo, I guess. Anyway, I promptly fake-laughed, finished eating, went back to my room and cried.

That's just one example. I can give others...like the furry artwork of rule 34 porn...or every single teenager with a MySpace who has witty Portal quotes in those glittery graphics stapled onto every inch of their self-worshipping webpage.

Portal is something I could love a LOT more...if less people loved it. I just hear too much of it...I start to assosciate it with things I dislike...and, as a result, the experience is cheapened. There are more games like that...or even movies or television shows! I adore Kingdom Hearts, but the epidemic of slash fiction deters me from complete, unconditional love! I have a strange fondness of Sonic the Hedgehog that has been chipped away at by both Sega themselves and every member of DeviantArt that recolors pictures of Cream the Rabbit and calls them original characters! Bleach and Naruto are tolerable...though, they'd be much more tolerable without 13-year-olds in Leaf Village T-shirts with whiskers etched on their cheeks in magic marker!

So, to make this post not quite so self-indulgent...has anything you enjoyed been made not so enjoyable by other people who happen to enjoy it? Do you prefer devoting yourself to something mainstream or something obscure?

Do fans ruin everything?

 

[Sky Captanio]

Sometimes.

 

[Titanguy654]

It sounds like your fault, not the fans. If they want to love something and talk about it, that shouldn't make you enjoy it any less.

 

[Aura Guardian]

Well a FF7 fan made me hate the game before I could play it. He didn't spoil anything but he wouldn't shut up about it. So to this day, I haven't nor will I play FF7

 

[Et3rnalLegend64]

Not quite for me. Fans only ruin stuff when it comes to the point that they only love to hate things about them or take it too seriously. The people that rabidly call for a character's death because they get in the way of their favorite pairing or FPS elitists that look down on everyone else. I can't avoid them because they're everywhere online. I stay far far away from fan-made stuff that can't be brought to my little section of the net. I go nowhere near KH slash, and it doesn't bother me at all.

 

[salamarian]

normal fans don't ruin everything, Halo fans ruin everything.

 

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

It sounds like your fault, not the fans. If they want to love something and talk about it, that shouldn't make you enjoy it any less.

The community around something is a big part of enjoying something. Statistically speaking, I think the more popular something is, the less welcoming and overall enjoyable the community that surrounds it is...and that, in turn, effects how I feel about a game or a movie or a book series. Makes sense to me, at least...

 

[Amnestic]

normal fans don't ruin everything, rabid fans ruin everything.

Fixed. Don't provoke unnecessary flame wars, especially over something so goddamn trivial as Halo.

We get it, you hate them. The game is years old now, move on.

 

[Usagi_dono]

As far as ive seen, the more obsessed the fan the worse it is... but that sounds very logical now,eh?

For example, ive got a 100% rabid WoW fan who says some really bad shit about ALL other MMORPG's out there. Never played them, or even seen screenshots... but oh, they are so uselsess and full of bland copies of things from WoW. Personally, I think WoW is a good game and all, but I cant bring myself to play it anymore

 

[The Rockerfly]

Look at the console wars. What originally started as a way to entertain people at home has turned into more controversial topics then religion or real war

 

[HardRockSamurai]

Not really. Fans only ruin things when they start dressing up in costume, leaking videos, and spamming forums like schizophrenic mad men.

 

[Titanguy654]

It sounds like your fault, not the fans. If they want to love something and talk about it, that shouldn't make you enjoy it any less.

The community around something is a big part of enjoying something. Statistically speaking, I think the more popular something is, the less welcoming and overall enjoyable the community that surrounds it is...and that, in turn, effects how I feel about a game or a movie or a book series. Makes sense to me, at least...

Again, that's you. It's not the fans fault that you're uncomftorble with them. It just feels like you have a weird phobia to popular things

 

[BonerMacTittyPants]

Well, sometimes the fans do take away a bit of the pleasure. The thing is, they can deprive a game of it's mystery and set a generic way to interpret things. It's not about big storyline spoilers, but also character personalities, the game's mechanics and litte details that would've been great to find out by yourself. It's annoying. And I had a similiar issue with Portal. I for one find no love for the Companion Cube. There, I've said it. I just don't understand how one sentence would make me love it. Though I think it was because I already seen people's artwork, quotes and comments about it and I was a little bit biased.

Currently, I await Call of Duty: MW 2 with much anticipation. I always enjoyed the series. Though the popularity of Modern Warfare made it's fanbase overwhelmingly huge and unfortunately, much diverse, especially in age. I often find myself reading comments and arguments both against, and in favor, that seem to be written by people who shouldn't be playing the game in the first place. That is why I'm starting to look at the recent titles in a diffrent perspective.

 

[historybuff]

When fandoms get huge, they start to suck. That is true.

 

[Aardvark]

There's stages of a product. In the initial larval stage, when the product is relatively unknown, fans are required to purchase and provide free publicity. These are the die-hard fans, the ones who were fans before it became famous. Once it achieves a level of notoriety, you start to gain your mainstream fans, the one who like the product because it is able to perform a function they require better than anything else they have. These you want to make up your main market base, but you need to appeal to them and ensure your product is of superior quality and price to keep them. When you get enough of these, that's when you start attracting the worst kind of fan. Fanboys. People who's love of the product stems not from any functional concerns, but merely because a significant number of other people use these products. It gives these vapid, shallow, worthless individuals something to talk about and to espouse their expertise on via the internet. It allows them to add launch and publicity events to their otherwise-empty calendars. It adds meaning to their pointless little lives. These are the best and the worst fans to have. The more you get, the larger your fanbase, the more fanboys will come flocking to your product. As you're guaranteed a revenue stream from these cretins regardless of quality, your quality will slip. Dissatisfaction with your products as a percentage will drop, as these clowns don't care if they have to replace it 5 times, as long as everyone else has one, they're happy. Finally, your products will drop to the point where regular consumers will no longer see a need for them, as they're overpriced, unreliable and have less of the required features that your competitors offer on the same product.

So it depends on if you value your cash more than your reputation.

 

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

It sounds like your fault, not the fans. If they want to love something and talk about it, that shouldn't make you enjoy it any less.

The community around something is a big part of enjoying something. Statistically speaking, I think the more popular something is, the less welcoming and overall enjoyable the community that surrounds it is...and that, in turn, effects how I feel about a game or a movie or a book series. Makes sense to me, at least...

Again, that's you. It's not the fans fault that you're uncomftorble with them. It just feels like you have a weird phobia to popular things

I suppose that may be true. Obscurity is just...attractive to me! That's why I like to import. That's why I love indie games. That's why I scavange unblinking across every videogame bargain bin I can find or troll about flea markets in hope that I could actually find a glittering gem amongst the patches of crabgrass.

But, I don't think it's ONLY me. The community around something can determine how much someone enjoys that something. Yeah, cheesecake is delicious, but if it was suddenly a huge fad among militant, Valerie Solanas lesbians to absolutely adore cheesecake, I'd probably avoid my favorite cheesecake hangouts (...Yeah, I'm stretching the metaphor far, but whatever). If people I find annoying tend to like it, I'll probably avoid openly talking about it for fear of attracting their attention. ):

 

[Titanguy654]

It sounds like your fault, not the fans. If they want to love something and talk about it, that shouldn't make you enjoy it any less.

The community around something is a big part of enjoying something. Statistically speaking, I think the more popular something is, the less welcoming and overall enjoyable the community that surrounds it is...and that, in turn, effects how I feel about a game or a movie or a book series. Makes sense to me, at least...

Again, that's you. It's not the fans fault that you're uncomftorble with them. It just feels like you have a weird phobia to popular things

I suppose that may be true. Obscurity is just...attractive to me! That's why I like to import. That's why I love indie games. That's why I scavange unblinking across every videogame bargain bin I can find or troll about flea markets in hope that I could actually find a glittering gem amongst the patches of crabgrass.

But, I don't think it's ONLY me. The community around something can determine how much someone enjoys that something. Yeah, cheesecake is delicious, but if it was suddenly a huge fad among militant, Valerie Solanas lesbians to absolutely adore cheesecake, I'd probably avoid my favorite cheesecake hangouts (...Yeah, I'm stretching the metaphor far, but whatever). If people I find annoying tend to like it, I'll probably avoid openly talking about it for fear of attracting their attention. ):

Sometimes, it's fun to be part of something big.

 

[KaiRai]

Yeah sometimes fans hype something up a shiteload, and then it turns out to be abysmal. I'm looking at YOU MGS2.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

yes i think fans do ruin things and they do more harm than good a lot of time by hyping things and wishing things that they want in a game or movie and then getting all pissed off when that doesn't happen. if you want a great example of where fans ruined things look at the Star Wars prequels and the new Indiana Jones movie

there are other times where they beat jokes to death and over use them

 

[mikecoulter]

Sometimes, when fans are being rather dull-headed yes. But otherwise no, fans if anything can improve a games worthiness and let others know it could be good. Look at Monster Hunter for the PSP, those Japanese people are going nuts for it...