"Gamer Entitlement": Current state of gaming journalism and industry

[GloatingSwine]

First of all he is younger, Angsty and essentially not your average brown haired protagonist. Making your whole point about making the image fall completely flat. The fact that you even compare all those chars as one is completely idiotic. If I go wisecracking multiple of those pictures drop off.

The brown haired white male protagonist is a purely visual thing though. It is a comment on the lack of diversity in visual design for game heroes, yes, predominantly in western games (and the new DmC is a western game), but those are the highest profile releases right now. Dante has become that, changing five minutes from the end of the game doesn't make him not that. He looks like every other protagonist ever now.

Secondly I can make an image with silverhaired douches as well as well. They would be a Japanese stereotype protagonists. Essentially making this into an issue of choosing one cultural stereotype over another.

And you'd be wrong, because although that's a thing that sometimes happens, if you see that silver haired character in a Japanese game you're usually going to think antagonist, not protagonist. Your stereotype is wrong, your arguments are wrong.

Thirdly I am not arguing wether or not you should buy it based on promo material. I am saying wether or not promo material judges it for what it truely is.

If promotional material doesn't tell you what a product truly is (and it's not a deliberate fakeout cf: MGS2) then it's doing its job wrong. And from what I've seen in reviews, the promo material is exactly correct when it comes to DmC. And no, a cutscene right at the end or the devil trigger mode don't count, because they do not represent the protagonist as he is throughout the actual game, which is that bhwm guy.

 

[GloatingSwine]

So you dont accept the cut scene as representative of the games char, but insist on representing him through the promo material.

One cutscene which constitutes almost certainly less than a tenth of a percent of the content of the game is not representative. Images which represent Dante as he appears during the other 99.9% of the game are.

Do you get it now?

 

[OuroborosChoked]

Strawmen

You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.

Strawman
A misrepresentation of an opponent's position

for example

So you blame the fans for not buying a game from a company that specifically said it doesn't care about the fans or their money and was looking for mainstream appeal?

My definition is pretty solid.

You might be the one who doesn't know.

Oh right I see you do know what it means you just use it incorrectly because you have no other means to defend your idiotic ramblings.

Ad hominum

The last resort of a man without an argument.

1. A strawman argument is when you mischaracterize your opponent's position, argue against the mischaraterization, and claim victory for defeating the argument. Basically it's arguing against a simulacrum of the original argument, not the argument itself. It is not just misrepresenting someone's position.

2. It's ad hominem, not "ad hominum".

3. Ad hominem is not just when someone insults you, idiot. Ad hominem is a fallacy where you say something like, "Draech is of dubious character and is therefore wrong." It's a kind of red herring.

Do you see the difference? It pisses me off when people use terms they don't understand AT ALL and act like they're so goddamn smart. Newsflash, bub: you just made yourself look like an idiot, and you didn't even realize it. Now it's online forever.

Anyway, on topic.

I could give a toss about DmC or the original series, but I just wanted to share a video of a guy who only recently played through the entire series... and still found the latest offering lacking. And he has many reasonable objections, too... none of them revolving around hair.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0a_QlurNZU

If you like his stuff, I'd suggest watching his Other M videos. They're quite good, though a bit Prime-worshippy...

So essentially you came to correct my spelling, and then tell me what I already know and already did?

And I am sorry a mischaraterization is the same as a missrepresentation what talking in an effort to defeat the opponents argument. And that is exactly what they did multiple times.

Ad hominem is a case of arguing the man rather than the argument. Hence why it is latin for "to the man". Ignoring what what the argument is order to call me an idiotic rambler* to try and support the idea that I dont know what Strawman means. That is Ad Hominem. The only thing you got right was me spelling it wrong.

*Original text: "Oh right I see you do know what it means you just use it incorrectly because you have no other means to defend your idiotic ramblings".

I guess on top of not knowing how fallacies work, you also have difficulty reading. He characterized your ramblings as idiotic, not you. See emphasis added above, both in his statement and your reply. Just because you took it personally doesn't mean he said it.

Further, simply misrepresenting your opponent's position is not a strawman. The example you cited was just someone asking if he understood what you were saying. That does not make it a strawman, as he did not go on to argue against the interpretation he derived from whatever you had actually said (at least, not in the snippet your quoted). To wit, you cannot post a single sentence as an example of a strawman. It makes no sense without the context. You could argue that something was a strawman to a complete stranger until you were blue in the face... but unless they know what the original argument was, you'll never convince them. I, for one, do not have the time nor the interest to pore over every line of text in this ridiculous thread to find the original post, then the response, and determine for myself if what you're saying is true. Posting a single sentence from a reply without ANY context and saying it's a strawman is WORTHLESS.

Now you've just wasted more of my time. Thanks. Am I going to have to come back and explain it all again or are you going to get it this time?

 

[mxfox408]

-snip- for space

The problem is that the critique didn't show up before the those series were out.

It did with DmC.

Furthermore there is a difference in actively seeking its destruction. If it was just "I will take my money elsewhere" sure there would be no problem, but its not. There are "fans" who will actively seek the games destruction in an effort to vindicate their opinions. If there were people actively trying to undo some popular culture (Cough Star Wars Cough) out of personal opinion of material I will have the same opinion of them. Get over yourself. It is just a Franchise. You dont own it. You just like it.

Then why are you here attacking people for forming an opinion before purchasing a product? Yes there are people who want its destruction, you cannot stop that from happening. I fail to see how that's relivant to this topic. If an industry wants customers it will pretend to listen at the very least or have better PR reguardless of the idiots out there, otherwise it just turns people off when a professional company is acting immature about it. I have no idea why your arguing that point of justifying developers acting like a bunch of Jr high kids instead of the paid professionals they supposedly are especially the money that comes from customers who have certain expectations of the product they are buying. At this point I have to assume your trolling based on a biased opinion you formed about a game you like.

 

[Something Amyss]

Companies are not entitled to my money and they should have no right to insult a customer on multiple occasions for not buying their products, then raging when their product fails.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, as the case may be), one right both sides have is to speak in any way they damn choose. They have the right, the entitlement, to sound like utter tools if they want. This includes the right to lash out at us because they though pissing us off was a good consumer relations move.

One of the big problems I think plagues both the internet and America (where a lot of this rage does originate) is that people confuse "can" and "should." Specifically, they they think the right to do something means they absolutely should. Some of the worst people hide behind the right to free speech or the entitlement of opinion.

The ultimate outcome is that both sides talk over one another and nothing gets changed.

However, companies have every right to be dickbags and worse, we've given them reasonable expectations that we will buy their product anyway. It's going to take more than a DmC or two to change that, too. We've reinforced the notion that we will buy their games anyway, even if we cry boycott.

But this is sort of tangential to entitlement.

Entitlement really is an overused buzzword. And entitlement itself isn't bad; rather, what people are on about is a false sense of entitlement. However, it's gotten to the point that people complain about a false sen of entitlement in cases where you really should feel entitled. You should feel entitled to expect a game to live up to promises made by the makers (even if they say "but we're artists!") You should feel entitled to a game that is reasonably free from defects. You should feel entitled to use of a product if you have paid money for it.

The gaming industry's sense of entitlement is less touched upon.

This backlash against consumers not buying their products is stupid, juvenile, and exactly what we should expect from the gaming industry because they are the ones who have been acting all self-entitled.

"We deserve to get paid twice unlike any other industry!"
"We deserve to fix prices unlike any other industry!"
"We deserve profits even if you don't like the game!"
"We deserve profits even if you don't BUY the game!"
"GIMME GIMME GIMME!"

 

[Frission]

In that case they were not any different, but equally disgusting and childish behavior from self entitled man children.

So that's what you think of the fans deep down when you strip away all the rhetoric.

Fans were told to vote with their wallets and when they did the producers were surprised and blamed the fans. It doesn't matter what this whole fiasco is about.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Since it seems that this thread has turned into another "Is DMC good" arguements, I'll leave my 2 cents on the OT and bail:

I do agree fans have a tendency to go waaaaaayyyyyy overboard, but they sort of have the right to. As the OP pointed out, free market. The companies appeal to the consumers, not the other way around etc. The point of promotional art is to make people buy the game. If it angers people into telling people into not buying the game, then it's your own fault. You don't get to blame the customers for getting biased against the game from your promotional material, because that's a problem with your own advertising. You especially do not have the right to blame your consumers and calling them "losers" because of your own fuck ups (It's not just wrong, it's also stupid. That sort of reaction alienates customers even more.) Yeah promotional material that overhypes your game game is an awful thing to do, but making your promotional material anger fans is just dumb. I won't be buying DMC because the user reviews, promotional images and videos of the combat all lead me towards thinking the game has forgone gameplay in favour of spectacle in addition to the fact I don't want to support a gaming studio which seems to enjoy responding to criticism with confirmation bias. That may or may not be true, and I've never played the game proper so I don't know for sure, but that's what the advertising has lead me to believe, so sale lost.

As for gaming journalism, the two main problems are:
1: Game reviewers constantly in bed with the PR people, so they enjoy defending them to get invited to their special reviewer events and
2: A lot of game reviewer websites are focused on rating how "fun" a game is, if it's fun they give it a 7-9, if it isn't they give it a 5, if it is painful to play, they give it under a 4. Since the very act of playing a video game creates a sense of accomplishment, it's very hard to make a game that isn't "fun" unless you make it nigh-unplayable. Because of this we get a case where we get a traffic jam of people trying to rate game on a 3-point scale which doesn't really represent the comparisons between games properly.

 

[GloatingSwine]

So you dont accept the cut scene as representative of the games char, but insist on representing him through the promo material.

One cutscene which constitutes almost certainly less than a tenth of a percent of the content of the game is not representative. Images which represent Dante as he appears during the other 99.9% of the game are.

Do you get it now?

I would like for you to stop cutting my post in half in order to try an avoid what I am saying.

I say again.

Incomplete information. Dante isn't just a single image. His char as a whole is made up of individual small bits. If you can pick off cinematic bits as you please in order to define his char I get to pick of cinematic bits in the previous games. And all of a sudden he is not the son of Sparda. You dont get to cherry pick your information to fit your preconceptions. Reality doesn't work like that.

Who's trying to argue that a single cutscene which represents a tiny fraction of the game is an accurate representation of Dante's design again?

Oh right, it's YOU.

For ALMOST ALL of the new DmC Dante looks like he does on the front of the box, and he's a brown haired white male, the same as ALL THE OTHER brown haired white males in videogames.

It is YOU who is trying to cherry pick a single cutscene, rather than the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of the product.

 

[Savagezion]

I do get your first overall point and I agree but I need to just make one counterpoint on how much of the weight the fans could possibly even be responsible for.

It's like saying the new Forrest Gump film is bad because Michael Bay directed it, and he directs bad movies. That argument has no room for the question of whether or not the new film is any good. Ultimately, the criticism should be founded in the quality of the actual game, not one's opinions of the developer.

One thing to keep in mind though is anyone who would discredit a movie because of Michael Bay directing it, I dismiss entirely. (It's relevant, stay with me) Michael Bay is batting around 80-90% for doubling a studios money. If a studio hands him $400m there is a 80-90% chance that movie is going to pull in $800m+. That makes him a fantastic director in that sense. Everyone complains about the transformers movies, yet they steadily got more lucrative with each sequel meaning more and more people were going to see it with each movie until Transformers 3 finally ended up the #5 top grossing movie of all time. Plus, I always thought transformers lore was crap and I actually think he did the lore a favor personally despite the fact that even with that "favor", I still think its crap. He had bad source material to work with but it worked a little.

Why is that relevant? Because assuming that someone will just go along with your projection of a creative source highly discredits their own free will. It is like when my brother said something about Assassin's Creed and I actively discredited the game by saying it was highly repetative, the story was bland and predictable, and the combat was monotonous. This was music to his ears and that SOLD him on the game. I was attempting to let him know that I found the game dull and just very generic and that was exactly what he was looking for. As someone who hasn't played a DmC game, someone telling me I shouldn't play it because of the hair or Ninja Theory, I will dismiss overall because my lack of experience doesn't give their claims weight. It's like saying I shouldn't play because purple exists. People talking crap on a game doesn't necessarily give weight to their claims to many people.

As I said though, I do get your point on circular logic. I just wanted to post that side point.

snippity

I can't really comment on whether or not Capcom's point is actually valid. The shitstorm curried up by the fanbase may or may not be the reason behind the lower-than-expected sales. Answering that question requires sales data that Capcom hasn't actually made public. It's much more likely that it's a combination of several factors. And while the fan shitstorm is only one of several possible causes for the lower-than-expected sales, it is a plausible one. Capcom is entirely within their rights to say that the vocal and often unreasonable shit-stirring of the DMC hatedom contributed to lowered sales.

The problem I have with the OP is that it's incredibly partisan. The OP clearly doesn't like the new DMC, or Capcom, or Ninja Theory. He's perfectly willing to blame the low sales on Capcom's poor PR, even though he's conflating Capcom's PR with articles written by independent journalists. But he's conveniently ignoring the possibility that the bad press cuased by a vocal minority may have contributed to those lowered sales - even though he said in his post that he told everyone he knew not to buy the game. He's also conviently avoiding the question of whether the game is any good, because he knows he's swimming against the current of critical opinion.

Basically, Capcom is making a reasonable point that the negative fan reaction generated bad press and hurt sales. It might not be true, we don't have the facts, but it's plausible, and Capcom's not unjustified in saying it. In response, the OP is mischaracterising it (Capcom thinks it's entitled to our money after treating us like shit!) for an ulterior motive (making Capcom look like the usual callous corporate overlord). I don't think that's fair. It's not fair to Capcom and Ninja Theory, who've made a decent game that underperformed, and it's not fair to the reviewers, who are implicitly accused of corruption in giving the game a good score.

Well, another thing to consider also is that 5m copies was pretty damn optimistic. This chart is from info released by Capcom in 2008:

In Dec of 2012, DmC4 has sold a reported 2.7m units.
http://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/business/million.html (#11 on the list)

What in the hell made them think that the reboot would sell more copies than DmC 3 and 4 combined? Especially, when fan backlash has been bucking development since its announcement? They picked a crazy number and then got upset when the stars didn't align. They actually think they are "entitled" to 5m sales and I can't see where they are basing that logic on. Where did they get that number from? IS that how many they wanted to sell? I wouldn't say that blaming the fans for them not hitting that number is plausible. If those 2.5ish million people voted with their wallets and we assume a 50-50 split among the fanbase, we arrive at 1.25 million sales. Now I know that assumption is so smudgy it you could probably rub it off your screen, but I don't see the backlash as influencing negative sales so much as the backlash is your missing sales.

Their accusation is plausible in the sense that it could happen - but I wouldn't call it reasonable as I think it is highly unlikely and I can see a more likely alternative as to why it is the way it is.

 

[SonOfMethuselah]

I refuse to jump into this full-force, and as such have not read most of the posts here, so this may have already been said. But I feel the need to say it anyway, to make sure it's been said. In the simplest possible way:

There are two sides to every story. You're telling your side, from the perspective of a gamer and fan of these developers/franchises/characters/whatever, who feels trodden upon for whatever reason. There is nothing wrong with being unhappy with the way a company conducts their PR, especially since if you, as P, feel like the R you're receiving hasn't been particularly good.

But you're totally ignoring the fact that there's another side to it, and, as such, painting that side entirely black. Think of this from the perspective of the development team, who are putting months upon months of work into these titles, only to (in the case of DmC), have to be constantly torn into, insulted, threatened, and otherwise bullied for making some changes to an established franchise, before the game had even come out yet. I think they have the right to be angry.

On the other side, you have Bioware, who put tons of work into Mass Effect 3, and then the only thing that people could focus on was the ending. There was a whole game there, not just an ending. You're condemning an entire trilogy for one moment that you didn't like. I think they have the right to be angry.

And you, as a gamer, have no right to ***** and moan about being called entitled, when you're, in effect doing the same thing to those who worked on the games by making a thread like this. You're calling them entitled, in your own way. It's not right, and it's not fair.

There are two sides to every story. You're completely ignoring their side, because you're too entitled to see it.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

snip

I agree with you that five million sales is a ludicrously optimistic target point. Capcom definitely bears some of the blame for not meeting their projected sales - especially if their projections were so far off.

What I'm getting at is that there's a difference between these two statements;

1. Capcom says it's entitled to at least five million sales of its video game.
2. Capcom says that negative fan reaction contributed to lower-than-expected sales.

The first point is what the OP is arguing against. The second is what Capcom's actually said. The second point is way more reasonable, and I agree with Capcom; it's entirely possible that the bad press caused by fans would hurt sales. It doesn't take a genius to work through that logic.

There's just a huge difference between estimating that your game will shift five million copies and saying that you are entitled to five million sales.

 

[King Billi]

The expectations for success nowadays and the supposed sales figures required to deem so many new games nowadays a "success" usually just serves to make me wonder why anyone bothers making videogames at all... The odds of making a profit often seem hard enough even without any fan criticisms or controversy to worry about.


I've said before that I actually like hearing the actual developers responding to fans(often ridiculous) attacks on them personally, I think it's refreshing to see the actual creators not backing down from insults and threats and treating such childish behavior with the contempt I personally feel it deserves. That is just me though and while I personally like to see this kind of honesty I can't say really blame those who consider it unprofessional... I mean they're really not doing themselves any favours or encouraging people to buy their game are they?


So in the end while I can respect their stance in defending their creation I hope their pride makes up for the loss of profits such a stance could bring upon them.

P.S. On a different note is DMC an undisputed failure yet? I mean I know they said it was underperforming but has it really "bombed" that badly? Are people likely to lose their jobs over this?

 

[shadow skill]

I refuse to jump into this full-force, and as such have not read most of the posts here, so this may have already been said. But I feel the need to say it anyway, to make sure it's been said. In the simplest possible way:

There are two sides to every story. You're telling your side, from the perspective of a gamer and fan of these developers/franchises/characters/whatever, who feels trodden upon for whatever reason. There is nothing wrong with being unhappy with the way a company conducts their PR, especially since if you, as P, feel like the R you're receiving hasn't been particularly good.

But you're totally ignoring the fact that there's another side to it, and, as such, painting that side entirely black. Think of this from the perspective of the development team, who are putting months upon months of work into these titles, only to (in the case of DmC), have to be constantly torn into, insulted, threatened, and otherwise bullied for making some changes to an established franchise, before the game had even come out yet. I think they have the right to be angry.

On the other side, you have Bioware, who put tons of work into Mass Effect 3, and then the only thing that people could focus on was the ending. There was a whole game there, not just an ending. You're condemning an entire trilogy for one moment that you didn't like. I think they have the right to be angry.

And you, as a gamer, have no right to ***** and moan about being called entitled, when you're, in effect doing the same thing to those who worked on the games by making a thread like this. You're calling them entitled, in your own way. It's not right, and it's not fair.

There are two sides to every story. You're completely ignoring their side, because you're too entitled to see it.

There's just one problem, it doesn't matter if they have the right to be mad. It is immaterial to the entire situation, they changed things from the way they were and therefore had to know it was going to cause a problem. They proceeded to insult the previous design. They made their own problem far worse than it had started out being by trying to pretend that they were trolling, by creating a meme about the hair which their industry agents (The gaming press.) gleefully repeated, and by saying that he [Tameem] did not care about fan reaction. They came to the whole thing with an air of disrespect for the source material and it shows. Who in their right mind would think to insert himself so deeply into an already established franchise the way Tameem has? Why is his twitter id anywhere in this game? Who decided to put that stupid scene with the mop in the beginning of the game?

They didn't just change things from the way they were, they changed things into something far worse than what we had before because they don't understand what DMC is supposed to be. It isn't supposed to be an overly serious yet simultaneously laughable social commentary. Dante isn't supposed to be Nero. Who couldn't admit to themselves that this wasn't working?

 

[GloatingSwine]

Who's trying to argue that a single cutscene which represents a tiny fraction of the game is an accurate representation of Dante's design again?

Oh right, it's YOU.

For ALMOST ALL of the new DmC Dante looks like he does on the front of the box, and he's a brown haired white male, the same as ALL THE OTHER brown haired white males in videogames.

It is YOU who is trying to cherry pick a single cutscene, rather than the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of the product.

You need to point out where I dont regard the black hair Dante as being partly represented through other material. otherwise I am not cherry picking. I Have been going on complete image over and over now. I dont know how i can make it clearer. He is black Haired yes, but that is not all he is.

You still don't seem to understand, the "complete image" you're talking about is irrelevant because the presentation of Dante as anything but the brown haired white male is so minimal as a component as a game that it has literally no impact on the character design as it is presented to the player. As far as this game is concerned Dante is that brown haired white male. For the entire game until right at the end.

You have literally no argument that Dante in this game should be considered as anything else because the time he spends as anything else is so infinitesimally small as a component of the game. You are literally saying that, for instance, Twilight is good because one sentence in it somewhere at the end is kinda OK.

 

[Savagezion]

snip

I agree with you that five million sales is a ludicrously optimistic target point. Capcom definitely bears some of the blame for not meeting their projected sales - especially if their projections were so far off.

What I'm getting at is that there's a difference between these two statements;

1. Capcom says it's entitled to at least five million sales of its video game.
2. Capcom says that negative fan reaction contributed to lower-than-expected sales.

The first point is what the OP is arguing against. The second is what Capcom's actually said. The second point is way more reasonable, and I agree with Capcom; it's entirely possible that the bad press caused by fans would hurt sales. It doesn't take a genius to work through that logic.

There's just a huge difference between estimating that your game will shift five million copies and saying that you are entitled to five million sales.

Yeah, the problem is that the way it comes off is that they would have reached 5m sales but now they won't because of the fans.

Do you have a link to the actual statement made by Capcom if there is one? I can't find an actual statement but the gaming media is reporting the unit expectation drops and then bashing the fanbase.