Jimquisition: Joy Begets Anger

[Thanatos2k]

I think however that the real problem is simply that gamers don't trust reviewers anymore. Reviewers in the past just have damaged the trust of gamers everywhere so damn much that gamers ignore the opinion of the reviewer and think that everything they do is crap.

I guess its due to the following reasons:
1: They have to rely on game publishers to get products. This makes people think that reviewers are bribed to give good scores.
2: They don't play every game (so not doing what they want people to believe they do). How can someone trust them?
3: The internet has given more notoriety to smaller reviewer groups, who work independently and make clear that they choose what they review, thus aspiring confidence to there audience and making them more sceptical towards professional reviewers

But I guess this episode just shows how far that hatred has gone.

Another huge reason for the mistrust is sometimes reviewers have reviewed a game without completing it, or on some infamous occasions WITHOUT EVEN PLAYING IT!

See, there's no way to really verify that a reviewer really played a game, not like a film reviewer seeing a movie (people obviously saw them at the screening). Some game reviewers even proudly state they DIDN'T finish a game (this almost never happens for film reviewers). Plus reviewers are usually so strapped for time that they end up rushing through just the main plot in a game that has perhaps dozens of hours of optional content or multiplayer content that reviewers don't play. Reviewers usually play on the lower difficulties too, which is rarely what most hardcore gamers are going to use. The way reviewers play through games is pretty much the worst possible way of getting enjoyment out of a game, so how can you trust them to ever properly represent the entire experience in their review?

 

[Thanatos2k]

But Jim, Mass Effect 3 did tangibly negatively effect my life. It was so bad it broke the last vestige of childlike wonder my cold black jaded heart was clinging to.
I am literally less of a person because that game exists

"Tangibility" is a word that means things. Namely that it's something you can touch. Has your physical heart's temperature or color significantly changed accordingly?

Mass Effect 3'd ending made me very angry. My blood pressure and pulse rose as a result, both of which can be measured by touch. Those are tangible things, surely.

 

[tercenya999]

You're wrong, as usual, when you attack haters. Because it's not that simple. I consider myself a true gamer, and I personally can't remember a game I didn't like. Maybe some PSP rubbish based on a movie game put together in a week that I couldn't be bothered to play further than an hour. Aaanyway. I don't hate people who like or dislike games. I judge them of course, but I don't hate. What I hate is the fact that these people can influence the game industry to a point where I start disliking the games myself.

Let's assume Call of Duty is a bad game, a really bad game. Now look at these gamer girls for example:

"I want to be cool so I will play games, let me see, what game is the coolest? --> buys CoD

I am not saying all gamer girls are fake, but you have to understand that all fake gamer boys and girls, and all people who buy the first thing their TV tells them to will go for Call of Duty, making the franchise rich, and fostering all games to be like Call of Duty.

I won't go into detail about how triple A games get tons of financing while great projects go in the bin, you already know how that works. What I'm saying basically is: stop defending these people, it is perfectly understandable that we hate them because they are destroying the gaming industry. These "newcomers" have no right to swarm around a franchise and spoil the market for the "real" gamers.

Now go ahead Jim, make yet another video devoted to haters, even though you are wrong.

 

[Therumancer]

But Jim, Mass Effect 3 did tangibly negatively effect my life. It was so bad it broke the last vestige of childlike wonder my cold black jaded heart was clinging to.
I am literally less of a person because that game exists

"Tangibility" is a word that means things. Namely that it's something you can touch. Has your physical heart's temperature or color significantly changed accordingly?

Believe me the pain I feel because of Mass Effect 3 is quite real
The headaches I get when I try to understand what thought the Crucible was a good idea
The heartache I get when I think about what they did to characters I loved like Jack or Garrus or Tali or any of them really.
The pulsating soreness in the back of my neck when ever I press the A button and have a 1 in 5 chance of Shepard doing the thing I was trying to do.
The rage swelling up behind up my eyeballs growing stronger with every plot point that directly contradicts common sense or something that happened in a precious game.

It's all quite tangible

All jokes aside, the bottom line is that I spent hundreds of dollars on a franchise that took up a lot of my time, effort, and thought. Like "Star Wars" and other great science fiction franchises I really got into the game, it's lore, and central concepts. It was a spiritual successor to KOTOR and in playing it I was able to see that someone finally "got" the idea of high fantasy in space again.

Really, this was a pretty straightforward series to do, and that was part of it's appeal. Then they had to decide to pretty much ruin the entire franchise retroactively through their ending. It was like the guys doing ME3 watched the finale of the "Battlestar Galactica" remake and thought it was a wonderful idea, totally missing how badly panned that got, not to mention that it was an entirely different style of fantasy, atmosphere, and plotline that it happened in. Basically all of the love I had for the series until that point turned into hatred, since the ending managed to pretty much retroactively make everything that happened irrelevant.

There are also admittedly trust issues, despite the cracks appearing, I had a lot of trust in Bioware. It had been shaken with "Dragon Age 2", but I figured telling a proper story and ending it on a high note was something they could at least pull off. Bioware came out and made all kinds of promises about how ME3 was going to end, how much what you did was going to have mattered, and how all of the questions up until that point were going to be answered. This was directly from the game developers. Part of my hatred is because not only did they not deliver, but they actually sold a "behind the scenes" app that said flat out that they were lying and never had any intention of properly ending the trilogy on a high note, or answering questions that could be used to spin off further sequels without having to do any more work. Something that was so well known to the design team that those making the promises to the public could not have possibly have been ignorant of the fact.

Their "free clarification of the ending" didn't change any of the things that were fundamentally wrong with it. I'm one of those people who is quite frank in saying that the only way they can really fix this is to re-do the finale of the game entirely. Leave the current version as an "alternate, abandoned ending" like you see for some movies.

 

[Phasmal]

Let's assume Call of Duty is a bad game, a really bad game. Now look at these gamer girls for example:

"I want to be cool so I will play games, let me see, what game is the coolest? --> buys CoD

I am not saying all gamer girls are fake, but you have to understand that all fake gamer boys and girls, and all people who buy the first thing their TV tells them to will go for Call of Duty, making the franchise rich, and fostering all games to be like Call of Duty.

Dude, seriously?
Ser-i-ous-ly?
First of all AGAIN with `fake geek girl` bullshit? Really?
Girls are TOTALLY spending money on consoles and triple A games just to be `cool` because there's no quicker way to do that than go on Xbox live because everyone loves ladies on Xbox live...?

No. Stop being silly, please.

Yeah, it sucks when everyone wants to be like Call Of Duty. So don't buy it if you don't want it.
The people who do buy it generally buy it because they want to play it, not because they want to usurp the `real gamers` from their dubious throne.

OT: You know this episode made me realise I can be a little bit grumpy towards people who like games I view as shit and it made me realise that really that's just a waste of energy. More positivity is better.

 

[marioandsonic]

Thank God for you Jim, but this isn't just limited to gamers.

People will get mad at you for liking not just certain video games, but certain movies, music, TV shows, cartoons, restaurants, locations, sports teams, beverages, computer hardware, cars, etc...

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

But Jim, Mass Effect 3 did tangibly negatively effect my life. It was so bad it broke the last vestige of childlike wonder my cold black jaded heart was clinging to.
I am literally less of a person because that game exists

Your misled delusions in the goodness of the world were weakness.

Mass effect 3 freed you from the shackles of your false optimism, you should be thankful.

Logically, that makes sense but I can't bring my self to forgive it.

Every time you would rise up in anger for some misery the world may impart on you, but instead calmly accept the universe as a cold unforgiving place empty of any warmth or love or happiness, your anger for mass effect will lessen.

Your pain is temporary and meaningless, the lesson given will last you your entire lifetime.

Which is slightly less temporary and meaningless.

 

[Mikeyfell]

But Jim, Mass Effect 3 did tangibly negatively effect my life. It was so bad it broke the last vestige of childlike wonder my cold black jaded heart was clinging to.
I am literally less of a person because that game exists

Your misled delusions in the goodness of the world were weakness.

Mass effect 3 freed you from the shackles of your false optimism, you should be thankful.

Logically, that makes sense but I can't bring my self to forgive it.

Every time you would rise up in anger for some misery the world may impart on you, but instead calmly accept the universe as a cold unforgiving place empty of any warmth or love or happiness, your anger for mass effect will lessen.

Your pain is temporary and meaningless, the lesson given will last you your entire lifetime.

Which is slightly less temporary and meaningless.

that's the wisest thing I've heard in a while

 

[Mikeyfell]

Then they had to decide to pretty much ruin the entire franchise retroactively through their ending.

This is the part of the whole Mass Effect debacle that really gets to me.

Almost everyone will tell you that ME 3 was "good" until that horrible ending.
But really the game is awful from word 1. (Literally the first spoken work in ME 3 is a plot hole)

Everything surrounding the Crucible is the kind of bad over-writing that it takes lots of effort to pull off, and the fact that the entire... um "plot" around it is even more insulting.

Every single choice you made in the previous two games were thrown away. Except for who happened to be alive at the end of ME2. (Including what Shepard looked like, what was it 2 months after launch before you could import your character from ME2?)

Characterization of the squad mates in ME 3 was pretty much boil them down to one sentence and making them the opposite.
Garrus was a bad ass, make him a pussy
Jack was a psycho loner, make her a mother hen
Tali wears a mask, show her face
Liara had a deep and interesting personality, Let's not give her any lines at all.

On the gameplay side the controls are busted, the enemies are designed to do nothing but cheep tactics (Which is probably realistic but doesn't make for a fun game) the Adept class is way over powered (To the point where I beat insanity difficulty without using a health pack or ever taking cover) and the Vanguard class is even more OP. 75% of the time your squad mates just stand still and don't shoot.

As it stands the ending is one of the better elements of the game. Because it didn't work, but it didn't work in a way that was so stupid it was almost funny, the rest of the game is just sad.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Then they had to decide to pretty much ruin the entire franchise retroactively through their ending.

This is the part of the whole Mass Effect debacle that really gets to me.

Almost everyone will tell you that ME 3 was "good" until that horrible ending.
But really the game is awful from word 1. (Literally the first spoken work in ME 3 is a plot hole)

Everything surrounding the Crucible is the kind of bad over-writing that it takes lots of effort to pull off, and the fact that the entire... um "plot" around it is even more insulting.

Every single choice you made in the previous two games were thrown away. Except for who happened to be alive at the end of ME2. (Including what Shepard looked like, what was it 2 months after launch before you could import your character from ME2?)

Yeah, people usually don't believe me when I tell them Mass Effect ruins not just ME3 but the entire series. But the first two games were good because you were working towards something greater, towards combating some threat that you knew was coming. Your choices were shaping a narrative and your identity. All ME3 showed is that all your work was pointless.

And the inability to import a Shepard that looked the same was mind boggling. As if Bioware suddenly lost all notion of good game design and forgot that the entire point of the series was a consistent characterization of your main character through 3 games.

 

[Lightknight]

I'm sorry, but you're not going to get me to turn "made me feel bad" into a tangible effect. The ending to the game was just bad for some people. The point is that it may leave you unhappy, but that game didn't tangibly effect you and so you shouldn't feel that bad about it.

However, my contention is purely with the misunderstanding of the term tangible. The fact that it made you so upset that you lost the ability to control its hold on your life does not make the game any more tangible as it is an IP and IPs are intangible assets. What your response should be, if you want to make one, is that even though it's not tangible it still matters. Emotional distress is still a thing. It just isn't tangible.

I don't think people would take it seriously. But it's really the only way of going about it. Did you not enjoy Mass Effect 1 and 2 as most everyone did? Did you not enjoy most of Mass effect 3 before the ending? I think anyone got their money's worth out of it. The ending just didn't give them everything they wanted in a nice pretty bow.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

TL;DR: a kind of High School-level Online Civics class would go a long way towards reducing occurrences of awful backlashes like this. We need to be able to react to diverging opinions with maturity, and we need to be able to distance ourselves from our hobbies.

You are not the hours you've spent playing The Last of Us, just as you are not the online friends you have who incomprehensibly hold BioShock Infinite up to the ranks of "Waiting for Godot".

I wish I could just expectorate my own share of bile at how fucking petty we can be as consumers, but the fact is - this is the Internet. People rage about other people liking things they don't like because THIS IS THE INTERNET. Screw trying to rationalize someone else's opinion or giving yourself five seconds to divorce yourself from obviously terrible knee-jerk reactions, you have an opinion NOW and must voice it NOW, everyone else's sensibilities be damned - because you, yes, you, are a Special Snowflake Whose Opinion Matters.

Everyone's the star of their own little sitcom on the Web, everyone has an occasional moment of delusion where a bit of verbal slag is misconstrued as passive-aggressive wit or unadulterated Geek Intellect. We all feel utterly and completely entitled to our half-assed opinion in the exact moment that sees the rise of said offensive reaction, and if we could only take a step back for fear of rejection or contempt actually hurting us (as is the case with actual, physical conversations and debates), we'd be done with about two thirds of the Internet's many petty problems. We'd be able to digest everyone else's reviews of whatever game it is we'd defend to the death or hate with every fiber of our being - because we'd be able to remember to be diplomatic online.

But, alas - 'tis the Internet. Who cares if you offend anyone in your response to a given argument or criticism? Who cares if your ad hominems actually do end up ruining someone's day? All that matters is Number One, right?

*sighs*

 

[The Lunatic]

I guess people tend to regard the sites they frequent as being representative of themselves.

So, when a site they consider "Home" exports an opinion to the world which is drastically counter to what they believe, it tends to create some sense of offense.

 

[chazwicked82]

I don't like Call of Duty because I'm not a fan of those type of FPS's. I played Mass Effect and didn't like it, so I haven't played 2 or 3. Just because you don't like or enjoy a game, doesn't mean you should gripe and complain about those who do.

 

[Addison Wilson]

So I largely agree with this video, but come on, DA2 is a seriously bad game. If you actually enjoy DA2 you have to seriously overlook the blatantly game breaking bugs, the awful practice of exactly copying and pasting dungeons (I counted the exact same dungeon set up with only enemies swapped out SEVEN TIMES, SEVEN). If you want to enjoy a shitty game, that is your prerogative, but from a scholarly, logical, critic view, there is no way that anyone can seriously give DA2 a perfect score unless you are merely acting in hyperbole. DA2 is a shining example of the shit practices that EA commits, killing originality and quality for a yearly cash out. Hell, DA:O has BETTER textures than DA:2, if that alone, the fact that a sequel has worse textures that the original, does not scheme corporate cash in or rushed, I do not know what does. Furthermore, DA:2 leaves out massive time gaps in the story to be told by a party member who I never used since he cant become a mage and thus is a useless party member since mages are OP in the Dragon Age combat system. So I ended up feeling like I was playing merely a side character and had no direct investment in the story.

Other stupid shit like the party AI being completely broken in several circumstances. Most of the party AI bugs are not apparent unless you are playing on the hardest difficulty and actually have to micromanage your party completely, things like your party moving up in a dungeon after you gave the stop command. DA:2's numerous issues killed all the immersion in the game for me. DA:2 is the only game that I have actually said out loud "fuck this game," and uninstalled it.

DA:2 is a blatantly rushed game, it is in no way a shining gem of a game quantitatively nor qualitatively. So you can see why there would be massive back lash coupled with claims of corruption when someone would give a bad game a perfect score, again, you can like bad games, but don't give them a perfect score when you can not break that score down nor defend it. I do understand that this post is basically the exact same thing about what you are talking about, but view it from a journalistic integrity perspective.

 

[FoolKiller]

My favourite part is where Jim points out that one problem is that people wish they loved something as much as others. That rang true with me...

I absolutely want to love The Last of Us. I tried to love it. But I don't. I fucking hate the game. So many things about it drive me nuts that I can't be bothered to finish it even though I enjoy the story. I find it to be the shittiest game I played in 2013.

 

[Rose and Thorn]

A really good message in this video.

This negative outlook only seems to be getting worse as the years go by.

 

[Grey_Area]

A really good message in this video.

This negative outlook only seems to be getting worse as the years go by.

My theory is that the Internet is now in its teens. Ok, it is literally older than that, but the attitudes expressed by commenters is like that of teenagers who attempt to increase their cred with their peers by finding boredom or loathing with inconsequential things. In another five or ten years I think we'll see a maturing online, and the whiny puerile voices will fade to an easily ignorable minority.

In the meantime it is impossible to, as JS has shown, like a game others don't, or discuss religion, politics, science, or Anita Sarkeesian without crying havoc and letting slip the dogs of homophobic, racist, and or sexist slurs.