Toilet said:
Gaming is a very expensive hobby/lifestyle(?) and as a community we are very vocal with our opinions and after reading "The Dangers of Gamer Entitlement" [http://uk.gamespot.com/features/the-dangers-of-gamer-entitlement-6350732/] I have come to think are we entitled to more from developers and publishers or do we just scream and shout like a spoiled child.
Over all I think we deserve a lot more, according to EULAs and License Agreements we pay a few hundred £/$ to own a license to a console, then we pay £39.99/$59.99 to own the license to a game (which in some digital distribution service can be taken away), at which point DLC is advertised and while we can not pay for it sometimes it is necessary to get the complete experience (see the Mass Effect 3 Prothean character/mission dlc) that may be included on the disc or made during development for pure monetary gain.
After all that we have to appease the local DRM and then if you want to connect your console to the online service you have to pay your ISP (and purchase a Gold Account for Xbox Owners), sign up for the service and then when you are finally online you have to go through system and game updates.
And when we finally get to play the game and it isn't good so a large majority complain (and others resort to pretty insults) we get called "Entitled". As far as I am concerned I see why people pirate games we deserve better, companies do not deserve or earn our money it is a trade of goods and sometimes the goods aren't worth the price.
To put it bluntly I think the consumers are entitled to control of their own product. The problem with EULAs is they have never been challenged properly, and most of the lawyers that could successfully fight it are under retainer from the game companies... at least to the point of not being able to take cases against them due to a conflict of interests even if they aren't actively used.
I also believe that core gamers are entitled to better treatment from the gaming companies. Right now we're seeing a classic example of a group of artists and developers selling out. When the potential amounts of money get big enough, the people who made creators popular are usually forgotten in pursuit of the allmighty dollar, irregardless of whether those creators would have been anything without the support of their fans and financing.
The game industry is in the same place right now as a lot of the singers and songwriters from the 1960s and 70s, guys who started out caring about causes and the art, but eventually betrayed all of that for money and became exactly what they were originally rallying people against. The rock star telling their fans that he "doesn't owe them anything" for getting them that far has become a hated stereotype for a reason, and today that's the gaming industry in a nutshell.
While a lot of money can be made from harcore RPGs, and deep gaming experiences, more money can be made from derivitive casual garbage. Especially if they can convince people that isn't what it is. Today the "shooter", first or third person, is roughly the equivilent of Farmville, but aimed at a differant audience, and comes along with the illusion that it's serious gaming. Sort of like how you might have a group of serious rockers with a message turn to soulless, but high selling, bubblegum crap that convinces the people listening that it's still serious rock.
The thing about selling out though is that the new audience of course takes itself seriously, and doesn't see itself as being in some way flawed. They want to see themselves as what the previous audience was like. You'll rarely see a shooter player who puts hours and hours into something klike "Modern Warfare" and similar games admit he's not a serious gamer, and only plays casual games. People like that are why you see an effort to turn everything into a shooter, brawler, or other kind of shallow action game with "serious" seeming graphics implying it's a serious game when at it's core the game itself is well... bubblegum.
Today the industry takes the "we don't owe you anything" attitude towards the people that made them, because like rockers who have sold out, they are making tons of money, and don't care because from their position at the top of the world with seemingly no end in sight, they don't care and feel they don't really need those people anymore, and there is nothing they can do about it anyway. With guys in the game industry like Bobby Kotick zipping around in their private jets, it's easy to see why things have turned out like they have.
See, saying that the game industry DOES owe the people that enabled it to get to this point is meaningless, because it's not like I can actually force them to do anything. All the old guard can really do is score a symbolic point here and there and make the guys we're targeting feel like crap in short doses, but their huge piles of cash quickly assage any such feelings, and they just increasingly shut us out so they don't have to look into a mirror any more than absolutly nessicary.
In theory, there is a big enough industry for all kinds of games to be developed. On paper there is no reason why you can't have casual game development on one hand, and people still developing elaborate, extremely deep and non-casual RPGs and similar kinds of games on the other, in amounts sufficient to keep that audience happy. In reality however the gaming industry has gotten to the point where nobody wants to moderate returns, in exchange for a solid game that appeals to the serious gamers, when for a similar amount of money they could squirt out another casual game, hype it as being something hardcore, and make much larger piles of money. Everyone pretty much leaves the serious game design to someone else, agreeing on principle, but deciding they are going to take the huge piles of cash. The few hold out developers aren't producing on a level sufficient for the demand, and are becoming fewer and furhter between. Many indie companies start out with the intention of making serious games, but wind up becoming victims of their own success and selling out... big companies gobbling indie and small developers and turning them into more soulless fodder is big source of discussion in the industry. Not to mention the growing realization that a lot of "indie" games are not really "indie" but are made to seem that way, being developed by big companies if you follow a long, and frequently convoluted path... leading to the rather cynical question/discussing topic as to whether "indie" has ultimatly just become another genere. Tons of games that look like something that were put together by a few guys as a labour of love were carefully constructed to appear that way, when it really isn't the case, it's a marketing technique similar to mass producing stuff for tourist traps that looks like it's handcrafted but isn't (ie your shell and driftwood display bought on the beach of a small island you vacation on, that actually sports a made in china sticker on the bottom).
I know many will disagree with me, but these are my thoughts, and what I think. I just hope I've articulated it well.
These thought processes on the subject are one of the reasons why I am so brutally critical of the gaming industry on so many levels throughout my posts.