Poll: Worst gaming trend?

[thedailylunatic]

Hah, I was going to post a very long winded thing about trends and such but the fact 180 votes on Game Journalism Corruption pretty much demonstrates the point I was going to make. Gamers themselves are the problem. Developers are doing just fine, if somewhat afraid to do 'new' things. The players of video games being terrible people (while nothing really 'new' either) is the worst trend of all.

I see THIS as the biggest problem in the gaming industry: outright hatred for the core audience. If you don't like us, why the f*** don't you LEAVE? We nerds have always been "beaten and shamed into submission" by cool kids like Sam Biddle (a Gawker gaming journalist who openly called for bullying against nerds in response to #GamerGate DURING BULLYING AWARENESS MONTH).

Seriously? Why on Earth are my ad dollars paying for anti-nerd jihad? That's why I joined #GamerGate, because I'm not a defenseless kid anymore and now I can fight back.

 

[Pete Oddly]

Ethics in games journalism is leading the poll? Over season passes which further fleece the consumer (and may not include all DLC anyway)? Over crappy early access games designed to cash in on gullibility and the good will garnered by indie dev pioneers? Over misleading bait and switch E3 trailers? Really guys?

I won't say ethics in journalism (not just games journalism, mind you) isn't a problem, as it seems to have flown out the window in recent decades, but journalists don't make the games, and they don't sell the games. At the very worst, they market the games, but it's the industry folks, the publishers and developers, who create the real issues.

 

[mrdude2010]

Wait, game journalism corruption? Really? That's just idiotic. Who the hell can justify voting for that?

Wish there was an "all of the above" option, but I guess that kind of defeats the purpose.

 

[Darzinth]

Unnecessary Online Only DRM is the Devil.

Gaming Journalism is a moot point if you don't pay attention. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

 

[Battenberg]

If you put an option for "game journalistic corruption" surely it would only be fair to include gamergate as an option? Both are essentially irrelevant to the actual games but both cause irritation/ frustration in equal measure to gamers. Either include both or include neither.

 

[the doom cannon]

Wait do people actually think that game journalism corruption is the worst thing in gaming? Like really? If you don't like what a reviewer is saying then don't watch/read what they have to say. It's that simple.

 

[Signa]

Online DRM for sure. I can ignore the rest of them to some degree, but Online DRM is an instant no-buy from me, no matter how good the game is. Especially if it is a good game, there is a chance of never being able to play it again.

None of that is to say that I don't think the rest of the list is varying degrees of vile.

 

[Shadow flame master]

I find game journalism to be pretty bad as most of the time it's nothing but people giving out reviews with a unhealthy dose of elitism. That shit gets annoying when I'm trying to figure out whether or not I should buy a certain game I've been on the fence about.

 

[MerlinCross]

Yesterday, game journalism corruption was second-to-last, and today it's winning by a large margin.

What happened?

Honestly I have no idea. Didn't know that would be on the poll and I didn't see somewhere "Hey let's flood this guy's poll". While I think it is a problem, I smell something funny.

Journalism aside(Since that's like an industry onto itself), probably misleading trailers.

 

[Duster]

No hollywood/casualization/dumbing down?

To be fair it's getting better but damn it was bad for a while.

 

[Genocidicles]

Gosh they're all so horrible, I can't decide.

Maybe journalism because they'll often try to pass off the other bad things as good, like Diablo 3's always online.

 

[AetherWolf]

Yesterday, game journalism corruption was second-to-last, and today it's winning by a large margin.

What happened?

You know what wouldn't surprise me? If it's all from some KotakuInAction thread or twitter rally that gathered people to sway results as a way of saying "Look, here's proof people DO think that game journalism is corrupt! check out these totally legit numbers from a ~non-biased~ selection of people! Bwuahaha, we've bested you now, evil anti-white reverse-racist man-hating SJWs!"

Not that a small poll from a topic in the Escapist forums is relevant in any way to... whatever it is they're up to. But, you know. Journalistic integrity and all that.

 

[EmperorZinyak]

Did people from GamerGate find my poll? It looks like Gaming Journalism corruption shot up. Anyways, I just watched my friend play AC: Unity and it pretty much has everything on my list covered. You've got Day One DLC, DRM from Uplay, a Season Pass, Microtransactions in a full price game (that range up to 100 dollars), and I would call the trailers misleading as the PC version looks horrible and is full of bugs, a far contrast from the gameplay trailers.

 

[bluepotatosack]

Gosh they're all so horrible, I can't decide.

Maybe journalism because they'll often try to pass off the other bad things as good, like Diablo 3's always online.

Did that actually happen? I mean, here's the first few paragraphs from the PC Gamer review:

"I have to start this with a warning, then a little tantrum, a few insults and a dash of paranoia. Apologies to those of you who already know what I'm going to say and are either fine with it or all raged out - you guys can skip this section.

Diablo 3 can only be played online. You can play it on your own or co-operatively, but neither mode works when Blizzard's servers are down, and neither mode is fun when Blizzard's servers are slow. In my six days of playing it, I got disconnected twice and experienced unplayable lag five times, each time when my own internet connection was working fine. At times, the servers were down for hours.

That's pathetic. There are valid reasons for forcing multiplayer characters to play online, but none for excluding an entirely offline single player mode. If you don't have a connection you can reliably play multiplayer games on, don't buy Diablo 3. Skip the rest of this review. Blizzard have chosen to exclude you completely, and I'm genuinely pissed off by the hostility and callousness of that decision."

 

[Genocidicles]

Did that actually happen? I mean, here's the first few paragraphs from the PC Gamer review:

"I have to start this with a warning, then a little tantrum, a few insults and a dash of paranoia. Apologies to those of you who already know what I'm going to say and are either fine with it or all raged out - you guys can skip this section.

Diablo 3 can only be played online. You can play it on your own or co-operatively, but neither mode works when Blizzard's servers are down, and neither mode is fun when Blizzard's servers are slow. In my six days of playing it, I got disconnected twice and experienced unplayable lag five times, each time when my own internet connection was working fine. At times, the servers were down for hours.

That's pathetic. There are valid reasons for forcing multiplayer characters to play online, but none for excluding an entirely offline single player mode. If you don't have a connection you can reliably play multiplayer games on, don't buy Diablo 3. Skip the rest of this review. Blizzard have chosen to exclude you completely, and I'm genuinely pissed off by the hostility and callousness of that decision."

The one that mainly sticks in my mind is Kotaku defending the online component in one article, spouting some bullshit about how it makes the game better... then they say that it's an awful feature in another article two years later. Both written by the same author:

http://kotaku.com/5912744/how-diablo-iiis-always-on-internet-requirement-makes-it-a-better-game

http://kotaku.com/in-the-end-diablo-iii-just-shouldnt-have-been-always-1624648696

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

None of the above. The worst gaming trend is: guns. Sometime in the 90s after Wolfenstein 3D, a transition occurred in which every game that wanted to be popular, had to involve a 1st person perspective with a gun sticking out in front of you. Whatever the reason for this (repressed male sexual inferiority syndrome is my guess), it meant that we no longer get a variety of top quality games and running round with a penis er sorry gun became the image non-gamers have of us all, rather than a variety of more intelligent gameplay styles that exist.

 

[BrokenTinker]

Some tough nuggets, but having a critical press would alleviate most of the other problems. If enough press starts talking about the scourge of online DRM, micro in full priced game and so forth, and you know, readers actually know to avoid these... horribly implemented games, the features will be quarantined somewhat (they will never disappear )

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Wait do people actually think that game journalism corruption is the worst thing in gaming? Like really? If you don't like what a reviewer is saying then don't watch/read what they have to say. It's that simple.

There's more to it than that and you know it. The journalism industry helps market these games. They are the go between companies and the people who buy their shit. Games journalists can influence the development of games by withholding or offering coverage. If that's corrupt, then the consumer is fucked.

 

[Gergar12_v1legacy]

How about all of the above. Free to play gaming can be done right. Just look at World of tanks, and TF2, misleading trailers look pretty cool, and people should know by now to look out gameplay vs climatic.

 

[SeptusCap]

Game journalism corruption - Plenty of reviewers, and types of reviews out there. If I go look up a reviewer of an Atelier game on a major gaming site I know it'll be rated poorly, and mocked. That is why I check other places which are more credible for that particular review as they more align with myself.

The problem isn't finding games I like, it's corruption shaping the market; journos have undue influence due to metacritic, external linking & other SEO, and so on, and they abuse it. They also attack people for clicks, ideological reasons, etc. (Brad Wardell, Max Temkin, David Jaffe, etc).

Divinity Original Sin's artist, for example, says "blackmails in the form of 'change your game art or we won't publish a single word about you.' is a common behavior"

Do you need these sites? No, but developers are often beaten into submission because google is rigged to favor these hacks, and most people aren't as invested/knowledgeable as you.