Why are we afraid of criticism?

[Timpossible]

Well I guess this defensive reactions comes from the fact that games where the scapegoat for everything in the 90s. What I mean is that for a long time critique about games as a medium and it's status in our society where mostly "It makes children into killers!!!!" You know the stuff people used to say.
So some...okay: many...Gamers react to everthing that isn't only and precisely about the gameplay, writing or tech like "STOP TAKING AWAY MY GAMES!!!!!"

And the fear of change in general. But that's not games-exclusive.

 

[Something Amyss]

Reason 1: They don't play games for art, they play them for fun, exclusively. Thats fine, I'm not trying to take the mindless fun games like Titanfall away, nobody is.

What baffles me here is the notion that other people criticising games will impact the fun in any way. Hell, Since the third, I've put like fifty hours into Warriors Orochi 3, and had two game nights with like four hours of GTA each. And I'm one of those horrid critical people. How is it I can still have fun?

Reason 2: They feel that criticism of the game is criticism of them as a person.

This one seems very likely. A lot of people take even a "bad" review (hate out of ten, anyone?) as a slap in their face.

And I'm pretty sure them and people like them make up 1% of the industry. In fact I'm being EXTREMELY generous with that statistic.

And the best part? The people complaining are responsible for roughly 99% of their power!

 

[Guerilla]

Criticism is fine, political self-righteous indignation and spamming political agenda every. fucking. second. is not.

Ok then. I'll be sure to let you know when criticisms of games do that. I'm pretty sure it's a 1% deal though.

No, it isn't. Like I said before, Kotaku and Sarkeesian alone have turned feminist self-righteous indignation into a lucrative business.

And I'm pretty sure them and people like them make up 1% of the industry. In fact I'm being EXTREMELY generous with that statistic.

I wish this were true but the damsels in distress and their white knights are very in style lately in this industry. Apparently if you're a female in the gaming industry you can make wild libelous accusations against anyone and get away with it and when you eventually face criticism because of that obnoxious behavior just play the victim.

Funny how the people who want women to be treated as equals are being called misogynists while the geniuses who treat women like defenseless little princesses who apparently can say anything are the champions of equality. You'd think that kind of condescending behavior would be sexist. In fact I find it regressive as hell and I would never treat a woman like that.

 

[Harpalyce]

This just in: apparently believing women about incredibly awful threats made against them is white knighting and therefore patronizing and fuck it, just fuck it, I'm done, I'm going to go jump off a fucking cliff because the ground meeting my face at max velocity is kinder than the entire gaming community and whining bunch of shitbabies thereof when it comes to women's issues

Slightly more seriously, though, to get back to the topic instead of me just screaming into the void:

I think videogames and the actions people do in them are more connected and therefore seem more personal because this is really the first really interactive mainstream media. It's not just a vague character, say, going to pimp out some bitches in Steelport in SR3, it's *my* character - the one I've made, the one I've carefully groomed, the one I've acted through during the entire game. For me, that's why it feels so especially gross when SR3 treats women like chattel - yeah, yeah, what did I expect and all that, but still. feelsbadman.gif and so on.

Maybe that's why people find it so hard to swallow critique. The characters we're given are proxies and we're meant to think of them as proxies for ourselves.

 

[Erttheking]

Criticism is fine, political self-righteous indignation and spamming political agenda every. fucking. second. is not.

Ok then. I'll be sure to let you know when criticisms of games do that. I'm pretty sure it's a 1% deal though.

No, it isn't. Like I said before, Kotaku and Sarkeesian alone have turned feminist self-righteous indignation into a lucrative business.

And I'm pretty sure them and people like them make up 1% of the industry. In fact I'm being EXTREMELY generous with that statistic.

I wish this were true but the damsels in distress and their white knights are very in style lately in this industry. Apparently if you're a female in the gaming industry you can make wild libelous accusations against anyone and get away with it and when you eventually face criticism because of that obnoxious behavior just play the victim.

Funny how the people who want women to be treated as equals are being called misogynists while the geniuses who treat women like defenseless little princesses who apparently can say anything are the champions of equality. You'd think that kind of condescending behavior would be sexist.

You know, it reflects poorly on your argument when you resort to calling people names right off the bat. Oh? This is true? Every woman ever can do whatever she wants and can get away with it? Every single one? You'll have to forgive me if that sounds rather hyperbolic.

Oh, this is the case? I have to say I didn't notice that. Because I haven't been called a misogynist. And I have to say I really don't get the people who say that standing up for a woman online when she's being harassed is treating her like a helpless little princess. It just doesn't make any sense for me, because it's a decent human being thing, and not a woman thing, but whatever.

 

[Caiphus]

It could be so many things.

It could be the fact that it's difficult to empathise with people over the Internet. It could be that seeing people as semi-anonymous walls of text causes us all to become, in some small way, psychopathic or narcissistic.

It could be that gaming tends to attract people who are socially awkward or insecure.

It could be that gaming tends to attract young people, who may not have been taught to think critically.

It could be that many of the companies in the gaming industry like to encourage fandom and loyalty of their products. And the effectiveness of this would probably be enhanced if the previous two points are true.

It could be because gaming is extremely important to some people.

It could be because we are taught "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." and we somehow extrapolate that to mean that it's okay for us to say really mean things about other people.

Dunno. That's all armchair guesswork. It could be all/some/none of that.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

This is a more general point on how the internet can essentially nerf constructive dialogues of any kind, but I think it's on topic enough.

Criticism is fine, political self-righteous indignation and spamming political agenda every. fucking. second. is not.

Wait, what? Who's dishing out political self-righteous indignation and political agendas "every. fucking. second"?

Topic: fear of change does funny things to a person/community. Also, most of teh internetz doesn't seem to understand the following point---

Things in themselves have no power to extort a verdict from you.

These days reacting has become an obsession, which then leads onto people reacting to the reactions... An overall level of ignorance inevitably makes most of these reactionary paroxysms blot out the nuances and everything between binary states such as left/right, right/wrong, good/bad. You can't have a true discussion or debate in such a completely open (i.e. a free for all forum) environment, so opinionated flailing is inevitable.

The internet democritised opinion, for better and worse - and the truth is, simply having a 'voice' does not validate or qualify your opinion. A screen tends to sever a notion of individual responsibility and consequence, because anonymity allows people to behave in ways they simply wouldn't - or couldn't - face to face or in a group. Ergo, it's an environment of people over-identifying with what they value or like, and taking anything that questions that as personal insult.

(however, every, er, 'place' I've gone to online has had some very smart and savvy people, this place very much included. there's always reason to be hopeful)

The greater critical attention gaming has gotten recently is dealing with some very tricky subjects, so the fact that the internet hosts outpourings of ignorant bile is of no surprise whatsoever.

As you alluded to; criticism never diminishes a medium. Games are more mainstream than ever, now, and the technology capable of some pretty amazing things. It's only natural there'd be some significant--- er, growing pains... Keep Calm & Carry On Gaming

 

[Guerilla]

You know, it reflects poorly on your argument when you resort to calling people names right off the bat. Oh? This is true? Every woman ever can do whatever she wants and can get away with it? Every single one? You'll have to forgive me if that sounds rather hyperbolic.

Oh, this is the case? I have to say I didn't notice that. Because I haven't been called a misogynist. And I have to say I really don't get the people who say that standing up for a woman online when she's being harassed is treating her like a helpless little princess. It just doesn't make any sense for me, because it's a decent human being thing, and not a woman thing, but whatever.

Why do you put words in my mouth? Did I say every single one? I spoke about a trend going on lately not about something that always happens. Zoe Quinn created a false flag against wizardchan to advertize her crappy game a few months ago, and from the looks of it Sarkeesian did the same recently to distract from Gamergate. So when some people hurry to defend them blindly every single time I'm quite sure it's the definition of white-knighting and it's a very condescending way of treating women.

edit: turns out the Sarkeesian thing was bullshit, the cops fucked up

 

[Erttheking]

You know, it reflects poorly on your argument when you resort to calling people names right off the bat. Oh? This is true? Every woman ever can do whatever she wants and can get away with it? Every single one? You'll have to forgive me if that sounds rather hyperbolic.

Oh, this is the case? I have to say I didn't notice that. Because I haven't been called a misogynist. And I have to say I really don't get the people who say that standing up for a woman online when she's being harassed is treating her like a helpless little princess. It just doesn't make any sense for me, because it's a decent human being thing, and not a woman thing, but whatever.

Why do you put words in my mouth? Did I say every single one? I spoke about a trend going on lately not about something that always happens. Zoe Quinn created a false flag against wizardchan to advertize her crappy game a few months ago, from the looks of it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaXDLpjG3XU&hd=1] Sarkeesian did the same recently to distract from Gamergate. So when some people hurry to defend them blindly every single time I'm quite sure it's the definition of white-knighting.

Well you said "If you're a female in the industry". Was I supposed to assume you were just talking about some of them? Well, you need to clarify that. Not her what the quality of her game has to do with anything, but whatever. I'm still waiting for things to claim the Hell down around Quinn before I make my decisions on the matter. While some people do seem to be defending her blindly, a good deal of her attackers have an unhealthy sexist tone to them. I mean, of all the things to get people mad about journalistic integrity, this was it? Not the Mountain Dew, Doritos mess from a few years back? And as for Anita, a good deal of her detractors jump at every single little thing that could possibly point her out as a fraud, even though people within the threads point out a good deal of flaws in this evidence. So yeah plenty of people might blindly defend her (Not on this forum though, this forum seems divided between "Anita is the anti-christ" and "She's just boring and can we please stop acting like she's the anti-christ") so yeah, issues on both sides

Also, that's a grand total of two people, one of whom doesn't even work on video games directly. Two people does not a trend make, especially for all women in the industry, especially when they have to deal with a constant level of harassment.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Because they don't stop. The posts are incessant, without end. Moaners and complainers haven't shut up for years now and it's the same damn tune. Could you imagine if your car radio would only play a single song, on loop indefinitely and couldn't be shut off? That's what the Escapist has become.

I'm tired of being accused of sexism, misogyny, discrimination and whatever else SJWs, feminists and their white-knight toadies are harping on about. Can't we just enjoy video games and geekdom? It's a tiny but very vocal minority who spew vitriol and adore controversy that make this site unwelcoming. The supposed "family-friendly" nature of the Escapist has been torn to shreds by them and by the Management's inability to separate social and controversial issues from those of gaming and off-topic. For some reason religion and politics get their own forum but similar, controversial topics are fine in off-topic, a forum supposedly for fun, light-hearted topics.

Take your social justice issues elsewhere and let's enjoy games, geekdom, movies and having fun. Being an SJW is not "serious artistic criticism", it's moaning and whining and spewing hate and browbeating and has been going on for years.

 

[Guerilla]

Well you said "If you're a female in the industry". Was I supposed to assume you were just talking about some of them? Well, you need to clarify that. Not her what the quality of her game has to do with anything, but whatever. I'm still waiting for things to claim the Hell down around Quinn before I make my decisions on the matter. While some people do seem to be defending her blindly, a good deal of her attackers have an unhealthy sexist tone to them. I mean, of all the things to get people mad about journalistic integrity, this was it? Not the Mountain Dew, Doritos mess from a few years back? And as for Anita, a good deal of her detractors jump at every single little thing that could possibly point her out as a fraud, even though people within the threads point out a good deal of flaws in her arguments. So yeah plenty of people might blindly defend her (Not on this forum though, this forum seems divided between "Anita is the anti-christ" and "She's just boring and can we please stop acting like she's the anti-christ") so yeah, issues on both sides

Also, that's a grand total of two people, one of whom doesn't even work on video games directly. Two people does not a trend make, especially for all women in the industry, especially when they have to deal with a constant level of harassment.

I also said at the beginning that "it's in style" which definitely doesn't mean it always happens. And let's not use extreme examples of the douchebags on the one side to criticize the entire gamergate crowd because it's a two way street and the amount of hateful "cis male scum" remarks and doxxing going on from the feminist side can easily be used as easy criticism against them too but as you can see I haven't done it.

Again, it's not just two people, it's the entire Gawker network, it's Polygon, it's neogaf, it's Rock Paper Shotgun and so on. This onslaught of feminist whining about everything and everyone in the industry has been going on for years now. I guess you weren't paying attention?

 

[SOCIALCONSTRUCT]

Often I have seen the refrain of, "Please stop talking about X. All this focus on social issues will suck the life and fun out of games."

For some this is true. For others it may be a non-confrontational dodge of their real issue in that they don't share the perspective of you or Bob Chipman or whomever.

In what medium has criticism left art worse off? Are books terrible because there's literary criticism? Are movies worse because there are disciplines devoted to studying film? Is TV boring now that we analyze shows for social themes?

Criticism encompasses a lot of things. Criticism could be something along the lines of "this cut scene dialogue is hackneyed and cliched", or "the combat system is repetitive and boring", etc. For the most part, people don't have a problem with this type of criticism, even when there are practical disagreements over the specifics. Within this framework there are shared principles and it is just a matter of clarifying what they mean and fidelity to those principles.

Once political or social doctrines come into play it becomes a much deeper disagreement. Instead of being a matter of interpretation and fidelity to shared principles it then becomes a matter of competing and often mutually antagonistic sets of principles. As in the former case but for completely different reasons, the idea of "criticism is bad" isn't an accurate description of the opposing thought process. Rather it is a matter of my theory versus your theory.

 

[Erttheking]

Well you said "If you're a female in the industry". Was I supposed to assume you were just talking about some of them? Well, you need to clarify that. Not her what the quality of her game has to do with anything, but whatever. I'm still waiting for things to claim the Hell down around Quinn before I make my decisions on the matter. While some people do seem to be defending her blindly, a good deal of her attackers have an unhealthy sexist tone to them. I mean, of all the things to get people mad about journalistic integrity, this was it? Not the Mountain Dew, Doritos mess from a few years back? And as for Anita, a good deal of her detractors jump at every single little thing that could possibly point her out as a fraud, even though people within the threads point out a good deal of flaws in her arguments. So yeah plenty of people might blindly defend her (Not on this forum though, this forum seems divided between "Anita is the anti-christ" and "She's just boring and can we please stop acting like she's the anti-christ") so yeah, issues on both sides

Also, that's a grand total of two people, one of whom doesn't even work on video games directly. Two people does not a trend make, especially for all women in the industry, especially when they have to deal with a constant level of harassment.

I also said at the beginning that "it's in style" which definitely doesn't mean it always happens. And let's not use extreme examples of the douchebags on the one side to criticize the entire gamergate crowd because it's a two way street and the amount of hateful "cis male scum" remarks and doxxing going on from the feminist side can easily be used as easy criticism against them too but as you can see I haven't done it.

Again, it's not just two people, it's the entire Gawker network, it's Polygon, it's neogaf, it's Rock Paper Shotgun and so on. This onslaught of feminist whining about everything and everyone in the industry has been going on for years now. I guess you weren't paying attention?

I. Didn't. I said "A good deal of her attackers" Not all. In fact, you're the one who seems to be going for the criticizing the entire group path (Onslaught of feminist whining? Really?). In fact, I acknowledge the flaws in the pro-feminist side in my post.

I thought we were talking about women being able to do anything they wanted and getting away from it in the industry. When did we shift gears to talking about "feminist whining"? Because those are two very different things. Is your main complaint really about how everyone is complaining about the representation of women in media? If that's the case, the "whining (If reflects badly on you when you refer to people who you disagree with as whining) will stop when female representation in gaming stops being so abysmal. Because it is.

 

[endtherapture]

It's because I don't particularly care. There's room for videogames with diversity, there's room for games with less diversity. There's games with diversity, and there's games which aren't diverse. It's all making a mountain out of a molehill.

 

[SNCommand]

Personally it seems people are more afraid of criticism of the criticism

People are free to put out their ideas and opinions, but you should accept that your views will be scrutinized, but it seems you're a horrible human being if you criticize the wrong person

 

[Artaneius]

Honestly?

All I've seen is people crying very loudly about this when they know they've been caught with hands in the cookie jar, so to speak.

The correct answer, for the record, is "you're right! that IS problematic, and an issue we should discuss, because it's important to discuss such things. But I really like this game for other things it brings to the table like x, y and z." However, people aren't saying that. I think it's mostly because they're scared to make the realization that yes, they're in it for the skimpy cardboard cutout women characters who exist only as sex objects, they're in it for the ability to shoot non-white people for the crime of not being white, they're in it because they think rape is a hilarious joke instead of actually a bad thing to do, etc. etc.

If people actually sat down and thought about these things - if people actually looked at this from a perspective of 'let's think about what will help an industry' - the tune would be different. But it's not. It's just a bunch of babies crying things like "waaa there are feminists in my games waaaa".

A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

But that's the point of a game. I shouldn't have to treat rape and other negative things the exact same way like we have too in reality. I shouldn't have to care if people no matter what race or gender are being shown a certain way, whether positively or negatively. It's called entertainment. Why don't we all just work 3+ jobs if we're suppose to always treat everything super seriously? Why don't we just care about responsibilities and work until the day we die? Some people like to be politically correct at home, others don't. There are tons of games for everyone's tastes. Stop expecting everyone to care about if minorities or woman or white men or anyone for that matter are represented positively.

That's the problem as a whole. People who want change are expecting others to care the same as they do on the grounds of "morality". Morality has hardly ever mattered when it comes to the entertainment field. Because the point of entertainment is to relax, have fun, and not GIVE A SHIT. Hell, everytime I walk outside and talk to someone, it's like talking to a scared robot. No one has feelings or emotions anymore because it's not "politically correct" to have any. We can't say what we truly think or want because some law prohibits it. So everyone is forced to be this nice, good standing robotic citizen that cares about everyone's feelings because "equality" had to be taken overboard. I don't want the same shit to happen with video games. No fucking thanks, I shouldn't have to care about what happened for thousands of years of inequality when I play video games.

 

[Fappy]

Because the point of entertainment is to relax, have fun, and not GIVE A SHIT.

Don't speak for everyone, please. When I sit down and read a book, most of the time I expect to learn something. If the book has interesting characters and smart themes, it may force me to think a little bit which I like. What's wrong with wanting that for video games? Look, no one is asking to change the entire industry. I play Dynasty Warriors for fuck's sake! I love dumb fun!

But I also like smart fun!

Most people criticizing the industry for these things just want a bit more variety. I don't get what's so problematic about that.

 

[Artaneius]

Because the point of entertainment is to relax, have fun, and not GIVE A SHIT.

Don't speak for everyone, please. When I sit down and read a book, most of the time I expect to learn something. If the book has interesting characters and smart themes, it may force me to think a little bit which I like. What's wrong with wanting that for video games? Look, no one is asking to change the entire industry. I play Dynasty Warriors for fuck's sake! I love dumb fun!

But I also like smart fun!

Most people criticizing the industry for these things just want a bit more variety. I don't get what's so problematic about that.

Of course I like to learn stuff when playing. New game mechanics and new stories are always fun. But downright expecting a huge revolution and forcing people to think like robots when it comes to "morals" is not right. That's all I'm saying. I love good games with good stories. Trust me, I've been playing RPGS since Ultima back in the 80s-90s. Baldurs Gate too.