Gamers are assholes

Maximilian

Ok not all assholes but definitely angry. Very angry. Is it me or are gamers becoming more and more militant? I mean just this year you have L4d boycotters, more recently the MW2 boycotters etc. Many complaints are legitimate, don't get me wrong but so many people then go completely overboard.

It just seems people pick up pitchforks on a whim these days. I came across this complaint yesterday (God I really hope he was just trolling). I can't remember people complaining as much 10 years ago.

So, are gamers getting angrier or am I just getting old and mellow?

Azza

Yeah makes gamers seem like whiney twats. We also had people who got Borderlands early because some retail stores broke the release date by a week not being able to play because the activation sever are not yet ready. Lots of complaints but I do think the MW 2 one is justified but if people keep using them I can see them loosing what ever effect they have in the long wrong.

Shryke

Could I borrow that shoehorn Max?

I don't think it's bad that people shoud get angry. Games used to have free content, stupid cheats and developer jokes, mods and a sense of community. Now if you want community you pay a subscription.
Everything is starting to cost, and cost more while at the same time the many small freedoms you'd have with a game such as with dedicated servers or simply lending a copy to your friend are being quashed for corporate profit.
It's a good time for games in terms of quality and online play in general. There's some great stuff coming out by people who truely care about making good games. And then there's all the money grubbing bastards hanging off them.

cregser

Nothing new here.

Shiminay

Haven't seen a spas attack like that since I asked my brother to move his computer so I could paint our sitting room... It does remind me of the various Hitler in the Bunker routines...

There are a few things that contribute to this I think.

1) people expect stuff to be done for them.

2) the stuff like Servers and LANs used to be run by communities (i.e. you or your mates put them on) and so you'd never flip out at your mates when something wasn't 100% When people are paying for stuff as opposed to covering the costs, they expect it to be perfect and think they have some sort of gods-given right to turn into a complete moron behind their keyboard when it isn't.

3) people are dicks

cherryghost

yeah im a complete asshole alright.

Maximilian

Shryke wrote: »

Could I borrow that shoehorn Max?

I don't think it's bad that people shoud get angry. Games used to have free content, stupid cheats and developer jokes, mods and a sense of community. Now if you want community you pay a subscription.
Everything is starting to cost, and cost more while at the same time the many small freedoms you'd have with a game such as with dedicated servers or simply lending a copy to your friend are being quashed for corporate profit.
It's a good time for games in terms of quality and online play in general. There's some great stuff coming out by people who truely care about making good games. And then there's all the money grubbing bastards hanging off them.

Pre-order crap and the whole DLC thing really pisses me off. I'm not saying there aren't reasons to get annoyed by the way the industry is going. My point is that people really do go completely over the top these days.

Pacing Mule

2 years ago you would have said he was definitely trolling - now you just aren't sure which I suppose is exactly your point.

Stercus Accidit

Any group I am a member of standing up for itself in whatever way is preferable to the sort of apathy that gets rolled over and exploited.

Stick it to tha man etc.

pixelburp

I wouldn't say that gamers are assholes, more a case of the following:
http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/215499488_8pSZr-L-2.jpg


I also wouldn't be inclined to stuff the Left4Dead2 & ModernWarfare2 boycotts into the "gamers are assholes" category. There's a lot of legitimate disenchantment around at the moment, and many gamers - particularly old-school ones - are rightly feeling a bit exploited by publishers, who are increasingly chasing the bottom line any way they can. Gamers as a demographic have to show they're not completely spineless idiots

The interaction between the gamer & developer is changing, and not necessarily for the better. It used to be about driving a (modding) community and fanbase; Half Life 1 & 2 stand as the best example of how a game acts as a nexus for amateur creativity & development. Now? It's about creating repeat purchasers through DLC and micro-payments (is there a more evil recent financial invention, I think not). Even the once infallible Valve have tested these waters with their sudden sequel to Left 4 Dead & inclusion of "exclusive" pre-order weapons.

With game developers & publishers collapsing in this global recession & finding that they're not earning the billions they used to, their greed is beginning to manifest itself in more cynical gestures & manoeuvrings. They're scared the gravy train will stop and are lashing out at us, the end-user.

The first two salvos have been in-game advertising & DLC. The DLC is a particular poison for a far more insidious reason that's worth contemplating; note that gaming as a medical addiction has cropped up & is beginning to be seriously documented (notwithstanding the mainstream media's bias against the medium), with "legitimate" clinics set up to treate extreme cases.

I don't think it's a massive leap of logic, or unlikely scenario that the publishers have seen these reports & cases and thought "Jesus, we're selling a drug. Cha-ching!". Publishers know many of us are too addled, addicted and hopeless to resist these DLC packs.

Sierra Oscar

I think a lot of uproar is usually created by the very vocal minority.

Moriarty

I think it's a result of making PC games easy to play.

Ten years ago, you had a small number of people who were interested enough to work through the ****e to get windows and then games to run. Generally, if they ran, they were happy. You also had a tiny faction of spazzturds, but they were small enough to be easily ignored.

Move to today and you've given the idiots the keys to games on the PC. This has increased the spazzturd pool as a percentage of all gamers. Now consider that the size of the PC gaming population has increased massively. Far, far more spazzturds.

It's unfortunate, but a symptom of success and simplification.

KoKane

I dont see the problem with gamers being "militant" and boycotting things. Thats exactly how it should be done and not just in the gaming industry.

Infact, its a shame that communities or groups of people dont act like that more often (see broadband in ireland for example)

nix

People are assholes..

wolfric

He went over the top of course but i can understand why people blow up like that. Computers are the most and least understood thing in our culture. After a while of reading and seeing ignorance around you, even the understandable real problems can make you blow up in someones face.

Usually you either know how to use a computer or you don't. The problem is that it's quite a small gap in between the people who don't and who do but the perceptional gap is HUGE. What i mean by having some sort of intuition and searching sense will lead to having a huge advantage over other people who don't. This normally leads to massive anger from the mass numbers of people who seem impossibly stupid at computers to people who have no clue how they can be that stupid.

Imagine if people showed the eqivilence of stupidity they show on the internet in one of many day to day problems except ALL you saw were these problems. For example imagine someone phoning up a pizza shop and asking how they get a pizza and how they measure how big the pizza is going to be. What the pizza looks like, how do they cut the call off etc...
Which button is for the indicator and why SHOULDN'T you have your horn pressed the whole time you're driving (JUST LIKE HOW YOU SHOULDN'T ALWAYS TYPE IN CAPS)

The main problem? The internet has no manual. You just jump on and learn fast while you take abuse. Here's an example of what i'm asked to find 80% of the time because i'm "good at computers" and here's how to solve it yourself.

Overheal

Most of the online roar seems to be voiced by an ever younger majority thanks to earlier access to the internet. It makes me shudder. They should be trying to look at porn, not trolling message boards or playing world of warcraft. come on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGHEhKo5Ils

And of course in the OPs example, you just get Power-Trolls sometime.

Gummy Panda

so basically the internet has given people the anonymity which allows them to be assholes over the least of complaints?

Nothing new and not restricted to gamers. Check any companies consumer forum and you'll see some outstanding posts of being príck.

Fnz

pixelburp wrote: »

I wouldn't say that gamers are assholes, more a case of the following:
http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/215499488_8pSZr-L-2.jpg

Nice, was going to post same.

Retr0gamer

I'm an arsehole.

L31mr0d

I put it down to there being no great catastrophe or war that has severely impacted on our generation. We have no perspective when it comes to what matters and what doesn't any more.

I'd say if I lived through a few air raids on my home, I'd start whistling the end song from "the life of Brian" every time someone pulled out their network cable to stop me from winning in a Championship Final in Street Fighter IV instead of gritting my teeth and hitting alt-f4

What we need is another good world war and possibly a devastating epidemic, then whoever survives will have enough perspective to not write anger fuelled posts on message boards because their weekend shifts at BK can't cover the amount of game sequels and DLC they will be forced to buy to feed their gaming addictions.

D4RK ONION

Gummy Panda wrote: »

so basically the internet has given people the anonymity which allows them to be assholes over the least of complaints?

Nothing new and not restricted to gamers. Check any companies consumer forum and you'll see some outstanding posts of being príck.

Penny Arcade joked about this years ago. Image has some naughty words.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/
It depends on the game in fairness, some games are more conducive to being a douche than others.

Onearmedbandit

I think that people expressing they're opinions on something like this isn't just a case of being assholes. Obviously there are a lot of people out there who feel passionately about certain games enough to complain when they think something wrong is happening.

With regards to where the gaming industry is going I too have strong opinions on certain things. For example it grates the sh*t out of me when developers announce DLC before they have even released the game....why don't you just put it into the game in the first place instead of trying to charge us more money for parts of the game that should have been there in the first place.

The whole MW2 dedicated server thing is just an example of a group of people with strong views expressing them. Hopefully someone will listen.

pixelburp

D4RK ONION wrote: »

Penny Arcade joked about this years ago. Image has some naughty words.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/
It depends on the game in fairness, some games are more conducive to being a douche than others.

Oi, I posted that first

OMFG ghey cheat hax! hmmm, this internet asseholery is harder than it looks.

FruitLover

a) A significant proportion of online gamers are teenagers.
b) A significant proportion of online gamers are Americans.

QED.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

I broke the dam

D4RK ONION

pixelburp wrote: »

Oi, I posted that first

OMFG ghey cheat hax! hmmm, this internet asseholery is harder than it looks.

How did I miss that?! Apologies!

BlitzKrieg

Shryke wrote: »

Could I borrow that shoehorn Max?

I don't think it's bad that people shoud get angry. Games used to have free content, stupid cheats and developer jokes, mods and a sense of community. Now if you want community you pay a subscription.

I must be going crazy or something cause when I read that I thought I saw:

I dont think its bad that people should get angry. Ireland used to have free beer, stupid craic and a government you could rely on, jobs and a sense of community. Now if you want community you pay tax for it

same sh*t different topic.


People bitch, its a stress reliever, people can and should actively b*tch and discuss about everything and anything, the difference is putting a line between what you should b*tch about and what you should act on.

Petitions online are just a reflection of the b*tching and pretending to be acting on it when honestly its still doing nothing.

THe internet has just made the b*tching much louder.

Jazzy

you havent seen ar$eholes in games until you have played HoN. kicks the fudge out of cs for assholes in games. ya need a brass neck.
its a good thing that the game is so good that it doesnt matter about them and the trash talk reminds me a lot about Wrestling.

there is currently someone 'hunting' me in HoN because i missed a stun at level 5 and we were on the same team. we won the match and both of us had positive scores. he still thinks im an asshole and a n00b because of that one instance. thats dedication

Retr0gamer

I stopped playing CS when the community just filled with assholes. Never regretted it.

Nick_oliveri

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I stopped playing CS when the community just filled with assholes. Never regretted it.

You should connect to some L4D public games. Mein Gott, ist verboten!

pixelburp

Consistent assholery for me is playing as a Medic on a selection of Public TF2 servers. Although you'll experience some genuinely genial players - often complementing you for your work - there will be at least 1 / 2 players determined to castigate you at every single opportunity. Honestly, I haven't had my sexuality questioned that much since school.