Gaming Scene, what's going on? Thread

Computer Gaming Nerds, and I'm referring to the ones who really jump into the thick of gaming as if they're critics yet thankfully are not, take themselves way too seriously and are the biggest set of douchebags on the face of the planet at the moment. From ME3, to Wreck it Ralph, to the Hitman trailer to Tropes Vs Women, its the unnecessary hate and oppressive attitude that will tarnish the very idea of innovation from the gaming scene if it keeps up. Publishers don't make it easier but the majority of douchebags in the gaming community are shooting themselves in the foot by bullying the little guy by mistake when they should really be standing up for them.

The problem with the CGN's is the amount, you'll have 25 that know what they're talking and their opinion holds some weight but they're followed by 50 per every 1 of the 25 who are sheepishly ignorant. What becomes more infuriating after a while is their highly-defensive response to anyone calling them out as something other than a 'savior' or 'protector', they're just thugs of the internet essentially and like all thugs are pathetic, leave all forms of personal offence outside as you as an individual are not important; the collective is important.

I'm hoping for someone to shed a bit more light onto this matter to reassure me that this isn't as bad as it looks.

Edited by: Lucífer

Sounds accurate to me

I understand that publishers are killing the developers creatively as well as financially, Free Radical is a prime example having one heck of an unlucky run until Crytek stepped in. Enough discussion goes into the publisher already, what I'm trying to get at here is the ridiculous attitude from a large amount of CGN's, the petty empty threats and up-themselves attitude is getting too thick to make sense within the gaming community an example being the reaction to the Hitman trailer which was ridiculous! Fabricating a moral high-ground for themselves, since when did we all want to take games so seriously as to not allow the devs to have a little fun with a CGI trailer?

That kind of attitude I'm sure sends a chill to the developers, maybe the word innovation is a little strong but when you've got the tight bindings of a publisher who keeps the rights of what is practically your IP, keeping over half the earnings of your work, along with the bigoted masses of whoms standards seem to be founded on the publishers preconceptions of what "they, the consumer" wants, that same bigoted bunch of bastards also having an unsavory approach anything that stands out; or is different in some way; or just somehow amounts a collective of senseless hatred then it doesn't surprise me when a developer gets confused by an unexpected reaction as what's being asked and what's being wanted keep going back and forth and we're ending up with games having unnecessary features and never ending franchises.

Mass Effect 3 had such an uproar and I'll admit it was rightly deserved just wrongly directed, when the fuckers allow EA to use the developers as a scapegoat (that goes to most if not all the publishers actually) only then does it reach a "Guys, you're shouting at the wrong people" scenario. Just look at Bethesda Softworks and that lawsuit with Mojang, everyone got mad at the developers like the retarded pricks they are when the developers weren't the ones in control of that lawsuit to begin with, its that thuggish attitude from the 'Computer Gaming Nerds' that affects the developers more than anything.

Developers need to go on a global strike against the publishers to see if the majority of 'gamers' out there even support the developers.

Edited by: Lucífer

Firstly with the Mojang thing:

I think your targeting is a bit off. As in its a bit too general. In regards to the Bethesda Lawsuit just realize how closely tied Zenimax and BGS are to each other, Zenimax has direct control over both BGS and Bethesda as a publisher- and BGS acts in the interests of Zenimax as does Bethesda as a publisher. The hate in that regard was warranted. It was essentially a big 1r; driven company picking on a small indie company for trying to move into their territory and it decided to squash them before they could do anything, similarly to how Apple works.

Rest assured as far as business practices go, Zenimax are the most unethical I've seen in this industry and any hate is well deserved given that if we let them get away with what they're doing it could have extremely bad consequences on not only the mainstream industry but also indies as well (Zenimax's policy is very anti-indie- and Bethesda as a publisher has had a long history of scamming and misleading indies as well as blatantly stealing work and not paying indies for services delivered.). I wouldn't defend them. The hate was well and truly deserved, people only defended them because BGS produced Oblivion and Fallout 3 (Fallout 3 being practically stolen from Interplay using unethical legal practices- and a gullible moron at the helm of Interplay).

Lets also make it perfectly clear, Bethesda's praise is completely and blatantly un-deserved, their products are more buggier than anything on the market, the standards are low.. they shouldn't be praised.. better developers have been shutdown for doing far better games and got none of the praise (see Troika). There is a blatant double standard with Bethesda, and people conviently seem to forget the companies long and unethical past which I was hoping Zenimax would be able to put behind them... but only ended up making it 100x worse.. god fucking help us if they get anymore powerful.

There is a history there, too many ignorant people seem to forget it.
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As to the state of the industry, unfortunately given the approach to "let the consumers vote with their wallets" its lead to all kinds of big problems. I will not ignore that there is definitely a big problem with gamer entitlement... granted a LOT of what they are entitled to is very much legit and deserving, eg.. their basic consumer rights.. which frankly too many developers tread on too often. In most cases its the publisher but occasionally it can also be the developers in the wrong..

Examples are companies like Obsidian and Creative Assembly who despite placing blame on the publisher neglect to point out that the major flaws of the project came not only from their design choices but also terrible management and in a lot of cases asshole devs reaching out to the public promising the world and delivering nothing (which btw is my number 1 thing that shits me off.. I'm fine with blame being shifted to the publisher most of the time.. but when a dev has told me to my face that a game will contain X feature and by release didn't.. and they won't give me a reasonable explanation or compromise... then obviously I get really really pissed off at the devs.).

The Mass Effect 3 ending situation I feel was valid if only because people saw it and felt that it was a case of misleading advertisement, as vague as "Non-linear story driven game based on choices and consequences" is.. it creates the impression that each of the endings would at least be unique.. even Bioware stated in their PR that each ending was unique.. which was a blatant lie. We can blame a LOT of why this happened on PR- and I'd argue its mainly PR which is causing the problems that you've pointed out.. Now I'm not dismissing that they are problems.. they definitely are. Some gamers are demanding stupid unrealistic things from their devs for example.. I get that.. and some are putting up with crap.. I get that too. Unfortunately though for us to have a game market where people play nicely, we have to educate the public on how to develop games... which is not easy. Some just assume they know what they're talking about but in a lot of cases are just bullshitting and basing their experiences off developer diaries or trade show interviews with people like Peter Molyeneux ect and just repeating the same crap that they usually spit out.
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In regards to the hitman trailer, I don't think it was the imagery that was the problem rather that they'd gone to E3 with a shitty CGI trailer.. Simply CGI trailers are shit, they annoy gamers more than they get them interested.. and frankly.. GO TO E3 WITH A WORKING FUCKING DEMO! if you're going there with teaser trailers then you've wasted company money. E3 is a joke because of this, its a corporate circle jerk of the biggest publishers in the industry all pretending like they have the most "Accessible" most "Market Friendly" most "Dynamic" game on the market today.. We put on this same fucking show year after year and its always the same crap.

I miss the old E3 where it used to be everyone with their booths competing for your attention, instead of this stage demo crap where people hide their games and attempt to mislead you. Hitman's trailer was blatantly misleading, especially given that the game is actually true to Hitman, that trailer was a total bastardization and extremely poor marketing- the PR guys should be ashamed, as they've basically proven how worthless they are at their jobs. Hence the uproar. Its not really fan entitlement, rather frustration that the developer didn't show them what they wanted to see. If you hype something up.. you better fucking deliver. Gamers don't like it when you take their money and trick them into buying crap. Unfortunately we see this happening time and time again.

I agree in general though that the developers should go against the publishers. Community Funding could be the solution. And I'd argue its our best bet to finally liberate our industry as well as put an end to these petty arguments. At least with Community Funding the customer is allowed to participate in the development process so its possible to prevent events like what has been talked about with the ME3s ect.

anyway, yeah gamers have issues, but its only a result of the conditioning that the industry has put on everyone. Having seen both ends, the devs themselves are going through similar crap with the publisher. Maybe this is a sign that we need a drastic change else we run a risk of our entire industry collapsing till only 1 publisher remains with a monopoly (as is likely to happen given the state of the US economy, the publisher will consolidate to stop the bleeding- similar to what we saw with the GFC). It is some interesting times I'll give you that lol.

And yeah also, the threats towards developers is not on. You can call them names all you want, but threatening them in a personal way or even threatening lawsuits is just taking it too far.

Edited by: formerlyknownasMrCP

The Bethesda dev's themselves stated their dislike towards Mojang being at risk of a hefty lawsuit, but from what you've said I'm a little uneasy about the sincerity of Bethesda devs' comment now, everything else you've said (Hitman and most of ME3 etc) has relaxed me slightly leaving me with little left to say on that front.

Weren't BioWare rushed with ME3 due to EA? Making their extreme goal of endings based on the players' actions in the previous two games a much more challenging feat, again EA got hardly any stick when that outrage broke out and as you said the PR was probably the main bit that made the issue worsen, which to me only means EA should have received the threats not the developers who were being told their game was terrible without further input implying the whole "Not living up to expectations" issue, there's really no saving that sinking ship though.

Developers under the wing of large publishers really ought to strike, what are the publishers going to do? Sue all the development groups? Take their IPs away from them? With people backing them up a global scale developer strike could really do the trick, with the internet these days most games don't even need publishers and without publishers a development group would find the costs of publishing a game themselves much cheaper than it is currently. There needs to be a form of publisher blacklisting as well as publisher-developer etiquette, publishers or developers not fulfilling the etiquette can then find themselves in trouble via a third party.

A blacklisted publisher can find themselves in a difficult position of most development groups or freelance developers not wanting to work for them and if there was such a system as previously mentioned then those developers won't be the ones begging and wishing to work under x-publisher, likewise a good publisher can be recommended by development groups. Should this come up now, we all know that a lot of big name publishers would find themselves blacklisted or at least certain certain departments as publishers like EA aren't one single outlet anymore.

There's a similar system in the entertainment industry and it works.