Do you ever get the feeling that Gamers these days dont want to enjoy games?

[Chilango2]

Well, its easier to criticize something that praise it, and I mean that on several levels.

To put it simply, praise exhausts itself very quickly, and mostly can be shortened to "Try this!" It's difficult to have a *conversation* along those lines, at least with strangers online. The only way to really meaningfully discuss the positive aspects of a thing without just recommending it is to engage in meta-critique, as you would with higher level theater, literary, or cinema criticism, eg. a discussion of the themes, why the work, etc. The escapist actually does this a fair amount, but on a every day basis most people are either not up to it or not interested in it.

A good rant at a clearly sucky game experience, however, feels satisfying, well deserved, etc. It's also often funny, which is the real draw.

 

[Mairsil the Pretender]

I find that, if i've seen enough of their work, I can usualy parse out whether or not a reviewer though the game was fun, or if I should purchase it.

Since it's the example that leaps to the forefront of my mind, lets take Zero Punctuation. Yahtzee Mercilessly lombasts games, pointing out all of their foibles, while hardly dwelling on the positive. He does this because it's funny.

But, many of his reviews just made me want to play the game more. Mass Effect, for example. RPG seems to be a genre that Yahtzee doesnt love that much, yet his grudging respect for the game sort of shined through. What I've seen looks awesom, and I await it's PC release date with the same glee that I await HL2:E3 with. the difference being that I actually know ME's release date.

His Super Mario Galaxy review was very funny, but it also prompted me to shill out 25 bucks to go halvsies on it with my little brother.

Clive barker's Jherico, on the other hand...well, I'm not touching it. ever.

His Witcher review saved me 50 bucks. nuff said.

So, negative reviews might seem like a bad thing, but really, most gamers love their hobby to bits, and the reviewers are around to save them from unwisely buying bad games. Thus, the industry standard goes up, as developers realize that only good games sell, and flashy movie-based crap wont fly.

 

[RavenAlegria13]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that talking about what you like in a game can actually be a fair bit harder (and often quite a bit less interesting) than going over what you don't like.

Now I don't know about you, but whenever I'm having fun I generally just enjoy myself rather than trying to analyze why I'm having fun as doing this would detract significantly from my experience. On the other hand, when something disturbs or interrupts my fun, I specificially note what it was and why because it annoyed me and I want it to go away.

The end result is that the only way I have (and it'd suprise me greatly if this was only me) to quantify my enjoyment of a certain game is to count how much of it interrupted or disrupted my enjoyment of it and put that on some kind of less is better scale. To further this, games have this kind of paradoxial state where the whole can be both far more and far less than the sum of its parts (as in: lifting a fun element from a great game doesn't necessarily make a fun small game, and putting a whole lot of fun small elements together doesn't automatically make a fun whole) so it's difficult to just lift a part out and say "this automatically made it better".


As for the popularities of people such as the Angry Nintendo Nerd or Yahtzee -- deprecating humour is fun, it always has been; Bugs Bunny and Elmer Mudd anyone? A list of plain facts might be very informative, but it's also ultimately boring - by making reviews amusing there's a greater chance that people without any interest in the game (or even the genre) might read and enjoy the review, and might even try a game they never would have otherwise as a result. That said, I can't say I've watched either Zero Punctuation or the Angry Nintendo Nerd in the context of forming an opinion on a game - I watch them because they're fun, if I'm interested in a deciding judgement on a game I'll look up something more factual because I'll be hunting for facts as opposed to amusement.

As for why we focus on negativity, well.. what'd you rather play? Half-Life: Gordon's Black Mesa Disaster Survival Adventure or Half-Life: Gordon's Flowery Sample Cart Pushing Adventure?

I agree...however, like me, some of us are poor and I actually play on friends consoles. Some good games, some okay, but hey, I'm a gamer...although not as avid as some, I enjoy a good game.

 

[stompy]

I pretty much agree with wilsonscrazybed, as well as Saskwach. I think those 2 points are the main reasons why you find more people slamming a game. Not 'cos more gamers have started slamming more games, but more people have the ability to get people to hear them.

 

[NotPigeon]

I didn't bother to read the whole thread, but I've actually been thinking about this recently.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I love comedic, negative reviews (I've got 3 AVGN style YouTube subscriptions) like ZP and such, I'm a huge fan of MST3K (and Rifftrax), heck, I even spend time making fun of incredibly inaccurate propaganda films. Still, though, I wonder why we're so positive about the thing, I guess. It's hard to explain. Let me use an example from the music industry:
Lester Bangs. He was a rock critic and was known for 'not being afraid to call something bad.' Now, I respect that, but reading through some of his reviews, I had to wonder how much it was someone with the guts to say "This stuff sucks," and how much it was some guy who decided to slam something and called it 'revolutionary' because no one else did.
I hope this post comes off the way I want it to.

 

[Conqueror Kenny]

ah yes i does get to that point in most games where you get far in and ts lost the spark that thing about it that you loved but if you fail to complete it you feel like it is there laughing at you and haveing its way with your mother and i begins to take too much efort and the enjoyment with it diminishes yes it must have been fun for a while or it would have been burried in your garden along with that old copy of Devil May Cry 2 (btw if you have seen my posts i am a DMC fanboy)

 

[shadow skill]

ah yes i does get to that point in most games where you get far in and ts lost the spark that thing about it that you loved but if you fail to complete it you feel like it is there laughing at you and haveing its way with your mother and i begins to take too much efort and the enjoyment with it diminishes yes it must have been fun for a while or it would have been burried in your garden along with that old copy of Devil May Cry 2 (btw if you have seen my posts i am a DMC fanboy)

Devil May Cry 2 wasn't even a Devil May Cry game.

 

[Erana]

This whole thing comes to the classic, "Why is there never an 'In Order' sign?" thing combined with the internet.
Its like mashed potatoes and the Adkins diet. No one actually appreciates the quality of my good, homeade mashed 'taters, but bring in the whole Carb-counting thing and BAM! All potatoes are considered hellspawn, and my good, wholesome staple, (that should be limited in one's diet like any starchy food) becomes the target of all sorts of trash-talk.
At least with Yahtzee, he actually does acknowledge when food, er... a game is good.