Entitlement: Is it ruining our community?

[Post Tenebrae Morte]

In recent times, I've started to see an increase in gamers whom believe they are owed something by the various Game Developers in the industry. Am I wrong to think that we are only owed the money we spend on the games we buy? I don't mean it in the sense that "If I don't get 60 bucks worth of entertainment out of this, I will lynch somebody!", I mean it in "Look, I know you tried, but if your game doesn't live up to the money I spent or isn't a good game, I won't be amused".

If you ask me, the simple-minded way of entitlement that seems to be occurring in the new generation of gamers, is simply harmful to the development process of video games and may have the potential as to hurt gaming in general. No company should pander to the consumer, I'm not saying they should ignore them, just that they shouldn't be forced to follow the dictations of people who, generally, don't know how to make a good game.

What do you all think?

~Efrit

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

I don't understand how this:

I don't mean it in the sense that "If I don't get 60 bucks worth of entertainment out of this, I will lynch somebody!",

Differs from this:

I mean it in "Look, I know you tried, but if your game doesn't live up to the money I spent or isn't a good game, I won't be amused".

Maybe that makes me part of the problem. Can you elaborate to help me understand the distinction?

 

[Richardplex]

I don't understand how this:

I don't mean it in the sense that "If I don't get 60 bucks worth of entertainment out of this, I will lynch somebody!",

Differs from this:

I mean it in "Look, I know you tried, but if your game doesn't live up to the money I spent or isn't a good game, I won't be amused".

Maybe that makes me part of the problem. Can you elaborate to help me understand the distinction?

The former is angry and would be raging at some forums. The latter would merely be dissatisfied, I think.

If people don't complain about what made a game terrible, the developers will never learn. Though we do have a tendency to overreact.

 

[T5seconds]

I think this is wrong. A small publisher can do whatever the hell he wants. They can bankrupt as many times as they can get investors to spend money on their ideas. Publishing is a buissness, we have so many MW clones because there will always be that little kid hyped up on skittles with rich parents who don't give a shit if their kid is reading a book or blowing a head off. Therefor there will always be money MW clones. Rockstar has a reputation for creating great games, and also for not having a huge stable. Alot of the others will have huge stable's of huge selling, mediocre games. These mediocre games pander to the customers because that is their job. And your going to buy the game because it's being pandered TO YOU.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

We obviously don't know best. But if I plan to drop 60$ on (or already have bought) a game then I am going to voice my opinion on it. Can we get carried away? Yes. But without us (the consumers), they (the makers/publishers) would be nothing.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Entitlement always tend to be harmful, as a rule.

Fans aren't "owed" anything, but then creators of various artistic things are often said to be insulting with woeful creations, and I can agree with that.

 

[veloper]

Complaining about bad games is good.
If the game you bought is terrible and you warn other people away, you're doing other gamers a service.

Also the customer is king.
So rant away.

 

[antofdeath]

I'm entitled to say I HATE SONY for causing games to cost 60$ before the PS3 they were 30-40$ so ya know what if a game isn't the second coming of jesus to me I feel I very well have a right to be entitled a complaint because for the price of one horrible game I could get 6 indy games

 

[cgentero]

Why are people so against other people complaining, its called criticism, if we didn't tell videogame makers what we didn't like about their games, than they would keep making terrible games and end up sitting around wondering why their game isn't selling.

 

[badgersprite]

As entitled as any fandom gets. I mean, if you think gamers are entitled, you should see shippers.

 

[Aeonknight]

Our community? Entitlement is ruining the human race. Work customer service of any kind for a single day and you'll agree.

 

[Bostur]

We are perfectly entitled to criticize games or other pieces of art for that matter.

I think where the entitlement complex sometimes goes awry is when developers accept very specific critique at face value.

There is a big difference between these 2 critical statements:

- "The 4th level didn't feel as smooth as the rest of the game".
- "The boss on the 4th level needs to be nerfed".

In the second statement the critic takes the role of the game developer and decides what is wrong. That is a perfectly natural thing to do, and maybe the critic is right, but the game developers need to look into that kind of statement and try to figure out why people argue like that. Maybe the boss is fine but the level needs more ammo pickups. If the developers blindly nerf the boss because of player feedback, the gameplay may very well suffer.

 

[Leadfinger]

As they say, the customer is always right, and happy customers mean happy game companies.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

There's a difference between criticising a piece of work and decreeing that you know better than the developer; I think that's what's ruinging our community.

I fully understand that if I pay the full £40 that Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 will undoubtedly cost and I find myself unsatisfied with the campaign I am entitled to criticise the product I purchased. However if I then declared that Infinity Ward "should have done X differently" and because they didn't, it was a bad game, then I'd be taking it too far.

 

[surg3n]

It depends how the publisher/developer handles it.

Take 'Test Drive Unlimited 2', when it was first released, that game was so damn buggy, couldn't connect to lan games, some things just didn't work. Now the publisher recognises this, and decides to make up for the teething troubles, the first DLC will be free.

So, that sounds fair right? - well the game was released in early February this year, and the free DLC is still not released. I stopped playing TDU2 ages ago. Now I can go and buy DLC cars, I can pay to use the in-game casino - but the DLC that is supposed to be an apology is still 'coming soon'.

If this is 'entitlement', then there is something very wrong with the state of play between consumers and publishers. Are we not entitled to what we were promised, what we paid £40 for?


It's the same with PSN going down a few months ago. I bought a PS3, partly because the online is free, it's part of the PS3's USP, and when it doesn't fulfil it's own USP we have reason to complain. If I had picked a 360 instead, then I wouldn't have those issues. Sony did improve matters with their free games, because they obviously felt we are entitled to them as well.

 

[Nimcha]

As entitled as any fandom gets. I mean, if you think gamers are entitled, you should see shippers.

Hah, exactly what I was going to say.

Entitlement only ruins threads on RPGs, Bioware RPGs specifically.

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

The type of entitlement I though of when I saw this thread is the kind of I've seen among some PC gaming communities who believe that certain developers who started making games on PC but later went multi-platform owe them something, bonuses that their console customers shouldn't get because they "made them."

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

I'm entitled to say I HATE SONY for causing games to cost 60$ before the PS3 they were 30-40$ so ya know what if a game isn't the second coming of jesus to me I feel I very well have a right to be entitled a complaint because for the price of one horrible game I could get 6 indy games

One thing I don't understand about the $60 game complaints is the fact that no one is forcing you to buy the game immediately on release. You can wait a few weeks or whatever until the price drops (as in the case of Portal 2) and then pick it up.

The whole entitlement problem is that it's hard to know how much entertainment $60 should actually get us. Some people prefer online gaming, so a game with a solid multiplayer setup can easily be worth $60. I'm more of a solo player, so if I can't enjoy a game just on my own I don't feel like it's worth the dough. However, I still think the entitlement problem is related to my first point about people thinking they're missing out if they don't have the game now instead of waiting for the price to drop. Plus, waiting for a while lets you get some user feedback so you know if the game's worth the time and money.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

Entitlement only ruins threads on RPGs, Bioware RPGs specifically.

Oh dear Lord. Yes. While I wouldn't say that's the only place it's the problem, Bioware fans are just... wow.

OT: I would say, besides Bioware fans, we are just as bad. Not that that excuses it though.