Gamers, why so serious?

[mindlesspuppet]

Contrary to what many may be thinking, this is not a post about Batman or the Joker. At all. Seriously.

This is about how serious some gamers can be.

...

Not to mention that my co-workers claim I'm not a real gamer because I don't play Halo or COD. (I seriously think it's very close minded to decide which games make a gamer...)

Sorry. That was a bit longer than I thought it would be.

My point is, why are some people like this? Aren't games and gaming in general suppose to be fun? A way of escaping? A way of becoming someone else so playing in a fantasy world? Why are some people so angry in the gaming community? When did it become so competitive and...well, serious?

Please enlighten me, Escapist!

No, I think it's very close minded of you to decide other people's personal reason for playing games. I don't play games for fun, I play them for the challenge, and I sure as hell am not the only one.

I take multiplayer games quite seriously, I try to stick to games which have a competitive community (DoTA, SC, AoE, Quake, etc).

When did the gaming community become so serious you ask? Well it was serious originally. Then it got dumbed down for a mainstream audience, so it's not nearly as serious as it once was.

Old arcade games used to work on high scores alone, people would play obsessively just for the reward of having their initials on the list. Early console games were unforgiving, and generally lacked a save feature. Early online games were entirely twitch based and deathmatch reigned supreme, so you didn't have a team to fall back on/blame if you were bad.

Hell, I've been in fistfights over arcade games before.

Point being, some people games for the challenge.

On a side note, I absolutely hate when people say "it's just a game", I find it to be one of the most asinine statements ever. It's not just a game, it's how I choose to spend some of my free time when I'm miserable fucking working, why the hell shouldn't I take it seriously?

 

[Salviar]

If you place a thing into the center of your life
That lacks the power to nourish
It will eventually poison everything that you are
And destroy you

Something about that really got to me, like in a good-ish way. I totally agree with it.

...
Anyway this post is getting too long so I will cut the next bit short. People are angry because they get big egos from singlplayer. Then when they play online they get competitive because they think they are great. Then they are not thus more anger.

Haha I love that your post was so long! I'm glad someone feels as strongly about this sort of thing as I do. I was beginning to think that maybe I was overreacting...

 

[[.redacted]]

Basically, for a lot of people the game has nothing to do with it: it's just one person versus another at some arbitrary task.

Losing can get people pretty irate.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

If you place a thing into the center of your life
That lacks the power to nourish
It will eventually poison everything that you are
And destroy you

Something about that really got to me, like in a good-ish way. I totally agree with it.

...
Anyway this post is getting too long so I will cut the next bit short. People are angry because they get big egos from singlplayer. Then when they play online they get competitive because they think they are great. Then they are not thus more anger.

Haha I love that your post was so long! I'm glad someone feels as strongly about this sort of thing as I do. I was beginning to think that maybe I was overreacting...

Nah I do feel the same way. The only time it is ok to get annoyed about game is if you are an actual competitive player and playing for money or maybe a big clan match on clanbase or something and even the latter is pushing it. People do take gaming a little too seriously sometimes.

 

[mindlesspuppet]

This is how ridiculous and ill informed people can be about gaming even the people who work in game retails(no offense). Ages ago I went into to buy some games for my 360 as there were some games that should of been coming into my preowned price range(yes I am a cheap bastard). Anyway the person behind the counter asked if I would be getting MW2. Not to be rude or a conversation stopper or anything but I said "No I would not be buying the game as they have cut loads of different features out of the PC version and am kinda boycotting it". The person didn't know that any features had been cut off any version of the game and was not aware of the boycott that got 1/4 of mil signatures but didn't do squat unfortunately. Well maybe not squat as they did read back in dedicated and will add modding to Blops, also lean is back in.

Anyway getting off point. This stupidity or well lack of info leads into the not playing Halo/CoD thing. A lot of people and I don't mean elitist by this on console think unless you play a certain AAA title you aren't a real gamer. Suddenly it is cool to game if you play CoD or Halo. Personally I find this to be complete and utter bull. These people which make up a fair portion of the console market are also the people who DON'T come on sites like this. I had an argument with one person who thought a 360 had better graphics and was more powerful than a top of the range PC. I've also had an argument saying An analog stick is better for aiming than a mouse. No I have no problem with people preferring a console or game pad over PC and mouse but a top of the range PC does have better hardware than a console(doesn't make it better just more powerful) and a proper gaming mouse is more accurate and flexible than a controller when it comes to aiming. People can prefer to use a controller but a mouse will always be more accurate and faster and then a proper gun peripheral(eg Time Crisis) will always be more accurate and faster again if it could be properly implemented.

Anyway this post is getting too long so I will cut the next bit short. People are angry because they get big egos from singlplayer. Then when they play online they get competitive because they think they are great. Then they are not thus more anger.

Sounds like you're basically saying that if people don't keep up on gaming news then they aren't real gamers or something to that effect. In which, case aren't you every bit as bad as people that say unless you play ______ you're not a real gamer?

 

[Kukakkau]

Good lord you're working in a game store? Good luck man, I almost went crazy from being the "Game Guy" in a blockbuster

Edit - Oh yeah here's everything you'll need to know about working in a game store

http://spoonyexperiment.com/2010/03/18/tse-riff-theater-gamecrazy-training-video/

You sir - I mean "playa" have made my day with that video...yo

OT i'd say it's because they play games to be a winner - then when they stop being a winner it's the hardware/stores fault

 

[catalyst8]

Salviar, your post addresses two issues:

As with any game there are different degrees of participation for different people. Chess, for example, has a specific system called Elo to rate highly ranked players' skills. Of course at the other end of the spectrum people play informally at home, or in a pub or café. In games like rugby & cricket there are also varying degrees of participation from amateur to international.

Games & the nature of play itself are intrinsic to our cultural development, the structure of our societies, & our development as individuals within these contexts. As well as teaching us how to interact with others they also teach us about critical thinking, & sometimes interaction & communication as a team. In addition to abstracting genuine conflict, games & the nature of play are also expressed in narrative, being closely linked to the participation/catharsis of observation (I recommend Richard Schechner's various papers on the correlation of action and identity). As we all know, some people take these things very seriously, as can be seen when someone supports a sports team, or when an audience vicariously participates in the narrative of a play, book or film.
Surely it can be no surprise that a lot of people take some games very seriously.

The second aspect of your post relates, in my opinion only, to the burgeoning miasma of self-entitlement so many children & adolescents seem to be cultivating. A complete lack of accountability for one's own actions, & an apparently eternal demand for unearned reward. Whether the result of parental neglect or the sheer conceit their parents created by dishonestly telling their spawn that they're special, I truly despise the grasping little cunts who seem to think that the world owes them something for nothing. On the other hand the world will, for the foreseeable future, need unskilled labour to operate factory machinery, stock shelves in supermarkets, & operate tills. And when their unskilled labour becomes redundant we can farm the worthless scum for donor organs.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

A better test would be to ask what the Contra code is.

Something without which my little brother and I would never have finished Probotector (the European version of Contra)

 

[Salviar]

Contrary to what many may be thinking, this is not a post about Batman or the Joker. At all. Seriously.

This is about how serious some gamers can be.

...

Not to mention that my co-workers claim I'm not a real gamer because I don't play Halo or COD. (I seriously think it's very close minded to decide which games make a gamer...)

Sorry. That was a bit longer than I thought it would be.

My point is, why are some people like this? Aren't games and gaming in general suppose to be fun? A way of escaping? A way of becoming someone else so playing in a fantasy world? Why are some people so angry in the gaming community? When did it become so competitive and...well, serious?

Please enlighten me, Escapist!

No, I think it's very close minded of you to decide other people's personal reason for playing games. I don't play games for fun, I play them for the challenge, and I sure as hell am not the only one.

I take multiplayer games quite seriously, I try to stick to games which have a competitive community (DoTA, SC, AoE, Quake, etc).

When did the gaming community become so serious you ask? Well it was serious originally. Then it got dumbed down for a mainstream audience, so it's not nearly as serious as it once was.

Old arcade games used to work on high scores alone, people would play obsessively just for the reward of having their initials on the list. Early console games were unforgiving, and generally lacked a save feature. Early online games were entirely twitch based and deathmatch reigned supreme, so you didn't have a team to fall back on/blame if you were bad.

Hell, I've been in fistfights over arcade games before.

Point being, some people game for the challenge.

On a side note, I absolutely hate when people say "it's just a game", I find it to be one of the most asinine statements ever. It's not just a game, it's how I choose to spend some of my free time when I'm miserable fucking working, why the hell shouldn't I take it seriously?

I can understand your point, and I get that some gamers do take games seriously for the challenge. Hell, I use to do it too, but I would rage quite so much that I think it may have been unhealthy :/
Anyway, I'm not saying that the sort of serious you're talking about is bad, in fact I enjoy when someone can get as into a game as I can most of the time, I just mean that in the retail side of it all, there are a lot of people who just get really...angry over the littlest things and it's just confusing. I can understand someone being upset if they look forward to a game and it turns out to be faulty or it won't play properly, it freezes up, etc...But I don't understand why people become so detached from the world that they no longer care about common decency of just explaining and fixing the problem. (It's the same thing when someone things a game will be good, it isn't, and then they have a yell at the staff that sold it to them because it's obviously their fault that the game isn't good.)

Sorry, that was long winded. I'm not even sure if I made my point.
I guess what I mean is...I do accept that there IS a serious side of gaming and I respect it, I just don't think that this specific type of seriousness in games is...well, good. Hopefully that all made sense.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Sounds like you're basically saying that if people don't keep up on gaming news then they aren't real gamers or something to that effect. In which, case aren't you every bit as bad as people that say unless you play ______ you're not a real gamer?

No I never they weren't real gamers. I basically said they are illinformed. I never said they weren't real gamers. What this can lead to though is the illinformed gamers can turn into loud mouth assholes which is a problem. Yes I do expect that have genuine interest in gaming to keep up with some sort of gaming news. I never met a person that liked Football nad yet didn't talk about the latest scandals and player transfers I don't see why gaming should be a special exception to this. If you like gaming you should strive to be informed.

 

[wasalp]

There will always be elitism in any form of gaming (WOW chalk that one up for obvious statement of the day) not just in Video gaming, i had the same experiance of Wargaming when i worked in a Games Workshop, elitism is one of the reasons i don't play WOW now and also Warcraft 3 mulitplayed (i'v egot a good half hour in me about that).

Its your basic nerd posturing (did i spell that right?)

What annoys people about me is that i give as good as I get ie

Moron: Gasp. You've never played Fifa 11?

Me: Gasp. You'cve never played world of warcraft?

At this point we both look at each other with pity and they get annoyed for some reason.

works with music, games, tv shows etc

well the thing with warcraft 3 is that the community varies depending on what map you play. Dota is a map that is NOT friendly to new players.

 

[Fooz]

i must say i get annoyed when im paired up with noobs in team games like cod etc. and whenever i die im like "oh yeah! thats so realistic (sarcasticly)" but then i think, i was once rubbish at games, and also when i die, it usually is a fair death, its just i cant take losing lol.

overall i think people have got to chill out a bit (myself included) when it comes to gaming, if you want to be serious about gaming, play in game battles or something.

 

[Lilani]

Truly I don't know why people get so astronomically angry when things go wrong in a game (or involving their abilities to play games, see the WoW freakout kid), but I'd be lying if I told you it never happened to me. I can get viciously angry when I have to play a certain part again and again because the game demands such precise perfection to complete the level. It DOES feel as though the game is betraying you sometimes.

Dying when the save point or checkpoint is in clear view, having the last of your health blasted away by a cheap shot from the enemy you've got down to 1%, multi-phase boss fights that you can't save inbetween, timed platforming sections with unfair levels of difficulty...it all just gets old after a while. Recently I've been playing the Sega Genesis collection on my PSP, and I've found myself raging over the obligatory water levels that almost all of the Sega Genesis platformers resort to at one time or another. Sonic, Sonic 2, Ristar...now I've learned that any level background consisting of beaches is automatically hell.

But I do return to the games eventually, out of a love for it and a revived desire to go on. I guess I can be bipolar when it comes to games.

 

[Guffe]

Tell your workmates that Real Gamers[sup]tm[/sup] play Tetris.

YEAH!!
When you beat Tetris you know you're THE man!! (or woman...)

On Topic
I have no idea, I mean I swear that the Mario Galaxy series is harder as a 3D gaming platform to master than CoD or Halo since there's actually some pretty hard parts with jumping between all the annoying gravity fields...

 

[sanguis3k]

Contrary to what many may be thinking, this is not a post about Batman or the Joker. At all. Seriously.

This is about how serious some gamers can be.

I've just started working at a game store, which I was sure would be a blast because, come on, getting the perks of working in a game store, being able to talk to other gaming enthusiasts, telling people about games and how fun they are? These are things that I was excited about with my new job.
However, instead of being a fun experience, it's left me feeling...somewhat sheltered from the other side of gaming. The serious side of gaming. That side of gaming where the person takes gaming so seriously that dying in a game leaves them feeling betrayed by the game itself, where when they buy a game, if it doesn't work when they get home for whatever reason they will literally demand that the till be opened so they can take their money back because their entire life will be meaningless without either the game or the money that paid for said game (true story, except it was a guy who bought wii controller cases that didn't fit properly, which he then proceeded to throw in the bin and then take the empty cases back into the store and demand that he get his money back for the empty boxes.)
Not to mention that my co-workers claim I'm not a real gamer because I don't play Halo or COD. (I seriously think it's very close minded to decide which games make a gamer...)

Sorry. That was a bit longer than I thought it would be.

My point is, why are some people like this? Aren't games and gaming in general suppose to be fun? A way of escaping? A way of becoming someone else so playing in a fantasy world? Why are some people so angry in the gaming community? When did it become so competitive and...well, serious?

Please enlighten me, Escapist!

i hate to say it man but i think you are in the presence of elitist jerks of the gaming community who think they are somehow better because it is not simply something to relax with but a crutch to support the fact they have nothing else in their life.

i know this because i did this for about 5 years as a way to avoid issues i had and i recognize other people doing it a bit too often.

really i think the only option is to hang out with people who aren't out there to see how big their e-peen can get from killstreaks on COD or Halo

 

[TheMan2203]

Some peoples lives are empty, they try to fill them with what marketers tell them will make them happy, when it doesn't they get angry - but instead of getting angry at the right people, themselves, they take it out on others.

If you place a thing into the center of your life
That lacks the power to nourish
It will eventually poison everything that you are
And destroy you

As simple a thing as an idea
Or your perspective on yourself of the world
No one can be the source of your content,
It lies within, in the center.

ahhh faithless what can you not teach us

 

[Bad Jim]

I do expect that have genuine interest in gaming to keep up with some sort of gaming news. I never met a person that liked Football nad yet didn't talk about the latest scandals and player transfers I don't see why gaming should be a special exception to this. If you like gaming you should strive to be informed.

Computer gaming is a wider topic than football. Every transfer and refereeing decision in the Premiership will have some effect on the order of teams at the end of the season, so fans have a good reason to know them. A better analogy would be to see them as sport fans and ask how much they know about controversial engineering techniques in Formula 1, or biased judges in figure skating. COD players have no reason to know anything about WOW, nor should they be expected to know about Need for Speed or Starcraft or Bejeweled.

 

[Daveman]

There are idiots and there are gamers in the world but the terms aren't mutually exclusive. It makes sense.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I do expect that have genuine interest in gaming to keep up with some sort of gaming news. I never met a person that liked Football nad yet didn't talk about the latest scandals and player transfers I don't see why gaming should be a special exception to this. If you like gaming you should strive to be informed.

Computer gaming is a wider topic than football. Every transfer and refereeing decision in the Premiership will have some effect on the order of teams at the end of the season, so fans have a good reason to know them. A better analogy would be to see them as sport fans and ask how much they know about controversial engineering techniques in Formula 1, or biased judges in figure skating. COD players have no reason to know anything about WOW, nor should they be expected to know about Need for Speed or Starcraft or Bejeweled.

So you are still asking them to be informed in their topic which is all I ask. If you want to be a gamer of any description you need to be involved in some reading form of new. Whether it is a site such as this to the update notices on WoW. I never said they had to know every single piece of news of every single game. I think things like the L4D2 and MW2 boycotts along with say the SC2 boycott(yes I know they are all boycotts) should of been common knowledge among actual gamers at the time. Why shouldn't people who consider themselves gamers not know what is happening whatsoever in the medium. I am sorry but a lot of people don't. The sheer number of people in my school who are alleged devout CoD fans yet never even heard a whisper of the several boycotts and controversies over their supposed favourite game is astounding. I am not asking for in depth knowledge but basic knowledge like Football fans. You think Premier league fans watch other leagues? Very few. So I don't see the Football fan as bad comparison. Everyone should have a basic knowledge of news in their preferred league or genre of games if they really want to be considered a gamer. I never asked CoD players to know about other games.

 

[Danceofmasks]

What's there to know about CoD?
Latest patch notes? Sandy Ravage is a beast? Ghost perk is OP?

Anyone who calls someone out for not being a "real gamer" while playing CoD on a console is just silly.

An example of FPS taken seriously:
Painkiller Cyberathlete Professional League 2005 had a total prize pool of US$1,000,000.
The world champion Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel walked away from the final with $150,000.
(Great match, btw ... watch it if you can find it)

That kind of thing is impossible on a console FPS, because controllers are so bad for FPS, aim assistance is a necessity.
Hence, PC FPS players have little, IF ANY, respect for console FPS.

Counterstrike 1.6, Painkiller, Sudden Attack, Quake Live, even COD4 (on PC, with PROMOD) .. those games are good for competitive play.

FPS can be serious business. Just never on console.