Have we become spoiled game players?

[Continuity]

So what is your own opinion? Could I be crazy? Are we spoiled? Are our wants/needs too little, too much?

Perhaps a bit, but then each generation is more spoiled than the last or at least that's been the trend up to now. It just progress, the more we get the more we take for granted, but I'm not sure we should be ashamed of that, the bar has raised, the stakes are higher and game companies have to put out better stuff now to continue to meet expectations and turn a profit.

That's just that way it works, I'm not sure there's an alternative, its just a common marketplace trend you will find in all areas of life.

Personally I think we should be expecting and demanding more, gaming as a medium is fairly new and very new as the entertainment behemoth it has become. However it has a heck of a lot of maturing to do, and there are increasing numbers of gamers who want more substantial games, not just clones of mediocre action titles.

 

[Antari]

Old games didn't require you to pay extra to get content that was meant to be in it in the first place. Old games didn't require you to go through DRM. Old games weren't just reharshes of even older games with a differnt label slapped on it.

No I don't think we're spoiled. The gaming community is pretty vocal, but alot of our complaints are legit. And well...gamers are growing up. As a kid I could be fascinated by anything - but as an adult you would actually have to give me somthing that's amazeming before I'll say "That's amazing!"

Ya I agree with this. The game industry needs to rethink its strategy before it looses BIG. There are alot of aging gamers who are none too pleased with the way games are made today. The quality ISN'T there, just because they use a few algrythums that are built into your video card to make things look pretty doesn't mean they put anything that could be described as real effort into the game.

Ok so my first 3 posts, no problem, but this one needs Captcha? .. wtf?!?

 

[gigastar]

Old games didn't require you to pay extra to get content that was meant to be in it in the first place.

No, old games required you to buy a full-price expansion pack which is always contains less than half of the content you originally payed for.

Despite that up there, if the behavior you inevitably get on XBL is anything to go by, yes i do. They gave us headsets for ease of communication, instead theyre being turned into torture devices.

 

[gigastar]

Hell just look at the reaction from most of the people on the thread about the Mass Effect 2 giveaway. It shocked me that so many people were able to find fault with a free game and manage to complain...

The chief complaint among them was having to buy DA2. The people either already bought DA2 or listened to reviews and decided to not buy it.

Another complaint is having to use EADM, which is second only to GfWL in terms of user-hostility.

That and it is the PC version. Which i believe is the worst among them.

 

[Woodsey]

I think the spoiled attitude goes far beyond gamers. The western world is gripped by an entitlement culture that has literally paralyzed every aspect of it's societies.

Not quite sure if I should make a Granddad joke or a drama queen one. Decisions, decisions...

OT: In some aspects, whilst in others I don't think we complain enough. I mean day-1 patches are a pain, but back in ye olde dark ages, if your game was broken, you were pretty fucked.

We certainly don't complain enough about storytelling and such. Remember how everyone praised Heavy Rain for its story and story telling (I'm choosing it in the vain hope that David Cage may see this one day - he's being a complete twat right now)? And yet this is a game with some gaping plot holes, that cheats with its twist, has bizarre voice acting and some truly terrible dialogue. And we're praising it!

We should demand developers make games, not really long (and simultaneously really short) films - this is why the LA Noire guys should be telling those film awards to piss off. ITS A GAME. You don't give films book awards when they have good dialogue for fuck's sake.

Anyway, viva la revolución, and all that shit.

 

[Negatempest]

Cookie cutter games in the past with "sequal" pasted on it. Megaman 1 through Now (don't tell me it's not, still fun though), Super Mario bros. 1 and 2 (the real one), Zelda, Final Fight 1-3, anything to do with street fighter 2, Mortal Kombat, WWF games on the 64 (Admit it, they played AND looked the same..still fun as heck though), and Contra on the NES just to name a few. Were they "bad" games, heck no. Why were they fun? Because we just wanted to have fun 1st before worrying about "looks" or "Mature" depth. So yeah, we so spoiled.

 

[LitleWaffle]

Yes, I agree with the gaming community being spoiled. Same with everything else for that matter.

Why can't my anything do everything? Replace anything with any electronic is what a lot of people i've seen act.

I miss the good ol' days when I could go over to a friends house and play a game with all of my friends having a grand time.

Now, I can barely do something like that, with everybody just playing online saying that going over to so and so's house isn't necessary. And if you do get people to come over, they will play but constantly text throughout the game.

 

[mavkiel]

That and people bought a game they haven't been able to use for a month. Oh but wait, your giving me mass effect 2? To bad I already own it.

Honestly, that whole mass effect deal strikes me as a money grabbing ploy. If you were really interested in mass effect, you probably already own it. If on the other hand you don't and like it, congrats you have $20 worth of dlc to buy(Never thought ea, would make me long for the good old days of horse armor dlc).

 

[Trogdor1138]

The gaming community has and will always be spoiled shits.

But we're used to it now.

 

[Saviordd1]

Each time a new console launches I here, "Day 1 games suck", "games worked better in the past", "There weren't as many bugs", etc. I am sure you guys can add in a few of your own. So, to keep from making this a long post, which is easy to do, I'll keep my opinion as short as possible.

Yes, as a 24 year old gamer myself I believe we are spoiled. Raised with the NES and blowing into the cartridge kinda gave me a little more patience and empathy for a video game. Considering that the "american" version of the NES was a far more of an inferior model to the Japanese one, we still view it with admiration. Bugs are as persistent now as they were in the past. Some video games in the past were made half complete, I really don't think I need to list them most of use know them by heart, as any game today maybe even less.

I, in no way say that you should forgive games today or look at video games more tenderly. I am just saying we are spoiled, that is all.

So what is your own opinion? Could I be crazy? Are we spoiled? Are our wants/needs too little, too much?

I see your point and shrugged it off, humanity in the western culture is spoiled as a whole.

 

[Evil Tim]

Why can't my anything do everything? Replace anything with any electronic is what a lot of people i've seen act.

And if it weren't for people like them, people like you would still be sitting in a cave trying to figure out if rocks were edible.

 

[DevilWolf47]

There's a difference between being spoiled and having standards. I think expecting game designers to DO THEIR MOTHERFUCKING JOB AND MAKE GAMES THAT WORK is not unreasonable. I don't expect them to all be like Valve, but the ratio of pure shit to good game has reached almost the level it was at during the Atari generations.

 

[Outright Villainy]

*shrug*

I'm going to get too fussed over things like this, but I'm not going to get fussed over people making a fuss either.

[sub][sub]Yup, this is my incredibly passive way of being an elitist dick. I think it's quite snazzy.[/sub][/sub]

 

[theultimateend]

Ok so my first 3 posts, no problem, but this one needs Captcha? .. wtf?!?

It would be nice to not get a captcha once you've posted here over a thousand times :/

As for the OP, most folks look at professional games and expect professionalism. I consider AAA games to be indie games with better graphics budgets.

Doing that makes it much easier to come to terms with just how bad many of them are.

In fact they start looking really good when I come to treat them like that. "Oh sure this is a terrible idea, but the other 5 ideas in the game aren't too shabby."

Course I also tend to get games for 20 ish bucks so the sting is much less noticeable.

 

[Kaanyr Vhok]

I say no. I dont hear, read, or share unjust or unreasonable concerns. The only genre that has really improved its core gameplay is sports and you have exclusive licenses mucking things up there. Just compare the Xbox to the 360. Where are my Otogi, Pychonaught, Deathrow, Phantum Dust type games? Then look how RPGs have been dumbed down.

 

[Negatempest]

I mean, how old is our "favorite" industry? 30-ish years? Sure it's grown pretty quick, but still VERY young in general compared to our other entertainments. We give the excuse of the industry being young when we discuss it being an "art", but what about it working well in general? Where are the great camera angles that both improve the visual impact AND hide the uncanny valley? Where is the combination of a cutscene and interactivity that isn't a glorified QTE...that is beyond what half life has done? Our entertainment/hobby is just far to young to expect some form of "perfection" in animation, atmosphere, story, plot, characterization, etc, etc.... Maybe this way of thinking keeps me from looking at the bad 1st before the good. But this is just me.

 

[Evil Tim]

that is beyond what half life has done?

What's that, locked you in a box with a bunch of talking heads and no game to play?