Jimquisition: I Hate Videogames (Because I Love Them)

[Aardvaarkman]

Fucking Retro Goggles. Always raping your eyes with their large pixels and limited color palette.

Anyway - why is there a need to make a video, on a website that routinely criticizes video games, saying that video games are allowed to be criticized? That's obvious to anyone who isn't a complete moron. And why should we care about what complete morons think in the first place? Shouldn't we just ignore them and move on to more intelligent discussion?

This is kind of like if a flat-Earth proponent walked into a meeting of astrophysicists and the astrophysicists bothered to dignify the flat-Earth argument with a response other than simply calling for security to have the nutcase ejected.

 

[1337mokro]

....

That means, as long as you buy games, they will continue to do what they do because they would lose money doing otherwise.

Sry Jim he is right.

Stop buying games is the only way to stop EA, Activision and Ubisoft.

Ubisoft even hacks into your browser, evidently.
Stop supporting those companies, do not buy their games.

Thats the only way to beat them,
if you Jim really love video games,
say that people shall stop buying them.

There just is no other way.

with regards

Yep Ubisoft hacks into you browser. They install a little UPlay plugin without you consent that thankfully isn't compatible with the latest firefox beta otherwise I would never have known it.

Stop buying games, even if they are good, when companies perform such horrible practices. They are literally spying on you without any notification or legal grounds, they simply just don't tell you. This isn't America I should not have to stand for that.

 

[Bluecho]

It's the same for me with comic books. I love them, which is WHY I criticize and call out the crap. We have a medium for telling great stories, yet we get bogged down in overblown events, stories that erase decades of continuity, the exploitation of great creators, and seeming to need to reboot their entire line every ten years or so. I roll my eyes at the fanservice and grumble at the fact that most comics are produced with an opposite political idealogy to my own. Yet for all this, I'm with Jim here. It's a medium I love, and that only makes the need to point out its shortcomings all the greater.

As always, I thank God for Jim Sterling.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Don't buy new, bypass any and all DRM= not buying them at all.

I hate most new games like I hate most new music, canned, cloned unimaginative crap I loath.

 

[lord.jeff]

I think it's worth noting that not only should we be careful of viewing other's criticisms as hatred but keeping are dislikes of a mostly good game from turning in to acts of hatred, like the review bombing of Portal 2 because it had DLC or the whole Mass Effect ending controversy.

 

[Jennacide]

It's good to see more sentiment that I've had for ages, "criticism is not only okay, but just." I love some really abstract games, yet have to defend myself if I point out any fallacy in them. I had a legion of jerks pick a fight with me when I simply stated that I wish Persona 4 wasn't so grindy. Getting moronic retorts like "then go play something else and stop bothering us." Screw that nonsense, I love every other aspect of the game. The characters, story, combat mechanics and social link systems are all great. But you DO need to spend and almost absurd amount of time in the combat grinding up to get the spells you need for many bosses.

 

[Riobux]

I feel bad that the main part I paid attention to and had to rewatch it because I was actively laughing out loud was the Chick Fillay intro part.

Edit: Aw, alright, I'll contribute. I'll admit I'm part of the crowd that constantly criticises the ever loving hell out of games. There's no such thing as a perfect game and even some of my favourite games are deeply flawed (Eternal Darkness with a terrible problem that if you miss something in a previous level you can't pass a later level and it's impossible to go back to the previous level for it, Silent Hill 2 with shoddy combat and camera angles and Kane & Lynch: Dead Men because...Haha, I don't think I need to list them). However, it's only through feedback that developers can work out what the consumer want. If people don't complain, and whine, and ***** about all their games, even their favourite ones, then it's stuck producing the same game over and over again.

It's a problem with some game series, where no one has really sat down with the developer and said "look, this and that could be improved, this game isn't bad but look you can improve all of this". You instead get game series that seem to be going nowhere and changing nothing from game to game because they're sung to the high heavens (or told they're shit a lot with no explanations) so they're left with nowhere to go to improve the game further. It's a case of needing criticism and constructive kind to further improve games and the games industry, rather than just sitting like an obedient dog ready to gobble any crap it's owner gives them and then begging for more.

 

[TrevHead]

I love niche games that arn't your common run of the mill AAA blockbuster, and this generation has been getting progresivly shittier as mid tier games have been squeezed away from home console. ATM anybody who isnt EA, Activ, Ubi & Capcom who can hype their games is between a rock and a hardplace, Sega is a good example of how fucked it all is, they release some of the best games this console gen (Many with no DLC, and solid as a rock with no patching needed), which don't sell and are soon in the bargin bin, so they have to quit retail and are now mostly doing HD remakes of their back catalog on digital.

Retail is a broken mess, and the digital DL services like XBLA and PSN are a fucking joke compared to Steam. On Steam like any good internet store its generally easy to find quirky and interesting games.

One only has to look at the growth indie and mid tier games on Steam to see what a godsend a good digital store can do for gaming.

Consoles its totally the opporsite, bad interface and GUI, crappy adds and TV and music, indie marketplace which is a pain in the arse to find anything, limited to £10- $15 games so only the odd budget indie or HD remakes of older classics is viable, crappy discounts on older games so ppl don't buy them. The multitude of multiplayer XBLA games that have nobody in the server lobbies.

 

[A_Parked_Car]

Thank you! That was extremely well said and pretty much sums up my own thoughts on the issue.

 

[Evil Smurf]

I would eat fast food Chik o Fill if it was tasty. And besides the only EA game I have bought is Tetris

 

[Magmarock]

Great video as always Jim, maybe I should dead space since Event Horizon is one of my all time favorites too. But I'm not sure which one to try.

 

[snd_dsgnr]

This might be the most I've ever agreed with one of your positions. Sometimes it genuinely seems like game companies are going out of their way to make it more difficult to enjoy playing games, to say nothing of the obvious ways that they go out of their way to squeeze every last dime out of their audience that they can.

I would have given serious consideration to just throwing my hands up and saying to hell with all of it, if not for the fact that the actual quality of the games that we're seeing this generation really just blows me the hell away.

 

[TrevHead]

"loving something while been mature enough to critisize it"

Every Steam fan needs to watch this vid

 

[Metalrocks]

true. even when i love half life, i still find something bad about it like some levels i hate or a certain mechanic i dont agree with.
im anyway done with ?A. lately BF3 has become bad to play and im not sure if i want to keep playing it if these problems dont get fixed asap.
despise ubisofts crappy DRM, im still looking forward to play AC3. because i think their games are actually fun to play and i generally dont mind ubi...yet.

im picky with games these days. if its really something i want, i get it, and i dont care if its game of the year material or not. as long the game works and im having fun with it, i get it.

 

[TallanKhan]

Im not opposed on principle to games making money but the focus seems to have shifted from legitimatley making money to milking the player. DLC is a clasic example, if a game stands on its own merit and is released complete (by which i mean as concieved) then i have no objection to DLC being released later, however content being left out then sold to us later isnt just insulting but its morally questionable too. Dragon Age Origins is a good exaple of both.

Stone Prisoner DLC was just material that was left out of the release and repurposed latter. Even though it did introduce arguably the best character in the franchise it was still just cynical money making.

On the other hand the Wardern's Keep dlc was excellent, relatively well written, fresh environment and it added to the overall game world. This was something conceived as an addition to the main game and produced to a high standard, and something i was happy to part with money to purchase.

 

[Adon Cabre]

As arrogance and stupid-foul a rant as I've ever heard, but brilliant all the same. It's funny how the internet is simply mirroring mankind's age old flaws; prejudices and intolerance, which is why a future dystopia is utterly impossible, because we're all too damn cynical to trust a government when it introduces a program with the word 'free' attached to it, or tells us 'mission accomplished'. But back to the point.

If you're an artist, you are obliged -- no, required -- to experience a form of art, and then piece it apart for your own study: to find out what is good and bad. The great thing about video games is that its fans actually critique them in ways they wouldn't with movies. This is because they have such an emotional connection to this visceral experience. They have played for two or three, sometimes dozens and even hundreds of hours, so they'll go on the internet and defend or critique pieces of it against say, another game or a 'part two' to the series.

Take the good with the bad.

 

[HalfTangible]

I'm going to skip over the fact that supporting traditional marriage is not the same as hating gay people and just ask... What does hating gay people even TASTE like?

Your points are otherwise well made, insightful and true as always. I f***ing love the Jimquisition. And hate it. And love it. And hate it. And-

... I'll shut up now.

 

[Kanatatsu]

I see lots of people, including Jim, talking about all these crazy fanboys who won't hear a bad word spoken about their favourite console/game.

I've never seen them on a board or heard from them in real life. Not saying they don't exist, but in normal gaming converse they never seem to pop up.