Poll: The Greatest Threat to Gaming

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

There is no threat to the gaming industry.

All of you people are fucking paranoid.

Oh come on, you know the counter-argument to this.

"OPEN YOUR EYES SHEEPLE! EA AND NAMCO CHARGE YOU MONEY FOR SHIT ALREADY ON THE DISC!"

 

[Raven28256]

I think the biggest threat is Jack Thompson (And people like him) and uninformed journalists.

Basically, both are doing the same thing: Spreading complete lies to further their own gain. With Thompson and people like him, it is some political or "religious moral" reason. For the journalists, it is all about ratings.

The journalists are particularly bad, because it is an example of what I HATE about the media: The concept of pulling things out of your ass just for ratings. Whatever happened to integrity in our news networks? Oh, I remember. That got pissed on around the time that everyone started dicking around and paying attention to celebrities more than actual news.

The journalists are worse than people like Jack though. The typical American has never heard of Thompson, and likely never will. However, when someone like Fox News shits out a steaming pile of lies and misinformation then people take notice. The Fox segment on Mass Effect is proof, as they based EVERYTHING they knew about the game off of a rant by some bigot looking for attention. Worse yet, they bring in a woman who has never even see a video game before as some sort of "expert" for a debate about Mass Effect and how bad and distasteful it is. Now, anyone who has ever played or done research about the game would see that it was all a load, but the average non-gamer American would listen to all this stuff about Mass Effect being a "porn simulator" featuring "full digital nudity," "the most realistic sex acts ever conceived," and "violent orgasmic rape," and be really concerned. This makes the game look very bad, and smears the name of the industry just because someone with an agenda started spreading rumors on the Internet and a group of ignorant journalists find it, think it will make a juicy story, and run with it without bothering to check their sources and do research...something that any respectable journalist SHOULD be doing instead of wanking off to potential ratings.

Really, this is just like someone making up a story about how a respected local surgeon rapes his female patients when they are under anesthesia and putting it on the nightly news. It smears that person's image by spreading outright lies for everyone to hear. Now, some might argue that a news network spreading lies about a video game for ratings is no where near as bad as that example, but really, it is. You have to remember that some of us work in the industry for a living, and when news networks spread lies about games or the game industry, it hurts us. Not mentally, mind you, I think some of these things can be rather hilarious, but then we have to deal with all the potential backlash and outrage based on something that just isn't true. Now we have to deal with the random angry mother groups and intolerant religious fanatics ragging on us because they heard a bunch of lies on Fox News.

It also hurts gamers, because now we have to watch what we do or put into games to avoid random hate. Which is pointless anyway; a lot of these people just make up random bullshit and get it passed off as fact.

In any case, uninformed journalists are one of the biggest threats to the game industry. People listen to what they hear on the news, even if it is bullshit they made up or spun from half-truths to make a potential rating booster. The more lies are spread about the industry or certain games, the longer the general public will have negative opinions about them. That in turn means that games will be everyone's favorite whipping boy for longer because it is easier to manipulate the masses to hate something they have a negative opinion about in the first place than to attack something that people have a better understanding of.

 

[meatloaf231]

I'm torn... It's like trying to decide between the flesh eating disease slowly rotting you from the inside (EA) or living in a town in which every single inhabitant is constantly trying to kill you (media).

You really can't choose a better option.

 

[mr mcshiznit]

I change my vote to people like jazzyluv. They ruin it for all of us because the games they like MUST be the standard for all games. Dude(or chick) calm down and accept that people like halo and CoD4 and that does not mean that those people are not as good as you. We get it you think your taste in games is amazing, but maybe you could take some time away from thinking your the shit and find some class and accept that games are meant to be fun and each person can have fun in their own way without belittling other players. Well i feel better now.

 

[EvilEngineNumberNine]

The two biggest threats to gaming as we know and love it (NOT as an "Industry")

1) The gamers out there who only want the same old thing over and over, only more of it. Who are afraid or unwilling to try anything new because you can't blow things up with guns and it's quite devoid of flaming death.

2) The game companies that are all to willing to give it to them. Who are only interested in making the same old thing, over and over because they know you WILL buy it
(AKA. Planned Franchises, AKA. The Sure Deal.) and are quite happy to charge you sixty dollars for it, along with all the DLC that was stripped from the finished game so that they could sell it back to you a chunk at a time for twice what you payed for the disc.

There are a few dev studios out there who are independent enough that occasional sequel fanservice is a genuine labor of love and I just hope they don't get gobbled up by [faceless corporate machine] and forced to churn out crappy sequels with uninteresting, poorly written, cliffhanger endings, forever, and ever, and ever, and ever.

There IS hope in the independent games sector though. And maybe when most of the people around me are blasting away at Gears of War 10, I'll be playing something fun and enjoyable that didn't get churned out of [faceless corporate machine].

 

[flatearth]

Here goes my ranking list:

6. Rabid Fanboys
They are not really a threat, just an annoyance.
5. Australian Goverment
Bad, but something tells me that other countries might be smarter than that
4. Crazy Senile Lawyers
The can make waves, but just as with Jack Thompson, they don't have anything to really back it up
3. Uninformed Journalists
Give onesided news like these and what you get, mothers against games. These will wreck up the place, at least in the US. Unfortunately, a lot of games are made there.
2. Electronic Arts
Just plain bad. Gaming is art, not a get rich quick scheme. They used to be cool, but they changed.
1. MMO's
This will distort the gaming experience. So many new MMO's are coming all the time. Why would anyone want to make anything else when you can get so much money on a steady flow.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

In truth, the one group that holds gaming back both as a casual persuit, an art form, and in general is perhaps the most powerful and wealthy.

The Consumers.

Companies can sell shitty games because you buy them. Journalists can push shitty stories because you read them. Politicians can push shitty agenda's because you let them.

Vote with your wallets and your ballots, take personal responsibility.

 

[Iron Mal]

It's not one on the list but I just thought of yet another thing that may have become a threat to gaming as we know it...also life (congratulations to anyone who gets the reference).

Bad in the good old days of the SNES and Megadrive we were satisfied to see a bunch of pixels run across a screen and explode into 3685 pieces, we didn't care about graphics, we didn't care about storyline, those things were nice to have but they weren't vital.

Nowadays people have begun ripping into games just for being average. For example, Army of Two, it was pretty bland and the AI clearly had 'special needs' but it was an alright shooting game and pretty fun to play with a friend.

In short, I get the feeling that the ludicrously high expectations of many gamers with eventually run games into the ground, remember, average doesn't mean bad.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

I do have to concur. Mercenaries 2 looks like a fun time and everyone craps on it for not being gods gift to sandbox.

Of course the 60 DOLLAR!??! price tag is probably what makes people expect more awesome experiances from games.

 

[ZenMonkey47]

The same thing that makes everything extinct: inability or unwillingness to change

 

[Zer_]

Surprised no on mentioned this, but I think that the most significant threat to gaming right now is the people who are against net neutrality.

 

[Phoenix Arrow]

Im sorry, but you have to understand how utterly hard these games are and how much they have evolved. Quake is a game that has been in constant evolution, quake 3 for example came out in in 1999, and the level of play has completely changed how the game is now played. Imagine keeping track of 4 armors timings on 25 second timers mega health on 40 second timer, weapons on 15 second timers to control them from the opponent, the position of the enemy, and what weapon to use when.... all while having to do a complex movement system called strafe jumping.

I have played Quake before, but to me it isn't any different to any other FPS. You get a gun, you shoot people. Not much else to it. Maybe if you play it obsessively but then that's true of any game.

Cs, because it has been fine tuned into a game that requires amazing aim in 1.6 just to even compete with the strategic element, the timings, movement patterns and all that have constantly changed as players strategies, skills, and overall timing and teamwork have improved.

I'm sure this is true if you run through Halo or say Perfect Dark (I game I loved) on the hardest setting.

Doa, because of its very complex and hard to master counter system, as well as its highly phycological play to get an advantage. The reflex and control as well as general game understanding you have to have to be competitive is staggering.

Hahaha. You don't play many fighting games do you? The counter system is ridiculously easy to master on that game and it's all too easy to win a game just by guessing a counter anytime people get close to you. Granted, if you play as certain characters (Helena, my best character Christie and Hitomi) then the combo system is good enough for me to say it's the best on a 3D fighting game, but people don't use these characters, they use Hayate, Ayana and Jann Lee and make me want to gouge my eyes out with a spoon. No offence, but I don't think you have a clue when it comes to fighting games.
I haven't actually played Starcraft so moving on.

Forza because it is extremely hard to master, the intricacies are almost like that of a real car. Again i could go driving.... but of course that isn't exactly exciting is it? It has a very high skill ceiling and that is what makes it a solid game.

Maybe. But it shows you exactly what line to take and exactly when to brake, which totally undermines the... goodness of the game for want of a better word.

Halo doesn't have shit to master in comparison to any of these game, and cod4 is a joke, and Portal is just another movie

edit: you must understand the game before you can see its peak

You haven't played Portal have you? I must admitt, after seeing all those internet memes about it I was reluctant to play it for fear of catching the chan virus. But the game itself was excellent. But none of what either of us just said is the point.

You said it yourself, "you must understand the game before you can see it at it's peak". Maybe you don't understand these games and should just respect the people that enjoy them rather than say that they're killing the games you enjoy. I mean, DOA4 and Forza came out relatively recently, but you claim that the games industry is being destroyed by new games. I don't know, just seems very hypocritical. A bigger games industry can only mean more good games, you just have to trawl through more shit to find them I guess.

 

[Dommyboy]

I would say that EA and Australia's government joined together would be the greatest threat. Though every game would have some fat politician in it with a deep, husky voice talking about why beer is good (it has happened before, except not in a game).

 

[Altorin]

It's not going anywhere, but journalists will stifle it.
How are MMO's ever going to ruin the games industry? You say it takes away from making other games, but Square Enix have Final Fantasy XI and do well to make other RPGs. You just don't like them by the look of it and that's fine. But you can't fairly justify what you've been saying as a fact. I play FFXI, I have a level 75 Red Mage, I play the game with my current best friend and then boyfriend who I bought the game with for something to do. I also go out with my friends at weekends, do alright for myself at college and also buy and play various of games from various other genres. Does that mean this MMO is destroying my life or that I'm destroying the games industry?
And you won't listen to arguments to the contrary? How bloody closed minded are you? MMO's are THE most expansive games available and can be very graphically apealling. Moreover, while I can't speak for GuildWars or WoW, FFXI has 7 seperate and well thought out stories. I think elitists such as yourself are a bigger threat to the gaming industry.

Amen.

for the record, WoW doesn't have much of a single player narrative, it's up to the players to develop their own narratives if they so choose with the vast amount of lore and quests/areas available. Most do not, and that's ok.

It does however have a fairly strong overall narrative. Each expansion is a new chapter in the story, and each major content patch also adds to the overall story as well. They're trying in the latest expansion to make the story seem more relevant.

 

[Thirtysomething]

This question probably shouldn't have been a poll with just 5 answers (of many), more of a general discussion.

The only thing that could become a threat to gaming is if everyone goes off it and takes up other hobbies. As long as it remains popular (and therefore profitable) none of the opposing forces in that poll, or any of the other hundred possibilities we could dream up, stand a chance of putting a stop to it.

When rock music first came about, it had its opposition. When TV emerged so did it. These are just a couple of oft-repeated examples which solidly illustrate the point that if something is popular, as gaming is right now, opposing it is futile.

In short, you have absolutely nothing to worry about.