Poll: What Do You Think Is Currently The Worst Thing In Gaming?

[NecroNinja]

I was just over on GameFAQs.com as I like to take part in their daily poll, and today's poll had me stumped. I simply couldn't choose an answer. This was striking to me as it really highlighted how much is currently wrong with the industry. It made me recall a time when gaming felt like it was for gamers, not for the businessmen behind games to line their pockets.

Is it over-saturation? Business? Or is it a new generation of gamers? What is it about the game industry that is causing you to lose faith in it at the moment?




NOTE: The poll is the property of www.gamefaqs.com apart from option 6 which I added. So, credit goes to them.

 

[SSJBlastoise]

I didn't vote in the pole because my version of why gamers are the worst part isn't really about reinforcing bad practices but more about the fact that many would rather whine about a game they didn't like, hasn't even come out yet or even played (see just about every CoD or EA game). The reason this is terrible is because they could either simply trade it in if they didn't like it or, and this part really annoys me, they could just not buy it and end up having nothing to do with it.

I don't like some games that are popular but I don't see the need to go into an article about a game and whine about it and tell others they have shit tastes if they liked it. It really is annoying.

 

[Silly Hats]

Gamers not having their own independent thought really.

People that like AAA games are going to buy those games over an over, everyone else can either wallow in sadness and lament the industry or the gamers can focus on games old and new that appeal solely to them.

 

[bluefields1]

I think the 8.5 to 9.5 review scale is getting really old.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Money I suppose is the worst and best thing about gaming good because it allows massive expansion of it and bad because it also restricts its growth in so many ways or rather money is good, profit focused business practices are bad.

 

[Tom_green_day]

We in our community all must love each other :L
I'll go for gamers, complaining about these things. I can see relevant and believable examples for all the things in the poll, except gamers. They never seem to be pleased, and are pretty intolerant of others from what I can see. It's basically the complaining.
When I say 'they' I do of course mean 'we'.
Capcha: and that's the way it is. Well screw you too!

 

[mavkiel]

Had to pick gamers, but by that I mean consoles. Sure it may give the developers more cash, but in turn they have cater to that crowd and tether the game to old hardware.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

High cost of development. It leads directly to "safe" sequels and a lack of innovation and exploration. It also leads indirectly to things like microtransactions and DRM, as publishers/developers look to find ways to recoup their investment.

Fortunately with digital distribution making it possible for indies to thrive, marketing being cheaper than ever before, and kickstarter creating a new method of putting talent in contact with capital, the traditional publisher model is slowly fading away. It's actually a pretty exciting time to be a gamer. However, everyone is whining about it anyway.

So I chose "gamers" in the poll.

 

[IllumInaTIma]

Gamers - but not the way described.

I don't see a difference in gamers. They are all the same to me, be it the dudebro who only plays Madden and CoD or the selfproclaimed hardcore gamer who swears by how superiour his games are. They are all the biggest problem or your mom playing Angry Birds. They are the same, there is no 'hardcore' or 'casual' distinction in what games you play because there is no definition for 'hardcore games', the distinction is only in how much time you put into gaming. And even there: Unless you are not one of those professionals you are equal to the 'filty casual mom'.

Because the gaming 'community' contradicts itself on every topic. DRM and always on is bad? Then why the flying fuck is D3 one of the best selling titles for PC? You hate CoD because it is the same but buy the same shit from other companies who never change. You proclaim how games today are worse but deliberatly ignore every shitty game that came out during your favorite timeperiod (this bugs me the most - I recently dug out a gaming magazine from 2000 and god was it full with shitty titles I never even heard about who were obvious copycats from then successfull ones). I could go on but:

The biggest problem in gaming is the gaming 'community'. Because every other problem stems from them alone.

Holly Hell, that's a perfect way to put it. No joke, amazing.

Apart from that, and all the answers in a poll, I think there's one more problem that's often addressed by Jim Sterling. AAA-games budget is fucking overblown! They put in incredible amount of money on development and marketing and the only way they can make profit out of that is by selling more copies than there are people on Earth. Because of that, there are only 2 game markets, AAA-titles and Indie games. A whole empty niche in between.

 

[Weatherking]

Listening to my teachers at game-design uni when they talk about the market, how you must have a target audience and how everything has to be about selling the game and making money, I just feel slightly sick and frustrated. Maybe I'm just a naive nut(I'm definitely a nut.) but I don't care about making money, it's a necessary thing for me to survive and make more games but I don't want to make games because I want to make money, I want to make money because I made something I really care about that people might enjoy. If no one does enjoy it, well then I fucked up and move on, whatever.
Anyway, so that's what I think is the worst thing, making games because of money instead of making games because of games, but I understand the perspective in which it's a totally fine reason too, it's just not my style.

 

[morrie man]

#Weatherking You make me have faith in people! Thank you! We need more people who believe in making games that people will enjoy rather than making more money. So in this poll I would have to vote the last option "Gamers".

 

[AngloDoom]

It's got to be the Gamers for me. There are a lot of new ideas coming out all the time and until my console exploded and my desktop died I hadn't realised how much the indie marketplace had grown from rinse/repeat top-down zombie shooters to sophisticated and unique experiences.

People like me, prior to the destruction of my console and decent desktop, would never have looked at the indie market and wouldn't have helped fuel the more original ideas that are developing all the time. Now I find it extraordinarily hard to engage in games I used to enjoy because they feel like such a shallow or repetitive experience.

 

[Envy Omicron]

Everything else is a symptom; The audience is the cause. Well, the publishers too...

The problem is that, as it stands, both sides are filled with dumb shits.
Now, you're a gamer, you're reading this and you feel insulted; Don't. Remember: A person is smart, people are stupid.
The publishers are dumb as bricks in that they will only follow what made the most money instead of either trying to create the next big thing or to corner other markets than the
The audience is dumb as bricks because they keep buying that shit!

-DRM is just a stupid reaction from publishers scared shitless that people who weren't really interested in buying their game pirated it and they count that as a lost sale.
-Microtransactions are a stupid reaction from publishers scared shitless that they won't make enough of a return on their investment. i.e: "Lets get more money from the ones who pay 60$ without a second thought and lets potentially get more money from cheapskates who buy used."
-Sequels (et al) are a stupid reaction from publishers scared shitless that people won't buy a name they don't recognize.
-Rushed game are a stupid reaction from publishers scared shitless that games won't sell unless they are released at specific points in the year.

If the audience were smart(er), we wouldn't get these reactions.
If the publishers were smart (and gamers instead of suits), well the gaming world would be made up of companies like CDPR and Valve.

Wow, I was going to post a response explaining that all of the issues in the poll could be traced back to dumb gamers, but then I saw this, and now it feels like it would just be redundant. Seriously though, great post!

 

[Assassin Xaero]

Gamers, for multiple reasons. First off, some of them are the biggest fucking babies on the planet. The complain if a sequel comes out and not enough was changed, or they'll complain that too much was changed. If it goes on sale for 85% off the week after release, they will complain that it isn't 90% off and the developers are greedy. Even if the game is free they will find something to complain about.

Then there are graphics. If a game doesn't have graphics that require a $5,000 computer to max out, they complain that the game sucks because the graphics are horrible. Game are about fun, not looking pretty. But now with all the complaining, we get decent looking 4 hour linear games that take up 30GB of space (or come on 3 discs for you console folks).

And don't forget about the people who just bash a game without ever having tried it or knowing anything about it. I swear at least half the people trashing Duke Nukem Forever never played it. If you play it and don't like it, that's fine, and that's how I learned BioWare can't make a game that classifies as "entertaining" if their lives depended on it, but don't go and trash games you've never played, especially if it is because your idol you worship on youtube says it was bad and you lack the ability to form your own opinion.

 

[HardkorSB]

I think that the worst thing about gaming right now is the fact that there's no real dialogue between gamers and developers/publishers.
All I see is gamers bitching about companies and companies bitching about gamers.
Gamers don't like the companies because the companies (especially the big ones) don't listen to anything the gamers say and only concentrate on making a quick buck.
The companies don't like the gamers because they often have unreasonable expectations and don't understand what it means to run a big business.
Each side thinks that they are right and the other side is wrong.
They can't seem to realize that they both act too entitled and are full of crap.

As for the games, some are bad, some are good, most are mediocre. No change there as far as I can tell after playing games for 24 years.

 

[Dangit2019]

Gamers. I know this is an old example, but nothing has shown the problem more than when people pirated the humble indie bundle instead of giving a single penny to the developers or to charity.

 

[Yopaz]

Gamers for a ton of reasons really. Not so much for buying every Call of Duty that comes out, but for how some of us are really, really stupid. We whine about why X game sucks and call everyone who bought it stupid. We have pointless arguments about features that might be added to a game that are optional, but we're sure is going to ruin the game and make it suck. We whine about people liking games we don't, we will spend a lot of time whining about games rather than talking about them.

However the worst part isn't how childish we can be at times, this is something that I can accept. The worst part is that we demand to be treated like sensible adults. We whine like children, we have childish arguments and we insist that we are mature adults.