Poll: Worst gaming trend?

[Quadocky]

Hah, I was going to post a very long winded thing about trends and such but the fact 180 votes on Game Journalism Corruption pretty much demonstrates the point I was going to make. Gamers themselves are the problem. Developers are doing just fine, if somewhat afraid to do 'new' things. The players of video games being terrible people (while nothing really 'new' either) is the worst trend of all.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Microtransactions are the only one that can effect the core gameplay drastically. Followed up by Day1 DLC and Online-Only DRM.

I don't really think that Season Passes, Free-To-Play, and Early Access are inherently bad, just that they have the potential to be abused. I don't care about misleading trailers since I never pre-order on principle, and I don't care about Games Journalism because I get most of my information from YouTube/Gaming Forums anyways.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

I think the worst trend in gaming is the recent influx of hipsters into the hobby who feel it is their god given fucking right to denigrate, insult, and paint with the widest and most terrible brush, the people who are passionate about the hobby. Sadly, most of these people now work in the journalism, so the cancer has metastasized and overtaken other organs.

Unlike most other people who can't seem to get it through their skulls that there's more to gaming than brown shooters if you'd just look, I think the biggest issue is gamers aren't angry enough. Companies care only for the bottom line, if you threaten that line, they will bend over backwards to fix that.

Another big contender are the constant patches and treating the customer as an unpaid beta tester.

 

[LeePatekar]

I don't care about Games Journalism because I get most of my information from YouTube/Gaming Forums anyways.

Hence the issue with journalism? ^_^

Another big contender are the constant patches and treating the customer as an unpaid beta tester.

Sadly its not limited to game development. I'll copy paste something I wrote on facebook about security in electronic devices (like routers) but it applies here as well:

MBA's push products out the door before they are ready to finance the last X% of development.. but once people already bought it do you really want to invest a lot of money and resources in fixing the flaws? Or would you rather concentrate on version 2.0 that promises more feature and fixes the flaws of version 1.0?

And so instead of pushing resources on the current project to make it right, they make it good enough and tolerable for the clients while working on version 2.0 And when version 2.0 is near the ship date things are rushed out the door for profits.. but that's okay because version 3.0 will fix it right? And the cycle continues.

So its not so much about corruption than it is greed. But the clients are also to blame.. we willingly accept to buy half finished products with the promise of future updates and patches. Our money encourages businesses to do this behaviour.. and the cycle continues.

 

[Zendariel]

I'd like to add the seemingly huge marketing and development budgets that seemingly cause much of the lack of risktaking and variety in the AAA game development industry, while also "justifying" a number of these terrible practises.

Aside from that my vote goes to anti-consumer DRM. Online only is kind of a tip of the iceberg, there was also i think SECUROM number something that broke dvd-drives on some occasions, mandatory accounts that often lessen the experience(for some people at least) And the fact that this has done very little to slow down piracy while also giving them a better experience on some occasions.

Now that is not to say all DRM is bad(at least to my knowledge). Game dev tycoon had programmed piracy ingame if you had pirated the game and it took the players sales down. Serious Sam 3 had that pink?/purple? unkillable death scorpion few levels in and Batman arkham asylum had a part where the cape refused to work on a mandatory gliding part halting the progress for pirated game. Also Fifa 2015 and lords of the fallen use a new drm that seems to work pretty well though there are suspicions that it might be causing some of the crashes, but that is unverified to my best knowledge.

I also have an issue with misleading trailers and demos to some extent. Back in time i could not wait to play castlevania: lords of shadow 2 after playing the demo that introduced a quite campy and fun experience that left an interesting cliffhanger, only to find out that the game changes tone like 160 degrees right after that.

 

[thedailylunatic]

Hah, I was going to post a very long winded thing about trends and such but the fact 180 votes on Game Journalism Corruption pretty much demonstrates the point I was going to make. Gamers themselves are the problem. Developers are doing just fine, if somewhat afraid to do 'new' things. The players of video games being terrible people (while nothing really 'new' either) is the worst trend of all.

I see THIS as the biggest problem in the gaming industry: outright hatred for the core audience. If you don't like us, why the f*** don't you LEAVE? We nerds have always been "beaten and shamed into submission" by cool kids like Sam Biddle (a Gawker gaming journalist who openly called for bullying against nerds in response to #GamerGate DURING BULLYING AWARENESS MONTH).

Seriously? Why on Earth are my ad dollars paying for anti-nerd jihad? That's why I joined #GamerGate, because I'm not a defenseless kid anymore and now I can fight back.

 

[Pete Oddly]

Ethics in games journalism is leading the poll? Over season passes which further fleece the consumer (and may not include all DLC anyway)? Over crappy early access games designed to cash in on gullibility and the good will garnered by indie dev pioneers? Over misleading bait and switch E3 trailers? Really guys?

I won't say ethics in journalism (not just games journalism, mind you) isn't a problem, as it seems to have flown out the window in recent decades, but journalists don't make the games, and they don't sell the games. At the very worst, they market the games, but it's the industry folks, the publishers and developers, who create the real issues.

 

[mrdude2010]

Wait, game journalism corruption? Really? That's just idiotic. Who the hell can justify voting for that?

Wish there was an "all of the above" option, but I guess that kind of defeats the purpose.

 

[Darzinth]

Unnecessary Online Only DRM is the Devil.

Gaming Journalism is a moot point if you don't pay attention. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

 

[Battenberg]

If you put an option for "game journalistic corruption" surely it would only be fair to include gamergate as an option? Both are essentially irrelevant to the actual games but both cause irritation/ frustration in equal measure to gamers. Either include both or include neither.

 

[the doom cannon]

Wait do people actually think that game journalism corruption is the worst thing in gaming? Like really? If you don't like what a reviewer is saying then don't watch/read what they have to say. It's that simple.

 

[Signa]

Online DRM for sure. I can ignore the rest of them to some degree, but Online DRM is an instant no-buy from me, no matter how good the game is. Especially if it is a good game, there is a chance of never being able to play it again.

None of that is to say that I don't think the rest of the list is varying degrees of vile.

 

[Shadow flame master]

I find game journalism to be pretty bad as most of the time it's nothing but people giving out reviews with a unhealthy dose of elitism. That shit gets annoying when I'm trying to figure out whether or not I should buy a certain game I've been on the fence about.

 

[MerlinCross]

Yesterday, game journalism corruption was second-to-last, and today it's winning by a large margin.

What happened?

Honestly I have no idea. Didn't know that would be on the poll and I didn't see somewhere "Hey let's flood this guy's poll". While I think it is a problem, I smell something funny.

Journalism aside(Since that's like an industry onto itself), probably misleading trailers.

 

[Duster]

No hollywood/casualization/dumbing down?

To be fair it's getting better but damn it was bad for a while.

 

[Genocidicles]

Gosh they're all so horrible, I can't decide.

Maybe journalism because they'll often try to pass off the other bad things as good, like Diablo 3's always online.

 

[AetherWolf]

Yesterday, game journalism corruption was second-to-last, and today it's winning by a large margin.

What happened?

You know what wouldn't surprise me? If it's all from some KotakuInAction thread or twitter rally that gathered people to sway results as a way of saying "Look, here's proof people DO think that game journalism is corrupt! check out these totally legit numbers from a ~non-biased~ selection of people! Bwuahaha, we've bested you now, evil anti-white reverse-racist man-hating SJWs!"

Not that a small poll from a topic in the Escapist forums is relevant in any way to... whatever it is they're up to. But, you know. Journalistic integrity and all that.

 

[EmperorZinyak]

Did people from GamerGate find my poll? It looks like Gaming Journalism corruption shot up. Anyways, I just watched my friend play AC: Unity and it pretty much has everything on my list covered. You've got Day One DLC, DRM from Uplay, a Season Pass, Microtransactions in a full price game (that range up to 100 dollars), and I would call the trailers misleading as the PC version looks horrible and is full of bugs, a far contrast from the gameplay trailers.

 

[bluepotatosack]

Gosh they're all so horrible, I can't decide.

Maybe journalism because they'll often try to pass off the other bad things as good, like Diablo 3's always online.

Did that actually happen? I mean, here's the first few paragraphs from the PC Gamer review:

"I have to start this with a warning, then a little tantrum, a few insults and a dash of paranoia. Apologies to those of you who already know what I'm going to say and are either fine with it or all raged out - you guys can skip this section.

Diablo 3 can only be played online. You can play it on your own or co-operatively, but neither mode works when Blizzard's servers are down, and neither mode is fun when Blizzard's servers are slow. In my six days of playing it, I got disconnected twice and experienced unplayable lag five times, each time when my own internet connection was working fine. At times, the servers were down for hours.

That's pathetic. There are valid reasons for forcing multiplayer characters to play online, but none for excluding an entirely offline single player mode. If you don't have a connection you can reliably play multiplayer games on, don't buy Diablo 3. Skip the rest of this review. Blizzard have chosen to exclude you completely, and I'm genuinely pissed off by the hostility and callousness of that decision."