A friend recently posed a question to me which opened up a lot of ideas in my head about gaming and its communities. When he saw how much money and revenue the gaming industry had made, beating movies and music alike by a significant margin he asked... "With games becoming so main stream, will we start seeing the same divides in people about games like we do with music ?" Basically will you get people who just eat up highly marketed mainstream but perhaps low quality games, and then all the cult like followings of the sub genres. Like say Goth or whatever.
You kind of see this already with the whole Indie vs Mainstream gaming but I think its already becoming far more pandemic than that. Your already seeing "popular" opinions becoming well used in the gaming industry even though some are not entirely well though out. One of these is the whole popular bashing of "gray and dull shooters" which is a common target these days. Even though these fps shooters are often quite varied, very well designed, fun to play and great examples of community gameplay. Not to mention helping games become more widely recognized and accepted socially... their still a common target for people to rip on. Not to mention selling massive amounts, competiting even with MMO's. A bit arrogant perhaps to dismiss them as bland and poor when so many people clearly enjoy them ?
Will we also start to see in games the same social stigma's we get with music ? Those who like this band have no taste while those who haven't heard of this other one... live under a rock and are socially retarded ?
Perhaps we are already seeing perhaps gaming snobbery and overly judge mental attitudes starting to appear as gaming gets a wider and wider audience. Its easy to draw similarities with cosplayers and their favorite game, to say metal fans who dress like the band members. How far will this go ? How will it socially divide people like it clearly does with music, I think most people can remember their high school days and how important music taste was back then. Friends being made or lost simply over what music people listen too.
I personally think we often see poor quality games or say... substandard and blandly manufactured AAA games being hyped beyond reason and people being suckered in by marketing. Fallout 3 and Call of Duty Black ops being fine examples of perhaps lesser quality games being well received during the hype stage... before the shine soon rubs off.
Anyone else seen similar comparisons or social divides being formed over games and gaming tastes ? Are we at risk of getting somewhat pretentious attitudes to more high brow games and looking down on simply fun games ? Will we get cliques of people who rail against mainstream for the simple fact that its mainstream ? Quite likely.
Is this a good thing ?
You kind of see this already with the whole Indie vs Mainstream gaming but I think its already becoming far more pandemic than that. Your already seeing "popular" opinions becoming well used in the gaming industry even though some are not entirely well though out. One of these is the whole popular bashing of "gray and dull shooters" which is a common target these days. Even though these fps shooters are often quite varied, very well designed, fun to play and great examples of community gameplay. Not to mention helping games become more widely recognized and accepted socially... their still a common target for people to rip on. Not to mention selling massive amounts, competiting even with MMO's. A bit arrogant perhaps to dismiss them as bland and poor when so many people clearly enjoy them ?
Will we also start to see in games the same social stigma's we get with music ? Those who like this band have no taste while those who haven't heard of this other one... live under a rock and are socially retarded ?
Perhaps we are already seeing perhaps gaming snobbery and overly judge mental attitudes starting to appear as gaming gets a wider and wider audience. Its easy to draw similarities with cosplayers and their favorite game, to say metal fans who dress like the band members. How far will this go ? How will it socially divide people like it clearly does with music, I think most people can remember their high school days and how important music taste was back then. Friends being made or lost simply over what music people listen too.
I personally think we often see poor quality games or say... substandard and blandly manufactured AAA games being hyped beyond reason and people being suckered in by marketing. Fallout 3 and Call of Duty Black ops being fine examples of perhaps lesser quality games being well received during the hype stage... before the shine soon rubs off.
Anyone else seen similar comparisons or social divides being formed over games and gaming tastes ? Are we at risk of getting somewhat pretentious attitudes to more high brow games and looking down on simply fun games ? Will we get cliques of people who rail against mainstream for the simple fact that its mainstream ? Quite likely.
Is this a good thing ?
