Have you ever actually read the comments on a discussion board? I don’t mean the most recent five or six, I mean them all (or at least the first sixty to one hundred). If you ever had you will come to two inevitable conclusions.
1) Everybody in the world is an idiot, or at least your IQ dips the more time you spend on the internet.
2) People like to argue… just for the sake of arguing.
The second point is what I am going to be talking about mostly this issue, specifically about the hate and stereotyping that exists within the gaming community. The gaming community seems to be one of the angriest groups when it comes to internet message boards – or maybe it’s a tie with the Mac vs. PC groups. You cannot read a single article about anything video game related without someone posting a message of “Xbox sucks, PS3 rules” or “PS3 sucks, Xbox rules”. Take your pick as they are equally prevalent, and that is an important point. Both sides are pretty much equal when it comes to hating the other; each will focus on different things, but they both end up degenerating into simple hate arguments and childish comments.
I have said before that I don’t think there is a single ‘best’ console, each has its benefits and weaknesses, and each caters to a different group. Of course there are cross-platform titles, which bridge the gap and allow everyone to enjoy a game no matter what system they own. Even in these cases there is more hate between groups, propagated by subtle differences in games. Check out the discussion forums on an upcoming or recently released game and you will always see people arguing about the frame rate of the game, or the degree of anti-aliasing, or the pixel count in a specific model. In all of these cases people are arguing about the graphics components of the games – not the gaming components. If someone played the game on a system outputting at 30 frames per second (fps) at 1080p resolution while another person played the game at 60 fps at 1080i resolution, who had more fun?
Well, that has absolutely nothing to do with the technology does it? It has to do with the game, the experience they had within the game world, and the interactions with fellow gamers. I firmly believe that a game is nothing without a great premise and story (or lack thereof for many of the most addictive games like Plants vs. Zombies and Angry Birds), no matter how great the graphics. Too many times it seems that developers create a new graphics engine, or an amazing new gimmick – I’m referring to in game gimmicks like time control or terrain modification – and then they try to slap on a story to market the game. Anyone every play Timeshift? I mean the original version, not the actual release version. I have subscribed to the Xbox Magazine for several years now, and every month I get a new DVD with all of the latest demos, which definitely helps with clearing space off the hard drive and not having to re-download demos if I ever want to play the game again.
Timeshift is an example of a game where the public response has had a visible impact on developers. The first Timeshift demo was absolutely horrible. Within a month it was pulled from Xbox Live, and replaced by a new demo a long time later. The new demo was totally different, from the story and motivation for the adventure down to the time control mechanics themselves. Now I have two demo discs with a Timeshift demo on each one, demos for the same game, which are completely different. But one thing stayed the same – the graphics. The first game was horrible, and the second was a huge improvement, so that is my point: don’t judge a game by its cover.
Back to the issue of message board hate, where the Nintendo fanboys are mysteriously missing. Maybe they are a more civilized bunch, maybe they respect the choices of other people more, or maybe they are too busy trying to catch every one of the 700 Pokémon – I really don’t know. But it remains a common perception that Nintendo, and especially the Wii are catered towards a family market, not hardcore gamers. But what is a hardcore gamer? Is it the person who plays the most difficult games, yells at everyone in co-op who can’t begin to compete with him? Or is it the person who plays games all the time, but could care less about being the best in the world, they just want to game with friends? Does it have to do with the game itself, where the best selling game with the highest reviews is the most hardcore? If so then games like Nintendogs, Mario and Pokemon are the real hardcore games, not Call of Duty and Gears of War.
I really don’t know the answers, probably because there aren’t any ‘correct’ answers, just like there isn’t a ‘best’ console or handheld system. So that is my rant for this week, if you want a more humourous take on the current gaming news check out the Tin Soldier; I’m a little less preachy in that article. Until next term…Keep on Gaming.
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