Rant: Video Game "discussion" has become way too divisive

[inpurpleshadows]

If there's one piece of media I love experiencing and talking about, it's video games. With so many genres to experience, so many worlds to explore and so much amazing music, video games are a diverse medium, one that I consider an art form. I really like hearing others opinions on the games I played, even if they were to disagree with me because it's really cool to hear about an experience on a game that was different from mine. However, I feel like certain video games and the discussions that surround them have become overwhelmingly polarizing. I can understand why some games, especially story-heavy games like The Last of Us Part II have become divisive, particularly in the way they treat previous games in the same series. But in todays age, discourse of said games is polarizing, and at times, toxic. I am of the belief that subjectivity is implied 99.9 percent of the time, but the more I browse threads on Steam, Reddit or *shudder* Twitter, the more that belief fades. My biggest problem with these threads is how polarizing they are because there is no middle ground or agreement to disagree. The creatures who inhabit these forums will be at each others throats, all because of... opinions... on a fictional piece of media. I get that many have the tendency to get emotionally attached to the stuff we play, including me, but there's no need to get overly defensive over something you like or be extremely harsh over something you dislike. My solution to this kind of polarizing discussion is to agree to disagree if you can't come to a general consensus or make a more balanced analysis by taking both good and bad qualities of a specific game.

Unfortunately, many would probably ignore this post or even be completely unaware of its existence. I briefly mentioned TLOU Part II and how it divided the gaming community into factions, because COVID and the Internet took away the ability to have a friendly discussion (somehow). When I say this game was divisive, I don't just mean it was a love or hate situation, I mean that people got harassed over it. I never played the game myself so I can't really say anything about it. But from what I heard on the battlefield formerly known as Twitter, the developers and others who worked on the game received lots of harassment which knowing how the developers were forced to spend multiple hours a day to work on a game in time for its deadline, is probably, definitely a terrible thing to do. At the same time, anyone who offered genuine criticism to TLOU Part II were labelled as bigots. No matter what you said on the game, there was no winning, even if you were genuine in the way you expressed your thoughts on it.

It's not just TLOU II that is divisive, but pretty much every major game release in the past decade has been met with this kind of reception. I'm not saying divisive games didn't exist back then as there were a few games that were polarizing among their respective fanbases like Mario Sunshine and Zelda Wind Waker. The difference is that I've barely seen anyone get into a fight over those games. This kind of mentality has extended into reviews, where reviewers will sort games into two categories. One category is for games labelled as "flawless masterpieces" and the other is for "iredeemable disapointments". Many of these reviewers "critiquing" these games are very melodramatic and throw hissy fits under the geist of "comedic" "satire". The worst part is the reviews comment section. If you were to browse the comment section of a review, you would notice that a large majority of the comments agree with the reviewer's opinion. And that's another thing. So many people on the Internet are so used to being in their little isolated echo chamber that any opinion that opposes their own is the "wrong" opinion. It's a shame this is the case because if one were to actually listen to a differing perspective on a game they played, they would be able to get a different view on how one reviews or analyzes games. I know this post got a bit ranty, but I needed to get it off my chest. If you're reading this and made it this far, please be more balanced in your view of games, don't harass othet people, and for the love of Gabe don't turn the replies into a Twitter thread.

[ReBoot]

The more popular X becomes, the more toxic discourse around it gets. That's simply the way it is.

Take yourself out of it. Fixing mankind would be nice & ♥♥♥♥, I'd rather shoot for a realistic goal though. "Don't swallow poison yourself" is a realistic goal and that's achievable.

[DarkCrystalMethod]

Subscribed because you have some good points.
Also I have no clue about this controversy with TLOU, nor did I know people had issues with Sunshine and Wind Waker which were both fun up to the point where my skill level and time to dedicate to the game were insufficient. (Got to the orange Yoshi level... if you know, you know).

When I write steam reviews I tend to leave my opinion out of it(or at least save it for last).
Is the game play/story/mechanics solid? Any shocking revelations and plot twists? Good soundtrack, etc? And then replayability vs what I get out of playing the game. Does it improve me or my thought processes? Is there a peak level/weapon and is the game fun once you reach it?
Also I consider if I have to open my wallet to continue playing or even advance. Also I love when there are references and memes, it shows the devs put time and effort to put in easter-eggs that are enjoyable and perhaps even funny.
I don't usually write reviews but if its a game I had fun with that I know some of my friends would enjoy to then I usually tell them about it.
Of course the opposite is true too, If there's a game that done me wrong I'll make that clear in the review, without being nasty about it.

[crunchyfrog]

Get better people to talk to then, as this is just how reality and society works.

I'm a n old git and I've worked in politics, I've been a DJ, I've worked in insurance and legal work, and I also work in disabled campsites in music festivals.

You want to see people who will be pissy and unreasonable then all of those have their moment, ESPECIALLY politics and drunken people at some music festivals (it's why I'd never work Reading or Leeds ever again).

It doesn't matter whether it's games - some people just either cannot reason or cannot handle their opinions being challenged. Hell a lot of the time these days people can't even do really basic logic and can't tell the difference between subjective and objective.

I'd recommend you do this:

Treat online discourse of any kind the same way as you'd handle finding games servers online to play.

What I mean by this is when I play online, I tend to avoid PVP games entirely because they tend to warrant a lot of bad behaviour. Co-op less so. On top of that time of day is a biggie as well as server choice.

As I'm retired now, I have any time of day to play but if I play any time in the morning you get a few people who are also at home and it tends to be OK. Lunchtime tends to be about the same but a tiny bit busier. It dies off until about 4pm when the kids kick out of school and that's when I AVOID online play altogether. Until about 10pm when most are either going to bed or knocked off.

This is prime time for me as that's when most adult people or people who have families use their little time to kick back and relax. So you tend to get good games and also will often find new friends to regularly play with.

So use the same metrics with discussion. Choose your battles, choose your people you talk to and so on. If people aren't being honest it's not a problem to just ignore them.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

I have absolutely no clue what TLOU is even. Man am I tired of all those acronyms...

But there is one point I wanted to share which I believe that is very important: in the past people would always make sure to separate different medium like consoles and PC games. Those should be two completely different topics. I utterly hate how everything seem to be blending together in the recent years. There is a reason why you have consoles and why you have PCs. I so wish they'd stop making games which aim to please every single crowds. Because guess what? It never succeed at pleasing anybody. You never get great games anymore and that's one of the big reasons for this.

[DiceDsx]

Eagle_of_Fire님이 먼저 게시:

I have absolutely no clue what TLOU is even. Man am I tired of all those acronyms...

The Last of Us.

[Crazy Tiger]

So, OP, you're complaining that people are being people? Social media have ruined people in that regard.

Just don't participate in the areas/hubs you don't like.

[crunchyfrog]

Eagle_of_Fire님이 먼저 게시:

I have absolutely no clue what TLOU is even. Man am I tired of all those acronyms...

But there is one point I wanted to share which I believe that is very important: in the past people would always make sure to separate different medium like consoles and PC games. Those should be two completely different topics. I utterly hate how everything seem to be blending together in the recent years. There is a reason why you have consoles and why you have PCs. I so wish they'd stop making games which aim to please every single crowds. Because guess what? It never succeed at pleasing anybody. You never get great games anymore and that's one of the big reasons for this.

You're wrong I'm afriad. They're all the same.

The crowds and metrics are the same. If they weren't then you wouldn't have so many cross platform games.

I'd also remind you there's a welath of data that shows this and that since the start there was no dictinction. There were home computers and Pong consoles. The consoles obviously had no cartridges (until the Fairchild channel F and the RCA Studio II, or was it another of theirs?). So there was only computers and no universal crossover.

Andthen you got the Atari VCS at the same time as more home computers started showing up.

All in all as more and more of each started to become popular (and cheaper) the SAME games were being made on each. That continued and when PCs were invented and standardized to a large degree, you had very few games outside of the classic stuff that appeared on mainframes as there was bugger all much in the way of graphics on PCs. They were essentially business machines.

But once things like graphics accelerators and soundcards started to become a thing, PCs started getting attention.

But this is around the time that games were well established with multicoloured sprites, scrolling and so on.

The point here is that your imaginary fencing of them being different is clear nonsense. Games have ALWAYS existed across all platformsd the same, with little divesting except in some platforms being slightly better for certain genres - PCs being great for strategy amd mouse based games, for example.

But that still only is a preference thing.

There's nothing in the sphere of people, types of person, attitudes, cricumstances or whatever that are exclusive to one group or another.

That sounds all very "no true scotsman "fallacy.

[Crazy Tiger]

crunchyfrog님이 먼저 게시:

But that still only is a preference thing.

There's nothing in the sphere of people, types of person, attitudes, cricumstances or whatever that are exclusive to one group or another.

Yup. I've been playing on pc and consoles just about my whole life. I want the same thing in games no matter what platform I use: fun games.

Luckily there are so many great and fun games to play.

[crunchyfrog]

Crazy Tiger님이 먼저 게시:

crunchyfrog님이 먼저 게시:

But that still only is a preference thing.

There's nothing in the sphere of people, types of person, attitudes, cricumstances or whatever that are exclusive to one group or another.

Yup. I've been playing on pc and consoles just about my whole life. I want the same thing in games no matter what platform I use: fun games.

Luckily there are so many great and fun games to play.

Yup, I can't fathom the claim about people being different because I've never seen any evidence of it realistically. Sure, you get weirdos or small pockets of bad actors, but they're everywhere and it has nothing to do with the platform.

If there were, then it would aobviously affect whetgher I'd play on all platforms or not.

All sounds a bit silly and elitist to be frank.

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

Focus on self-improvement, to hell with these other people.

[Volfogg]

If you don't like it, then ditch interaction with such people. To hell with social interaction anyway, "Block and move on" as they say... I have no patience for such people myself, so I pretend they don't exist.

[Psychlapse]

We needed a tl:dr there.

I've pretty much retired from all forms of social media now, mainly because of the drama and facepalm that seem to have exploded over the last few years.

Simple fact is that as a species, we're just not that smart or nice. We like to create divides and poo fling at each other while screeching.

We've been on this earth for thousands of years, and yet here in 2023 we still can't get over skin colour, or whether something is dangling between our legs or not, or what we do with it and to who.

Picking sides in video games and screeching about it in an arena where consequences are few and far between is easy and reasonably risk free, hence why you see a lot of it.

[inpurpleshadows]

DarkCrystalMethod님이 먼저 게시:

Subscribed because you have some good points.
Also I have no clue about this controversy with TLOU, nor did I know people had issues with Sunshine and Wind Waker which were both fun up to the point where my skill level and time to dedicate to the game were insufficient. (Got to the orange Yoshi level... if you know, you know).

You'd be surprised just how many games, no matter how critically acclaimed or how many awards they win are polarizing. Even games commonly found on greatest game of all time lists such as Heavy Rain, Skyrim and God of War 2018 are very divisive for many reasons. Heavy Rain had a bigger focus on narrative, a decision that some people loved and others hated; Skyrim was praised for its expansive world design and complex lore and at the same time panned for its near game-breaking bugs and GOW 2018 divided fans for replacing its fast-paced and gory gameplay with a bigger emphasis on story. There was also a time when everybody on the Internet decided Minecraft was "overrated". This was mostly because people were just tired of how oversaturated Minecraft had become that it eventually became the Internet's punching bag for a few years. Then Fortnite came out, millions of people played it and somehow everyone was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on that game. And when Fortnite was the new punching bag, those same people who hated Minecraft now considered it a masterpiece. The main point I'm trying to get across is that some will hate on something just because its popular and have little reasons for why they dislike it. While I could never get into Fortnite, mostly because of how repetitive it was, some of the hate was undeserved. While opinions are inheritely subjective in nature, I really wish more people could provide actual reasons for disliking something instead of just "popular game bad".

[Reggaejunkiedrew]

The underlying problem is the decline in usage of forums for discussions by the people who want that sort of thing. Game forums have always had a lot of complainers, but they used to also have a lot of people there for deeper, more constructive conversation. Most of those people grew up and have families now, they aren't wasting their time on forums and the younger generations don't seem to have those proclivities.

The end result is game forums just become places to complain. The arguments are divisive and unconstructive because many boards have a faction of people whose main hobby is hanging out on a forum of a game they say they don't like and whining about it. There's nothing to convince them of because they aren't interested in changing their mind. It's mentally ill lonely people projecting all their failures on some video game forum because their mad at the world.

And than obviously you have the other end; fan boys who get outright hostile and emotional if someone slightly criticizes their favorite game, these are more an issue on social media like Twitter I find than forums though.

[Lunar Fang]

Gaming should be fun and for everyone, but most cases people bring in their own emotions and opinions which is great, it means they're engaged, but if you disagree with them, you're the enemy. Having a discussion isn't we all agree with each other end of story, that's not a discussion. Most people, especially younger people, are being taught what you think matters and that's it, anyone who doesn't agree with you is hostile. We're supposed to disagree with each other, and having hopefully a civil discussion, let's people see things from different angles. No

Now it's just I'm right, you're wrong, but the point of an opinion has and will always be it's neither right nor wrong. You're allowed to like a game anyway you want, even if other people hate it. I'm interested in playing Fortnite, never played it, but everyone I know thinks it's a horrible cartoony kids game. We all bought it when it was a wave based game, that failed. Now it's this massive battle royale game and it has, as you said, this horrible reputation because it caught on with younger gamers.

You at the end of the day just have to make your own decisions and play it if you want. I don't read game journalists because they only play a level or two and struggle with tutorials. If I see a movie getting bad reviews but I wanted to see it. I will see it and decide for myself, a lot of people today are afraid to just decide for themselves. If I have to play Fortnite alone despite how many people I know, ♥♥♥♥ it. Things like that are just better with friends because you can also make your own fun in a game. I've never played TLOU and heard the first one was good, then they butchered what came after. I'm not interested in TLOU so I will probably never play it. I don't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ care of God came out of the sky and said it's his favorite game. I still have zero interest in playing it. So I won't act like I'm a TLOU expert and if someone asked me if it's good I would be honest and tell them this is what I've heard, but I've never played it and if you're interested go for it.