What is going on with modernized gamers ?

I am starting to wonder what is going on with the modernized gamers because it is becoming near unbearable to read even one sentence
of what such people are writing in magazines and posting online, or hear one word of what they fake on Youtube to get a view or two extra.
This moan and topic idea originates from this point because i tend to see more and more of what i and others i know call fake gamers.

gamers used to play games because they where fun while realizing how difficult it is to make them, so only if the game would have had
horrible bugs and down right impossible to enjoy visuals would you notice some form of aggressive writing and attitude toward the game and
its creators. People do not seem to care that their professionally crafted good looking game provided them hours of fun and memories, but
actually start to complain about even the most idiotic and miniscule things, and if they can not find those they will go for the obvious
framerates while some even dare go for the artistic visual style as a target to complain about. I even have read more then once people
that dare to complain about import games in a way that they break down and destroy anything which has been part of a nation
its cultural standard around the gaming sub-culture.

I can not do more then see absolute fake gamers that buy a game for its graphics and not the gameplay, gamers that call themselves
'THE' focus group on which companies should focus, gamers that mistake a visual style with bad graphics, gamers that are capable of e-mail
bombarding the creators of AAA games about design choices based on the few ways they could make the game possible while acting as if they
as consumers with usually no programming knowledge know it all, and oh so many times better then programmers and artists that worked on the game.

Even professional magazines are infected with these behind the back idiots where you could read things like 'i did not like the gameplay'
followed by a downgrade in the rating... One writer did not like a game oustide of his genre and preference thus the rating plummets. And this is
only a few years ongoing as the more years i go back into these magazines the more the writers just document a game instead of subjectively
breaking it down.

The biggest idiots of them all are the absolute minority under the gamers, those with 3000 dollar / euro computers that claim far and wide
on any forum that they should be elected as kings above all, and that their needs should go above the millions of gamers worldwide on older
machines, consoles, and a smaller budget. this type of what i call fake gamers seems to fail the common sense that their low potential buyers
base can not sustain a modern gaming company as the revenue gathered from them alone would probably not be enough for one AAA game its status-quo.

I know many ex hardcore gamers (and i myself once having been a buy myself poor gamer with once a gigantic collection before i sold it) that are
also breaking their head over these off behaviours and weird new-type gamers. So now after this rant i wonder if Doomworlders mostly consisting
of older gamers from two different gaming generations that together bought big the industry which is now used and abused by the follow ups also
noticed this, or would Doomworld have more of these modernized gamers itself ?

I'm not sure if I follow correctly - you basically mean that gamers today complain about everything compared to, say, 15-20 years ago?

I think it's a matter of scale. First of all, a number of players has significantly increased with time, while their average age has dropped due to computers / consoles becoming easier to use. Second of all, when DOOM / Quake came out there was literally NOTHING like it on the market. You either played DOOM or you didn't play anything (as far as FPS go). It's hard to complain about gameplay when there is nothing to compare it with.

Today we have access to so many series that if one doesn't work or we don't like it, we can switch to a different one.... but not before sticking it to the dev team right? That's what I often see on the Internet: "screw you and your game! I'm going to play X"

Lastly, the Internet. It allowed us to voice our comments. If you didn't like a game in 1995 who could you rant to? Other guys on some BBS / Usenet forum? All 5 of them?*

*yes, I know there were more, but you get the point.

The complaint, as I read it, is that gamers these days are whiny bitches that rage over the internet at the slightest provocation. This is exactly what most gaming discussion (particularly of new games) is on this forum when it isn't unadulterated praise. Look at the discussions of the Doom teaser for a current example. I think you'll find examples of literally everything you've said.

I AM an modernized gamer. Only play TF2, HL2 and Portal 1 and 2 just to name a few. I got introduced to the world of gaming through WOLF3D.

I see whining everywhere, and it's proving that more and more modern gamers are becoming these toxic aberrations who care more for graphics than how the game they're interested in actually plays. Not to mention all the "hype train durr hurr" bullshit either, because if a game *cough Watch_Dogs cough* turns out to be not as amazing and ground-breaking as the "hype" proved to be, it's going to get crapped on and stomped into the ground by the hype-infused idiots that bothered ramping themselves up for the game.

It's simple, really: It's an infestation of retards who care more for looks than how the game plays. They work themselves up for something that they think will be far, far better than the finished product, and when they realize it's not up to their jacked-up snuff, then they'll beat it into the ground, screaming, "it fukn sucks!! 5/10 this game is shit!!11*"

Look at Dark Souls II, for example. It's the sequel to a hit 2012 game, and of course people start hyping themselves up for it, myself included. It finally comes out in March, and people start playing it. What's practically the first thing I see on various message boards and forums once the game's released? "they downscaled the graphix wtf!!" and "they lied to us, the GFX are supposed to be better than this donkey shit!"

I think I've exhausted my point by now, but hopefully it's clear that many modern gamers are just toxic creatures that would rather have a pretty, tasteless game than one that actually knows what the hell it's doing.

And as for what FireFish said about the "PC mastur race hurr" gamers, those folks are potentially worse than the looks-oriented, super-high-expectation-driven gamers I've described* above. They deem themselves to be superior because they've spent large sums of cash on a fancy-schmancy machine that runs a game better than a console would.

Sure, the entire better-than-consoles thing is somewhat true, what with mods, game enhanceers, and the like, but this ties in to my previous point in that, more often than not, I see these PC master race fellows going on about how the game looks so much better on their expensive workhorses.

In short; quite a few modern gamers prefer looks over gameplay, and PC master race idiots are pretty much in the same group as the foul creatures known as the hyped-up modern gamer.

*To the best of my ability; I know that not everyone is this way, but I'm really just poking at the vitriolic tendencies of quite a few modern gamers.

(Damn, this is a long post.)

Christ, this is hard to read.

No, literally.

Why not fix the way you wrote the first post so others can understand your point better?

TES was one game franchise which just started to immensely disappoint me since their latest game, it gets so much praise yet it was dumbed down and casualized so badly, this is mainly because it attracted more people new to the series who have no idea of how much content isn't present from the series in general and bash anyone who plays and thinks the older games are better as being just nostalgic which is bullshit, they are just so biased and automatically think if it's new then it's better and think better graphics equals immersion.

I agree that gamers (maybe, people in general) has grown a bit too much negativistic, criticizing, demanding an impossible perfection and ranting when they don't get it, which always happens. Understandably - raised expectations appear to be a natural evolution of gaming (and not only it). A certain philosophical view claims that people would be more happy and the world would be a better place, simply if there was less pessimism and more optimism, tolerance and good will. Eventually, it's up to everyone how he views things around him. It's quite an idealistic view - but thanks to a certain person I know from my real life, I believe it's true. I apply it to gaming - maybe inappropriately, I admit - in a way that people should simply be less like that... Like I described at the beginning of this post.

I don't consider myself a modernized gamer. I criticize (games, Doom maps) when I'm downright annoyed by something, or when I'm suggesting an improvement to the author, in a good way. At least I try to. I feel that I'm really glad for all the entertainment that comes from games (and Doom mods, which I actually usually prefer) and don't feel like whining about nitpicks and let them spoil my enjoyment.

I also don't care about the amount of graphics, and I'm far more concerned about good gameplay and A SMOOTH PERFORMATION (because lagging bugs me a lot).

First of all, anyone participating in the discussion would do well to ignore the vocal minority that is obviously a bunch of trolls or people aggressively exaggerating their opinion in order to vent etc. It's the internet after all.

Second of all, I do not accept the clear separation of "gameplay" and graphics. This is a huge, but common, misconception. The original post describes how "gamers" used to appreciate just how difficult it was to create a game, but is guilty of this himself by failing to realize that the graphical representation of a typical modern game is a crucial part of the fun-factor. A game is not just an array of separate modules which together forms the game. Even if it were, "Gameplay" certainly would not be one of them. You cannot pull the experience apart like that.

People are no more focused on graphics today then they were when the game arms race sped up after Wolfenstein3D and Doom. Back in the day, people engaged in huge flamewars over Duke3D and Quake. Most of the arguments were mainly centered around, surprise, graphical features. For 20 years have I heard one large group of people arguing about which game looked better and heard another large group of people feel they're above that sort of thing and that they focus on "gameplay".

The first group will often consist of average consumers who enjoy games, but don't really have enough insight to properly formulate what in the game does it for them. The features that are the easiest to identity will often be related to visuals. We are a visual being after all.

The second group of people often consists of gamers who believe they have the insight into what makes the game good, but more often than not they don't. They pride themselves by talking about how good the "gameplay" is, often without ever explaining what they're talking about specifically other than a few buzzwords like non-linearity or praising the game for lacking whatever feature they personally don't like; cutscenes, ironsights, quick-time events. A quick example of this is the huge, ugly, uneducated mass of feature-fucking bulletpoint wishlists you'll find in the Doom(4) forum.

As for games being bashed for not being perfect; I'll sympathize with the game studios once they stop trying to make their games sound like they are the best things ever. Grab a few random game presentations and you'll notice stuff like "Best ever", "Insanely gifted development team", "more than ever before", "Completely new and revolutionizing", "Never before seen". The list goes on. When you market your game as the be all, end all product you don't really get to cry when the public complains about the generic, mediocre, forgettable game they received.

Strange choice of terms. "Modernized" makes me think that they were old-school proper, but underwent some process which made them CoD fanboys ;-)

And to clarify: Just because people say they dislike a game because it's "fucking ugly" doesn't mean they dislike the game just because of graphics(or whatever small feature). Doom 3 didn't fail the popularity contest because it was dark. RAGE didn't fail same contest because of low-res textures. Star Wars Episode 1 didn't fail because of Jar Jar. Those however are the easiest problems to identify. Not everybody's able to properly dissect a game (or movie for that matter) and pinpoint where it went wrong. They feel unsatisfied and have an urge to express this, so they grab on to whatever feature they can identify which displeased them, visual or not.

There's not special going on with "new" gamers compared to "old" ones, we're just seeing and hearing more from them thanks to, well, people talking more about people being stupid. It's also equally a fault of current websites which promote either circle jerks (reddit) or controversies (ie. part of Youtube's popularity algorithm, also comment sections on some sites).

In other words, the only thing that has changed is that internet not only gave people a channel for being heard, but it promotes the loudest of voices. Those voices have always been there, you just didn't hear them before.

I understand graphics are in ways important, but the whole idea that "graphics are more important" is what frustrates me, I actually believe there should be a balance between graphics and gameplay.

When I was 17 or 18 and first experience Doom 3 and tried Oblivion a few years later I started to care mostly for graphics than everything else, I even got to a point asking my friends if certain games included bumpmapping/normalmapping in the graphics which I loved a lot.

@Shaviro: You're also quite negativistic, but I find your speech interesting. It makes me realize how easily can everyone be mistaken or see things "wrong", unknowingly.

Can you describe your own way how to correctly dissect a game? No sarcasm or offense at all. I'm sorry if this is a badly put question. I'm honestly curious how a person, who speaks like you and implies a lot of insight, would personally see things as right (not wrong, which you had emphasized in your post).

@scifista42

Well, first I'd like to stress that it's not like I have an illusion that I'm the world champion of dissecting games or that I have enough insight to pinpoint everything that goes wrong according to my own taste. Second, it's important to note that we're not talking 100% objective ratings of games, but rather trying to figure out why we (individually) like and dislike games.

It's a very difficult process. Sometimes what went wrong in a game will border on "everything" and the most fitting conclusion is that something was wrong with the creational process. I think the best examples of a great "autopsy" (even though it's not about games) is the very famous Red Letter Media Star Wars prequel reviews. They're nit picky, they exaggerate, they (sometimes unfairly) juxtapose. I think that's where you need to start though.

Finding the great things about a game is fine and all, but you'll learn much more from the mistakes and the potential problems (and how they solved them). Identify all the things that annoy you. I know this sounds like being overly negative, but this really shouldn't change your gut feeling about the game as long as you recognize that it's exploration rather than bashing.

Sometimes you'll be able to spot a problem with the story structure or the general setup of the enemy encounters right off the bat. Other times it will take a long time and a deroute to reach that conclusion. Often when playing something you don't realize half of what's going on. It has only gotten "worse" with how games have evolved into more of a story telling medium. Balancing the storytelling with the game mechanics is a difficult job and analyzing why it worked or didn't isn't easy either.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this "how [you]....would personally see things as right (not wrong, which you had emphasized in your post).", but I hope I answered your question anyway ;)

It's interesting. When you're a kid (judging by my experience at least) you never really criticize any movies or books or any other kinds of works of art. You just take everything as it is, like if a game is very hard then it is very hard but you never criticize it for that, that's just how it is and you don't complain.

Then at some point in life you learn about critics, like movie critics or literature critics. So you read some of their texts and start thinking that maybe you too should thoroughly analyze art instead of just blindly consuming it. But soon you find out that often it only reduces the enjoyment.

Like you begin playing a game and immediately you're trying to pick something to criticize, could be the graphics, gameplay mechanics or some very minor things that aren't really important. You're desperate to make some observations and form an opinion before you're even able to fully analyze the game. Criticizing becomes a game in itself and it might almost replace the process of just playing and enjoying the process.

I see this as a bad and kind of dangerous thing for me so lately I've been trying to avoid overthinking everything and to learn to just appreciate what I get without playing a picky customer.

Memfis said:

Like you begin playing a game and immediately you're trying to pick something to criticize, could be the graphics, gameplay mechanics or some very minor things that aren't really important. You're desperate to make some observations and form an opinion before you're even able to fully analyze the game. Criticizing becomes a game in itself and it might almost replace the process of just playing and enjoying the process.

In my experience, I find that the initial attitude doesn't really have much impact on the experience. A friend of mine wanted me to play Mass Effect. I didn't really feel like it, but did so eventually. My angle in the game was to be the biggest space racist towards aliens, making silly nonsensical decisions because hey, I didn't care. I'd rather make fun of the game, like building walls around visiting neighbors in the sims. It didn't take long before I had forgotten all that and just went for the ride. Why? Because overall it was enjoyable and immersed me in its world. Soon I started just making the most sensible decisions I could. There was a choice in ME3 that I spent around 5 minutes contemplating first.

I find that when a game (or movie) is good enough, you forget all about criticism. If you spend time nit picking things it's most likely because you're not really that engaged into what you're doing which often will be the fault of that particular piece of entertainment.

People love to complain. People love shitty games.

'gamers used to play games because they where fun while realizing how difficult it is to make them' It wasn't. 5 man teams could make a game. Now 50 - 200 or 500 people make a game.

geo said:

5 man teams could make a game. Now 50 - 200 or 500 people make a game.

Well it would certainly stretch the budget, but then again it really depends on how much they have and the time frame whether it is unreasonable or not, and possibly the slight chance that they want to make the most money at as minimal work put into it as possible.

Avoozl said:

Well it would certainly stretch the budget, but then again it really depends on how much they have and the time frame whether it is unreasonable or not, and possibly the slight chance that they want to make the most money at as minimal work put into it as possible.

All I know is the Bioshock Studio is going from 200+ employees to 5+ employees. They become millionaires, just like Doom and Mortal Kombat devs.

Interesting to say the least, most of the posters actually feel that these 'nit pickers' are idiots, while at the same time almost anybody who posted here could somehow relate to them.
Looking at the long replies in this thread (i read them all.) i guess more then one Doomworlder wanted to vent their frustrations with these types of gamers.

Everything is just aggressive opinions now days. There is no middle ground, or decent, or okay, could've been better.

There's only: "IT MEGA SUX COXS ON XMAS MORN GOD IS DED LOLXD OMHERGERD TOO MUCH COD NOT ENOUGH ANIMU UH EVERYONE WHO LIKES IT IS FEGGET #1"

or it's brother

"OH MAH GAAAAWD BEST GAME LIKE EVER. ITS SUPER GRAFFIX MAKE CRYSIS3 LOOK LIKE MY DOGS SMELLY GREEN POO-POOS AND THE GAMEPLAY SO UNIQUE LIKE IT JUST LIKE EVERY GAME VER WHICH IS SO PERFECT TOP-LEL COMP GAMING IS JUST A BUNCH OF SHIT EAT MY MONEY MY ASS VAGINA PRAISES DARWIN FOR MY GAMES OH FUCK YAH PENIS ENVY"

If it wasn't for nit picking comedians wouldn't have money, we wouldn't have comedy.

Like I can watch a movie and be entertained, but when I start talking to it, I start finding flaws. Then to keep the talk / speech / review going, I'll pick and pull at those problems, just because that's what there is to talk about.

Its like how there is no good news, because good news is assumed, its the bad news that's worth talking about. Its pretty rare when a woman having a baby makes the news unless she's famous or gives birth in a cab, but if a woman gets shot dead, then its on the news.

I think AVGN had a (probably inadvertent, given that James Rolfe seems like a pretty cool guy when he's not in the persona) hand in making it "cool" to rant and swear in a hotheaded manner about real or perceived problems with games that you hate. Just look at how many people jumped on the me-too wagon, whether they "got" that it was a joke or not. I cringe whenever I see AVGN talked about as if it's a show for "serious reviews" (doubly so if an imitator seems to think he's doing "serious reviews").

Clonehunter said:

Everything is just aggressive opinions now days. There is no middle ground, or decent, or okay, could've been better.

There's only: "IT MEGA SUX COXS ON XMAS MORN GOD IS DED LOLXD OMHERGERD TOO MUCH COD NOT ENOUGH ANIMU UH EVERYONE WHO LIKES IT IS FEGGET #1"

But only on the internet, though. I'm reminded of plenty of internet personalities who, while online, have spoken how terrible people can be but they've never met any such "assholes" at conventions, expos, fan meetings, etc.


@FireFish: Speaking of "idiots", there are two kinds of people in question here: There are those who are simply misinformed, such as console peasants who think that 30fps is better than 60fps because they've never played a 60fps game where it mattered. These people are, for sure, idiots since their error is in objective stupidity. Then there are those people who simply disagree with one's opinion, and because anyone who dares to disagree with you/me/someone else is clearly a subhuman we're free to label them as idiots as well. ;)

However, it's still fairly important to be able to distinguish between people who are clearly wrong and people who just have differing opinions.

Jodwin said:

However, it's still fairly important to be able to distinguish between people who are clearly wrong and people who just have differing opinions.

Indeed , and that is becoming a problem online. If your personal opinion is different from another you are a subhuman moron,
and others wil jump onto the trol wagon. It is as if people fail to realize that people have their own opinions. it does...
not mean that A likes Red that B is a moron for liking Green.

And if game companies chose A beause they complain a lot, they might lose the happy silent B as customer, losing money,
going broke in the end. AAA producers, programmers, and artists create what they think is interesting to work on while they also need to keep an eye on the market and make that idea capable of big figure sales to compensate for paying out 120 wages, a giant electrical bill, and everything else.

In case of framerates it are two collumns, one being personal preference while the second collumn is based upon technical abillities.

This all applies to online reviewing in general. I don't do video reviews of shit because its only going to get watched if its negative.

ETTiNGRiNDER said:

I think AVGN had a (probably inadvertent, given that James Rolfe seems like a pretty cool guy when he's not in the persona) hand in making it "cool" to rant and swear in a hotheaded manner about real or perceived problems with games that you hate. Just look at how many people jumped on the me-too wagon, whether they "got" that it was a joke or not. I cringe whenever I see AVGN talked about as if it's a show for "serious reviews" (doubly so if an imitator seems to think he's doing "serious reviews").

Wow, what idiots jumped into that bandwagon?

ETTiNGRiNDER said:

I think AVGN had a (probably inadvertent, given that James Rolfe seems like a pretty cool guy when he's not in the persona) hand in making it "cool" to rant and swear in a hotheaded manner about real or perceived problems with games that you hate. Just look at how many people jumped on the me-too wagon, whether they "got" that it was a joke or not. I cringe whenever I see AVGN talked about as if it's a show for "serious reviews" (doubly so if an imitator seems to think he's doing "serious reviews").

Jerry Seinfeld made it pretty cool to complain about things. I'm sure comedians ahead of him did too.

Jodwin said:

But only on the internet, though. I'm reminded of plenty of internet personalities who, while online, have spoken how terrible people can be but they've never met any such "assholes" at conventions, expos, fan meetings, etc.

Yah, that's a pretty good point. Example: Online I see people complaining about RAGE a lot, especially here. Everyone I've talked to IRL has said they really enjoyed it and claimed it to be the best game they played that year. Granted, I do often spout out how bad Call of Duty is to everyone I know. :P