Re: Are 'we' too negative?

On 04/09/2024 15:52, Dimensional Traveler wrote:

On 9/4/2024 2:13 AM, JAB wrote:

On 02/09/2024 18:33, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Mon, 2 Sep 2024 09:49:29 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
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So first up is 'we' in this context refers to gamers in general and not
this group. So with that out of the way, this comes from Spall's
'Favourite Era of Gaming' thread and something I watched (don't worry
about the video as most of it is irrelevant). Something that was talked
about was is the current gaming industry really that bad or is our
perception of games skewed by information available to us.

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My two cents:
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I don't think that the gaming public is too negative. Rather, I think
it's a negative reaction to some awful trends in the industry. There
are lots of examples of gamers being extremely positive about games,
after all. Gamers WANT to love their games, but they're too often
being disappointed by the people selling those games.
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<snip>
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I do agree that there are real problems, especially with the big budget game segment, but this was more focused on is 'our' perception of how bad the games industry is biased due to the likes of social media, and I'll probably also add that the hype that publishers push, and indeed games journalists*, then meets the reality of the actual game. I've still not got over just how disappointed I was when my pre- order of Bio Shock arrived and I thought oh this is just a shooter in an underwater city. At least the metal case was nice!
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If I look at my YouTube feed for games then a lot of it is quite negative even if this is due to where a lot of the problems occur, big budget, also happen to be those that will generate clicks. Another way of looking at it is, if there was less focus on negativity for clicks would the overall perception be better or to put it simply is the gaming industry as a whole really that bad?
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*I still get irritated by the steady march of the score an average game can get. 70% is a game that's kinda ok and 80% is good but nothing to write home about?
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If you want to start getting really meta about it this is part of a much larger trend that has been ongoing for many decades.  More and more money, and therefore power, being concentrated in a smaller percentage of the population.  It isn't just computer games, its society as a whole.
 

The UK has certainly gone down hill in the last ten years or so in that respect and particularly in politics with the proliferation of so called think tanks which are actually opaquely funded lobby groups almost all with a right wing agenda. It's not that this type of thing never happened before but instead the scale of it and also a government almost trying to normalise it.
So we had a MP who was caught taking money to ask questions in the House of Commons. You'd think that would be a clear resigning matter (a minister once resigned over lending his free rail pass to his then partner) especially as this came from an investigation by the parliamentary standards committee. Nope, our government (Tories) instead passed a law to say this was ok to protect one of their own. Less than a week latter they did a reverse ferret as it was just too much for the British public. Now they are confused as to why they had the worst result in a general election they've ever had.