Gamers and Entitlement

When an anticipated game is released, the subsequent criticism from the Internet usually begins a gradual slide. It’s like listening to a review by Waldorf and Statler from The Muppet Show:

GAMER 1: That was wonderful!
GAMER 2: Bravo!
GAMER 1: I loved that!
GAMER 2: Ah, that was great!
GAMER 1: Eh, it was pretty good.
GAMER 2: Well, it wasn’t bad…
GAMER 1: There were parts of it that weren’t very good, though.
GAMER 2: It could’ve been a lot better.
GAMER 1: I didn’t really like it.
GAMER 2: It was pretty terrible.
GAMER 1: It was bad.
GAMER 2: It was awful!
GAMER 1 & GAMER 2: Terrible! Take ‘em away! BOO!

Are we a bunch of greedy punks with an over-heightened sense of entitlement?

I say yes and no. I’ve seen what goes into game development. Designers often slave for months without real nutrition (without showers in extreme cases) or human contact. They pour everything they have into a product that stands a fantastic chance of being ignored or scratched underfoot like dirt at a chicken farm. I’ve been writing on a professional level for a while, and it still hurts when someone rolls up my work, bops me on the head with it and says “No.”

On the other hand, gaming’s not a cheap hobby. Why are people down on Sonic Unleashed? Because it’s not as if Sega has given us a lot of incentive to look forward to it. Sonic for the Xbox 360 was inexcusably bad. Sonic and the Secret Rings was better, but not quite there. When you spend seventy bucks on garbage, you have a right to be pissed off.

Though I still believe many of us would do well to remember that ’tis all for fun.

(Image of angry gamer courtesy of Kombo.com)