Loving Games to Death @ bit-tech.net

Bit-tech.net has posted an editorial column by staff member Joe Martin on the perils of fanboyism, called Loving Games to Death. It presents the idea that too much love for a game might be a bad thing:

This portrayal is mostly true of console fanboys and, as I mentioned before, I've run into a few of them since I started here at bit-tech. It isn't just the console fans who are guilty though. Hardcore games fans may also end up damaging the games they love, even if only to themselves. The Fallout 3 forums are already bristling with rivalry and uberfans who, in their attempts to guide and shape the expectations of others, end up pushing their own hopes so high that they cannot help but be dashed.

The problem with these fans is that, although they think they are doing good, by coming out so strongly and proclaiming that one system or game is better than another and doing it in such frabjously stupid ways, they just end up turning others against them and making themselves objects of ridicule at the same time. Aggressive fanboys just put people off of the console or game they are protecting, reducing demand and damaging it as a product.
Its something that I, forever forcing my friends to play my favourite games, am guilty of too. Only recently though have I come to appreciate how this 'hard sell' technique adopted by the most fervent fans rarely works. Fanboys are like viruses, and possibly one of the reasons the PS3 has had to withstand so much flak is because its fans try to defend it so brutally and end up pushing potential fans away in fear or annoyance.

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More information.

That's not loving a game too much, that's just having too high expectations and too much ego when one feel one's own view of a game is the right way for it to be.

Nevertheless it's still a good point, people sometimes set their own expectations so high in some cases that the game is doomed to failure from their standpoint.

Gnah, Fanboys. There is nothing more annoying on any board in the web.

If you are a mature person with self control and composure and yet there is a game or games which you enjoy which captivate and pull you in to an extent where it becomes hard not to play them....are you then a fanboy? ....or is "fanboy" an intentionally derogatory term used to "point the finger" or slur at your enthusiasm - example: "hey you - your a fanboy ha ha ha"

Does the word "fanboy" have a true grammatical reference? - for example the wikipedia explanation seems to suggest that there is an "emotional attachment" element?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanboy

Are "fanboys" time-warped in a level of adolescent ego-mania perfection unable to expand from their apron-strings into worldly maturity? - is there even such a thing as a "mature fanboy" ?

Interesting...i could be a fanboy yet never gave it much thought, will i have to go 'undercover' and keep a low profile and hide away from society?

Fanboys are completely resistant to logic and open discourse and respond immediately and emotionally to any negative comment on whatever game/platform they love.

While the 'console kiddie' fanboy is most common, I would also say that people who run around proclaiming total PC dominance in everything as if consoles were still the NES playing Donkey Kong are every bit as bad.

I think the author was just taking a shot at the "fanboys" who gave him a hard time on the forums: "It's the fanboys...there's something wrong with them...can we save them from themselves?"

Instead of ratcheting it up a notch, maybe the author should go have a drink, take a walk or watch a little TV.

Maybe it's because we can't see each other's faces or hear each other voices, but it seems too easy for Web-forum conversations to get confused. Calling people names probably won't help. Personally, I think we'd all be better off without the term "fanboy."

I partly agree with the overall theme.

In my opinion it was the "fanboys" who demanded G2 to be made much more difficult - like in Night of the Raven.

I suspect that they just knew the game *so much* that *everything* seemed to be "easy" for them. Hence the demand.

While "fanboy", like "immersion", is a word I think gets used so much and in so many ways that it really no longer has any specific meaning most of the time, I also tend to agree with the author of the article that some people simply carry their "love" of games too far and can make participation much more difficult if not impossible for more moderate or casual gamers.

'bout the only real point of contention I have is that I don't think this qualifies as "love" in any real sense of the word. If Fallout was the cool new boy at school and the more rabid Fallout Fans a clique of girls, there's no way such behaviour as that in which they've engaged in the past could be misconstrued as "love". Swarming a forum? Flaming said forum into senseless hostility? Obsession is far nearer the mark there. It's more noticeable at the Fallout 3 forums because those fans have been "denied what's rightfully theirs" (fanboy-think there) so many times already, but it happens on every company's message board that I've ever been to; all you've got to do is suggest something contrary to the group-think of the regulars and you'll see the claws come out soon enough.

No, what characterizes people like that isn't "love" so much as a gross sense of over entitlement toward something that was never really theirs in the first place, and a willingness to slap down anyone who says otherwise.

The internet just seems to breed this sort of madness.

I think the best comparison is with fanatical and misguided sports fans, such as football hooligans... I frequent a footie board and there is the same elitism and knee jerk response to any criticism of their team (or to criticism of bengals, or to any hint that those who sit down and watch the game quietly are real fans as well).

Whether it is love I leave for others to tell, but immature it is...

Flaming said forum into senseless hostility?

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In the last couple of weeks fallout fans were collectively called "morons, stupid, religious zealots" etc several times on the FO3 forum, let's not pretend they are the ones creating more flames. Props to the mods that are acting much more impartially now and trying to keep things under control.

Flaming in either direction is scary. As a developer, you never like to see someone ranting about your game one way or the other -- the rants against the game can ruin your day or kill you a little bit inside, and the rants for your game often have no actual connection to your game, but are instead linked to some platonic game ideal that they've decided your game represents... at least until it ships, at which point the ranter becomes either bitter or crazed in his attempt to avoid changing his worldview.

The hate, I can just ignore. The "this game will let you alter every aspect of your character and make choices that affect everything that happens ever" fan-talk makes me wince, because MAN, I wish we were making that game, and also, I know exactly why we CAN'T make that game, and I also know that nobody is going to just take my word for it.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

In my opinion it was the "fanboys" who demanded G2 to be made much more difficult - like in Night of the Raven.

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Just like it was the fanboys who started screaming bloody murder when Id Software discovered the bug in their Quake engine that allowed for the infamous "Bunny Jumping" or "Strafe Jumping" exploit and removed it. Like first time parents with a screaming newborn baby, Id Software caved in when faced with a small yet extremely loud fanboy crowd and they put the bug back in the code and left it there all the way through the entire Quake series. Consequently the rest of us have had to live with this game ruining exploit in countless games ever since.