To Be Fair…

An interesting video about the devolution of 'fans' towards corporate loyalty.

Disclaimer: Didn't listen. Maybe it's a well reasoned, unbaised factual examination. I give that about a, oh, 1% chance.

Because I run into this kind of sentiment all the time from those who seem to think they are some kind of crusading knights with integrity by shitting on anything and everything, and if anyone doesn't share exactly their degree of outrage, they're a fanboy/fangirl corporate apologist. I hate these people.

These are the people who harped on endlessly about the "lies" and "betrayals" of, for example, InXile because they changed some things about Tides of Numenara during development. These are the people who police the CA subreddit for people excited about what they're doing, reminding them of some slight, real or perceived, some misstep or thing CA left out or bug they didn't fix quite fast enough, sometimes years before. These are the people who say, about every fucking thing a company charges for, that it "should have been in the game", often professing to know more about game development and the time and effort it requires than the people who actually do it.

Didn't watch the video and already know what its about. Interesting.

Originally Posted by Silver
Didn't watch the video and already know what its about. Interesting.

I usually refrain from doing that, but I'm pretty sure I recognize the type. Feel free to tell me if I'm dead wrong after you watch it and maybe I'll watch it myself.

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
I usually refrain from doing that, but I'm pretty sure I recognize the type. Feel free to tell me if I'm dead wrong after you watch it and maybe I'll watch it myself.

The video itself is more about corporate culture and how fan conversations around things like Star Wars have changed and more importantly why. It is broader than just gaming culture. To sum it up succintly tribalism has replaced meaningful critique because of the need to demonstrate loyalty to the IP. No-one wants to be excommunicated from the tribe in other words.

Good old broad shouldered, large backed tribalism. An explanation to any entrenched opinion held in group even though the american system got rid of tribalism, one of its achievements.
Keeps rising from the dead, keeps rearing its ugly face to justify this or that. Just as Mammon does for christians.

It is not the american system that leads to those entrenched opinions, that is the long defunct corpse of tribalism.

Atlas bore the world as they used to say.

I'm doing my best to stay away from YT videos - and I'm doing well for the most part.

That said, there's definitely been a change these past few years - or maybe a decade or so.

I certainly don't remember the outrage gamer culture being ignorant and hateful on this level in the past.

My first recollection of just how silly it could get was with Fallout 3 - where fans went berserk because Bethsoft improved upon a classic in most ways - but made gameplay concessions for the mainstream audience and changed the perspective. But, even then, it didn't feel as out of proportion as it does today.

The irony is that FO3 is now held in relatively high regard by many of the FO4 and FO76 haters.

Just another example of how little sense there is to be made of people.

While I fully understand the frustration and bitter disappointment when young people finally figure out that companies are out to make money - and that suits are calling the shots in the grand scheme of things - I'm not very patient when it comes to waiting for them to realise that it was always like that, even back when they played their favorite games but were too young to detect the streamlining and mainstream nature of those games.

I was there once, though. I used to get angry at the industry and at companies for doing their job.

Not to a modern extent, mind you - but I was certainly miffed at how "my games" were being ruined by evil developers.

It took a while and some research and understanding before I managed to put things into perspective.

These days, I actually appreciate the challenges of being a developer in the modern industry - and how hard it must be to balance the creative urges with the realities of capitalism.

This applies to politics as well although obviously can't go into that here. But Tribalism is certainly a theme as is cult behavior. Interesting video.

I'm not convinced it's about tribalism or cultish behavior.

I think it's more about a genuine misconception of how reality works.

As I mentioned, I was a little like this when I was younger. I was really angry at the industry and the "corporations".

But there's absolutely no way I could ever be considered tribal or cultish.

So, at least for some of these people - it's about something else.

For my own part, as I mentioned, I simply didn't understand how things worked - and how it might not be entirely deliberate or by ideal choice when games aren't exactly as good as you want them to be.