Remember the Halo 3 beta? Remember how fucked up the first day was? It was supposed to start at a certain time, and wasn’t go up for hours and hours. Sure, it sucked, but some douches took it to another level, threatening Bungie employees and in one case threatening suicide if it didn’t go up immediately. I just pray that he did it and recorded it, so someone can upload it to Youtube and I can watch it daily when I need a laugh.
Then there was Bioshock, with the widescreen gamers bitching and complaining that they were seeing less of the screen. For missing a sleeve, for god’s sake, when the developers CREATED IT WITH WIDESCREEN IN MIND IN THE FIRST PLACE. Now Halo 3‘s out, and you just knew people would find something to cry about.
This time? HD. Apparently someone found out that Halo doesn’t run in true HD, instead running smoothly in 640p. They found this by counting the pixels on the screen. Let me repeat that- someone actually counted the motherfucking pixels on a screen to see how many there were. Jesus wept.
The thing I hate most about all of this is the sense of entitlement these people have. Gaming companies don’t owe you shit! What do you guys think- and how do you cope with these idiots making all of us look like children?
Jon Cassady (Sadistic Gamertag: Jlcquest) What bothers me about the speed bags at Widescreen Gaming Forum is that they miss the point. Why are they so concerned about the widescreen ratios of their console rather than something like, I don’t know, whether the game is well made. No, instead you have people bitching about centimeters on a 42” screen.
I mean we waited for months when we were grade-schoolers (grad students in Singer’s case) for some games (The Adventures of Link jumps to mind). What is mind-boggling is that if these people would lose their minds about a 8 hour delay, why haven’t they taken up their torches and pitch-forks and marched on Microsoft HQ? The 360 is clearly an inferior hardware product with material and significant problems. Instead, people lament their fourth Red Ring of Death, but post a 10 minute diatribe over the poor binding on the Mass Effect prequel novel.
My baseless theory is that the problem is that the populace of gamers are immature, where it be based in age or development (not us, of course). Because gaming is more intellectually accessible than other forms of media, the quality of its denizens will be diminished.
The best way to fight it is columns like this. It’s for people who live and breath gaming to try to raise the bar in the conversation.
Dan Vinton (Incomprehensible Gamertag: Senor Chefy) In the same vein, I’ve also heard bitching about the way Halo 3 coop shows up with vertical black bars when playing splitscreen. The whole thing (or more specifically, the overblown rhetoric) all seems petulant and futile. Remind me again- how does it affect gameplay? Further- isn’t this little technique an attempt to keep the aspect ratio of the image as opposed to cropping and stretching it into oblivion ala Halo 2? I’ll take black bars any day. And so should they. Bitches.
As for this whole sense of entitlement, I’ve got mixed feelings. Unfortunately, entitlement feels pretty much universal these days and I don’t see the gaming community needling much differently than anything else people get hyper-passionate about. Since the internet’s created this great conduit for bitching and whiney ass-hattery– and with hype building expectations into the insurmountable, you know the most passionate fans will cry foul as their expectations aren’t met.
Still, I can think of twenty important things to whine about off the top of my head and the widescreen functionality of a video game, which hardly affects the game play in any form, isn’t even close to the top. On the other hand, I’d argue Gaming companies do owe their consumers something- at minimum a game worth dropping $60 on. Bioshock and Halo 3 easily slip into that criteria– whatever Bungie and 2K owed to gamers was paid in full and then some.
Kurt Miller (Solid Gold Piscopo gamertag: Barnaby Fist): My second 360 was off being one of the burials of Melquiades Estrada when Bioshock came out, so my biggest problem with the aspect ratio was that it was in no-screen. These jalopies are being outlived by goldfish, and there’s morlocks out there taking Bungie to task over a handful of pixels? Die already.
What’s sad beyond the general obsessive nature of these complaints is that they can’t be coming from people who choose video games as a simple way to enjoy their leisure time. It’s what they do when they’re not grudgingly doing all the things that get in the way of gaming (like working or washing). These are the people that define this hobby—shut-ins, mouth-breathers, and borderline personalities.
It makes it difficult to admit to someone you don’t know that you play video games. Thanks to the vocal minority of pathological gamers, volunteering that information is the social equivalent of saying you can’t find a good snuff film or musing out loud which song you should play on your ukulele while your cat shits on a box of Girl Scout cookies.
Brian Condry (Asshole gamertag: Medium Dave): I think it all boils down to everyone, everywhere being an asshole. I’m an asshole. You’re an asshole. That guy who helps the homeless is an asshole. We all show it in different ways. And these assholes, well, they like to make life difficult for us. The anonymity of the Internet and Live helps. If you call somebody a “niggerfaggot” you should probably expect retaliation. If it’s done somewhere where nobody knows who you actually are, then if you’re the kind of asshole who does that kind of thing, you’re in hog heaven and there’s not a goddamn thing we can do about it. As an aside, it’s one of the things that’s always pissed me off about Microsoft’s marketing of Live. They portray it as this beautiful world where everyone gets along and fluffy bunnies give you handjobs as you play wonderful people around the world. They obviously have the limited edition of Xbox Live because mine is nothing like that, you bastards.
I agree with Dan about the entitlement thing. The people threatening suicide and complaining about returning the game and all that business is stupid. But about expecting and, dare I say, requiring a product to deliver…whatever for our $60 is not unreasonable. I have an HDTV and played the hell out of BioShock on it. Was I pissed when I found out I was missing some viewing area? Yeah, a little. But then I saw the comparisons, and realized, it doesn’t matter at all. The game is no less great because of this. But it still kinda shitty that this happened.
Dan: This might be diverge topic a little here, but I appreciate Kurt’s reference to the few morlocks who make "coming out" as a gamer an exercise in self deprecation and justification. In the last week, I’ve received no less than *__* snide comments from work associates and other finger-sniffing riffraff about my involvement with the Halo 3 release. In hindsight, I should have parried their jackassery with jokes about habitual workplace masturbation or divorce aggravated by child porn. Maybe next time.
So why is gaming stigmatic for shower-takers over the age of 16? Is it because of the obsessive few or in spite of them? Is it because I happen to be a 33 year old, mortgaged, jock-looking pretty boy (i.e.- asshole) and video games are “for kids”? Is it that I don’t fit the decade-old stereotype of "shut-in, mouth-breather, and borderline personality" championed by fanatical one-wipers abiding by the mantra of: "Well rounded? F**k that!" Shouldn’t I be playing golf or using E*Trade or suing someone?
Hell, no I say. It’s time to slough the fear of backlash when it comes to disclosing leisure activities. It’s time to admit gaming is simply what millions of cool kids do when they have a little time and choose to unwind– not unlike folks who watch golf, spend hours negotiating fantasy trades or Gillette themselves hairless. Ultimately, that’s what will free gaming from the clutches of the guys who make us look like children: "Yeah, I play video games and yeah those crybabies are douche bags. I also sign your paycheck. What of it?"
Alex Riviello: Yeah, that’s the other reason why news stories like those make me nuts, because it’s all that gets the press, and it paints this vision of every gamer being just like that, when in reality (at least as far as I know) it’s quite different. A good friend of mine who makes a helluva lot of money (and does well to support his family and kids) waited till midnight for the Halo launch, and took off the whole week. Excessive? Yeah, definitely, but the people at work ripped on him like he had gone to a playground with no pants on. Whereas if one of them had taken off the day after the Super Bowl nothing would have been said.
It’s annoying, but as more and more people get into gaming it’ll lose the childish stigma it has attached to it. It’s got to… right?
Brian Condry: No. Well, maybe. Probably not. If anything, it won’t happen until all the old people are dead and the people in power are the ones who have beaten Super Mario Brothers and kicked your ass in Halo. Oh, shit. I don’t think I want that. I think as games get more and more “active” like Wii, Wii fit, Guitar Hero and Rock Band, games where you aren’t just sitting, staring at the screen, they’ll start to become more “accepted” but no matter how many people line up for Wiis and stay up late for Halos, all gaming needs is one more shooting, one more murder simulator, one set of huge naked tits and it’s back to nerdy basement dwellers playing with their Wii as they play with their Wii. Jesus. That was one hell of a run on sentence.
Jon: The answer is yes and no. The exponential growth of “casual gaming” will lessen the sting of the negative stigma attached to gaming in general. At the same time, however, hardcore gaming continues to thrive and with its distinct market, the same element of childish whiny gamers, who are specifically drawn to these games will continue to exist.