With all the different youtube channels, blogs, websites, and other ways to get information about video games. Wether it be about reviews, first impressions, or maybe just a few screen shots and a bit of the hypetrain.. I personally feel that a lot of things have happened in the last decade of gaming that shouldn't have ever happened. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy)
Let me get straight to the point. Reviews from places are a joke. Unless you trust the place, there is no point in reading their opinion. The same goes for any other form of review. Gamers have become jaded when it comes to games. This generation seems to the the spoiled little brat in pre-school that brought his new toy and wont share.
What do I mean by this, well allow me to elaborate. Gamers today have multiple outlets to get information from about games. Not only do they have the ability to look in magazines, youtube, gaming websites, and other forms of media. Which has influenced the marketing and the media. Look at the marketing campaigns of some of the biggest games of the last decade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games
Yes, some of these games are a bit older than a decade. Yes look at Call of Duty, look at how many times a Call of Duty game has been on this list. Do you get my point yet?
No? Well here let me jog your memory. It was 2003 when the first Call of Duty was released by Infinity Ward and Activision. How did a game that was based in the time period of World War 2 become this giant juggernaut of a gaming series?
Well magazines like PC Gamer, or Game Informer. Those were the beginning. Once the internet took off. Everyone knew everything. Some people say they are reviewers when they just want a pay check. They don't care about the games as a medium, or as an art form.
Due to this influx of ways to review games, The publishers have turned to paying the reviewers for good reviews, or keeping them silent with NDA's. When ever a reviewer doesn't like a game they are either attacked by the company or just keep them silent with the marketing campaign. (http://www.trustinplay.com/2014/11/02/developer-attacks-jim-sterlings-first-impression-video/)
Through this type of review system, I personally have discovered that my opinions on a game are, a moot point. Noone wants to hear my opinion. They just want to watch the drama. Now the game developers and the publishing companies, love things like this. Any publicity is good publicity.
If a Youtuber says a game sucks so bad, that people find it funny to watch them. They will fork over the money to see if it is as bad as the Youtuber says. Which is a total contradiction of what the Youtuber adviced. Which gives the companies more money to keep shelling out crap games.
Which in turn creates more crap games. Does anyone remember Assasin's Creed Unity? (http://www.polygon.com/2014/11/26/7294993/assassins-creed-unity-is-broken-so-ubisoft-is-giving-players-free-dlc) Yay free DLC for a game that you could have already got it for, or a free game that could have also been broken.
Call me cynical, but I am very cynical when it comes to buying games with my hard earned money. As a kid, I played one of maybe five games I had. Now as an adult with well over 300 games, I have to pick and choose what games are worth my time to play at the moment.
That being said though, I didn't count all the free to play games on Steam or any other platform. So many games just get forgotten. If they don't have a big marketing budget or if they are from some small developer. Which is another reason why I think gamers today are jaded.
The market is flooded with all types of games. Along with the ability to look up any review on the internet. Back when I was a kid, not all games were good. Yet they were worth playing. Not only because you were bored with all the other games you had, but because it was something different all together.
With all the mass marketing of game franchises like Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry. It begs the question. Are all these clones needed? Which brings me to another topic of annual releases. Which in itself is another problem.
You have a game a year coming out, and if you don't get the newest one you can't play with your friends. Or the game is no longer played ( in the case of the PC) You loose the ability to play the game how you want. That is if all you like playing is multiplayer...
This topic can go on for days. From how jaded gamers are to how almost all games are just played for their multiplayer components.
Now these are my opinions, and my own perspectives on why I think gamers are jaded. My opinions my not be popular or publicized, but look at the medium in general. Look at everything. Gamers seem to throw a fit when they don't get what they want. (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/08/california-man-sues-sony-over-killzones-1080p-graphics-claims/
I guess I just miss the days back when gaming was just gaming and not some multiplayer competative shooting game.That is just a rehash of the game from last year, but doesn't work as good as the game from last year.
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