Social media and the internet have irreversibly changed our lives, for better or for worse. Nowadays, everyone’s loud and influential, but being loud doesn’t mean you’re an expert. At least that’s how it’s supposed to be, but instead, it feels like the general public opinion about a game becomes the truth, and not just public opinion.
Sure, you can argue that it’s been the case for most of human history, but it’s bad when people start forming opinions about something without even trying it, and this is especially true about video games. Gamers these days have been distilling games into purely good and purely bad, and I will have none of it.
Cool to Hate
First of all, whatever happened to the human race for it to become so pessimistic about everything? Take, for example, the recent discourse on the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender fighting game that was announced just a few months ago. As soon as some gameplay footage dropped, people immediately jumped on the hate bandwagon to say that the game looked horrible.
To that, I can honestly agree, the game does look a bit like the video game Divekick at times, but it shouldn’t be what’s shouted from the rooftops. It’s this inclination that gamers have to jump on the negatives immediately that I think ruins games for people, even before they’ve picked up a controller.
Now I’m not saying every game is perfect and shouldn’t be badmouthed, I’m saying that everyone should have a few hours put into a game before they have the right to hate on it. It doesn’t help that influencers online are actually rewarded by the algorithm to post so-called “hot-takes” to bait users into hate-watching and basically putting a video game in a harsh light. For reference, the reason I’ve been putting myself off MMOs is that there’s always the hate online saying that now isn’t the best time to pick up x game, and boy am I glad I didn’t listen.
The Echo Chamber
These days, people, including gamers, have gotten into the habit of splitting themselves into just two camps: thing good or thing bad. Not only do I hate this herd mentality that people have, but I also hate that no matter which side of the fence you are on, there’s an endless sea of people willing to echo your opinions. In fact, depending on which gaming community you’re in, you may be silenced just for having an unpopular opinion. And what sucks the most is that no community is safe from these echo chambers, especially on social media.
Recently, there’s been an uproar of complaints regarding Pokemon Legends: Z-A about the lack of polish and quality when it comes to the graphics of the game. You don’t have to play through the game in its entirety to see it; you only need a few hours to tell that the game is in serious need of polish. People have every right to complain because I think complaining about a game means you care, but just don’t do it on social media.
I’ve seen Pokemon criticism be tagged as blind hate and dismissed entirely, all because they’re so adamant on Pokemon being a perfect game whenever it comes out. This closed perspective not only hurts communities, but also hurts the games they’re trying too hard to protect by filtering out any valid criticism.
Developer Bias
After a long time of developers being a bit callous when it comes to what players want (looking at you, Multiversus), they’ve finally begun to listen to player feedback again. Only now, there’s the issue of who to listen to. Of course, the loudest opinions in the community are the ones that are going to garner more support and influence the devs more, but underneath all that noise is valid criticism.
This is something that sincerely worries me about two of my beloved franchises: Tekken and Pokemon. Both have recently had a stint of bad developer feedback when it comes to criticism, and I’m afraid that if the only thing filling their ears is toxic positivity about the state of the game, the franchise might end up nowhere. On the other end of that spectrum, mass review bombings of a specific game just because the hate wagon told you it was bad doesn’t help a game grow in the slightest.
So the next time you take to social media to look for opinions about a game, it’s okay to reference a review or two, but ultimately it’s much better to see for yourself how you feel about it. Because at the end of the day, you’re playing for yourself and not for anyone else.
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