Attitude of Gamers

I was originally going to write a similar post to this a few months ago when the Capcom/sexism incident occurred but for various reasons never managed to get round to it.

Lately though the attitude of gamers has reared it's ugly head again and has prompted me to finally write something about the way that a portion of gamers have been behaving recently.

There have been instances in the past few months where I have sighed, rolled my eyes and moved on like the Mass Effect 3 ending debacle and incidents where I have felt a little ashamed to be a gamer like the afore mentioned sexism fiasco. Lately though it seems that these incidents are becoming more and more regular and it was the recent Nintendo announcement of the WiiU and specifically Bayonetta 2 that got me really thinking about the problem.

I apologise in advance for the language in the pictures but it's these pictures that epitomises exactly what is wrong with some gamers in this day and age. I mean seriously, threatening to kill someone because a game is Nintendo exclusive. Did they threaten to kill someone because God of War was a Sony exclusive or is it just because it's on a Nintendo console. What really gets me though is the sheer ignorance behind the post. If they had done any kind of research (like typing Bayonetta 2 into Google) they would find that the whole reason the game is WiiU exclusive is because Nintendo are actually pumping money into the game after it was cancelled on X-Box and PlayStation. Of course Nintendo are going to want to make it WiiU exclusive, they are a business.

 The picture here again shows how ignorance prevails as yet again most of the people have a go at Platinum Games for releasing the game as a WiiU exclusive. I love the comments two to four as I'm presuming that the person has played a few games on a WiiU before making these judgments. I also love the fifth comment about about 'loyal gamers', loyal how? Loyal to Platinum Games as a quick look at their resume shows that up to this point in time they have released four games in Europe/USA with two of them being Nintendo exclusive and the other two being Bayonetta and Vanquish for the 360/PS3. So if he is on about being loyal to the company then I'm presuming that he owns all four games, but wait, as just mentioned two of the four games were Nintendo exclusive so from his post I'm presuming that he doesn't own all four games released by Platinum Games. Is he a loyal gamer because he only plays on one out of three home consoles?

I could sit here all day ripping apart the posts but the one that really irked me was the last comment about no one playing interesting games on the Wii (that's straight after she incorrectly states that Bayonetta 2 is in fact being released for the Wii and not the WiiU). Well here's the thing, not only is the comment completely false and judgmental it's also completely wrong. I know this because I PLAY INTERESTING GAMES ON THE WII. In fact I own and play nearly 100 'interesting' games on the Wii compared to about 40 on my 360. Do you know how I play interesting games on the Wii? I open my eyes and look. Just like I look past the FPS and Fifa's on the 360 to play games like Catherine and El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron I look past the 'shovel ware' on the Wii and play games like De Blob, Little King's Story, Boom Blox amongst many others. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing the likes of Fifa and Gears of War as they are good games but for me personally I wouldn't call them interesting in the sense of finding something different.

Moving on from all of that, I do apologise for the length of the post, on Friday September 28 I picked up the free Metro newspaper which had an article regarding women playing games. The article quoted some statistics (which are most likely all made up) about how 47% of games are women yet a lot of them are subjected to abuse when playing online purely because they are female. I'm always up for a bit of banter when playing games with other people but it's absolutely disgusting how far over the line some males take the abuse and insults. I'm not saying that women are perfect and I imagine that some of them give as good as they get and rightly so but sometimes it's shameful being a male gamer and being associated with the people who come out with this stuff.

The latest incident to upset those oh so sensitive gamers is an advert from Nintendo for the 3DS featuring Dianna Agron 'playing' on Art Academy. The bit that has made people get their knickers in a twist is the line 'I'm not a gamer, I'm an artist'. Big deal is all that I can say. The advert isn't aimed at 'gamers' who buy the likes of Mario, Metroid, God of War, Gears of War etc etc, It's aimed at a market who may not play them and may be looking for something different and Nintendo are showing of a different element of the 3DS to those people. Shock horror gamers, Nintendo are a business who need and aim to make money to survive, hence them advertising to people who may not be traditional gamers.

There is also a second advert featuring American gymnast Gabrielle Douglas which features the line 'I'm not a gamer, I'm a coin collecting champion'. First things first, if the context of the advert was that she wasn't a gamer then to me she wouldn't be playing the 3DS in the first place. The second thing to me is that what she's actually saying is that she's not only a gamer, she's a coin collecting champion because she plays the game so much (might not be true in real life but for the purpose of the advert it is). Maybe if the line was 'I'm not just a gamer' or 'I'm also a coin collecting champion' then maybe the poor little souls might sleep easier at night.

The final nail in the coffin for me at the moment is the furore surrounding Resident Evil 6 and the reviews that have been handed out to it, especially the 'gamer' scores. At time of writing the user score on Metacritic for the game is 0.8 based on 2795 ratings. So basically 2795 'gamers' have played and completed the game and the majority of them think it's one of the worst games ever and have said so on Metacritic, hmmm. I'm guessing that quite a lot of them have indeed not played the game and have based their score on the demo or what other reviews.

Anyway, it looks like I could be here all day ranting and I do apologise but I'm now just a bit fed up of the idiots who give gaming a bad name, it's bad enough that a lot of non-gamers think that gaming is immature and juvenile and this a lot of time sadly I can see why they think that.

Don't even get me started on fanboys and 'hardcore/casual'.

The two videos can be found on The Official Nintendo Channel on Youtube.