5 Things Wrong With Modern Gamers

How exactly do you classify yourself as a gamer? Is it because you play games all day everyday or is it because you play FIFA every second day or so. It’s a tough thing to categorise, but one thing is certain: there are a lot of “modern” gamers. A modern gamer, I believe, is someone that hasn’t been around when the early stages of gaming happened. Not exactly the origin of gaming (you have to be an extremely old bastard for that to be the case), but rather the stage where gaming became noticeable enough that it could support its own weight. If you want a certain age range then I guess someone in their teens or early twenties can be considered a modern gamer.

Now, there’s something I’ve been noticing recently when it came to my favourite hobby. More and more people are slowly starting to ruin it. These people are almost always (yep you guessed it) modern gamers. I’m becoming more and more frustrated by the day when I see a large amount of people just bashing gaming into a pulp. It’s almost ridiculous how these people behave sometimes.

Without further ado, here are the things that I think is wrong with a modern gamer:

 

1. Way Too Spoiled

A few years ago I almost never had the means to buy my games. I either had to work my fingers to the bone or sell stuff that I really didn’t want to sell in order to get the games I wanted. You know what that made me? Appreciative, that’s what. Buying a game yourself with your own well earned money is an experience in itself. When you finally, after a long struggle, get the game you desired then you will play the everlasting shit out of it. That’s almost a fact. You will find all the secrets, do all the activities, finish all the challenges, do all the side-missions and everything that you can possibly do in that game. You will make that game worth every cent and that’s for damn sure.

In recent times, games have become much more accessible and easy to buy. While I approve of what Valve is doing with Steam, I don’t agree with just flogging games off for next to nothing. You might be raging through the rafters right now because I said that, but hear me out. Yes, cheap games are great and it’s always nice to pick up a good deal, but there can be too much of a good thing. If people buy twenty to thirty games for next to nothing, you can almost guess what would happen next. Those games will be there for them to play and will either never even be played or they will be played just for a few hours.

I’ve seen a ton of negative comments for games where the person hardly even played the game at all. One guy quit on The Witcher 2 because he couldn’t figure out the difference between a regular sword and a silver one. Now that guy is of the opinion that Witcher 2 is an absolutely shit game and for what? Because he couldn’t be patient enough to just figure out one thing. Gamers of today fly through games. In open-world games they only do the story missions and we all know that most of the fun lies in the messing around and doing side-activities.

We are too spoiled and that can potentially make us sour and negative towards everything.

 

2. Judges A Game Based On Its Fanbase

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear Halo or Call of Duty? If you’re in the majority you might say little kids trying to have sex with your mother. The thing about these games is that they are solid games in their own right, but they will be mercilessly bashed and come under ridiculous scrutiny because of some sour apples among their fanbase. It pisses me off because people will hate a game to no end without even playing the damn thing for themselves. It’s unjustified hatred and that’s the worst kind. If you play a game without any prejudice before hand and you hate it then you have reason enough, but just hating it because you heard about some guy that got sworn at by a twelve-year old is just stupid and unfounded.

We need to let go of this petty branding that we do to most games. Not everyone is a cunt on Call of Duty. Not everyone on Halo 4 is going through puberty. Play the game yourself and then decide that it’s worth it for you to go to such an extreme that you actively and verbally hate it on any opportunity you get.

Not all Counter-Strike players like to suck penis. I’m kidding, put down the torch.

 

3. Thinks Their Opinion Is The Only Right One

My God has this become apparent to me this past year. Gamers of nowadays will sit at their computer, get their huge, throbbing opinion out on the desk and start shoving it down people’s throats. If you so much as say the smallest thing that doesn’t agree with their opinion then they will go on a murderous rampage. Look, it’s great to have an opinion about something. We all have our own little opinions. But ask yourself this, is it worth the trouble to belittle and humiliate other people because you don’t like something they’re saying. Sure, if that person is saying something idiotic or ridiculous then you have permission to put them in their place. But when you cuss someone out and call them a retarded faggot (I hate that word) because you liked a game they hated is something you just do not do.

You might voice your disagreement, but respect the other person’s choice at least. Nothing you will say will rid them of their opinion so it’s not even remotely worth it to type out 3000 word essays telling someone to go fuck themselves and agree with your thoughts. Nobody that liked a certain game has ever said to themselves, “hmmm this guy’s long message might be right. Okay I hate that game now”.

Nobody.

 

4. Hates Because Hate Is Cool

Otherwise known as the “jumping on the bandwagon” effect. It might be popular opinion that a game is a piece of shit, but it can still be pretty good to you. Just look at Medal of Honor: Warfighter for example. Prior to its release everyone that could use a website’s comments section said that the game will be a piece of dog turd. It was branded as just another military shooter and extremely generic. Before it even released. It could have been the cure for cancer and nobody would have taken it seriously. That’s the bandwagon effect in its most rawest form. It was popular opinion that the game will fail to be anything great.

Everyone just started magically having the opinion too because it was the cool thing to do. If you said that the game looks kind of cool then you would have been taken to the butchers and cut up into little pieces. Like the second point on this list says: play the damn game for yourself before you slaughter it. You might end up enjoying it.

 

5. Expectations Are Astronomical

Not every game can be the new Half-Life or Legend of Zelda. Make peace with that. A game can certainly strive to be amazing, but most of what we get isn’t that amazing that the sky will open up and rain chocolate and unicorns. There were a lot of games that were made on a budget that I thoroughly enjoyed. I went in not expecting the best and I got sufficient entertainment out of it. Some even ended up being amazing. The newest thing that really pisses me off is the expectation that Assassin’s Creed III would be so amazing that your balls would explode. What we got was a solid and enjoyable game no matter how you played it. I was legit confused as to why so many people are of the opinion that it’s a horrible game. I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea.

Then I started reading the comments in more detail. There was a trend among the people that hated the game and that was that AC III was supposed to be the best game this year. No it wasn’t supposed to. People expected way too much from AC III and in the end it couldn’t have possibly lived up to the unrealistically high expectations that some people had.

We need to keep our expectations low for every game I think. Not every game can be amazing. There are almost always limitations involved in the creating of a game. Even those awful movie license games had no choice but to be rushed and simplified because some corporate asshole said so. Don’t think every game will be the second coming of Christ and you might find yourself happier.

 

In Conclusion

I made this list because I just can’t handle all the negativity in gaming these days. Almost everything I see is negative. It’s either someone commenting hateful words towards me or people hating games for totally unjustifiable reasons. Gaming shouldn’t be negative. It’s an entertaining art form made to make you happy.

Go play your games and enjoy them for a change. Don’t shit in your pants because the main character’s eyebrow moved 2 centimetres to the left instead of the right.