4w ago

Why is gaming discourse so damn negative recently

Instead of "it's not for me" it's always "this is horrible". Most of the time I'm on social media I see people talk down to others or ridicule them for liking or enjoying certain games. I get that gamers can be annoying, but it's just so draining sometimes.

And don't get me started on this anti-"woke' movement. Some people are BEGGING to see developers and games fail just because they don't like their stuff. Not to mention most of their complaints are based in BIGOTRY alone, which is definitely not getting better in the coming years. It's so fucking infuriating

Plus, In the early times of the Internet, gaming discourse wasn't this negative at all outside of the stupid Console War discussions.

I'm pretty sure that it's the way that social media is designed. It's designed to generate outrage to maximize engagement

43 comments

Gaming discourse has been terrible as long as I've been alive and probably longer.
- Guy yelling into his HAM radio about pong being pinko nonsense

Recently?
Also, chuds have been poisoning the well basically since 2013 and earlier. To be honest it got worse with the rise of platforms like YouTube and all other social media. There were always shitheads but now they make millions from patreon subs to post slop on YouTube
- I remember WoW forums being a cesspit in 2006-ish. Bleh

I wonder how many people that are gaming enthusiasts are depressed and feel less satisfaction with things generally
- That's a good point. It's kinda a chicken and egg situation, though. Do lonely people get into gaming because they don't have IRL hobbies and friends, or do the people who are really into gaming become depressed and lonely because of the nature of the activity?
- thats literally everybody in every hobby all the time. like what could you possibly be into where you go "oh yeah this is the high time for this, this is going greater (or at least not worse) than ever before"

recently?

Playing Vidya Games for Fun vs. Playing Vidya Games as Personal Identity

Gamers are whiny next question

For me this is how the gaming community has always been. It's the reason I'm pro gamer gulags tbh

It's been like this since I started consuming video game content in like 2011. The only newish addition is the gamers who call every game woke now.

It is a category of media that attracts children, man-children, and people who can be entertained by slop-level tactile/audio-visual/skinner-box mechanisms. Even the slightest critique of their escapist fantasy causes the whole thing to turn to ash in their mouths.

I mean besides the cultural war and the social media manipulating things to be always angry comments we also have the enshitfication in general affecting the industry.
- Capitalism endgame: instead of artists working on passion projects, it's corporate slop directed by weird people in suits using soulless algorithms attempting to maximize profit margins.
  
  Like always, people are angry at capitalism but didn't notice it yet.

Gaming discussion online has always been shitty on the whole, but nowadays this applies to nearly every hobby online. Social media amplifies this effect like crazy.

I remember seeing flame wars on gamefaqs over 20 years ago over dumb shit while looking for guides. Gamers, like all fandoms, have always been like this.

Because its
They're pit beasts.

At least the console wars were entertaining and made for some funny moments. A bunch of people in their mid 30s arguing about "woke" and how games aren't as good anymore is just sad. Like don't get me wrong, some gaming genres have suffered badly in the past few years, racing games being a prime example. But other genres are better than ever right now.
- I'd say racing sims are better than they've ever been and arcade racers are having a major resurgence.
  
  Arcade racers are practically dead outside of Forza Horizon though. As for racing sims, they've gotten better at the downside of becoming an obscenely expensive hobby, and aren't really games anymore in terms of feature set, they're just simulators and nothing else.

recently

People don’t even play these games on the whole. Their favourite slop merchant does a react video to someone else playing the, or more likely the teaser trailer, decides it’s woke, and their opinion is chosen for them.
I dunno, I am definitely a category five hater, but I just play a game and if I don’t enjoy it I turn it off. Life’s too short to spend time caring this much about the size of boobs in an anime game or whatever. This is the most frustrating part of the culture war. At least get riled up about something important.

I'm pretty sure that it's the way that social media is designed. It's designed to generate outrage to maximize engagement

i mean games do kinda suck not gonna lie
- i mean games are kinda great not gonna lie

I feel like its only a continuation of the same idpol taken to the extreme, first it was the "console wars" now its a genre wars, people build their identities around certain games or studios (e.g from software). Its kinda sad because i enjoy pretty much any genre.

I'm sorry, but if you didn't vote Wukong: Unwoke Booba and Rootyy Tooty Western Shooty as game of the ~~year~~ ~~decade~~ ~~century~~ ~~ever~~ ∞, in every category, you're woke. I don't make the rules.
- I voted Wukong in everything to make all Euroamerican gamers even more upset that the Chinese game keeps on winning. I haven't even played it. Shame about the misogynist developers though.

In the early times of the Internet, gaming discourse wasn't this negative at all outside of the stupid Console War discussions.
idk what about like gamergate and all that shit, i dont think it was ever nice
- Gamergate is super recent, I think they mean like in the 2000s and earlier.
  
  its like ten years old

steve bannon

Unfortunately Eggplant, the only good gaming podcast, covered Block Koala this week, so even they're negative at the moment.

I deleted my X Account a WHILE ago and I recently decided to take a break from Reddit so, it at least hope that helps

Yeah, it's definitely at least partially YouTubers influencing this. Games that are kinda' bad are treated as the worst thing. I remember people trying to point out that there are worse games than Pokemon Scarlet/Violet, not defending them, just pointing out there are some uber-bad games that run and play worse on PS2, Wii, NES, etc. And that was met with a lot of smug opposition. Not sure if AVGN and outrage YouTubers did that or maybe YT reviews in general.
A lot of people repeating opinions of others on games they didn't play. Which is annoying although slightly more understandable since games take so long to play and can be expensive sometimes, so people still want to be part of the conversation but might be able to actually play them sometimes, but it also leads to people just repeating arguments and factoids that aren't necessarily sound or genuine. Might also tie into my first point about how gamers have such low control of their urge to buy games they need a game to be the worst thing ever to stop themselves from buying it.
- Games that are kinda’ bad are treated as the worst thing
  according to the internet at large, things are either the best thing to ever exist or absolute shit
  mediocre has become another way of saying bad

not sure where you've been for the past 30 years but it has pretty much always been like this

Social media pushes content that will make people angry because it keeps them engaged for longer. This causes a feedback loop where negativity becomes a larger factor over time.
I would argue that Gamers are predisposed to this kind of thinking already, so the negativity is amplified even more.

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