Thanks for helping me quit video games

[Rolodome]

It's been a long time coming, but I might just quit video games entirely. I've watched the trends of the video game industry over years and I've seen how awfulness gets normalized time after time. I've watched as people turn on their fellow players and tell them off for having any standards at all. It's like going into the trenches of an ideological war just trying to have a conversation on a video game forum.

 

And now, in this update, I see a combination of some of the worst growing tendencies in this industry manifest into effectively destroying what was a decent game and replacing it with a half finished, incoherent mess, without even anyone who produced it being willing to stand up for it and defend it as being in some way coherent. The spinelessness of it is appalling and the silence is deafening, and because of how narratives have been created, spun, and normalized over the years, my putting it that way will be instantly mentally categorized by some people as "a gamer taking things too seriously." As video game enthusiasts, we have been progandized into a corner where we are unallowed to have standards at all passionately because that's "gamer rage." We are unallowed to want a quality product for what we spend because that's "being entitled." We are unallowed to sound at all dramatic because "it's just video games" and [insert example of some 1 out of a million "gamer" who went way too far to represent millions of people]. It's exhausting, demeaning, and unhealthy to spend time in an environment like that on a regular basis. And it's exhausting and demoralizing to know how poorly the workers in this industry get treated too, the type of nonsense they have to put up being told to turn this medium more and more over time into virtual casinos.

 

People are so starved for anyone who cares anymore, they'll hear an ounce of indication that a company is listening and it's like water in the desert. This industry is already on its way to leaving video game enthusiasts behind, except for the ones it can successfully turn into payers more than players. It only makes sense for me to consider leaving it behind before there's nothing left to enjoy.

 

I've been playing computer games heavily for a long time now. But nowadays, most of what's left is nostalgia for the games that captured my imagination years ago. I wish the newer folks could see what it was like then, so they'd understand why I have the standards that I do. It didn't have to go down like this. This medium has way more potential than gets explored anymore.

[juliushorst]

Try classics and indies.

[Rolodome]

Try classics and indies.

I appreciate the thought, but I don't think that's gonna save my interest in video games. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's not like it's a switch I can just flip off. I've modded extensively, I studied video game design, I've made at least one (very small) game. It's a lot to contemplate leaving behind, but the headspace I'm in right now, I think there's just a lot about the environments surrounding them and the direction they've been going that is very unhealthy and I don't see a path forward right now that leads to an upswing in that trend for games without great societal change relating to the, ah... "social mechanics" of what has brought us here to begin with (I am being intentionally vague bcuz I'm trying to avoid getting into depth on the controversy-attracting P word).

[Totemdancer]

It's been a long time coming, but I might just quit video games entirely. I've watched the trends of the video game industry over years and I've seen how awfulness gets normalized time after time. I've watched as people turn on their fellow players and tell them off for having any standards at all. It's like going into the trenches of an ideological war just trying to have a conversation on a video game forum.

 

And now, in this update, I see a combination of some of the worst growing tendencies in this industry manifest into effectively destroying what was a decent game and replacing it with a half finished, incoherent mess, without even anyone who produced it being willing to stand up for it and defend it as being in some way coherent. The spinelessness of it is appalling and the silence is deafening, and because of how narratives have been created, spun, and normalized over the years, my putting it that way will be instantly mentally categorized by some people as "a gamer taking things too seriously." As video game enthusiasts, we have been progandized into a corner where we are unallowed to have standards at all passionately because that's "gamer rage." We are unallowed to want a quality product for what we spend because that's "being entitled." We are unallowed to sound at all dramatic because "it's just video games" and [insert example of some 1 out of a million "gamer" who went way too far to represent millions of people]. It's exhausting, demeaning, and unhealthy to spend time in an environment like that on a regular basis. And it's exhausting and demoralizing to know how poorly the workers in this industry get treated too, the type of nonsense they have to put up being told to turn this medium more and more over time into virtual casinos.

 

People are so starved for anyone who cares anymore, they'll hear an ounce of indication that a company is listening and it's like water in the desert. This industry is already on its way to leaving video game enthusiasts behind, except for the ones it can successfully turn into payers more than players. It only makes sense for me to consider leaving it behind before there's nothing left to enjoy.

 

I've been playing computer games heavily for a long time now. But nowadays, most of what's left is nostalgia for the games that captured my imagination years ago. I wish the newer folks could see what it was like then, so they'd understand why I have the standards that I do. It didn't have to go down like this. This medium has way more potential than gets explored anymore.

 

👏🏻👍✌🏻 Well put

[Vurculac]

It's been a long time coming, but I might just quit video games entirely. I've watched the trends of the video game industry over years and I've seen how awfulness gets normalized time after time. I've watched as people turn on their fellow players and tell them off for having any standards at all. It's like going into the trenches of an ideological war just trying to have a conversation on a video game forum.

 

And now, in this update, I see a combination of some of the worst growing tendencies in this industry manifest into effectively destroying what was a decent game and replacing it with a half finished, incoherent mess, without even anyone who produced it being willing to stand up for it and defend it as being in some way coherent. The spinelessness of it is appalling and the silence is deafening, and because of how narratives have been created, spun, and normalized over the years, my putting it that way will be instantly mentally categorized by some people as "a gamer taking things too seriously." As video game enthusiasts, we have been progandized into a corner where we are unallowed to have standards at all passionately because that's "gamer rage." We are unallowed to want a quality product for what we spend because that's "being entitled." We are unallowed to sound at all dramatic because "it's just video games" and [insert example of some 1 out of a million "gamer" who went way too far to represent millions of people]. It's exhausting, demeaning, and unhealthy to spend time in an environment like that on a regular basis. And it's exhausting and demoralizing to know how poorly the workers in this industry get treated too, the type of nonsense they have to put up being told to turn this medium more and more over time into virtual casinos.

 

People are so starved for anyone who cares anymore, they'll hear an ounce of indication that a company is listening and it's like water in the desert. This industry is already on its way to leaving video game enthusiasts behind, except for the ones it can successfully turn into payers more than players. It only makes sense for me to consider leaving it behind before there's nothing left to enjoy.

 

I've been playing computer games heavily for a long time now. But nowadays, most of what's left is nostalgia for the games that captured my imagination years ago. I wish the newer folks could see what it was like then, so they'd understand why I have the standards that I do. It didn't have to go down like this. This medium has way more potential than gets explored anymore.

 

 

Very well put indeed.

[Felmyst]

"I've been playing computer games heavily for a long time now. But nowadays, most of what's left is nostalgia for the games that captured my imagination years ago. I wish the newer folks could see what it was like then, so they'd understand why I have the standards that I do. It didn't have to go down like this. This medium has way more potential than gets explored anymore".

 

 

Sorry I dont know how to quote properly, but this just rings so true. Thank you, this is exactly how I feel, but could never have put it in words.

[Drenovade]

Standards in gaming have dropped dramatically over the years, in all the ways you alluded to. It's demoralizing to see for sure. Voting with your wallet helps, but it seems "grand narratives" are the only way to have any real impact. When a massive number of gamers come together to reject a design philosophy, the widespread player activism on social media, high-profile content creator coverage, and mass exodus of players cannot be ignored.

 

Not that we can expect that for a game that's shrunken as much as SWTOR, but perhaps they'd listen to the sentiment of other player bases within the MMO genre. Blizzard Entertainment is still suffering from the heavy losses they took last year. I don't keep tabs on them anymore, but I expect at least some level of positive change had to result out of it.

 

Exquisite read by the way. Love to see posts as well-composed as this.

[xordevoreaux]

Not able to lean into your entire post, but I agree this is becoming the way of things, and across the industry:

 

People are so starved for anyone who cares anymore, they'll hear an ounce of indication that a company is listening and it's like water in the desert.

 

Communication and follow-through are key. The one thing people want to know on the forums more than anything else about 7.0 is simple: why.

 

It's worth 2 minutes for a SWTOR producer to lay out the mindset of their motivation in a dev post. Perhaps they don't want us to argue point-by-point with that motivation, but it'd still be nice to see the full reasoning, not just snippets, just lay it all out, all the thought processes that went into this, good, bad, and otherwise.

 

That said, it doesn't require a producer's letter to launch the game. It doesn't take a producer's letter to log into a character. It doesn't take a producer's letter for me to kill things, level up, grind gear, accommodate a change in abilities, learn a new interface, or anything else.

 

But it's occasionally nice to know why.

Edited February 19, 2022 by xordevoreaux