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Are gamers more negative, pickier, and more entitled than they used to be?

This is about graphics, frame rates, and expectations. I am not talking about story, or plot as that is a different can of worms and would need it's own dedicated mile long thread to dissect...
hell, yes. you got your 3dfx card, you got tomb raider, & you were damn happy! i mean, if you weren't? what the hell were you supposed to do?
 
I think so but I don't think it's really "gamers", just moreso people in general. It's a lot more easier to be negative online. I think reviews are a good example. Maybe I'm just in the minority but when I enjoy a product, doesn't necessarily need to be a video game, I tend to just enjoy the product and move on with my life. If the product sucks, that's usually when I'll either bitch at whoever made the shitty product, either in the form of a bad review or just some type of post online somewhere for people to see.

I think the biggest problem for gaming is these stupid ass benchmark and videos from digital foundry and what not. People just look at if it just hit results and not playing the game for themselves.
 

LectureMaster

Gold Member
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Shifty1897

Member

Are gamers more negative, pickier, and more entitled than they used to be?​

I think it's just that the vocal minority have social media platforms to broadcast louder now, but they've always been insufferable. They're also not getting bullied anymore, so maybe we bring that back.
 

AgatonSax

Member
I suppose it’s partly the consequence of constantly scraping up and re-serving old gaming experiences. PS5Pro has brought this to a head.
 
That is on the developers for putting out bad games, not the customer. A customer is entitled since they are spending their hard earned money on a product. If people have low standards and conform to bad products then things will never improve. Before the reason people didnt complain as much is because the majority of games were good and there was variety even within genres. you had sports games from different developers even,etc
 

lifa-cobex

Member
Gamers probably are more negative and pickier than before.
TBH it's not without reason and I think they have a right to be.

On the example of Stalker 2.
Lets not ignore the fact of the pre-pay items or "bonus pre-order content".
Which roughly translates to = Content were going to lock you out off if you don't hand us money upfront before being able to play in order for our stocks to look good.
This seems to be a norm now that doesn't get pointed out.

I am a fan of the Stalker games and was excited to play. From what I can play, I am enjoying. It's taken some finessing to get it to run at a stable FPS.
However I'm only enjoying it when I can because the game keeps crashing.
In terms of "graphics aren't good than what i expected". We live in an age of youtube. Folk who take that argument are idiots.

People are sinking so much money into consoles and PC's. On top of this your getting subscription services and addons.

Gamers are more negative and pickier than before. But they aim it in the wrong direction.
 

Wildebeest

Member
Big games are blander, easier, and less innovative than they used to be. They rely so heavily on the visual wow factor, nostalgia and story that those things have to be spot on.
 

Hohenheim

Member
People just like to complain online (myself included). I would say almost any hobbies enjoyment is increased tenfold by not looking at any social media about said hobby.
This. If folks back in the mid 90's had forums and internet like today, we wouldn't hear the end of how terrible everything was back then too.
The constant crying and moaning almost makes me want to get the fuck out of everything gaming related online, but this dark, depressing place keeps dragging me back in😁
 

Trogdor1123

Member
I’d say yes but it’s mostly because gamers have been burnt by these damn companies so many times they have become extremely defensive.
 

FeralEcho

Member
Have you SEEN the broken shit that developers release nowadays?

Maybe people were not as negative back then because broken releases for major games were so few and far between compared to nowadays. The entitlement comes from the publishers that expect gamers to buy their untested crap for 100$ not gamers who complain about said crap.
 
It really is becoming way more vitriolic than it used to be. You got whole hate campaigns on games before they even come out, and a lot of it just seems like AI generated outrage that people just repeat ad nauseum.
 

Bernardougf

Member
I guess Im not a graphics whore ... since last gen graphics achieved what I consider to be a pretty cool balance between 60fps and image ... playing games like The last of us remake or demons souls remake at 60 fps is pretty great... stable 60 fps and good image quality is all I ask ... coudnt care less about some barely prettier lights and reflection on puddles
 

NotMyProblemAnymoreCunt

Biggest Trails Stan
Reasons why I'm negative towards lot of modern games including Japanese Games

1. The constant messaging getting jammed down my throat that certain companies that "consult" on games have been doing. This has been happening to Japanese games too. That's all I'm saying on that

2. With Western Games I get turned off from most of them now due to their focus on Graphics. I wasn't a fan of PS3 Era for this reason. PS3 Era has some good games I admit like Mass Effect Trilogy. But I felt starting in that era is when there was too much focus on graphics and trying to be like Hollywood instead of being different from Hollywood. And compared to the PS1 and PS2 Era both had lot more bangers across the board

3. I feel that with Japanese games have been becoming too westernized for me. When I play a JRPG or any other game made by a Japanese Developer I expect the game to have that uniqueness and their identity in their games due to their culture. Same with games made by Western Developers

4. I don't like how prices are increasing when it comes to games. Even Nintendo has been doing this with Tears of the Kingdom being 70 Bucks.

5. Censorship of even Japanese Games. That's the main reason why I tend to wait more and more on buying Japanese games and just wait on a sale when I do decide to buy one

6. Buggy Mess, alot of these games have been turning out to be

Nowadays I play lot more older games and VNs
 
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ap_puff

Banned
Society as a whole, twitter/tiktok/facebook/youtube has turned the primary mode of communication into finding something that doesn't matter and whining about it until it either gathers a bandwagon or fizzles out.
 

XXL

Member
Absolutely. I'm generally pretty positive about things and some of these motherfuckers are so negative about everything and it's fucking hilarious to me.

It's like they hate gaming.

If I hated gaming like them.....I'd just stop gaming.
 
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PaintTinJr

Member
This is about graphics, frame rates, and expectations. I am not talking about story, or plot as that is a different can of worms and would need it's own dedicated mile long thread to dissect.

Just something I noticed, especially on game related subs on reddit, steam and even more general forums like here.

Most recent example: Stalker 2.
I see so many people being super negative and harsh on the games forums.
I seen a bunch saying that the graphics aren't much better than the original game and then went on to compare it to TLOU2. Saying that they expect that fidelity in 2024. (not taking account that this is an open world game, made by a tiny team in comparison and in a Eastern bloc country, in the midst of a war, yet they still got it out. ) Saying that the trees and textures look straight out of the originals, and they feel "ripped off".
I just don't understand how people can expect all games to be like tlou.

Then there are the other groups complaining about the AI either working too good, or not working to their liking. That the enemies are doing their own thing and not on you 24/7. (the game has a system for this and needs tweaking but it is working. Some complaining about getting a refund because it's not perfect out the gate and unacceptable. Yet the game is playable and not incomplete like cyberpunk, nms or something.
Some complaining about having inventory encumbrance (weight limits on what you can carry). Complain on things broken sure, but calling the game a rip-off because it has a few bugs?

Which makes me wonder, is this a generation divide or are there so many desperate for a shooter that they play a game that wouldn't interest them in the first place? We haven't had many single player, gritty, military esq type shooters in almost a decade, outside of multiplayer like cod and bf, which sp is mostly on rails.

Stalker 2 is just one example, but I have seen others. Games that I think are visually stunning, still get calls for "its not running at 60 fps all the time , and has 'Frame pacing" or drops to 50 here and there, and then calling it unplayable. Maybe it's just me, I can play a game with lower fps. I played doom and wolf3d in a small shrunken window in the middle of my 386's monitor just to play it, and was happy. I played Quake 3 at 24 fps but still got on with my friends using dialup and was happy. Eventually i upgraded my cpu for that scenario but i had fun even with the lower fps. Tons of games from the early 2000s and I don't recall people being so batshit over visuals or frame rates (well mutliplayer shooters fps, and people turned off visual settings for this).

My thread here isn't just about a specific game it's about a mindset. I see it all the time and I wonder where it comes from. It seems to me that people are more negative in general, pickier about a few frames per second, or frame pacing (something I don't even see or know what it is), expect every game to be turned up to 11 in visuals, have 4k max settings.

Asking questions and critique is good. Being unreasonable and expecting miracles or that every game be top of the line in visuals is just ridiculous.

Thoughts
I think the problem is that in any other field, TV, film, music, TVs/Camera resolutions, you go up a technical hardware tier and you expect higher fidelity, and that's been the case until music fidelity and all the others plateaued to a point where there's little noise already compared to immense level of detail, but games outside of first party games and top tier studios are hit and miss.

Whether moving up massively from PS3 -> PS4 hardware, or from PS4 -> PS5 hardware and still having a noisy image, the underlying reason is that developers at the poor A/AAA level aren't being objective about their technology choices before moving hardware, and instead trying to run before they can walk, leaving a shit tonne of noise in all aspects of their rendering and just eating up the new hardware by dialling things up with noise still in it, which is why I'd take issue with any negative words about the quality of NMS at any point it launched, because it still had the fundamentals right even in its V1.0 indie release and was a playable game with some amazing touches that couldn't be experienced elsewhere, even now.

But the game to drive the point about noise is Wii Sports tennis, as it is natively a 576i/480i/p game that on a good modern day TV will still look clean enough via SCART or component because Nintendo have expertly chosen how to composite everything, and chosen procedural shading instead of textures for the court's outline, to minimise the possible aliasing reason to just be the result of lower resolution native output, rather than some artefact within the rendering, and even intentional chosen the tilt of the court to minimise other textures suffering mipmapping issues from a lack of anisotropic filtering, which they would if the camera motion doesn't maintain an angle much less than the typical righting angle of a TPS or FPS to the ground and so maintains excellent clarity.

The real proof of the low noise image in the Wii Sports game, is that the game literally just gets a resolution bump on the WiiU/Switch versions and looks perfectly rendered with very little noise at all, even making the aliasing net cords look closer to the real thing when watching live tennis.

So the point of complaint is probably that egregious noisy looking games look like they belong on platforms where the devs pushed the hardware too much and were forced to accept these artefacts, not on two generations newer hardware where a rework/retune of a game's rendering fundamentals would achieve more visually than moving up one of those generations.
 
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Wanting so many things to fail is just weird.

Gaming has always had a higher percentage of basement dwelling weirdos, but today the weirdos are definitely weirder than they were across the board AND have easy access to an audience, and it’s reflected in gaming.
 

Ozzie666

Member
Internet is a major reason why it might seem so, and probably ism entitled more than picky. But as someone else had said the state of gaming and how much bullshit publishers and developers try to get away with is pretty crazier. Bugs, microtransactions, public comments and blame, plotical agendas, nickle and diming customers, gambling, surprise mechanices, paid early release. The list goes on and on. Companies like Ubisoft and EA have really shown their true colours, they will bend you over anyway they can do extra profit and are always trying to socially engineer your gaming habits for their bottom line.

That mentality of 'we can patch it later' has done so much harm, first impression matter. Not every turd can recover like Cyberpunk and FF14 online.

When you made a game for cartridge, it had to be complete and as bug free as possible. Because if not, you had to re-release another version of the cartridge, even if people didn't know. Very costly. But ground breaking, game breaking bugs were few and far in-between.
 
I think the problem is that in any other field, TV, film, music, TVs/Camera resolutions, you go up a technical hardware tier and you expect higher fidelity, and that's been the case until music fidelity and all the others plateaued to a point where there's little noise already compared to immense level of detail, but games outside of first party games and top tier studios are hit and miss.

Whether moving up massively from PS3 -> PS4 hardware, or from PS4 -> PS5 hardware and still having a noisy image, the underlying reason is that developers at the poor A/AAA level aren't being objective about their technology choices before moving hardware, and instead trying to run before they can walk, leaving a shit tonne of noise in all aspects of their rendering and just eating up the new hardware by dialling things up with noise still in it, which is why I'd take issue with any negative words about the quality of NMS at any point it launched, because it still had the fundamentals right even in its V1.0 indie release and was a playable game with some amazing touches that couldn't be experienced elsewhere, even now.

But the game to drive the point about noise is Wii Sports tennis, as it is natively a 576i/480i/p game that on a good modern day TV will still look clean enough via SCART or component because Nintendo have expertly chosen how to composite everything, and chosen procedural shading instead of textures for the court's outline, to minimise the possible aliasing reason to just be the result of lower resolution native output, rather than some artefact within the rendering, and even intentional chosen the tilt of the court to minimise other textures suffering mipmapping issues from a lack of anisotropic filtering, which they would if the camera motion doesn't maintain an angle much less than the typical righting angle of a TPS or FPS to the ground and so maintains excellent clarity.

The real proof of the low noise image in the Wii Sports game, is that the game literally just gets a resolution bump on the WiiU/Switch versions and looks perfectly rendered with very little noise at all, even making the aliasing net cords look closer to the real thing when watching live tennis.

So the point of complaint is probably that egregious noisy looking games look like they belong on platforms where the devs pushed the hardware too much and were forced to accept these artefacts, not on two generations newer hardware where a rework/retune of a game's rendering fundamentals would achieve more visually than moving up one of those generations.
Wait when did wii sports get a switch release? There was switch sports but that is a different game entirely.
 
YES. Game companies definitely have their issues as well and don’t always deliver on what they promise, but imho a lot of gamers are entitled and whiny. I want perfect WRITING, spectacular graphics, phenomenal award winning stories, flawless acting, amazing character development, captivating gameplay, hundreds of hours of length and endless content, etc in my games.

Also, when modern gamers call games like Street Fighter 5 the worst fighting game ever for example, you know they probably haven’t played many fighting games in their life when games like Shadow on 3DO and Rise of the Robots exist. Sure, they are entitled to their opinion, but I truly don’t think modern gamers know what a truly horrendous game is now.
 

grvg

Member
We aren't ever going back to the generational gains that we got up until the PS2 era. People want it, or want some type of graphical progress, but it is not that simple. Higher fidelity assets means more artists required to make said assets, means ballooning staff sizes and production times.

There are tons of other ways that games could progress, but graphics are still the AAA focus.
 

FunkMiller

Member
The modern studio modus operandi is to launch a broken game, receive negative reviews, then complain that gamers are too demanding.
As if wanting a product that actually works, could ever be construed as some extremist demand from consumers.

First post nails it. The fact some gamers want to criticise themselves, rather than the greedy, shitbag filled games companies is some gaslit, Stockholm syndrome type shit 😂
 

RafterXL

Member
It's 100% an industry issue, not a customer issue.

If publishers and developers actually cared about making good games and giving the customers what they wanted, the overwhelming majority of negativity would cease to exist. The problem is, most of them don't give a shit about making good games anymore. They're either trying to nickel and dime gamers while releasing half finished shit, or they are using their platform to push their social, political ideologies. Developers used to be passionate nerds in a basement making something they'd enjoy playing. Now half of any development team is finance people, HR, or gender cult freakshows.

So, yeah, gamers are more negative, and we have every right to be. Stop feeding us shit and we'll stop complaining about you feeding us shit.
 

phant0m

Member
As if wanting a product that actually works, could ever be construed as some extremist demand from consumers.

Again, STALKER 2 is a perfect example. The game fucking works. I’m 8 hours in, had one crash and a few minor visual bugs that didn’t affect progression. People have dozens more hours and beaten the game for christ sakes.

Are there components that aren’t working fully? Yup. Are there areas that can be improved? Sure are. Does it deserve some criticism? Mhm.

But the fucking hyperbole over everything being broken, non-functioning, unplayable “dogshit” is so fucking exhausting. I swear half this forum and Reddit should just go find a new fucking hobby.

Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls ran sub 30fps very frequently on PS3 but you still loved that shit. Now? Anything that dares is “unplayable”
 
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PeteBull

Member
Standards change with time, ofc as decades passed we dont wanna see fist sized pixels on our tv anymore(only exception are switch owners, sorry bros :p ) and want that stable 60 fps, same way with minimal or no pop up, sharper textures and so on.

Ofc in the end its personal so subjective opinion, some1 can be less or more tolerant about game's technical inperfections, and it makes sense, if he is playing on a handheld or 10yo pc rig that is worth 150- 200usd at most, his expectation should and usually are different from ps5pr0 or 1,2k usd+ pc rig owner.
Edit:
Another 2 important factors are- game being launched recently or it being some old classic, and it being indie(actual low budget indie, not fake indie with big budget) or proper AA or AAA product, ofc the higher the budget/newer the game, the expectations are higher.
 
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phant0m

Member
First post nails it. The fact some gamers want to criticise themselves, rather than the greedy, shitbag filled games companies is some gaslit, Stockholm syndrome type shit 😂
First post leaves out the fact that “product that actually works” is so overblown and hyperbolic.

Game drops frames below 60? Unplayable.
Main character is “ugly”? Unplayable.
Cringey dialogue? Unplayable.
Visuals glitches that don’t affect progression? Unplayable
PC port doesn’t have ultrawide support? Unplayable

I’m not saying games shouldn’t be criticized, just that the hyperbole is insane and it seems like the default attitude is to lol for reasons to hate on a game rather than finding something to enjoy.
 
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I want to directly argue against the OP's points.

Black Myth WuKong should have failed. People thought it was a scam to start with, it was a Chinese game when political forces are against the country, the game definitetly had framerate issues, AND it has Denovo.

But despite all odds, despite flaws, Wukong is a GOOD game. And gamers rewarded WuKong for being the good game that that it is. A true current gen title.

People only complain about the flaws of the game when they are not enjoying themselves. And often the flaws they complain about isn't the real problem, but the problems are there.

So my position is that, no, gamers are not complaining more than usual, gamers are just unhappy with many titles they are playing. The games are simply bad, even if the gamers can't agree on what aspect that they hate the most. Make a good game, and suddenly none of the minor flaws matter.
 

Shrap

Member
Gamers aren't more negative, games are just released in shittier unfinished states than ever. You have massive AAA games having huge launches in a worse state than early access steam games and because so many gamers are impatient morons they slurp it up and allow the devs to continue doing it.

Also anyone that says gamers are "entitled" can go in the fucking bin. For those of you who say that - you do realise gamers are paying for products and are the sole reason this industry even exists and prospers in the first place? They are allowed to have high expectations for a product they pay for. They aren't getting anything for free, so "entitlement" is a bullshit argument from apologists and industry sack licking scumbags.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
No doubt. And thats the way it should be. Release a half wit game, get nailed by gamers.

Every other industry, the product seems complete. And if it sucks, you can return it. You cant return a car or a newly built house, but you still got a multi year warranty for free fixes.

In gaming, you might not get a refund and there's no guarantee they'll fix the game. The gamer prays the game is good and any issues will be fixed in a patch which may or may not come. And then you got issues like the studio abandoning the game and servers shutting down which is a whole other issue.

Game makers have the advantage on gamers. They can always promise patches. And they have hardly retail inventory anymore to worry about since most come from digital downloads. And physical copies dont have refunds. So they dont have to worry about returned product like other industries where if something is trash your company will get tons of returns and if the retailer gets pissed they'll also return or dump the existing product and then never order from you again because they got burned.
 
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PaintTinJr

Member
Wait when did wii sports get a switch release? There was switch sports but that is a different game entirely.
Pretty weird and out of context to a) talk about the whole game package when I was just talking about the Tennis Wii Sports game (mode), and b) my comment is clearly about the rendering, which is effectively the same in all three versions of that Tennis game (mode) across Wii/WiiU and Switch, so whether they are really unique products, rather than ports is neither here nor there to my overall point about them getting their rendering fundamentals right and still able to sell that important game mode as part of a product 18years later with just an effective increase in resolution and it still look great, and this what too many devs don't get right from the start and carry noise through into sequels on more powerful hardware.
 

rm082e

Member
Wide-eyed excited kids got addicted to the fun and excitement of video games. Then they grew up and became grumpy old men. Now they complain about everything because they can't find any way to feel the sense of joy they once did decades ago. The most grumpy are the people who can't even find enough motivation to play games anymore.
 
Wide-eyed excited kids got addicted to the fun and excitement of video games. Then they grew up and became grumpy old men. Now they complain about everything because they can't find any way to feel the sense of joy they once did decades ago. The most grumpy are the people who can't even find enough motivation to play games anymore.
Sales don't lie. If you can't make a game that grumpy old guys are willing to pay money for, you deserve to lose your studio.
 

Kumomeme

Member
gamers nowday are more 'educated'. they know more stuff about behind the scene and new generation today are more vocal. they didnt afraid to voice their opinion. also with age of social media, it create a 'hive' which is encourage people view to a huge echo of sentiment.

however perhaps due to the social media, some people become too entitled. to the point nitpicking at everything. they know their voice got 'power' at social media even if it just a vocal minority. the developers who 'afraid' of them also end up giving these people more 'power'.
 
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gamers nowday are more 'educated'. they know more stuff about behind the scene and new generation today are more vocal. they didnt afraid to voice their opinion. also with age of social media, it create a 'hive' which is encourage and people view to a huge echo of sentiment.

however perhaps due to the social media, some people become too entitled. to the point nitpicking at everything. they know their voice got 'power' at social media even if it just a vocal minority. the developers who 'afraid' of them also end up giving these people more 'power'.
Social media only has power when companies are seeing healthy profits. When the sales drop, social media can't save you. That is what recent events reveal, that consumers are where the power truly lies.
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Vocal Minority on the Internet usually dont represent the gaming market at large.

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