What Are Your Unpopular Gaming Opinions? (Ver. 2)

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In my timezone, it says my last post was yesterday.

still wasn’t 24 hours

I'll just merge the posts. It's not that big of a deal.

 

[fogbadge]

I'll just merge the posts. It's not that big of a deal.

sorry. just trying to help

 

[Champion of Hyrule]

This term is an exaggeration of course but I legitimately think bad video games (or bad movies) culture and the ways people complain about them is a case of collective delusion. I’m not saying this to say “[game that’s seen as bad] is actually good and if you disagree that’s mass delusion!” or even that most games seen as bad are actually good. I’m saying that a lot of bad games are talked about in a way that’s really illogical and unfair to them and you get a sense the people making those critiques are biased by wanting to see the game fail.

As an example I’ve genuinely seen people argue that Bubsy 3D deserves extreme scrutiny as a 3D platformer because it released after Super Mario 64 as if the few months between those games would be enough for them to change a game whose entire movement system is different. Or the infamous criticisms of Dark Souls II’s camera controls that almost certainly come from people doing the extremely stupid decision of locking onto a single enemy in a crowd (as pointed out by hbonberguy in his defense of dark souls 2 video). I don’t think people are dumb or anything for having extremely surface level, misguided criticisms of games but it seems to me that it comes from them hearing about a game’s flaws from content creators or reviewers and subconsciously thinking of it as not being worthy of their respect. When someone plays a game they don’t think of as serious they then have very surface level critiques of it and are deluded into latching into bizarre criticisms as fact. God knows that IGN reviewer who jumped over springs and ramps in Sonic Unleashed for some reason probably didn’t treat Sonic as being deserving of his time, and those misguided critiques are repeated in a self reinforcing cycle.

 

[Quillion]

I don’t think people are dumb or anything for having extremely surface level, misguided criticisms of games

I personally say people ARE dumb for having surface-level criticisms. Especially after seeing design goals or artistic decisions like linearity, repetition, slow pacing, difficulty, or large scale be treated as a bad thing time and time again. I consider myself dumb for ever thinking any of these were bad things.

Out of curiosity, what makes people not dumb for having extremely surface level, misguided criticisms?

 

[fogbadge]

This term is an exaggeration of course but I legitimately think bad video games (or bad movies) culture and the ways people complain about them is a case of collective delusion. I’m not saying this to say “[game that’s seen as bad] is actually good and if you disagree that’s mass delusion!” or even that most games seen as bad are actually good. I’m saying that a lot of bad games are talked about in a way that’s really illogical and unfair to them and you get a sense the people making those critiques are biased by wanting to see the game fail.

As an example I’ve genuinely seen people argue that Bubsy 3D deserves extreme scrutiny as a 3D platformer because it released after Super Mario 64 as if the few months between those games would be enough for them to change a game whose entire movement system is different. Or the infamous criticisms of Dark Souls II’s camera controls that almost certainly come from people doing the extremely stupid decision of locking onto a single enemy in a crowd (as pointed out by hbonberguy in his defense of dark souls 2 video). I don’t think people are dumb or anything for having extremely surface level, misguided criticisms of games but it seems to me that it comes from them hearing about a game’s flaws from content creators or reviewers and subconsciously thinking of it as not being worthy of their respect. When someone plays a game they don’t think of as serious they then have very surface level critiques of it and are deluded into latching into bizarre criticisms as fact. God knows that IGN reviewer who jumped over springs and ramps in Sonic Unleashed for some reason probably didn’t treat Sonic as being deserving of his time, and those misguided critiques are repeated in a self reinforcing cycle.

i think i know what you mean. i have certainly seen some people criticise things in very strange ways that feel like they're going out of they're way to find things to complain about

 

[Oracle Link]

The recent Garry's Mod situation has made me realise that Steam Workshop kinda sucks as a system. It's more convenient, yes, but giving the game's publisher responsibility over moderating mods makes DMCAs significantly more likely as the workshop could be considered part of the game or its marketing in a sense - plus, legal woes aside, troubleshooting is a lot harder if you're not adding the mods directly yourself and don't know where they go, (I've modded a lot of games, and Rivals is easily the single one I've had the most issues with, particularly when it comes to figuring out which installs are causing problems) and Workshop makes it really hard to go through mods and uninstall them.

In fact, I'd say mod sites as a whole are a very troubling system when it comes to DMCAs compared to self-hosting, even if they make discoverability much easier. Content on a mod site like Gamebanana can be collectively wiped easily, self-hosting creates an impossible whack-a-mole game.

Yeah true i feel cheated i wanted to play garrys mod specifically because of the nintendo mods! And btw i dont feel cheated by nintendo more Steam TBH!
I Mean Steam got my money for a game that has now lost almost its entire appeal for me!

 

[Quillion]

Yeah true i feel cheated i wanted to play garrys mod specifically because of the nintendo mods! And btw i dont feel cheated by nintendo more Steam TBH!
I Mean Steam got my money for a game that has now lost almost its entire appeal for me!

Many have raised a good point that a good portion of the Nintendo content (conservatively estimated 75-80%) for GMod consists of ripped models. That's probably the biggest factor there, but of course, the ground-up recreated models have to be crossfire victims too 'cause it's easier to not have to vet for that.