Sep 4, 2021
>>>Why is it never enough?<<<
Gaming fans are never satisfied, never happy so says the internet…
I have sat at my computer screaming with joy as new games, consoles and updates are announced from all gaming companies! Of course, not all games are for me and I can see that for what it is. I am a rational guy, clearly I have a preference to what kind of games make me tick. I just played Psychonauts 2 and had an absolute blast (this one is worth a shot) but peruse over Metacritic scores and you will see pretty impressive critic reviews however the user scores paint a different picture, they are divided. Some people give a perfect 10 and claim it is their Game of The Year! Some user critics give it a clear 0 claiming this game destroyed their whole life and soul.
This is common practice within the gaming community. Hate and trolls on the internet trying to destroy others fun. I am not denying that some people may have given a score of 0 because that is truly how they feel, however it is now normal for gaming news websites to write stories about people deliberately flooding negative reviews about games. Which leads me to the question why are people never satisfied in the gaming community and why does it lead to such hate and trolling?
Let’s look at an example. It’s 1am in the morning, I’ve decided to stay up and watch the latest Nintendo Direct. Sitting through 30 minutes of Nintendo news excites me, no matter what they show there will be something for everyone. Some games excite me others do not but that is life. I leave feeling pretty excited, pretty satisfied. I jump onto Youtube afterwards to see how the internet is reacting to the news only to see there are more dislikes than likes and the comment section is full of hate. I sit up, wondering if I am wrong, why do I like what everyone else is hating?
A recent example of this would be the reveal of the Nintendo Switch OLED model. Leading up to this reveal there were weeks of rumours about a new Switch Pro. When the OLED model was revealed, it just popped up on Youtube. The hate it received was unprecedented because of the rumours that were spreading before the presentation. Therefore, again, we had dislikes galore and hate comments towards Nintendo. I mean if hate should go anywhere it should be towards the leakers that got everyone so “hyped”.
Ok, so we have hate and trolls and dislikes, but we also have people who are always asking for more! Take for example Nintendo’s Online Service. It is cheap for a year compared to Playstation and Xbox. NSO offers online play for games, an app for voice chat and over 100 free retro games from the NES and SNES. For your $20 a year this to me appears to be a pretty decent trade off. However, the internet would disagree with me, they are constantly asking for improvements, more systems included in the free games and just “more”.
What is this elusive “more”? Is it ever achievable? Obviously not. Clearly you cannot satisfy everyone all the time but companies like Nintendo are constantly coming out with new games and all the internet wants is more. Consumerism is alive and well. It makes us want things rather than needing them, so we just buy things to try to satisfy ourselves. That craving becomes greater and the need to want over takes us. So wants turn to needs? Potentially and it is causing us to be in a cycle of always wanting more and demanding we get it. Does this breed hate? Again, potentially. When we don’t satisfy that need we get frustrated, anxious and angry.
Taking a step back and looking at what we have, why we love what we do and being grateful for our hobby is so important. Smell the gaming roses, how lucky are we to be able to play the games of these creative minds on these amazing consoles. Remember what it was like when you first loved a game and what that meant to you. Come on internet, rally around trying a bit of positivity once in a while and let’s sing the praises of the amazing gaming community we have.
