Entitlement

Recently, Starcraft 2 came out. OK, it came out four days ago. Largely there has been a resurgence of purchases from my friends of this game. However one day I caught my friend saying “Starcraft 2 is just Starcraft 1, it blows.” So I follow up with talk of Diablo 3 and my excitement for it. He immediately calls the game “awful and just a Diablo 2 clone. Its just going to suck.” I said “How can you know? you’ve never played it.” His response was equally ignorant. “I watched the videos, I know it’s going to suck.”

There is where I realized something that had been bothering me. He wasn’t the only one who shared this point of view. You can argue, quite poignantly that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Yet there was something incredibly wrong with these attacks. Gamers love to spout artistic garbage and defend their hobby, yet they don’t even understand their own immature behavior.

In no other industry are insults so rampant. Games MUST be played to completion. That is the medium of their narrative and focus, through game play. Yet many people have never played a game, simply just watch the “good” parts and immediately believe themselves credible and knowledge about the game. They speak as if they are a true fan and slam games because it earns them praise or blog hits. We have the hardest of hardcore fans and pretend hardcore fans, nothing else. "I payed 60 dollars for this game, Why can't I blow up the world or be paid in real life? Like come on, I bought the game, I should be paid for playing it."  I hang out with people like this, I’m for the most part, very used to this. Yet that doesn’t mean it doesn’t bother me.

Coupled with this ignorant strain of “Know-it-all ism.” Is the awful sense of entitlement that gamers have. World of Goo is an amazing game, and eventually it reached the “pay what you want” pinnacle of pricing structure. Yet gamers aren’t even willing to pay a penny. They rather steal it. Then they all complain when companies put in massive amounts of DRM protection. Gamers expect entirely too much out of the games they buy. Here’s this game that hundreds of people slaved away for 3 years developing, and “OH LOOK THE TREES AREN’T IN 1080. This game is crap. 1/10!”

Gamers are more than willing to put 15 dollars down for 4 new maps to Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. Yet ask them to pay ten dollars for an original indie title on XBLA or PSN? Forget it. “Because its not a game”. You may offer the rebuttal that it is simply the gaming industry going mainstream. Yet this has been going on for far too long to be considered recent.

Unfortunately, this is not going away anytime soon. We as gamers can ask for credibility to our industry. For games to be seen as art. Yet we have to appear more than meat head fan boys first. We have to stop acting like children with their first toy. Game companies owe you nothing, so please stop complaining. And please try to finish a game before you slam it for the most arbituary reasons. You make the rest of us gamers embarrassed with your behavior.