I happen to be a fan of Insomniac Games. I’ll be the first to admit that Ratchet & Clank sometimes feels a bit stagnant. I have my disappointments with Resistance. But in my experience, Insomniac is a consistent game developer that makes fun games that usually have something in them that make me laugh or go “Hey, cool!”. I have not played Resistance 3 yet – sort of a side effect of the whole “poor graduate student” lifestyle I’m rocking here – but I’ve certainly been interested in its critical reception.
The usual outlets give it pretty solid numbers, though they are divided over whether it is the strongest or weakest entry in the trilogy (no one seems to think that it’s in the middle). In essence, it’s scored comparably to its two predecessors: high, but not stratospherically so.
Then again, it depends on who you ask. I ran across one early review from a player, and to paraphrase: “Resistance 3 sucks. It doesn’t look as good as Modern Warfare, it has a dull enemy with absolutely no mystery to them, and I don’t care about the protagonist at all. It sucks like the other games sucked.”
And did I mention: this person hadn’t played the game yet. It hadn’t released yet. Though presumably his opinions on the previous games were founded in actual experience.
Of course, to anyone who has spent ten minutes on the Internet, anywhere that acts as a forum for people to discuss things, the general gist of the above review is not (regrettably) at all new. Indeed, such language, such extreme opinion, is ubiquitous in fan communities, from video gamers to moviegoers, comic collectors to those guys who spend hours sorting through CDs and vinyl at endangered music stores. Sometimes the implied ire is sight unseen, others the result of actual media consumption.
And it isn’t just the Internet. I can point out more than one time that the same implacable reasoning (that is, x sucks because, well, it does) has been used in my physical presence. It’s part of the discourse. And often the reasoning is, well, flimsy: whether or not Resistance 3 looks as good as Modern Warfare doesn’t actually mean much to how good the game is. A favorite example of mine, actually, regards Assassin’s Creed, a series of “terrible games” that “suck,” according to one of my friends, who I am not certain has ever picked one up, ever. After pressing him, I managed to get out that the key reason for this suckiness was that “you fight Templars.” (It is worth noting that the potential for offense, to a Christian like the aforementioned friend, is not lost on me, even if his complete willingness to blow Arabs or Russians away in Modern Warfare creates an apparent double standard. Ubisoft is also clear on this point, as they provide a disclaimer at the front of every Assassin’s Creed game to the effect.)
Thing is, it’s not that I disagree with these sentiments, necessarily; not always. The first Assassin’s Creed, at the very least, was a huge barrel of missed opportunity and repetitive gameplay: I might, in a fit of informal editorializing, say that is “sucks.” (The sequels, however, are amongst my favorite games of this console generation). But I can be very clear about why I hold this opinion. I certainly won’t make such a bold statement about something I haven’t even played. All that would do is incense those who disagreed with me; it’s not in the least constructive.
I have often wondered where the causality lies in this trend. Is this all-or-nothing, with-us-or-against-us mentality a result of the increasingly hostile, fractured social sphere that is Western civilization? Is this an instance of people being willing to say more extreme things behind the veil of anonymity that the Internet provides? Or did this rhetoric always exist, but only the Internet has allowed us to actually hear it from more than one or two people? I mean, were hordes of people hanging out outside movie theaters in 1987, screaming how Superman IV sucks? Before seeing it?
I have never quite understood what compels people to be so divisive over trivial things. (I can barely understand what compels people to be so divisive over really important things as to not brook any discussion, but this isn’t the place to bemoan that.) I am a devoted fanboy of many things. I will sing the praises of the stuff I like all day. But never have I felt the sort of vicious need to defame stuff I care for less, or those that happen to like it fine. I find World of Warcraft incredibly boring, but I don’t think it sucks, nor do people who play it fifteen hours a week.
And, I mean, the thing is, in entertainment, anyway, it just seems completely unhelpful to anyone for this culture to arise. We cannot expect every video game that comes out to be amazing, and yet it seems like a lot of people do. If they can find imperfections – even small ones – the game “sucks.” If – and I admit that this is a big if – publishers pay attention to what players are saying when handing down directives to developers, I’d wager this culture has contributed heavily to the number of clones of the Game of the Moment that we have to endure. There’s this idea that if a shooter isn’t Modern Warfare 2, it sucks, because clearly Modern Warfare 2 is very very good and there can be no in-between.
I suppose this irks me more than a lot of things because, amidst the broad political and media climate that favors character assassination, pithy phrases, and outright sensational lies over anything real, it is in this realm of geekery that I feel I can seek some respite from the insanity that is the “adult” world, and I just don’t like seeing the same stuff from my fellow gamers that I am all too used to seeing coming out of Congress. We’re better than that.
Send an email to the author of this post at dix@tap-repeatedly.com
How bizarre, I just republished my year-old Punchbag Artists which asks developers what they think of all destructive criticism.
Chatting with friends, someone will say, “How was that Transformers movie?”
You’ll say: “The Michael Bay one? Or the one with Unicron?”
“Unicron? WTF is that?”
“Okay, the Michael Bay one. Well, if you like explosions, I guess it was okay. I thought it sucked.”
Few people go into poetic detail when explaining why a game is critically good to a friend, and the internet becomes an extension of this conversational shotgun review where we don’t necessarily feel we have to be exact, precise or even fair. The internet didn’t make everybody journalists overnight.
But somehow all this negative shit seems to become more solid once committed to electronic paper, and actually does seem to have an impact.
What did the internet do to us? Did it make us happier or just meaner?
Very well said Brandon and very strange you post this right after my Brink review which was almost entirely motivated by the many, many, many ‘Brink sucks’ comments I’ve read across the web. Very few people actually go into the specifics and when they do they’re either a) trivial, or b) stupid. As HM says I don’t expect everybody to go into detail but sometimes I wonder exactly why some people hate what they apparently hate so much and whether it’s warranted.
“But somehow all this negative shit seems to become more solid once committed to electronic paper, and actually does seem to have an impact.”
I agree with this entirely and as I said in one of the opening paragraphs of my Brink review, “ill-will seems to have snowballed”, which is so true. If one issue gains enough momentum it becomes an almost permanent affliction which goes pretty much uncontested from then on.
Whether all this has developed with the web or has always been there I don’t know. I’d say it was always there but has got progressively worse with the web.
Anyway, great piece Brandon.
“There’s this idea that if a shooter isn’t Modern Warfare 2, it sucks, because clearly Modern Warfare 2 is very very good and there can be no in-between.”
I think this is the crux of the problem. There are some pretty outstanding games out there, and they are seen to “set the standard”. Anything which resembles, but doesn’t exactly copy, an outstanding game is immediately dismissed because it “isn’t as good as Modern Warfare 2”. No, people, it’s not the SAME as Modern Warfare 2, because it’s not trying to be the same.
It’s like the Matrix Trilogy: The Matrix was brilliant film; the proceeding sequels weren’t quite as good but they are pretty decent films in their own right. They will never be considered classics because they don’t quite match up to the first, but if a standalone film of identical quality to Revolutions were to be released it would probably be a critical success. The Christian Bale film “Equilibrium” suffers from similar “Matrix fallout”.
I’m not sold on gamers being “better than that”. My experience has been that they are the pettiest bunch who will dismiss one game without thought simply for not living up to their ridiculous expectations while flaming a game reviewer for giving the latest installment of their pet franchise a mere 95% instead if the 98% it so richly deserved.
In short, I think game fandom is in an unhealthy state. I’ve never understood this misplaced loyalty that these fans have. It is as if they think their game purchases come with some measure of the company’s esteem.
You’re totally right, Jason O. But, if gamers aren’t currently better than that, I think they should strive to be, at the very least. Harbour Master notes an incontrovertible truth: the internet has made us meaner.
I like your summation of the current state a lot, Brandon. Too many people are too willing to attack without basis or merit. Attacks are fine, so long as they’re constructive. Criticism is healthy.
I’ve not heard game makers respond to this kind of thing, but the same culture exists in other quarters: comic fans, movie fans. Heck, you don’t even have to be a fan of anything; observe YouTube, where viewers do not have the sense of entitlement that comes with shelling out $60 for the newest AAA title.
I have heard/read some responses from creators to this kind of thing, however. In the comics world – where the fans can be just as impressively vitriolic, and in some cases quite protective of their favorite characters and properties – I’ve heard more than one story from writers and artists about how much they fretted over this near the turn of the century, before realizing that this is really just a (very) vocal minority. The vast majority of people reading their comics are much more civil, even if they don’t necessarily like the work for some reason. And plenty do, anyway.
I think the assertion that the internet has made us meaner is a common error; in fact, I think it’s more that it makes jerks louder.
Great discussion, gentlemen! As one who barely understands the difference between a screen saver and wall paper, clearly, my geek status is in question. But, I do understand human behavior. From my perspective, the Internet is the modern day gladiator ring. All types of carnage are on full display daily, and we the consumers eat it up. It’s behavioral contagion at it’s best.
Brandon: if you want to know what developers think about negative (frequently baseless) criticism you should give Punchbag Artists a spin – it has perspectives from Edmund McMillen, Gabe Newell and a few others.
I’m not sold on the “internet makes jerks louder” theory, because if that was true, why would be spending so much time talking about negativity which is just a handful of jerks who we could ringfence and ignore? There seem to be a lot of jerks who are pretty decent in normal life.
(Another aside: There was an interesting discussion on an older Michael Abbott/Brainy Gamer podcast about the kind of language teens use in gaming forums, where the forumites see it as “harmless banter”, part of forum landscape, but to those outside its quite serious. There was also this about the infamous Metroid: Other M review.)
Hrmmm… to universally condemn or praise something speaks of having a closed mind. In the instances where games are percieved as sucking before they are even released, well that speaks of marketing departments missing their marks.
I think people often like to express such drastic remarks as the remarks help define them as people. For instance, a hard core TF G1 fan may violently oppose Michael Bay’s versions, as much because they want to be seen as ‘authentic’ or ‘true’ as because they don’t want people to change what they adore.
In this regard, opinions are very much affirmations – the stronger the expressed opinion, the stronger the message about the speaker that they wish to convey.
I know I’m rambling, but let me conclude by saying that absolutes, be they opinions or whatever, can be pretty useless things, and often people are trying to convey an image of themselves with absolute opinions to make up for a lack of qualitative information.
Excellent piece, Brandon.
I think to a certain extent it’s human nature. At least, to be critical and maybe even dismissive is. The internet just amplifies this by a massive magnitude. Everybody is on the internet nowadays (except my dear old Nan) and that means everybody has a voice. The problem is that obviously not everybody’s voice is worth listening to, and for those who aren’t capable of putting their criticisms and cynicism forward constructively, and who don’t have the platform of a popular blog to shout from, comments systems and social networks become the place where they shout their opinions.
In my experience, website comments systems are generally absolute wastelands of reasonable thought or debate, particularly on places like Youtube or the more mainstream gaming websites. Obviously there are exceptions (everybody say Hi!), but personally I’ll never read a Youtube comments thread hoping to find anything constructive. Just regurgitated meme’s and stuff like “FUCKING LOL”..
Stuff like dismissing a certain game because it’s character development and plot aren’t as good as Modern Warfare is obviously hilarious, but I think that’s just down to (incredibly bad) taste. There are a LOT of gamers out there who don’t acknowledge or appreciate other games because Call of Duty, Madden and FIFA etc are all that matters to them.
I think the OP of that post was not necessarily comparing Resistance 3‘s story/character to MW2, just the graphics. And to that point, there’s some fairness: the Resistance series’ biggest failure, I think, is in providing a protagonist, and I doubt this one’s going to change that.
Whether the Chimera are an interesting or mysterious enemy is more a matter of taste. A lot of people assume they are just an alien invasion when this is, in fact, quite untrue, but that’s hidden a little beneath the surface of the previous games. There are questions there for those who care to want the answers, but they aren’t exactly gaming’s great mystery.
Hear, hear, Brandon. And while I agree with you entirely on this matter, it’s still okay to critically dismiss some things, right? For instance: “Nickelback unequivocally sucks,” or “Compared to a pint of Guinness, Bud Light Lime definitely sucks.”