The Internet has done many things to our collective consciousness, attention spans and numerous other aspects of our existence, but one thing that saddens me more with each passing year is how the art of just enjoying something for what it is — rather than mourning what it isn’t — seems to be slipping away from everyone.
What I mean by this is the way in which I can’t remember the last time I saw someone simply say “I like this” with genuine passion and enthusiasm. It’s far more common for people to pick fault with literally everything, often under the justification “it’s important to criticise the things you love”.
But is it? Is that not just setting oneself up to be perpetually unsatisfied? It certainly looks like it from here.
One of the things I’ve always tried to do with both MoeGamer and my YouTube channel is “find the fun”. This is a phrase I picked up from (I think) Mark Bussler of Classic Game Room, who is someone I’ve always had a lot of time for. Essentially what it boils down to is not ignoring flaws in something per se, but rather deciding whether or not those flaws are really worth whingeing about — and whether or not your overall experience with the thing has suffered as a result.
I play a lot of games that mainstream, popular opinion regards as “flawed” or even “bad”. I learned a long time ago to listen to my own heart and feelings rather than the opinions of others, though, because some of the games that ended up resonating most strongly with me were those that had a particularly negative critical reception for one reason or another.
And you know what? I suspect I’m probably having more fun than people who don’t seem to know how to do anything but complain endlessly.
There are a number of different factors at play here, so I’ll try and acknowledge at least some of them along the way.
One of the first things I think that is worth contemplating is the oft-cited declaration that “modern gaming is dead” due to things like Battle Passes, microtransactions and all manner of other nonsense. Yes, those things are shit. Yes, they absolutely should be criticised when they show up in unwelcome places. No, we should not begrudgingly accept things like “modest monetisation” just because they’re not as bad as more egregious examples.
But no. Modern gaming is not dead. For one, all the “consumer-unfriendly” bullshit, regrettably, seems to thrive, particularly among those who aren’t as heavily immersed in gaming culture. The folks who buy FIFA (or whatever it is now) and Call of Duty every year just so they can play with their mates online every now and then don’t see anything wrong with their games being heavily monetised, because in a lot of instances, those people have grown up with monetised-out-the-arse mobile games and don’t appear to have a problem with a £70 game asking them for more money after the initial outlay. This is not a good thing — but it is a fact. That shit isn’t going to go away for a while.
But the more important factor to consider is that games like the aforementioned and their ilk represent just a fraction of the video games medium. If predatory monetisation and Battle Passes upset and offend you, then play something that doesn’t have those things. There are lots of examples, even in the big-budget end of things. I am currently playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and it doesn’t have either of those things. Neither did Granblue Fantasy: Relink, which I played before that. Neither does the Ace Attorney Trilogy. In fact, I don’t think any of the games I own a copy of among my considerable collection have either predatory monetisation or a Battle Pass… with the possible exception of Diablo III on Switch, and I’m not sure that really counts.
And yet it seems there are some people out there who like nothing more than buying the latest triple-A live service looter shooter and then doing nothing but moaning about it online. This is baffling to me. I legitimately don’t understand why you would do that. It’s patently obvious when an upcoming game is going to be a pile of old cack (was anyone surprised that both Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Skull & Bones both ended up as bland snorefests?), and yet it seems people still buy it for whatever reason, and then waste hours of their life complaining.
Honestly, though, that side of things is easily ignored. I pay very little attention to triple-A stuff that isn’t called Final Fantasy, and as such I encounter relatively little of what I’m describing above. The more insidious side of things is what I would like to talk about next, which is how some people appear to be completely incapable of just playing something, enjoying it and leaving it at that.
This side of things can particularly be seen in online reviews such as those found on Steam. Players on Steam appear to be perpetually unsatisfied with literally everything they play, with the most common criticism of something being that it “needs more content” and that it “needs updates” lest it be declared “dead” or “abandoned”.
Sometimes a game is just finished. Sometimes the developer wants to move on to something else. Sometimes the game hasn’t sold enough to make it practical for the developer to continue working on it post-launch. There are myriad valid reasons for a game to be left “as-is”, and if a dev decides to move on we should respect that. But in today’s age of live-service, continually updated games, the expectation seems to be that even scrappy little indies should have “post-launch roadmaps” that cover at least six months after release.
Here’s the thing, though: I fucking hate that. I fucking hate buying a game only to discover that the dev’s going to put a bunch of extra stuff in it at some indeterminate point over the next year. Why? Because it makes it feel like there’s never a good time to actually sit down and play the game; the next best thing is always just over the horizon. It’s the software equivalent of “I’m not going to buy a new graphics card now, because the next ones will be better”.
And yet it seems that a significant proportion of people actually want that. I am, apparently, the outlier, and I’m not sure why. At least I am well-catered to by the limited-print publishing houses — the vast majority of those won’t put out a physical release of a game until it’s completely finished, with all updates and DLC in place. Perfection. For me, anyway.
It’s not just a demand for more “content”, though — and let’s not get into why “content” is a foul word in today’s culture. At times it seems that people feel like they have nothing to say about a game if they’re not criticising something, picking fault or finding flaws. The current fashionable trend, it seems, is to criticise the “gameplay loop” of something, as if using that phrase magically makes you sound like an experienced game designer.
Part of this stems from clickbait and hatebait culture, where things with an overall negative tone — particularly when commenting on something perceived as “popular” — inevitably get more clicks, usually from people who are eager to jump into the comments section and start hurling abuse. But it also seems to be a very real problem with online discourse in general; people have got it into their heads that being positive about something doesn’t get good “engagement”, and consequently it’s more “worthwhile” to comment negatively.
Now, I’m not saying that we should just blindly praise everything or deny that problems exist. But remember that “finding the fun” concept I mentioned above. Are the “flaws” you have spotted in the game things that are genuinely ruining your experience, or are they just part of the way the game is put together? Could there, perhaps, be a reason that something you don’t like about the game is the way it is?
To put it another way: have you tried looking at what this game is, rather than what it isn’t?
I’ve found approaching things from that angle to be much more enjoyable and positive over the years. Here on MoeGamer, we’ve looked at numerous games that dare to do things a little bit differently — and I’ve made a point of doing my best to contemplate and explain exactly why those differences are there, even when they perhaps might not be to everyone’s taste. As a result, I feel like I’ve developed a much stronger understanding of both game and artistic design, and all without tearing down someone else’s creation.
More than anything, the constant negativity of online discussions is just plain exhausting. Sometimes I just want to hang out with some friends and talk about how much fun I’ve been having with the game I’ve been playing lately. Sometimes I want to be free to obsess over something, and have my friends understand why I’m obsessing over that thing. Sometimes I want to be able to just say “I love this!” without someone rattling off a laundry list of all the things that are supposedly “wrong” with it in an attempt to prove my opinion somehow invalid.
I’m just tired. Very tired. And it bums me out that a medium I love so much is also blighted by some of the most toxic negativity. Still, all I can really do is keep doing what I do: celebrating the things that I love, enjoy or simply find interesting, and just casting everything else aside. I hope at least some of you appreciate the positive tone I do my best to maintain around here — but honestly, even if no-one was reading, I’d still find this a valuable outlet on today’s Internet.
In unrelated news, I picked up a copy of Loop8: Summer of Gods today, cited by many as “one of the worst JRPGs ever”. I anticipate I will have a great time with it. But not until after Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. And so, having just spent an article complaining about people complaining, I better go put my money where my mouth is and just go enjoy something. So that’s exactly what I’m going to go and do.
Want more Pete? Check my personal blog I’m Not Doctor Who, and my YouTube channel ThisIsPete. If you enjoy what you read here, please consider buying me a coffee.
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Pete, I like the way you think!
And, yeah, toxic negativity is really a thing.
Also, I am happy that I can finally post comments on your site. It wasn’t working for some time since I first tried to post a couple of months ago. Yay!
I think I left a reply on one of your attempts: first-time commenters have to be manually approved by me before their comments appear, and you happened to try when I was away from being able to do anything about them 🙂 You’re all approved now, though, so you should have no further issues.
I thought that was the holdup. I know you are a busy guy, but I began to feel a little frustrated after a couple of weeks from my first attempts. Don’t worry, it’s all good!
I agree completely. Have even been avoiding most current gen games in recent weeks. Instead, I bought an A500 Mini and Cloanto’s emulation packages Amiga Forever and C64 Forever. Been loving every second of it!
Excellent stuff! Lots of fascinating stuff to explore among all that lot. Will you be checking out the 400 Mini? 🙂 (If not, you’ll be able to do so vicariously, because you better believe I’ll be covering it, haha)
I haven’t (yet) preordered the 400 mini, but I plan to buy one! Obviously, I’ll be keeping an eye out for your coverage! I hope it works with Xbox controllers, because I’d love to play 5200 Space Dungeon with an actual dual-stick controller. What are you most looking forward to playing on it?
I’m particularly intrigued to try Seven Cities of Gold, as I’ve never delved into that one and people say it’s excellent. (Also interested to see how they handled the multi-disk aspect of it on a mini console). From the games I’m already familiar with, I will definitely be playing a lot of M.U.L.E. as while I’m not normally very good at strategy games, that has such a good balance between accessibility and depth that I can’t help but love it.
I’m with you. I enjoy playing games. Some of my favorites tend to have extremely negative communities – either in places like the Steam discussion pages or in places like Reddit communities for the games. I feel like I get attacked whenever I post something positive about a game that I enjoyed. I just want to thank the developers for creating something I liked or have a conversation with other people who enjoyed what I enjoyed, but those get harder to do all the time.
And I’m definitely a fellow outlier in wanting to play finished games. Games like Stellaris and Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous are examples of what happens when I don’t. I enjoyed both games a lot. Then they got additional content. I went back and the content itself was good, but it would have been much more enjoyable to have had it when I played through the games previously. Then they got even more additional content. Looks good, but I just don’t have any desire to keep going back to them for this trickle of additional content.
Nail on the head right there. It feels… superfluous to come back to a game you spent a long time with just to play a piece of DLC that, in some cases, is less than a tenth of the main game’s length. Revisiting games is nice sometimes — and it can be pleasant to explore new stuff when it is available — but with so many great games being released every week, I’m surprised that post-launch support for a lot of games is even worth it, as surely a significant portion of the audience will have moved on by the time something substantial is added.
And yeah. What you describe is exactly what frustrates me. It feels harder and harder to find “like-minded” people who just live for the joy of the experiences they’ve had. I’m not saying everyone has to agree or anything, but I feel like something is actually wrong if it’s this hard to have a positive conversation about something with another person.
Often when reading your past articles, I find particularly interesting screenshots and/or in-text mentions of older games that I may not have already discovered or may have heard about but never had further exposure to. Sometimes I actually pursue those interests.
One such screenshot in this article caught my eye, and I then read your article from 2019 about Gun Gun Pixies. I liked what you said about it, and I actually started playing it today.
Here is the part where I turn my back on what was discussed on this page and start talking about the negative… but I am trying really hard to get into that game, and I think I would really like to continue. However… OK, here goes:
I am having technical issues that are holding back from making much progress with the game.
Mostly problems with Settings, like the invert horizontal camera setting that won’t stick, screen resolution that keeps slipping back from full screen to borderless or windows (truncating edges or bottom of the display), camera that goes completely bonkers when near walls or certain objects (making it virtually impossible to navigate or use the gun), crawling mode that pops back to standing up when moving forward or backward (only stays crawling going sideways). And so on.
I guess I need to find a forum where I can seek assistance with resolving these issues, because I would really like to have some fun with this one. Can you recommend anything that might help me?
I apologize for taking up some of your valuable time.
Update:
I think I’m good. It took a few hours, but I somehow got the game to a point where it is playable.
I gave up trying to get full screen to work. Borderless seems to be OK, it held up for a couple of hours of game time anyway.
The horizontal camera finally began to work the way I want it… so far, so good for the time being.
I can deal with the crawling thing. I simply press left and right alternately, giving a kind of awkward but usable forward movement. Of course, crawling underneath things isn’t a problem.
The worst thing that remains is the way the camera is hijacked when moving through the narrow corridors between walls and furniture. Very frustrating, but I have to deal with it if I want to play. And I do want. So, after a rough couple of hours, I am back to having fun.
Thank you for providing me with an outlet for my frustration..
No worries! I will say that as a general rule, I play most stuff on console (Switch more often than not, PlayStation 4/5 where performance is a concern or no Switch version exists), where a lot of these issues simply don’t occur.
PC versions of a lot of console-first stuff (particularly Japanese games, unfortunately) often seem to get fairly shoddy PC ports, which is a shame. Sometimes they are updated later, but sometimes they aren’t. If you have access to a modern console, I would generally recommend playing there rather than PC for the vast majority of things I cover. If not, it’s always worth contacting the developer/localiser/publisher to see if they’re aware of issues — sometimes they simply might not know an issue exists.
My first (real) PC was a Macintosh (original beige case, built-in 9″ mono monitor, 128k RAM, no HD, 3.5″ 720k floppy disc) in 1984. I also had numerous misc. computers: Atari, Commodore, T.I., Heathkit H8, …
But since late 80s I have almost exclusively used what was then known as “PC (IBM) compatible”. So, keyboard and mouse most of the way through early 2000s.
In February, 2021 I purchased a Playstation 4, mostly because I was fascinated by some early PS2 and PS3 games, some of which had been released (remastered, rebooted, whatever) for PS4.
Examples: Shadow of the Collosus, The Last of Us
I discovered immediately that the controller was a problem for me. After many hours of playtime, some games I can manage. Anything that requires rapid and/or precision directional control is pretty much impossible.
Surprisingly, I became pretty good (only “pretty good”, by no means GOOD good) with Horizon: Zero Dawn.
The Division 2, The Last of Us, just about any shooter or close combat game… forget it. Can’t do it.
A year or so ago, I purchased a Playstation 5. I don’t know why I did that, but there it is.
So now I have a PS4, a PS5, and a PS2 that someone gave me. I guess its time for EBay or Craig’s List.
TLDR:
Yeah, the point if this lengthy tirade is that if I am to play old console classics, it mostly has to be a port to PC that supports keyboard and mouse. Unfortunate, but true.
Hey, Pete, the time stamps on your pages is not my local time, obviously because the message I just posted is marked 4:13 AM, but it is 8:13 AM here in Reno, NV.
You’re not from around here LOL
Foiled again!
After hours of playing Gun Gun Pixies yesterday, the keyboard and mouse setup was working fine, but when I loaded up the game this afternoon the camera mouse control is FUBAR. When a mission or freeplay is started, the view goes up and left and I can only rotated further left and no other direction.
So it is like the mouse is stuck moving up plus left and won’t pull back.
I tried deleting the setup.ini, deleting the whole documents\my games\gungunpixies folder, and uninstalling/reinstalling the game.
Still won’t work. WTF!?
I’ll try Steam support, or see if I can still get a refund.
I am so disappointed.
Apparently it was simply the screen size/mode setting or something. I went as far as to delete references to the game from the Registry Editor, but still no worky.
Then I tried starting up in the default display settings, and the mouse is working correctly. Changed to borderless full screen that I was using before, and mouse fart.
Changed to something else, this time Fullscreen, and it works.
Geez! What is going to mess up tomorrow?
I echo alot of this sentiment, especially the idea of appreciating what something is and not what it isn’t. I think that is honestly SUCH an important thing to learn in terms of mindset.
I recently stopped caring as much about Achievements and Trophies too, as I used to let them get in the way of me enjoying a game. I am doing my best to just enjoy games for what they are, and similarly for films, TV, and otherwise.
Great post!!
Honestly, learning to let go of Achievements and Trophies is something I would advise everyone to try and do. So many people I know have ended up feeling bitter towards a game because they didn’t consider it “complete” until they had a Platinum trophy… but acquiring said Platinum trophy involved hours of grinding or luck-based activities that weren’t fun.
A game’s done when you’re good and done with it. While I argued recently that I wish more people would make an effort to at least roll credits on the games they start, there’s no point making yourself miserable over something that’s supposed to be fun, after all!