This Game Sucks!

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

When someone thinks of a gamer a wide variety of adjectives might come to mind. Gamers are usually stereotyped as being ungroomed, antisocial, and lazy. While these previous stereotypes may not hold up one that unfortunately does most of the time is negativity. Gamers are extremely negative! All this negativity would be fine if it was not hurting the industry gamers supposedly love so much.

There is one important and main reason that negativity from gamers is much more detrimental to the gaming industry than nearly any other industry. Unlike most other industries like the film industry, or technology industries, the game industry has a more intimate relationship with its customers. Therefore game developers talk to gamers and change their games based on what gamers are saying. This kind of communication is prevalent through online forums and developer conferences.

So what’s the problem? Getting constructive criticism directly from consumers is always a good thing right? This would be the case if the feedback received from gamers was constructive and not misleading. The proportion of gamers who are overly vocal about criticizing games have a tendency not to see the bigger picture with how a game is developed. They usually nitpick small details which can have a dramatic impact in terms of how the game is played instead of being content with the overall game, and living with the minor flaws.

Therefore developers make changes to their games to address criticism usually resulting in an inferior game. This can be seen across the gaming industry, but is especially evident with the Call of Duty franchise. In 2011 Call of Duty: Black Ops was released which included many new innovative features to how the game was played. These features were intensely criticized by gamers and when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was released the following year most of these new features were cut out. 

Although Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was still a great game it could have been much better if many of the features had been left in. Ironically many of the same gamers which criticized Black Ops new features had also been criticizing the Call of Duty franchise for not being innovative enough, which has prompted developers to completely revamp the Call of Duty franchise with Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

Negative gamers have put developers in an impossible situation where they can’t please all gamers and have to degrade their games to address critics, which will then criticize their games for decreasing in quality. Interestingly you would think that I was referring to all gamers, but these vocal negative gamers are actually the minority. 

The reason they seem like the majority is that they are much more vocal than the gamers who are content with the games they play. Does this mean that I don’t want gamers to criticize any game that they play? No, I just want the gamers who enjoy the games that they play to become more vocal in their support of these games, and to constructively criticize games they feel could be improved.

-Dylan Bertram