Originally posted by Zorgo

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Nothing to do with any of that.  As long as developers continue to put crap games out there they will get tons of criticism and deservedly so.  You should stop trying to psychoanalyze something with silly rejoinders and look at the obvious fact that none these games lately have been very good.

So it is rather hard to argue for any kind of tear down mentality when there is a lot to criticize about these games.

You did a great job exemplifying one of his points:

 

The Customer Satisfaction Premise

Here's something I picked up from Keen at Keen and Graev's Gaming Blog: the idea of dissatisfaction being caused by previous exposure. Basically, the idea as it relates to the tearing down premise is that we set ourselves up to hate things based on our expectations, as determined by past experiences. As Keen explains,

"If a developer aims for 100% enjoyment or innovation, then players will come to expect that level of enjoyment and innovation.  That means next time you’re going to have to meet that same level of enjoyment and innovation or else you will fail to meet expectations, and a high level of disconfirmation will result and players will be unhappy."

 

------------------------------------

That's exactly what he was talking about.

Well I completely disagree with you.  Why shouldn't bad games be criticized?  What is the point of even having a forum then?  You would not have what he calls a tear down issue if the developers had a clue what makes a game enjoyable to keep playing.  We have developers spending inordinate amount of time on voice overs, cut scenes, etc, basically fluff that adds nothing to gameplay.  They spend no time on the game systems which keeps people playing.   Then you have the nerve to say we have a tear down mentality because we have increased expectations.  Ludicrous! 

Give us the old SWG pre NGE,  it was a buggy mess, but it had 10 times the playability and character than these current games.   At least that game had some moderately developed systems.  Even old UO had better systems than the current crop.  

So I think this so called Tear Down Mentality is a product of the market, not the individual.

Originally posted by Ramonski7

Originally posted by Crazy_Stick

OP, I think you are trying to over rationalize forum behavior from a slimly sociological perspective to develop an excuse for why things are the way they are that fits your preconceived notions of why people post emotionally on various subjects. In truth, it could be as simple a fact as acknowledging that gaming (playing) is an inherently childish activity for emotional release or satisfaction prone to breed childish behavior in both its best and worse sense. As such a site for the discussion of game opinion can only follow suit.

You are way off base if you think that for a second. A while ago I was doing research while creating a website for my brother-in-law who is a dentist. I happened upon a forum for premed students while looking up terms and gathering information about them. One hot topic of dicussion was why some premed students feel it necessary to wear their lab coats or scrubs around campus to stroke their egos. The whole topic turned into a flame war about who's better than who and it was far from mature.

 

All I can say is you'd be surprise at the amount of "childish" behavior that goes on even if gaming isn't involved in forums. Maybe you should think about that next time you feel money, intelligence or power breeds mature rational thinking. We were all children at one point and none of us are perfect at keeping that child in us from resurfacing every now and then, myself included. You can be a gamer, doctor or judge it doesn't matter. No one is immune to doing and saying foolish things.

I pointed out that playing is a childish activity liable to breed childish behaviour and I stand by that point. The fact childish behaviour exists in forums unrelated to gaming is in no way detremental to the point made. I never made any claim that wealth, power or intelligence alone are somehow enough to protect one from such failings and see that as you projecting your own issues into an unrelated conversation. 

Originally posted by Crazy_Stick

Originally posted by Ramonski7

Originally posted by Crazy_Stick

OP, I think you are trying to over rationalize forum behavior from a slimly sociological perspective to develop an excuse for why things are the way they are that fits your preconceived notions of why people post emotionally on various subjects. In truth, it could be as simple a fact as acknowledging that gaming (playing) is an inherently childish activity for emotional release or satisfaction prone to breed childish behavior in both its best and worse sense. As such a site for the discussion of game opinion can only follow suit.

You are way off base if you think that for a second. A while ago I was doing research while creating a website for my brother-in-law who is a dentist. I happened upon a forum for premed students while looking up terms and gathering information about them. One hot topic of dicussion was why some premed students feel it necessary to wear their lab coats or scrubs around campus to stroke their egos. The whole topic turned into a flame war about who's better than who and it was far from mature.

 

All I can say is you'd be surprise at the amount of "childish" behavior that goes on even if gaming isn't involved in forums. Maybe you should think about that next time you feel money, intelligence or power breeds mature rational thinking. We were all children at one point and none of us are perfect at keeping that child in us from resurfacing every now and then, myself included. You can be a gamer, doctor or judge it doesn't matter. No one is immune to doing and saying foolish things.

 

I pointed out that playing is a childish activity liable to breed childish behaviour and I stand by that point. The fact childish behaviour exists in forums unrelated to gaming is in no way detremental to the point made. I never made any claim that wealth, power or intelligence alone are somehow enough to protect one from such failings and see that as you projecting your own issues into an unrelated conversation. 

I am sorry but I am getting too old and too tired to keep on hitting the same nail: to play games and react on them on the adjecent forums is a "behaviour" of any age, any generation: it  is inhirent to human nature. Any claim otherwise is proof of discriminatory biased "superstition". 

And while or because I am a firm believer of  any reaction based on reason and or substantiated ideas I believe and are convinced that  childish and or  mature reasoning will distantiate itself by its lack or by its abundance, and not by age only or anything else for that matter

I see it basically as mob mentality.  Or democracy.  Take your pick.  They're both pretty much the same.

Really, it's a mix of all those things you mentioned, but it pretty much just boils down to democracy, which equals mob mentality.

Originally posted by apocoluster
   I just assume anyone anyone who posts to online forums are pretty much admitting they are idiots.  Ill let the irony hang there for a second >>>>>

I let the irony hang.   Nicely done.   Would read again.

Anyway, great article.  While it is full of obvious points, I believe that someone had to put them all together for some exposure.  Do I believe it will make a difference?  No.  I lost my optimism back in my late 20's.  But I still applaud the article.

I rarely have ever posted on a forum such as this one but it is a good topic.

  I'm a 49 year old mom that has been PC gaming since original Doom circa 1993/94.   I'm most likely not your target audience, but I assure you , people like myself are progression raiders, PvP'rs and coined the term "Hardcore gamer" when most of you were pooping your diapers.  

I can tell you, if I want to enjoy ANY game in the least, I do not visit forums such as this one.   It feels to me to be full of the most miserable gamers all rounded up from every other Dev forum. 

These forums remind me of a cesspool and no one gets out without a little "dirt" on them.

Just for once, try to play a game with a "clean slate" frame of mind.  I'm not sure its possible for any of you to understand that concept due ot the jaded discontent that abounds now a days within the industry.   It's quite sad that all of you experience this, almost thrive on the drama forums seem to create.  

Hope you can figure it out soon!  Peace!

Originally posted by Ozmodan

So I think this so called Tear Down Mentality is a product of the market, not the individual.

I agree with this. The magnitude of the backlash generally seems to be proportionate to the scale of the hype. Game PR's and their 'journalist'  friends thrive on building a groundswell of interest long before a game is released.  It's a strategy designed to persuade naive and expectant consumers to part with their cash on release day. Is it really surprising that disappointment turns to anger when players feel that they've been wilfully deceived? It's karma, if you like - a repayment in kind to match the cynicism of the industry and its cronies. 

The article talks about dissatisfaction and consumer expectations. The onus is surely on the developers and publishers to be careful about what they promise and to be careful to deliver on those promises. Caveat emptor, for sure, but Caveat venditor too. The faithful here are an unforgiving and unforgetting audience. 

Originally posted by therain93

Dear DAG (Devil's Advocate Guy),

I think you missed a very important point -- the notion of cognitive dissonance.  Basically, when people are holding conflicting ideas, beliefs, or emotions, one of the atural reactions is to try to reduce or eliminate that dissonance while maintaining their belief structure.  A typical example is buyer's remorse when purchasing a new car and seeking out reasons to justify why that purcharse was worthwhile.

In the context of this column, ripping another game or criticizing praise for another game can also be a defense mechanism to reinforce the belief that what you've chosen is much better and worthwhile.

This. 100 effin percent.  If anyone ever made it past 200 level psychology, they would have run by this little dandy.  Definitely left out, but overall a good article.  I see a great deal of negativity in some of these responses.  Just blaming it on recent bad titles is not the answer.  This mentality has been rampaging on gaming forums long before the wave of bad games came.

The pattern I see is player burnout related to brain chemistry.

The way I see it, gaming displaces reality (aka immersion) and in-game reward triggers a pleasure / satisfaction response.  It's a rush from endogenous neurotransmitters.  Something that can be paralleled with substance abuse.

The problem I see is that receptors downregulate based on exposure and lessen the amount of neurotransmitter signalling.  Also, with continued gameplay the virtual environment gradually becomes less intense, reducing perceived immersion in the players and thereby lowering the pleasure response.

Bottom line, after a while, it takes more and more to satisfy , and it becomes the developers fault for failing to provide the desired experience.

There's no satisfaction for MMO junkies who can't get a good fix.  Of course they get hostile.

Then again, maybe it's just that the games are bad. 

Originally posted by crack_fox

 

The onus is surely on the developers and publishers to be careful about what they promise and to be careful to deliver on those promises.

Add in fan generated hype and I agree.  The level of excitement driven up rivals hysteria.  That's bound to be a factor in releases that fail to meet expectations.

I have been around since the Awesome XT and vic20 and games to me are still "Games" and Well I  love GW2 and Rift and I once loved WOW and Swtor and basically I don't care if you or anyone else agrees or disagrees! I put this down to my age (maturity). I call this the "I'm too old and crotchety to give a damn"  mentality. I will never tear down WOW because I had way to much fun playing it (except to get a rise out of one of my annoying mates) and I will never tear down EVE online because I have never played it.

I think people invest so much time and effort into thier games that it all becomes way to personal but I do think that with so many options the "Tear Down" mentality will slowly dissipate and be left to a few "unstable" gamers. The choices we have and are going to have will have so many people playing multiple mmos that preaching and "Tearing Down" will seem pointless and a little hypocritical.

This may be the words of an "Old Fart" (46 but to most gamers that's really really old!!) but what I am trying to say is invest in a game because you like/enjoy playing it, because really, everything else is incidental.

The Teardown Mentality is far from restricted to gamers. Long, long ago when I moderated lists and taught people who wanted to do the same we talked at length about this peculiar and imo interesting part of human behaviour. I lean towards a combination of

• anonymity that allows people to say things they would never ever say in a face 2 face meeting and to phrase those things in a way they wouldn't dare in public where they'd be recognised. There are plenty of behavioural studies (not for gamers per se but gamers are just human beings in the end) showing how differently people act when they think they are/are not anonymous.
• misunderstandings: I spent so much time writng something so well thought out and people react in such a disappropriate manner therefore I will spew poison back.
• entitlement: MY opinion is the most important (there are some good msgs in this thread going into a lot of details about entitlement)

and never forget

• current mood where someone in a bad mood will blow up out of proportion. Something one could laugh about Yesterday hurts deeply Today and often enough people will react quite violently in such a situation...it may even make them feel better at the cost of making someone else feel worse...

Add a big group like eg. here to the above and you have an explosive mixture that can blowup at any  (real or perceived) provocation.

I had quite a few laughs when people tried to tell me that their particular group was not going to be this way, either because they were too old for such nonsense or because a group was subject bound (eg. technical information only) and would therefore never descend into such destructive behaviour.

Originally posted by TsaboHavoc
stop making trash games and marketing them as gold, as we ll stop tearing down ur "stuff".

What is trash to you is another person's gold. PERIOD.

Don't like the games, vote with your wallet. Complaining just makes gamers sound like spoiled children that have to have everything their way.

Very good article.  The section on "Crab Mentality" really made me smile.  We have something very similar in the Bahamas.  The old people have a saying for those who like to tear others down:  "You just like black crab!"

In the Bahamas we have two types of crabs we like to eat.  One is a very large white crab, and the other is a smaller black crab.  If you put black crabs in one bucket and white crabs in another bucket, walk away for a while and then come back, the bucket with black crabs will still be full.  The bucket with white crabs...completely empty.

The black crabs will always reach up and pull down any of the others that try to escape, whereas the white crabs will pile on top of each other, creating a ramp of sorts for the others to climp up, and the second-to-last will actually reach down and pull the last one up and over the edge with it.  It's pretty amazing to watch, and always made me feel a bit guilty for eating them...

As pointed out with 'sayings' from some other posters this 'mentality' is not something new. I suspect its been around as long as homo sapiens have been able to communicate complicated ideas. The increasing incidences of this is due only to the fact (in my opinion) there are just so many people who now can connect to the Internet and with such large numbers even the 'rare' cases of behaviour will be seen more often. After all 1 in a 1000 means if there are 500k people going to a site you now have 500 people who share the same mind set. They will post and because their view no longer seems out of place they will be encouraged to post more often.

I suppose what this means is that there is now going to be a lot more noise on any website (regardless of what its about). It is the price we will have to pay for so many being connected in real time and it will take work to be able to properly sort out the unhelpful posts from the helpful. Its going to come down to survival for game developers since if they group all negative posts as being just noise they risk losing a large amount of their potential consumers. Indeed there does appear to be a tendency among some developers to do just that and they have already lost all the goodwill they have built up over the past years.