Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[FallingUpwards]

US mario 2? Actually agree with this take. Mario 3 is peak. But my nostalgia will always make 2 be better. IDC that it is a reskin of doki doki. I like it.

JP? Nah. I respect anyone who has finished it fully more than once. Even more if you are autistic enough to speedrun it. But hell no. I beat it once, beat all the secret levels and I was done. fuck that game I don't need blood pressure issues. lmfao.

I actually think lost levels is really misunderstood. There really is only like 4 levels that have bullshit moments + all the castle mazes. It wasn't as hard as I thought sometimes. The last level of the game before the lettered world was probably one of my favourites and wasn't actually that bad. Plus the game sprinkled mushrooms throughout and in hidden blocks (which were often placed the same in all levels) made it much less punishing when you take damage. Though I do understand those that dislike it because there are some troll aspects mixed in and some bad level design. I also understand the hate for the NES version because it was extremely punishing for losing all lives.

 

[The Ugly One]

Competitive multiplayer-only is just a tough sell because it's really, really hard to ensure the bottom 50% has fun. Quake I and II had SP campaigns that were fine. Lots of SP mods spawned from them. You could enjoy Quake I & II without being a twitch gaming master, just like how Starcraft campaigns and custom maps are quite fun.

UT was better because there were plenty of modes where you could contribute without being a top 10% slayer. Protect the flag, camp a zone, whatever. Also controlling weapon spawns wasn't a big deal outside TDM, and there was no rail gun.

But even UT couldn't survive the rise of the class based shooter. You can contribute in TF2 as medic without firing a shot. You could be a real pain in the ass as Pyro without technically being "good" because setting people on fire is just that fun and doesn't require a ton of skill.

Then you have battle royales where you can hide in a closet and luck your way into a win sometimes, or at least a top 20 finish.

Quake III had absolutely nothing to keep the common retard engaged.

 

[TheTitKoker]

It's dead because it's not fun unless you're in the top 5% of players, and my sophisticated understanding of graduate-level mathematics tells me that a large number of players are not in the top 5%, possibly more than half.

Okay, then that isolates the causal players. Without them, your game has a higher chance of being forgotten because of the high, unforgiving skill ceiling.

Perfect example from another genre would be earlier Guilty Gear games. Asston of mechnaics and even playing solo would take a few dozen of hours minimum to get a hang of it against comps. Playing against people you'd have to have put in helluva time in practice and raising your skill and despite all of that those games had a cult following until they got watered down for casuals.

If you actually like something, but it required skill to have fun with - you'd improve your skill and enjoy it. Otherwise its the gen Z effect of quitting whatever if it doesn't instantly reward your lack of effort.

 

[The Ugly One]

Perfect example from another genre would be earlier Guilty Gear games. Asston of mechnaics and even playing solo would take a few dozen of hours minimum to get a hang of it against comps. Playing against people you'd have to have put in helluva time in practice and raising your skill and despite all of that those games had a cult following until they got watered down for casuals.

If you actually like something, but it required skill to have fun with - you'd improve your skill and enjoy it. Otherwise its the gen Z effect of quitting whatever if it doesn't instantly reward your lack of effort.

Strive is the most popular Guilty Gear game of all time.



Make a game that's fun for more people, make more money, not less. Cult followings don't pay the bills.

 

[The Last Stand]

Competitive multiplayer-only is just a tough sell because it's really, really hard to ensure the bottom 50% has fun.

One example I can think of is Rainbow Six Siege. Evidently, according to a popular R6: Siege streamer, Siege went downhill when Ubisoft catered to the competitive crowd. That being, removing game modes and massively tweaking maps and characters per player feedback.

If you actually like something, but it required skill to have fun with - you'd improve your skill and enjoy it. Otherwise its the gen Z effect of quitting whatever if it doesn't instantly reward your lack of effort.

Yes and no. Sure, I see your point of maintaining effort into something to get more out of it. However, in terms of video games, most PvP or PvE games now equivocate "git gud" as exploiting game mechanics, abusing meta tactics for easy results, or more sinisterly, monetizing skill or progress towards "pay to win."

You mentioned Gen Z quitting games when that dopamine effect isn't immediately given to them. Gen Z, arguably, has more time to play video games than older generations of people because they do not have as many responsibilities to attend to. So, that statement is "true" at surface level.

 

[The Ugly One]

One example I can think of is Rainbow Six Siege. Evidently, according to a popular R6: Siege streamer, Siege went downhill when Ubisoft catered to the competitive crowd. That being, removing game modes and massively tweaking maps and characters per player feedback.

GG ruined Killzone 3 multiplayer for similar reasons. One problem when making consumer products is you only ever get feedback from the most passionate 0.5% of your customers. These customers typically have absolutely nothing in common with about 75% of your silent customers.

 

[Gondolindrim]

Make a game that's fun for more people, make more money, not less. Cult followings don't pay the bills.

I've always thought the term "cult following" was more of an insult than anything else. No one likes cults, they're scary, often because they're so devoted. Hipsters took over society at some point and declared that trying to appeal to large groups of people was bad for some reason so now everyone wants to be a super specific niche.

 

[The Last Stand]

GG ruined Killzone 3 multiplayer for similar reasons. One problem when making consumer products is you only ever get feedback from the most passionate 0.5% of your customers. These customers typically have absolutely nothing in common with about 75% of your silent customers.

I think MW2 had the inverse problem. Everything there was unbalanced. Grenade launchers across several maps, perks that drastically increased lunge magnetism or explosive radius, shotguns that shot through long distances like sniper rifles to name a few. Therefore, MW2 had the causal market down lock to a fault. Once everybody knew what could achieve more kills, that's what people followed through with.

 

[Bitey Kong]

I'm not a fan of how gay and brown video games are these days but I also hated when every protagonist was a bald scruffy generic white guy with a gun. That was equally creatively bankrupt and pandering.

 

[Judge Dredd]

My unpopular opinion: in the next few years the public will view gamers as weirdos again, in much the same way they did 2 or so decades ago.

Anything gaming-related gets infested with troons and furfags and pronouns bullshit insanely fast now and most people do not like when less than 0.01% of world population somehow finds its way into controlling 90% of all gaming subreddits/discords/twitter accounts and tries to groom their kids into sodomy.

Main discord servers and modding communities of pretty much all games are completely pozzed now, whether it be DOOM, Fallout, Half-Life, Sonic, GTA, Final Fantasy, etc etc.
Communities of like-minded people who are interested in lore or want to improve the base game get infiltrated, completely pozzed, basically get The Ship of Theseus-esque treatment and transform into groomfest and porn-addiction HQs.

Also see the RetroAchievements and the TCRF threads, tl;dr: troons tried to take over the already established communities which resulted in most senior members either leaving voluntarily or getting harrassed until they left.

Your average Joe has too much going on in his life to learn how to code or to moderate a gaming community so I really don't know how to solve this,

Rated late because this has already happened.

A lot on the right, or at least, more than there should be, view gaming (and anime) as bad. It's degenerate, lazy, only for incel losers. You should spend that time preying or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. They saw the collapse of the far left over the last 15 years and decided they can do it in 15 months.

 

[The Ugly One]

I'm not a fan of how gay and brown video games are these days but I also hated when every protagonist was a bald scruffy generic white guy with a gun. That was equally creatively bankrupt and pandering.

"I don't like being force-fed raw donkey crap, but I also hate how bland McDonald's burgers are."

 

[Quijibo69]

Just played about 4 hours of Resident Evil 9. I really miss 7 and 8.

Going back to Oops, all zombies! is like going go back to full retard. It's why I hated RE until 7 and 8 because up until that point it was like "Boo! A Haunted House!". Heaven forbid you heath goes down or you'll be hearing Peter from Family Guy until you restore heath.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

I'm not a fan of how gay and brown video games are these days but I also hated when every protagonist was a bald scruffy generic white guy with a gun. That was equally creatively bankrupt and pandering.

I disagree. I mean, I understood why they did that back in the day; you could get sued by organizations who pretend to stand for ethnic minorities if you portrayed them "wrong". Look at how the Left even attacked Speedy Gonzales. Meanwhile, a white dude with a gun, you can do a lot with him. Make him empathetic, make him rough, make him a tactical genius, make him a dumb meathead, the sky is the limit.

There's a reason why the buzz-cut white dude was a popular gaming staple of the 2000s. Hell, you can have guys like Starkiller show some skin and nobody gets pissed. If you have Samus Aran show skin, you'll have every feminist in a ten-mile radius screaming "misogyny!" before the cock crows.

A lot on the right, or at least, more than there should be, view gaming (and anime) as bad. It's degenerate, lazy, only for incel losers. You should spend that time preying or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. They saw the collapse of the far left over the last 15 years and decided they can do it in 15 months.

That's going to ensure the Right will lose every election from this point onward.

Gen Z already games just as much as the Millennials, and they're especially proud of their gaming histories with games such as Overwatch. And Gen Alpha is even worse; even in school, you cannot separate them from their computers long. The moment the teacher is done with the lesson, every spare minute before the next subject is spent on game time. A parent tries to take their child's gaming device away, and the kid goes apeshit. Gaming is a natural part of life, it is as natural as watching television or driving a car. It is, for better or worse, here to stay.

I can understand prayer, but the whole "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" has always been a lie. The only economic opportunities left are for losers and people living minimally. The idea that some idiot can just work hard and become a millionaire is a joke. People point to examples such as Andrew Carnegie, but even in his day, that owed more to luck and opportunity than it was with working hard, and even back then, there were people who worked hard all their lives, but lived and died poor. The Right's insistence on propagating this lie will just end with poor Gen Z and Gen Alpha people voting the opposite way. Gen Z already put some Communist Muslim in charge of NYC. Now imagine that happen a hundredfold as Gen Z becomes the primary voting bloc. Then imagine the Right tells them that their video games will be limited or openly taken away.

Going for this whole boomer "fuck your video games, get back to work" BS will just ensure more Communists will get elected in the West. Meanwhile, the Communists in the East sell Marvel games that have women with big boobs and fat asses, because they know gooners pay well for that shit.

 

[TheTitKoker]

most PvP or PvE games now equivocate "git gud" as exploiting game mechanics, abusing meta tactics for easy results, or more sinisterly, monetizing skill or progress towards "pay to win."

Now there is bloom, aiming downsights, and just SO much bloat over older games to make them "realistic" that inflates the base skill pool that's honestly more annoying for purely PvP games than it isn't.

Strive is the most popular Guilty Gear game of all time.

Make a game that's fun for more people, make more money, not less. Cult followings don't pay the bills.

ArcSys literally made a watered down GG in no lesser style ages ago - Blaz Blue, and they honestly should've stuck to than being the pleb title while keeping GG hardcore. Strive sold so many copies because it finally featured a 6 hour cinematic story mode than die-hard fans were dying to experience, and not because the game itself is any good. And i will die on this hill as someone who witnessed the series take a downhill dive with Xrd in terms of gameplay. GG was the game whose music, art style, and depth pushed me to gitgud at and in turn bolstered my 2D fighter skills well above par for most other, simpler franchises and I will always hate seeing it become mouth-breather slop in favor of bringing them into it.

 

[The Last Stand]

aiming downsights,

Maybe I'm showing my age, but aiming down sights in shooters is a skill gap? I know Counter Strike and Halo did not have ADS, but I never thought of that as a "skill gap."

 

[Bitey Kong]

I disagree

I think you're reaching man. Grizzled bald white guy was just the safest option because it was broadly "relatable" to the 17 year old edgelords who were the target demographic. Generic action movies from around this period generally used the same protagonist. It was just the lowest common denominator option in the early to mid 2000s. I dont think anyone felt pigeonholed because they were afraid of being too diverse.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

I think you're reaching man. Grizzled bald white guy was just the safest option because it was broadly "relatable" to the 17 year old edgelords who were the target demographic. Generic action movies from around this period generally used the same protagonist. It was just the lowest common denominator option in the early to mid 2000s. I dont think anyone felt pigeonholed because they were afraid of being too diverse.

Then you haven't noticed how the NON-straight/white/bald game characters were being treated. Females like Bayonetta and Zero Suit Samus were attacked for being gooner bait. If you made a minority character but someone thought it was offensive, you'd also get some heat. Meanwhile, the ordinary buzz-cut white boi at the time was the standard movie protagonist, and you don't have to worry about offending someone.

 

[Bitey Kong]

I think we're talking about two different time periods. If we're talking about Bayonetta/Other M we're in the 2010s. Thats indeed the begining of all modern faggotry. I'm talking about 2000-2005. If a woman was in a video game back then 9 out of 10 times she'd be an air headed bimbo with massive jiggly tits and the "progressive" take was to find that pandering a little exasperating. I stopped really playing video games after the PS2 outside of a handful of exceptions so that's more my wheelhouse.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

I think we're talking about two different time periods. If we're talking about Bayonetta/Other M we're in the 2010s. Thats indeed the begining of all modern faggotry. I'm talking about 2000-2005. If a woman was in a video game back then 9 out of 10 times she'd be an air headed bimbo with massive jiggly tits and the "progressive" take was to find that pandering a little exasperating. I stopped really playing video games after the PS2 outside of a handful of exceptions so that's more my wheelhouse.

2000-2005 still had a lot of variance. The buzz-cut space marine shit really hit fever pitch after Halo 3's release in 2007, and 1 out of every 4 blokes who designed games tried to hit the same target demographic Halo 3 did. But in 2000-2005 that massive leap hadn't happened yet. Especially since you're talking about the PS2, a lot of JRPGs came out during that age aping the anime aesthetic, so the buzz cut space marine had yet to become the titan that he became in the late 2000s/early 2010s.

 

[The Ugly One]

Strive sold so many copies because it finally featured a 6 hour cinematic story mode than die-hard fans were dying to experience, and not because the game itself is any good.

"This popular thing isn't actually good" is the eternal cope of fans of the unpopular thing that sold poorly.

And i will die on this hill as someone who witnessed the series take a downhill dive with Xrd in terms of gameplay. GG was the game whose music, art style, and depth pushed me to gitgud at and in turn bolstered my 2D fighter skills well above par for most other, simpler franchises and I will always hate seeing it become mouth-breather slop in favor of bringing them into it.

Quake fans sound exactly the same.

This is the problem. The type of game you love is a miserable experience for anyone who's not in the top 5% of players. You can insist all you want that people should feel a moral obligation to practice, practice, and practice some more until they get into that 5%...but only 5% of players ever will. Most just won't. You can't be upset that they don't, and that their lack of interest in being cannon fodder in Quake or a juggle dummy in a fighting game is a personal failing on their part...but this is just how consumer markets work. Most people don't buy things that they don't enjoy. Products that provide terrible experiences to all but the most committed users just plain do not sell in large numbers, and never will.

It basically looks like this:


This isn't just how video games work. It's how all consumer products work.