“Negative” gamers the biggest problem facing gaming industry

[styckx]

Stumbled upon this interview today with Josh Olin community manager for Treyarch and one question he answered was an interesting one.

I think anyone in the Railworks community can relate to this. If you aren't familiar with who Treyarch is, they are the developers of Call Of Duty Black Ops.

http://www.nowgamer.com/features/1185/b ... =2#listing

Q:
What, in your mind, is the biggest problem facing the games industry today, and if you had the power, how would you fix it?

A:
Personally, as a community manager who lives in the media or social media world every day, I think the social culture of video games is moving in a more negative direction as technology and social media continues to grow. Rather than growing with it, the trend seems to be devolving. More and more gamers seem to forget what this industry is all about. It’s a creative industry – the most creative form of entertainment in existence. Too many developers who try new things are getting burned by “pundits” and angry entitled fans who look to be contrarian, sometimes simply for the sake of being contrarian. The only thing this attitude aims to achieve is stunt that creativity and innovation even further, which is something that no rational gamer looking to be entertained would want to do.

[davejc64]

I bet RS feel like that every time they release an update for RW.

[CaptainBazza]

It is so unfair, isn't it!?

[davejc64]

Perhaps they should listen to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ic4i08S ... re=related

[philspace]

The problem with this is that the more creative a designer is, the less likely he (or she) is to be attached to the real world, and what people actually want.

The Sinclair C5 - a good example of creative design.

More and more gamers seem to forget what this industry is all about

"This industry" is about making money, and if you can't give people what they want, you won't make money - the "Emperor's New Clothes" syndrome gets seen through eventually.

Best wishes

Phil

[bigvern]

The last iteration of COD was pretty appalling though. Not interested in the multiplayer side but the SP campaign was very lacklustre, linear gameplay and padded out by virtue of unevenly spaced checkpoints combined with certain sections where it was impossible to overcome the enemies. Probably the last of the series I will buy. About the only plus point was the rampant grenade spamming from earlier versions was moderated a bit.

At the end of the day if people buy a game which in their view sucks, they will say so. By contrast, I had nothing but high praise for Mass Effect 2 which I only recently got round to playing and IMHO is one of the finest games ever created. (Even though I did lose poor old Tali and Jack on the final mission... ).