If you don’t read Kieron Gillen’s blog, you should. Though he’s branched out into comics and music, he’s still one of the best writers in the business. He’s more than Mr. New Games Journalism.
Anyway, he has an essay up today about “fans” of what he calls the Immersive Sim. (There has to be a better term than that…). He means games like Thief and Deus Ex and System Shock – games in the netherworld of FPS/Adventure/RPG.
There are people there who won’t buy Bioshock if it doesn’t let you kill the Little Sisters with whatever they have to hand. There are people who won’t by Bioshock because it features an integrated training level rather than a separate one. There are people there who apparently won’t buy Bioshock if it doesn’t allow you to turn off equipment items flickering slightly.
They’re puritans, basically. They want games which are totally committed to the belief in being a complicated Immersive Sim, or they’re not interested in playing. Screw that dumbed down shit.
Of course, you can find this mindset anywhere in the gaming world. Check out the strong dissents on Fallout 3. Or the people already calling SimCity: Societies a catastrophe (mostly because it is not SimCity 5, no matter what you read on Slashdot.) Then there’s the RTS audience that now thinks every RTS should be like Company of Heroes.
I love gamers. But sometimes I wonder why they even let us breed.
Without having actually read that article (I will, I promise, I’m just in a hurry), expectations can be a bitch, as can fanboys. While I can understand the Fallout 3 troubles, as it may not even really be the same genre as its predecessors (which is a whole other can of worms), it’s those who want everything to be like, say, Company of Heroes that irritate me.
Genres and subgenres. Probably not the best way to classify games, but it’s something we have to do; it gives us our expectations of how much we might enjoy any given product, even if it’s the games that breach conventional genres that really captivate the more hardcore of us. Company of Heroes is a fantastic game, but variety is the spice of life, and it’s sad when the subgenres die out. Frankly, I’d hate for everything to be like CoH. I adored C&C3, and part of that was because it was a type of RTS that hadn’t been seen in a long time.
Hm. This is almost turning into an article on its own. I think I’ll end this here.
As a bloody writer, game fans make me sad. And – y’know – I’m a game fan.
God knows what it’s like for a Dev.
(I suspect it’s a reason why I’ve never jumped the fence to development. Biting my tongue would probably kill me.)
KG
I’m much too close to Bioshock to comment on that (for a variety of reasons), but if ever there were fans who should STFU, it’s Fallout fans.
Oh my GOD am I sick of Fallout fans. Not normal fans, I mean the nutjobs who hated it when Bethesda got the license and have been whining ever since. The test build of Van Buren that mysteriously found its way online only fanned the flamewars on Fallout fan sites.
Regardless of the game or genre, there are certain kinds of fans that will always hate everything. There are small pockets of people (who are quite vocal on forums) who refused to upgrade to Civ IV. Similarly, there are fans who skipped Civ III and went from Civ II to Civ IV.
Personally, I think Civ IV was a step up in every conceivable way (although again, biased) and I have no idea how anyone could make the argument that Civ III was better.
But hardcore fans are hardcore fans. There’s just no pleasing them. I’ve seen a lot of people complaining that Civ IV uses 3D at all, because why does it need to be 3D? The gameplay would be just the same if it were in 2D, right? So why bother?
Yeesh.
Haha, fortunately most fans seem to be pretty pleased with Civ 4. Remarkably so. It’s pretty surprising how well the community has received the game. I remember when Civ 3 came out… Yeeesh.
Yeah, Fallout 3 is a fun one. I feel bad for Bethesda. Their forums are a little scary. Although I can understand the frustration of the fans it’s gotten to the point where it’s almost humorous.
This is common across all mediums. A guitarist changes his style of play after five releases and his fans cry out that he’s turned his back on them. A writer jumps genres after three bestsellers and fans cry out that she’s turned her back on them. And so on.
To a lot of fans who fall in love with a particular creative work it becomes *their* work. They forget that it’s not their IP though, but someone else’s, and if that someone else wants to go in a different direction, so be it. But in an era of forums and blogging the artist would surely hear about it, and it’s amazing how loud a handful of people can actually seem.
Do you listen to them? Or do you forge ahead, knowing that while your final product may be different from what came before, it will ultimately be just as good–if not better–than your previous creations? And when you do listen to them how much do you listen to them? If you take each and every comment in you’ll soon be faced with analysis paralysis.
Sometimes I think it’s best to develop in a bunker.
—-open quote—-
A guitarist changes his style of play after five releases and his fans cry out that he’s turned his back on them…(cut)…Do you listen to them? Or do you forge ahead, knowing that while your final product may be different from what came before, it will ultimately be just as good–if not better–than your previous creations?
—-close quote—-
Forge ahead trying new things, album with new things doesn’t sell, get dropped by major record labels, owe them for previous tour subsidies, then disappear for a decade, broke and destitute and end up on VH-1’s “where are they now?”
And then make a triumphant return, playing what the fans want to hear, the “oldies but goodies” that got you famous in the first place, and get re-famous by touring the casino circuit and selling out nightly…
Journey is doing this as we speak… so is Eddie Money…
/end joke mode. :)