Today’s market is flexible, fluid and free. We expect consumers to vote with their wallets when ?deciding which products are worth their time.
The gaming world is a little bit different. It seems to center around word of mouth, mostly on online forums such as NeoGAF, Reddit and 4Chan.
While these communities are great for finding out everything about video games, they can sometimes lead to people ?getting upset about a game for no reason at all.
It can be tough to have faith in the video game ?industry.
Only a few companies such as CD Projekt Red or Valve enjoy widespread popularity across these ?forums.
Others, such as Ubisoft or Electronic Arts, are much less popular and ?almost anything that these companies touch seems to be ruined in short order.
Witness the backlash against a game such as “Dragon Age II.”
While it’s a competent role-playing-game in its own right, it saw universal derision and scorn of those who cried that the game did not feel like “Dragon Age,” even though it was ?being developed by the same team, Bioware.
Or consider the initial treatment “Deus Ex: ?Human Revolution” received until a leaked press beta assuaged fears of the game’s quality.
The internet has made communication across boundaries a trivial matter, but this instant access has made it all too easy to overreact, judge, criticize or slant matters one way or another.
It’s absolutely wonderful that we are able to converse with those of ?like-minded interests.
But the temptation is to make the internet an echo chamber or a battleground.
We need to learn to not scream in rage for every little thing that ?happens in the multi-billion-dollar industry that is ?video-gaming.
Get off the forum, and just relax.
