Hatewagons: Why the Gaming Community Mostly Sucks

Posted by Zain at 9:09am on August 9th, 2007

Nintendo fans need to wake up, you are a foot note on their stock quotes. After years of buying their consoles for their great first parties and no third parties you thought you finally got your revenge when Ninty got popular again. You thought you would have your first parties and your third parties. Guess what, now you have neither. Nintendo is just going to pump out a few sequels to make you quit your bitching, third parties are going to port and port and port games to the system and what new original “games” do you guys get to play? You get cooking sims and workout aids. Congrats, you are now the misguided fanbase of a company that only tries to appeal to middle aged women.

- “yakityyakblah”, 1up.com forum user (July 2007)

Ouch.

This is the general opinion of most gaming forums today. Yet, so little as three months ago, everyone seemed to have a love affair with Nintendo.

There’s no place I frequent online on a daily basis more than gaming forums. Ever since I was but a wee elementary school lad, the attraction to the wretched hives of scum and villainy kept me posting and joining in conversations with others about our N64s or Playstations. Where else could you find such awesomely nerdy humor and such discussion about a hobby you were passionate about without others treating you as if you were talking about Dr. Seuss books? I became a regular at many of these forums and after some flaming and general gamer jeering, I got the hang of it. Quite simply, really. All it took was the realization that gamers felt the need to pick sides in order to participate in discussion. I chose E.) “‘lol’ at people who pick sides.

I think I’ve lost my touch. Instead of debating about their consoles in a mostly futile, sometimes informative, always entertaining matter, the kids nowadays have decided to share certain opinions and dismiss the people who break from the norm. If you defend a company that’s the victim of a hatewagon you’re a fanboy, and everyone who joins in is right. Lately this has made me lose interest in gaming boards. Everyone talks with the tired old “ass who hates everything that’s not hooked up to TV” persona, and it makes it so that everyone acts like the same person. The beginning of this mindset seemed to start with the gaming media’s EA backlash, but really blew up after the 2006 E3 press conferences.

EA had just released it’s first Madden title with the NFL license exclusivity. Gaming websites were stuck between a rock and a hard place with the franchise when it came to the review scores. Many stated that games only marginally improved with each title and so a conflict existed on whether or not Madden’s review scores should increase with each yearly iteration. In addition, fans of 2k Sports’ ESPN Football were outraged when EA gained exclusive rights to the NFL license, a move that simultaneously killed the ESPN Football franchise and any other competition for awhile. These fans (Most of whom were not Madden players) and gamers who just didn’t like Madden (Most of whom didn’t play either) joined together in the Madden hatewagon using the reasons they had seen already established by gaming websites. But things really got nasty when Madden’s sales numbers were released and it was announced that the title had a record-breaking first week sales success.

If you go to any game forum today you know how the story ends. EA is constantly demolished by the gaming community. Gamers simply rephrase the “sequelitis” tendencies when they explained their hatred. Horror stories started arising about how EA treats it’s employees. Despite EA’s commercial success, gamers have deemed them the Empire of the industry. This is where the “hatewagon” terminology comes into play. A hatewagon is when a mass number of people hate the same thing for the exact same reasons. Hatewagons usually begin with a small group of people who criticize something (usually something popular) because of personal dislike or to seem more knowledgeable about their topic. Once in full effect, future hatewagon supporters will simply recycle points of old to justify their unwavering criticism, often completely unaware about the object of hatred.

Digg is known for serving hatewagons on daily basis. Halo, Wii, and Guitar Hero being just a few of the gaming examples. It doesn’t help that these are fueled by Digg’s systems of rating users others’ comments. Instead of it being used to promote quality comments, it’s usually only used to bury differing opinions or reward the general opinion in the gaming section. Obviously they aren’t the only suspects; every major gaming forum from NeoGAF to 1up succumb to the phenomenon. Humor is inherent in gaming forums, and this usually means humiliating people who disagree with the overall opinion. Like high school bullying, hilarity ensues when you play predator. When the tides turn though, most will keep their opinions shut just to keep from being flamed.

Hatewagons aren’t exclusive to the gamers, the internet in general has it’s fair share. Practically anything popular has a massive following on the internet who despise it. Coldplay, Linkin Park, Star Wars, McDonalds, Fun, “assholiness” is instinct in most frequent internet users. If you hate at least two things on that list, you’re probably who I’m talking about. And assholey-ness is always good fun, but some gamers have a tendency to bend their hate into fact until their accusations are generally excepted. On the other hand, you have gamers who just dislike things, but don’t always hate them. These folks are often perplexed by the constant mass opinion changes we see in gaming forums.

Gamers flip flop so fucking often it’s not funny.” Nick Bertoglio a.k.a. “Floyd_the_Hippo” is 1up.com regular who’s been posting since 2003.”The elitists can’t even stick with their guns; Killzone 2 being the most recent example. Apparently the great graphics make up for the first one sucking. It’s just aggravating that people can’t stay with something, I guess.” He then proceeds to mimic the gaming community’s constant love(“OMG KILLZONE 2 SONY AM TEH WIN!”)/hate( “PS3 AM DOOM3D!”) indecisiveness by using infamous internet humor, reminding me why I loved gaming forums in the first place.

Some blame the price of consoles for the divides in the gaming community. You pay for an item, and other people say that their item is better, naturally you’d get defensive. Even this logic doesn’t seem to wash, as gamers will go so far as to villainize and preach third-party companies.

I believe it’s just about fitting in with the crowd. Gamers can be a harsh or endearing group of people over the internet, and it’s easier to just go with the program then be ridiculed by the majority opinion. Like Floyd_the_Hippo put it, one month you could hate a company and the next you’ll love it without really stopping to thing “why?”.

Hey, what do I know? The way we gamers are, your probably are going to call me a fanboy of _______, dismiss this article, go back to your local forum, and rehash about how the Wii is destroying the hardcore games, Halo sucks, Valve is some saintly company looking out for the little guy, or whatever floats your boat. You may think this is just stuff pulled out of my ass .

Next time you take a jab at anything though, just try thinking hard about why you actually hate it. If you can’t come up with any conclusions that haven’t been used yet, there’s a good chance you’ve had some first-class seats on the hatewagon for awhile.

…Unless you can instead make opinions on your own based on personal experience, then maybe you’re with the cool kids who just “lol” at people who pick sides.

Uncategorized