not sure where you've been for the past 30 years but it has pretty much always been like this
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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For me this is how the gaming community has always been. It's the reason I'm pro gamer gulags tbh
Gaming discussion online has always been shitty on the whole, but nowadays this applies to nearly every hobby online. Social media amplifies this effect like crazy.
I remember seeing flame wars on gamefaqs over 20 years ago over dumb shit while looking for guides. Gamers, like all fandoms, have always been like this.
I wonder how many people that are gaming enthusiasts are depressed and feel less satisfaction with things generally
That's a good point. It's kinda a chicken and egg situation, though. Do lonely people get into gaming because they don't have IRL hobbies and friends, or do the people who are really into gaming become depressed and lonely because of the nature of the activity?
thats literally everybody in every hobby all the time. like what could you possibly be into where you go "oh yeah this is the high time for this, this is going greater (or at least not worse) than ever before"
I mean besides the cultural war and the social media manipulating things to be always angry comments we also have the enshitfication in general affecting the industry.
Capitalism endgame: instead of artists working on passion projects, it's corporate slop directed by weird people in suits using soulless algorithms attempting to maximize profit margins.
Like always, people are angry at capitalism but didn't notice it yet.
Gamers are whiny next question
recently
In the early times of the Internet, gaming discourse wasn't this negative at all outside of the stupid Console War discussions.
idk what about like gamergate and all that shit, i dont think it was ever nice
Gamergate is super recent, I think they mean like in the 2000s and earlier.
its like ten years old
Yeah and the internet is like 40 years old, it's still super recent when you consider how long the Interrnet went without massive commercialized social media.
Gaming discourse has been terrible as long as I've been alive and probably longer.
Guy yelling into his HAM radio about pong being pinko nonsense
Recently?
Also, chuds have been poisoning the well basically since 2013 and earlier. To be honest it got worse with the rise of platforms like YouTube and all other social media. There were always shitheads but now they make millions from patreon subs to post slop on YouTube
I remember WoW forums being a cesspit in 2006-ish. Bleh
recently?
It's been like this since I started consuming video game content in like 2011. The only newish addition is the gamers who call every game woke now.
I feel like its only a continuation of the same idpol taken to the extreme, first it was the "console wars" now its a genre wars, people build their identities around certain games or studios (e.g from software). Its kinda sad because i enjoy pretty much any genre.
i mean games do kinda suck not gonna lie
i mean games are kinda great not gonna lie
It is a category of media that attracts children, man-children, and people who can be entertained by slop-level tactile/audio-visual/skinner-box mechanisms. Even the slightest critique of their escapist fantasy causes the whole thing to turn to ash in their mouths.
At least the console wars were entertaining and made for some funny moments. A bunch of people in their mid 30s arguing about "woke" and how games aren't as good anymore is just sad. Like don't get me wrong, some gaming genres have suffered badly in the past few years, racing games being a prime example. But other genres are better than ever right now.
I'd say racing sims are better than they've ever been and arcade racers are having a major resurgence.
Arcade racers are practically dead outside of Forza Horizon though. As for racing sims, they've gotten better at the downside of becoming an obscenely expensive hobby, and aren't really games anymore in terms of feature set, they're just simulators and nothing else.
We just got Victory Heat Rally and Parking Garage Rally Circuit last year, Turbo OutRun Reimagined is available for free and there are games based on Virtua Racing, Sega Rally and F-Zero in development, plus older games like Hotshot Racing and Circuit Superstars (iRacing Arcade from the same developers is upcoming). I wouldn't even call Forza Horizon an arcade racer in the traditional sense.
I'm not sure what you mean by ”aren't really games anymore”, there are multiple sims with online modes you can play right now. Unless you mean single player content, which is fair but not many people play them to race against AI anymore.
Because its 
They're pit beasts.
People don’t even play these games on the whole. Their favourite slop merchant does a react video to someone else playing a game, or more likely the teaser trailer, decides it’s woke, and their opinion is chosen for them.
I dunno, I am definitely a category five hater, but I just play a game and if I don’t enjoy it I turn it off. Life’s too short to spend time caring this much about the size of boobs in an anime game or whatever. This is the most frustrating part of the culture war. At least get riled up about something important.
Social media pushes content that will make people angry because it keeps them engaged for longer. This causes a feedback loop where negativity becomes a larger factor over time.
I would argue that Gamers are predisposed to this kind of thinking already, so the negativity is amplified even more.
I'm sorry, but if you didn't vote Wukong: Unwoke Booba and Rootyy Tooty Western Shooty as game of the ~~year~~ ~~decade~~ ~~century~~ ~~ever~~ ∞, in every category, you're woke. I don't make the rules.
I voted Wukong in everything to make all Euroamerican gamers even more upset that the Chinese game keeps on winning. I haven't even played it. Shame about the misogynist developers though.
Yeah, it's definitely at least partially YouTubers influencing this. Games that are kinda' bad are treated as the worst thing. I remember people trying to point out that there are worse games than Pokemon Scarlet/Violet, not defending them, just pointing out there are some uber-bad games that run and play worse on PS2, Wii, NES, etc. And that was met with a lot of smug opposition. Not sure if AVGN and outrage YouTubers did that or maybe YT reviews in general.
A lot of people repeating opinions of others on games they didn't play. Which is annoying although slightly more understandable since games take so long to play and can be expensive sometimes, so people still want to be part of the conversation but might be able to actually play them sometimes, but it also leads to people just repeating arguments and factoids that aren't necessarily sound or genuine. Might also tie into my first point about how gamers have such low control of their urge to buy games they need a game to be the worst thing ever to stop themselves from buying it.
Games that are kinda’ bad are treated as the worst thing
according to the internet at large, things are either the best thing to ever exist or absolute shit
mediocre has become another way of saying bad
I'm pretty sure that it's the way that social media is designed. It's designed to generate outrage to maximize engagement
steve bannon
I deleted my X Account a WHILE ago and I recently decided to take a break from Reddit so, it at least hope that helps
Unfortunately Eggplant, the only good gaming podcast, covered Block Koala this week, so even they're negative at the moment.