There's no shortage of trash talking when you're playing a video game online. The gamer doesn't matter. The game doesn't matter. But I have noticed an interesting trend. And it has nothing to do with "yor momma".
I have friends that prefer one game over another. Some like Gears of War, other like Call of Duty. Some like both, but I think everyone has a preference of which one they would rather play. But sometimes you just want to play with friends no matter what game they're playing. So CoD fans will play GoW and vice versa.
Every now and then the trash talking against one game gets out of control. Everybody thinks their favorite game is much better than the other one. Gears has wall bouncers, glitchers, lag and what not. Call of Duty has care package glitches, host quitting, camping, lag and the like. Neither game is perfect but try telling that to my group of friends.
But here's the rub. With Gears the complaining gets personal.
Not with other gamers as much as with Cliff Bleszinski. Who's Cliffy B. you ask? He's the designer of Gears of War. It's his baby and he's not shy about that. If something funky goes wrong in the game my friends will gladly tell you how they feel about Cliffy B. If anything goes wrong it's his faulty . . . personally. If Cliffy B. took any of their comments seriously I don't think he would leave his house for fear of being butt rapped by a group of irate gamers.
But Call of Duty is no different to the whining and bitchfest that online gaming has become. You will still hear complaints from gamers about people camping around corners, lag switching (although in order for this to actually happen it will effect the whole team and not just one person) and spawn killing. But what you don't hear is gamers directing their complaints against one person at the companies who developed the games. Why is that?
Maybe it's because there are two different development houses that do the Call of Duty games. Infinity Ward and Treyarch. Gamers might know those company names and which ones developed which games in the series, but there really isn't anyone one person who stands out as the "face of Infinity Ward" or the "face of Treyarch". They're a no one big faceless company so complaining and bitching is done in the the general sense.
With Gears it's specific and direct. One man made Gears of War his personal vision of how a video game should be. And my friends are taking that literally. He's personally responsible for the games so he personally gets all the complaints directed at him (even if he never hears them).
It seems gamers take their games personally . . . whether they design them or play them.
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3 comments:
I was involved with some 'trash talk' for the first time for a long time the other night on Call Of Duty,it was nothing about Gears,but i was playing demolition and i planted the bomb only to be told by an Irish guy that i didn't know how to play the game(apparently he wanted more time to kill the other team),i told him where to get off and go play Team Deathmatch
I must admit i have not heard any trash talking for a long time,but then again i only play COD or BFBC2 online,and a lot of people just don't use their headsets for a long time
Spawn Killing really is a problem on CoD(although not the other sides fault),mainly because of a few maps,especially 'Summit',you spawn,walk a few paces,and then the other team spawn behind you where you have just spawned,i must die a good half dozen times a game that way,not sure if Robert Bowling(FourZeroTwo) gets the slack for any problems in CoD,but he only works for Infinity Wards,and not specific to COD(Black Ops was Treyarch)
as for your Gears Vs CoD,this i would imagine is like console fanboy wars,and the answer is a simple,if you enjoy the game you are playing then you win
if anyone blames 'Dude Huge' again for GoW problems,tell them that there are over 200 employees at Epic Games
It doesn't help that Cliff is just a douche in general. :p
There are still very few in the industry that are attached to a game the way Cliffy B is attached to Gears.
People get pissed off with Gears because it is not the game that it could be or the game that people want it to be, but rather the game that it is - beautiful at times, flawed at others, and disc-snappingly frustrating.
When Cliffy comes out with that Cheshire cat grin on his face and tells us that there's nothing wrong with the game, you can't help but want to string him up by his nuts and beat him like a pinata. He's either drinking his own Kool-aid or he's outright lying to us. EVERYONE who's played Gears online for any amount of time knows how inequitable the game can be.
Part of the problem too is that people seem to take Gears itself more personally then any other game played online. Maybe because it's so close quarters and "in your face" compared to some other popular online titles.
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