Thursday, September 22, 2011

New Poll - Has Gears of War 3 been worth the wait?

I HAVE A NEW POLL!!!!

Has Gears of War 3 been worth the wait?

Absolutely YES!
I'm still thinking about it
I'm left disappointed
Hell no!


You have until October 1st to vote, so please do so!

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

When gamers get personal

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.