In a recent interview with NowGamer, Treyarch community guy Josh Olin says that raging gamers are threatening game development.
“Personally, as a community manager who lives in the media or social media world every day, I think the social culture of video games is moving in a more negative direction as technology and social media continues to grow,” he explains.
“Rather than growing with it, the trend seems to be devolving. More and more gamers seem to forget what this industry is all about. It’s a creative industry – the most creative form of entertainment in existence. Too many developers who try new things are getting burned by ‘pundits’ and angry entitled fans who look to be contrarian, sometimes simply for the sake of being contrarian.
“The only thing this attitude aims to achieve is stunt that creativity and innovation even further, which is something that no rational gamer looking to be entertained would want to do.”
He’s got a point. It does seem to me that whenever a new title in a popular franchise is launched, “hardcore” fans are instantly divided into two broad categories – the people who hate it because it’s the same game over again, and the people who hate it because the developer changed something significant about it. And both demographics insist they’re right.
Also, I’m betting a case of beer that 90% of the comments under this article will be slagging off how buggy and rubbish Black Ops is, and how it’s the same game over again, or that Treyarch changed the formula too much.
Does Olin have a point? Or is he deflecting responsibility for the negative feedback which Black Ops has received? Share your views in the forums
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