I'm Completely Done

Ugh, this website's comment section and forums have really frustrated me. Everyone is so damn negative. "I hate EA and Ubisoft!" "I hate DLC!" "The good old days of the NES were so much better than the shit we have now!" "I hate Battlefront!" "I hate anyone who likes something I don't!"

Give me a break. Just look at the comments. It's perfectly, 100% fine to share your dislike or even disgust of a certain game and practice in the gaming industry, but it just becomes a shitfest when everything you post is so negative.

So, I'm done. Never logging back into an account here. I'll still be getting my gaming news from this site though, but the comments? The forums? Done.

Have you checked the news lately? Its not just this comment section. I'm with you though, better to not take part and choose the high road. Others will follow.

I agree. So negative here.

It's a problem with the greater videogame community, unfortunately. Everywhere you go you'll find hate and negativity in spades. GameSpot is just another place that's become infected by the rampant vitriol surrounding videogame discourse. It's depressing. I don't know what can be done to fix it, either. I'd like to say it wasn't always like this, but it has. It's only gotten worse is all.

Fine by me, go and live in complete ignorance on some other board somewhere. If you can't handle constructive criticism and opinion then you belong in some sunshine and rainbows board somewhere pretending everything on this planet is perfection. The games industry is far from perfect and through negativity and voting with our wallets will be the only way developers and game companies listen to our concerns.

@Crossel777: Here's some constructive criticism for you: You bring up some good points about the gaming industry, voting with one's wallet, and the importance of sharing personal opinions. That said, I think you just offered a prime example of the OP's most fundamental point, which I understand to be the inability of so many community members to accept that its okay to have differing opinions. You say opinions matter and talk about constructive criticism, but your own words seem fly in the face of what you claim to value. That's the issue as I see it, anyway, and of course I'm willing to discuss it with you.

Edit: I also wanted to add that while I think you're 100% correct about the gaming industry needing our negative feedback to know what we don't like, I think our positive feedback is just as important in determining what we do like. I don't think any of us want sunshine and rainbows, we just want the normal weather patterns back. Sunny skys, cloudy days, wintery mixes, and the occasional nuclear winter. heh

I don't blame him tbh... The amount of BS posted on here is as bad as ever.

@Crossel777: "Constructive criticism"

Yeah, at least 90% of gaming criticism I see sure as hell isn't constructive. Almost all I see are knee-jerk reactions and bandwagon hate towards certain companies when it's hardly called for.

But I'm with you, OP. Not in that I'm leaving this site, but that I'm sick of seeing almost nothing but bitching and negativity over a hobby I find to be very enjoyable. Sure, I can't entirely ignore that there are certain things going on that tarnish some games out there. But if you do your research it's not too hard to find games you'll like and you don't have to waste all your time and energy whining online. I don't think GameSpot is any worse than anywhere else out there when it comes to gaming discussions. Best of luck finding a place with peaceful, polite discussions with any criticism being actually well-thought out and whatnot.

Good luck to you in finding a website that doesn't have so much negativity, but it's going to be pretty difficult, I feel. Gaming culture as a whole has a very negative viewpoint on many things. Sometimes it's justified (though not to the extremes that people take it), but often times it's just people going overboard with their opinions.

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

@battlestreak: I'm trying to build that type of community with my site, gamers sharing their love for gaming, not their hate for every little thing imaginable under the sun. Would love to have a few more like minded gaming fans to chat with on the site while I finish it, especially for the sake of helping to shape the tone of the site. And I'm not talking about just in the comments and the forums, but with the news content and reviews as well.

At the end of the day we are the gaming community, and it's up to us to clean it up since no one else will.

I understand how you feel and completely sympathize with you. Sadly it's likely prevalent anywhere you go online and is systematic of the gaming community at large.

One solution? Don't create a shitty redesign of the forum that turns away longtime, contributing members. Not directed at you, obviously, but the status quo sometimes stands for something.

Otherwise, yeah, the internet sucks. Find a group of lads and enjoy yourself with them instead.

I'm doubtful that your are done with the forums since you created this topic to voice that you are done with the Forum rather then simply not posting anything anymore.

Which frankly makes this seem more like a fake " Oh I'm done with this " and more of a " Pay attention to me" topic that does take up the subject of negative comments. Which if that was the case then you could've just dropped the " I'm done with this" part entirely.

This statement really gets to the heart of the matter. If we don't work towards changing our own communities from within it just won't happen, and that has to start with a good hard look inward.

I despise the negativity we've fostered in the gaming community too, but I'd be lying if I said I never get dragged into the pits with the rest of the vipers. So maybe the first step towards building a better community is to identify and address our own bullshit instead of sorting through everyone else's pile. Lovely visual, eh?

I'm inclined to wonder whether or not that makes any difference or adds to the conversation. We all want to be heard, especially when we're upset. Isn't that just part of being human?

Truth be told, since he was willing to bring up the subject I hope he doesn't leave. My "I'm outta here" thread is just a little bit below his, and while I do still plan to ditch GS as my source for gaming news I think I'll try stick around the forums a little longer for the same reasons we've been discussing in this thread.

correct. tons of really really good forum contributors left when the powers that be decided to flush so much of what had helped built up their community down the toilet. and it absolutely wasn't always like this.

agreed. he'll be back. 100%

Yeah, I wouldn't say I haven't ever been out of line with my comments, may have had a bad day once and came here because it's my goto gaming hub and games make me happy and some one had to be an ass that day. My problem with this specific site though is that the journalists themselves write articles that encourage the controversy between Playstation and Xbox fans, and I really see myself as a fan of both and don't understand why it is such an apparent crime to love them both, in addition to every other system I own(to which there are A LOT of them).

Oh man, I was extremely disappointed with how the redesign went. We told them we didn't like the changes, and they ignored us. The way we got treated during that time was the catalyst that led to me to build my site. It still makes me upset just talking about it, and yet it also makes me sad knowing that this site may have doomed itself to a fate similar to GameTrailers.

And this is why I pretty much been posting in G+ the social network where I can talk just about anything that has nothing to do with the negative BS. If anything, System Wars is just as bad as any other comment sections but the sad part is, that forum is always active and that tells you people over there rather just down play Xbox One/PC gamers and there's just way too many Sony fanboys it's just pointless to go to war with those guys cause the Sony fanboys make up the numbers over there.

I like to post more here on Games Discussion, I really do but the problem is, this place isn't as active as System Wars, I just don't have a choice to but post over there, this place makes it harder to get a reply.

That shit will forever mystify me. I still had my NES in the late 80's and remember when my friend got a Sega Genesis. Not once did I consider us rivals or wish for Sega's demise. I was just psyched that I had somewhere to play Altered Beast.

I gotta say though, that type of rivalry feels like the new paradigm, at least in my country. All you have to do is state your chosen political affiliation and 35% of the population (just pulling that number out of my ass) thinks you're an idiot or a "bad person."

@Schwah: Totally agree, growing up I had a friend who had the SegaCD and an Atari Lynx, another friend had a decent PC for playing those old Sierra games, and none of us ever once got upset the other had a different method to play games. If any of us got a new game, there'd be some phone calls with a simple "wanna check out this new game I got?", with a "**** YEAH" as a reply. Every new gaming experience was a shared gaming experience, there was never any thought of excluding anyone or any game from our gaming hype.

Hell, I still remember going into EBGames and seeing Atari Jaguar and Jaguar CD's up on the top rack wishing I could have one. One of the most poorly received gaming consoles ever, and I had to have one!

@suicidesn0wman: lol! Brother from another motha. I used to love spending the weekend at my friend's house so we could try playing through an entire King's Quest game. Felt sooo F-ing epic when we finished one, and nearly just as epic when we failed. The worst was trying to traverse cliff side passes or climb stairs without a mouse... just keyboard commands. Before the days of saved games that could mean perma death after hours of play!

Oh, and for me it was the Turbo Graphx 16. I was never able to save up the money for one but damn was I sold on those commercials. "10 times the colors!!" lmao

@battlestreak: Uhm, bye.

Gee, did ya think that just MAAAAAAAYBE everyone's negative for a REASON? How pretentious can you get!?

@Schwah: Swap Kings Quest for Heroes Quest/Quest for Glory and it's pretty similar. Also swap TG16 for Turbo Duo. :D

I'll miss you. You're, almost, 2 months here will never be forgotten.

@suicidesn0wman: Don't drink the Dragon's Breath, and thanks for putting "Hero's Quest" first ;-)

I was about to say that we should stop our conversation here because we're hijacking the thread (and we kinda are), but I think its also worth pointing out that this is the kind of conversation I like to have with a fellow gamer. No hate, just appreciating similarities and differences.

Everyone, you say.

I am not negative, but rather I seek to offer constructive criticism. It is probably how I am a moderator.

To offer some advice, complaining about legitimate issues should not be attributed to negativity in the part of the complainer or the issue itself, but rather the nature of the issue which is at the meta level. At the same time, rejoicing about legitimate improvements should not be attributed to positivity in part of the rejoicing or the benefit itself, but rather the meta level goodness of the gain. We should not accept that people should be the focus, but rather ideas ought to receive inspection.

TC, do yourself a favor. Never visit a Youtube comments section. Ever.

I hate it when people share their negative opinions.

@BranKetra: Hey bud, I'm going to go out o a limb here and suggest that he probably wasn't using "everyone" in a literal sense. Might be time to accept that usage as part of the vernacular, like "Christ almighty! Everyone in this town is so damn ugly," which of course is understood by all to be an exaggeration, unless of course we're talking about my cousin's home town in which case that becomes a literal statement (Seriously, the men look like scarecrows and the women like tardigrades. It's bizarre).

At any rate, I see you've been here since 2006. Have you really not noticed an overall increase in negativity? I'd liken it to climate change as opposed to weather. Sure, we always have our peaks and valleys and I can accept the possibility that I'm experiencing early-onset-old-man-syndrome with all the "back in my day" bullshit, but in this case I don't think so. This seems like an issue that's finally coming to a head, perhaps due in part to the bright lights shining on gaming's other skeletons in the closet.

@Schwah: I am not at fault for exegetically reading his post. Furthermore, I mentioned a solution to the negativity.

.....who are you, again?

He's one of us, man. Just pissed.

A long time ago, I wanna say around 2008 or so, I had been a member of this site for like 3 years then. It is hard to remember correctly, since gamespot has gone through a few revisions to its design since I was a member in 2005, but there used to be an area in the bottom right (I think?) of the main gamespot homepage that would hold users' blogs. These blogs were very long, but also filled with interesting points and made for good reads, whereas the forums were more for bickering and helping with games and whatnot. One of them, I remember a bit, was a guy who said that he was done with this site and he was moving on to the next chapter in his life that video games were no longer going to be a part of. If I remember correctly, he had gotten married and a little one was on the way to being born. He was feeling burnt out, but he also wished the rest of us gamers reading his post that he harbored no ill will towards anyone, he just needed to be done with games.

I can perfectly understand that even though I'm only 24. Eventually I want to quit this site and stop coming to entertainment websites and wasting my time reading comments on articles or forums and just live my life. I want to just play my games every once in a while and just make it less of a habit. I want to get a better job and move on to more important things because at the end of the day, all these are are just video games. They are wonderful little distractions in life and I want to remember them as such. I don't want to remember the many controllers I broke screaming in rage back when I was a teenager flipping out over getting killed for the 10th time in F.E.A.R. I don't want to remember the many studio closings, the games that could have been (Battlefront 3, Silent Hills, etc), games becoming more generic, music in games becoming so dull to listen to compared to the likes of the past games of the 90s and 2000s, the season pass and DLC forcing games to consist of less content and pay $30 more to get added quests or some more maps or whatever.

Yes, I guess you could say I'm contributing to this negative whining that the TC has stated his reason for "leaving", but I've thought about this for a while and I would like to eventually leave as well. Maybe just come around occasionally to see what the new Zelda game got score-wise and then close my browser and do the dishes or get my lunch packed for work.

In the end, I want to remember playing video games for the challenge, the immersion, the wonderful distraction from real life, but not as the annoyingly expensive addiction that it was for me and how I chose to play games over going out with friends 7 times out of 10 (I still had somewhat of a social life, but it could have been better). I want to remember playing games for the fun of it all.

This topic should be moved to off-topic, it's pretty awake discussion but it's not about gaming...who isn't feel good here - have a nice day.

Welcome to internet,,, the home of trolls.

*sarcastic voice* god damn theres so much negativity in this post, i think i may have to call it quits for good..

The problem is you, TC, for allowing stuff like that to bother you so much.

^^^

Pretty much. The Internet and all that. I'm always a bit amused when people come out exasperated by the very nature of the environment they are partaking in. It's like being pissed you're wet in the ocean. If so, then get out. The net overflows with cynicism, I know because I'm a big contributor to it but it's all in good fun and I hope no one takes my criticisms too seriously. If they do and let it become their problem and leave based on that, well.....I think that's throwing out the baby with the bath water, frankly.

You just have to learn to not let it get to you. The net is an anonymous avenue for strangers to vent all their frustrations they can't elsewhere to little or no consequence. If it seriously annoys you so much, try to get on Neogaf, they have great discussions and are (for the most part) polite, but it is also a bit like a dictatorship with the mods and getting banned is very easy.

So someone wrote bad things about a game that you love, and we are supposed to care that you are hurt by it. If you think EA and Ubisoft are not worthy of critisism, then I'd rather point the finger at you for accepting how this industry has become a cash-cow rather than a passionate artform..I've seen the same happening in the music industry. Do you want your hobby to end up like justin bieber or linkin park? When Nirvana broke the scene in 91, the record companies signed all the bands from seattle just in case. They didn't understand why nirvana was special, and didn't care. All they care about is profit. These people are now tearing through the game-industry. We are critical because we care.

@suicidesn0wman: This was all before the internet and website like this one. Gaming had that aura of wonder and excitement. you go to the store or the renting store and try something new that you either never heard of or you saw a few pic and read in a magazine.

Also all gaming system were vastly different in the software they offered.

Now all system offer pretty much the exact same games ... we know everything about the game years before it comes out to the point that when we lunch the game for the first time, it feels like we already played it a 100th times.

Another problem with our modern world games is people expectation are very high and they should know the system can't do what their wildest dream created. Like when Watch Dog came out ... people were disappointed because it wasn't an open platform to hack whatever they saw... come one.

I don't look for the news anymore because of all of that. Like I'm a big fan of Mortal Kombat but I was sick of seeing everything about MKX months before it comes out to the point the game had no value.

The stories I was sharing with @Schwah were somewhat before the internet, though I have been online since 1994, and those experiences did not end with the Jaguar. Late 90's and early 2000's were pretty much the same, my one friend and I both had win98 machines, he would get fmv sierra games like Phantasmagoria and Gabriel Knight, I'd get stuff like Command & Conquer and Sim City. He got me into Civilization, which I still love to this day. Our other mutual friend had a playstation while I had a 64.

Even after that it went to one of us having a GameCube and the other having an Xbox, both had very similar graphics and all that, no one cared about which was more powerful. I got a Dreamcast shortly after that and it was the best system we ever played at the time. These days my group of gaming friends has shifted, but the story is the same. The inner circle is 3 friends, 2 of us are PS4 and X1 owners, other is solely X1, and he comes over to my house for a gaming night and we always work the PS4 into our evening of gaming activities.

I think your 3rd point is actually a very big part of why I can't understand all the hate being spread through the gaming community. So the two main consoles aren't so unique anymore, that should mean even less reason for people to argue, wtf do they have to be jealous of? What is the catalyst? The emphasis should be on the games, not the box that plays them.

I don't get the hate bandwagoning going on over individual games either, half of it isn't even real, it's just fanboys crying because it didn't come out on their preferred plastic box, and the other games get hated unfairly. Watch Dogs being a perfect example of that. I actually enjoyed Watch Dogs, and I thought it was a good first entry for a new GTA styled IP. Now the same thing is happening with The Division, people trying to start up the hate bandwagon again, and the game is excellent. The #1 complaint I see about both of those games is 'graphical downgrade', as if both games didn't release with really good visuals. It's nit picking, finding the most minor aspect of the game and bashing it until there is no more horse left to bash.

I do think some games like Destiny and to an extent MKX get caught up on the hype train, where articles feel more like advertising than news, and I would like to see less of that. These are the games that I find myself most disappointed in. With almost every game I play, I only hope to get gameplay that isn't broken and a half decent story or better. Which is why Destiny disappointed me with its shallow story(and the content removed from the game for the sake of DLC). The game was hyped to the point everyone thought it would be greater than Halo, Halo 3, and ODST combined, yet it never came close to any one of those 3 games.

At the end of the day, I think gaming evolved as a medium for telling stories, but many gamers did not evolve with them. Video game developers are striving to be on par with movies and tv as an entertainment format, while many gamers are stuck comparing every game they play to the games that made them love gaming in the first place. Those are odds that no game can overcome.

@suicidesn0wman: I really enjoyed your answer.

I think that our modern technology help a lot for comparing result of the same game on various system. I think that before PS3/360 it was harder to do those and to be fair, a lot less games were multiplat.

it feels like the magic of discovering games and just enjoying them is kind of gone since modern gamers want to compare them ... and since PC also share a lot of games and it becomes a big competition of who has the best graphics.

You are right about article being more advertising, too much info, which I think raise the expectation.

I find it sad.

The problem isn't with you or with the internet imo, it is the kids in the internet, visit the forums but, try not to pay attention for the negativity or childish behaviour. I'm saying this because I did feel like you before.

I'm still holding out hope that someday this community will be as active as it once was. As far as the content of the comments go, that's pretty par for the course, honestly.

People hate a lot in the internet. It's not just gaming related.

Don't just blame the gamers here, this in also related to the corporate advertising whore-fest that is going on in the gaming industry. If they weren't such greedy fucks, this wouldn't be happening nearly as much.