But He's <i>Our</i> Bad Guy

Andrew Park is a senior editor at GameSpot who has been a hardcore fan of several games, but has seen the error of his ways. Email him at andrew@gamespot.com.

Sequels are a tricky business, which is why I'm surprised in a way that they're as common as they are in gaming. It seems to me that it's no less risky to take a fresh start and do something different than it is to hope audiences will appreciate a more-straightforward update to something they've already played--and for those who haven't played the previous versions, well, what about the sequel is going to make them start? I'm all for video game sequels, but the balance between creative ideas and quality execution is something that all video games need to strive for, regardless of whether they're part of a big franchise or not.

But part of what makes a series "big," aside from its sales, is its legions of devoted fans. And aren't they the ones that developers should turn to for their new ideas? Aren't developers making games just for the fans, and as a result, aren't fans' ideas always of priceless value and infinite usefulness? Unfortunately, this isn't the case for most fan communities, and from what I've seen myself, anecdotally, the more adamant the fans, the harder it is to make any sense of what they're saying.

Hardcore fans are often completely unreasonable, and sometimes totally insane.

That last sentence wasn't just a personal observation; it was also a little test. I'm positive that after reading that sentence, someone, somewhere out there, actually got personally offended, as though I had been directly addressing him/her about his/her favorite game (sports team, TV show, music group, etc.). I wasn't; but this is one of the issues involved when dealing with hardcore fans--they have an emotional investment in their favorite games (sports teams, TV shows, music groups, etc.), which causes them to go beyond just liking something. They associate their favorite games directly with themselves and their identities. They wear their hearts on their sleeves and keep a vial of venom spring-loaded, ready for the instant that someone dares to try to break their hearts by speaking ill of their favorite things.

For the most fanatical followers, being fans of the same thing isn't just a badge of honor. It's almost like sharing something much more intimate, like a common body part--as though everyone had the same nose or everyone was left-handed. This is why the same tightly knit fan community will, in the same breath, complain incessantly about their favorite game's (sports team's, TV show's, music group's, etc.) flaws, then turn right around and viciously assault any "outsider" who dares to say anything negative about it. To paraphrase FDR, these may be bad games, but they're our bad games.

As far as I'm concerned, this is also one of the main reasons (if not the only reason) why people get upset about less-than-top-scoring reviews for their favorite games, even after they've already preordered, paid for, played, enjoyed, written walk-throughs, and built fan sites for them. I admit I used to be baffled when people would get upset in these cases--if you already had the game yourself and enjoyed it, why would you even bother reading the review, whose primary purpose is to tell you whether or not a game is worth buying? Conventional wisdom suggests that hardcore fans read (and angrily disagree with) game reviews to "justify their purchase," to get some kind of confirmation or pat on the back from an authoritative review publication for making the right decision on what they bought. As I see it, the hardcore are looking for a much more personal validation. For some people, high praise for a favorite game is the same as high praise for the person. Conversely, a low review score isn't just an unfavorable assessment of a game; it's an "attack" on the game...and an attack on the people who hold it dear.

If you're a fan of games, and you've been using the Internet and online discussion vehicles like chat rooms, newsgroups, and forums for some time, don't try to tell me you've never seen any hardcore game fan get ridiculously worked up over a game. Don't try to tell me you've never seen people act like they were slapped in the face when they read such-and-such review. This is why fans can be so difficult to deal with, not just for guys like me who review and preview games, but also, in my opinion, for the developers that make them. Have you ever wondered why developers don't "just tell us" every last detail about a game's development? Much like the phrasing in the Miranda rights suggests: anything anyone in the game industry says, whether they are game reviewers or game developers, can be used against them.

Out of respect for the individuals, I won't cite any specific examples, but I've seen many cases over the years in which something a reviewer, developer, or publisher said was taken out of context, misinterpreted as something bad, insulting, and/or alarming, and magnified a thousand times as angry, frightened, and/or confused fans propagated the completely mistaken notion on message boards and newsgroups all across the Internet. It's like the old children's game of "telephone," in which children sit in a circle and whisper something to the child on their right, and when the message goes all the way around the circle, it comes out so garbled as to be ridiculous. "It might be cool if we could add horses that players could ride in the game" suddenly turns into "the developers promise on their mothers' graves that there will be horses that can be ridden." "The 23rd game in this series doesn't seem to have the same charm as the first" suddenly becomes "GameSpot is obviously biased against the Xbox (PS2, GameCube, PSP, DS, etc.)." When you consider how easy it is for hardcore fans to overreact to even the tiniest scrap of information, especially when they get it wrong, it should be pretty obvious why game companies keep so many things quiet.

Don't get me wrong--not all fans are insane, and some can actually provide reliable feedback. Here's an example off the top of my head: Some developers recruit organized fans to be "team leaders" to help test characters in betas for online games, such as Dark Age of Camelot and EverQuest II. At best, these testers can be as dedicated and organized as any you can find anywhere. But as for the age-old question of whether hardcore fans provide reliable feedback, I'm not so sure. In my experience, the real diehards are also the ones that provide the classically contradictory feedback of wanting everything in the next game to be new, but also having nothing at all be changed. (If neither condition is met to the letter, which is impossible anyway, fans then complain bitterly.)

I've been "platform agnostic" for years, and I've tried to focus my attention on games and the enjoyment that can be had from them. In my own small way, such as in my admittedly infrequent columns, I've tried to encourage others to try to do the same, rather than get caught up in the white noise of screaming hardcore fans (and creepy 35-year-old marketing guys disguised as screaming hardcore fans). To be honest, I've always wondered whether the game industry, and in a larger sense, the world, might be better off without hardcore fans. You know...if more people could enjoy disposable entertainment for what it is and move on. Then again, considering how expensive the next generation of game console hardware will be, it'll be a lot harder for everyone to buy up all consoles. In fact, except for those of us who have lots of extra cash, it may become impossible to be platform agnostic, or to enjoy every single one of the best new games. We'll all have to make some tough decisions and eventually take sides. Right?

Next Up: The Rundown by Jeff Gerstmann