I don’t know how to make beautiful eyeliners, but I will say that I felt the need to speak out because it was boiling. Today we will discuss the phenomenon of Hatewatch using the example of the gaming industry and I will try to convince you to stop doing it. (Hmm, with such topics I feel like Buljat or Topless). Well, let’s get started.
Let’s start by explaining what Hatewatch is. And here it would be easiest to give an example. You have a friend who simply hates, say, The Witcher from Netflix. But at the same time, he watches new episodes on the day of release, watched the first two seasons 2 times and monitors all the news about new seasons of the cast, etc. And you ask him: “buddy, why are you watching it if you don’t like it so much?”?“And he answers: “Because then I will hate him if I don’t watch?». That’s basically what Hatewatching is. When you follow a certain TV series, sports team, media personality, etc., only to show your hatred for every possible reason and development of events. And there can be a lot of reasons for this: from problems in people’s personal lives and the need to throw out aggression somewhere to the fact that people simply have nothing to do. But I’m not a psychologist here, so we’re talking about something a little different here, namely games. And don’t doubt the gaming industry, this phenomenon also affected, otherwise. And now I will explain to you why this is not very good in order to influence at least you, the people who read this blog.
You obviously know that there are game studios whose players are negatively disposed to any attempts. EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard, this is all clear and I’m not saying that they received their dose of hate undeservedly. You made shitty decisions – you’ll get the reaction you deserve, no questions asked.
But let’s look at the situation from the other side. There are excellent studios that simply drowned in the wave of hate that covered them after one or two unsuccessful decisions. I’ll give a couple of examples, because you can’t explain it in theory alone. Remember Bioware? And right now a social experiment: what first came to your mind, the last 2 failed games, in the form of Anthem and Mass effect Andromeda, which were crap for everyone? Or the Bioware that came before, which released games beloved by many like Star wars Kotor, the Mass Effect trilogy and Dragon Age? If the latter, then congratulations, you are in the minority. Because in the minds of the majority of people, Bioware is a studio of the past that will no longer be able to do anything worthwhile these days.
And no one cares that all the bugs in ME Andromeda have been fixed a long time ago, the combat is kept at the level of modern projects, and in comparison with the original trilogy it has grown three times, and the plot and characters are not as bad as the Internet paints them out. Considering that this is practically a new beginning for the series, which means we don’t have much time to get attached to the characters, it’s quite worthy.
Now about Anthem: the game was trashed for bugs, the lack of content at launch as a service game and in general “what the hell is this Bioware, where are my Dragon Age and Mass Effect. And no one noticed that the story campaign in the game is actually interesting. And no one thought that Bioware released a new IP, because they could have been tired of making games for 10 years only based on their two franchises without at least some room for experimentation.
And now I can already hear your indignation, but don’t confuse. I’m not saying games with problems shouldn’t be criticized. I just want you to differentiate between two extremes: objective criticism, thanks to which developers can see the right path, fix their game and make it better. And the stigma of shit attached to a game that you will never remember again, and the developer’s studio will despise.
Because here’s another story for you: remember Redfall? Yes, a new game from Arkane studios, creators of the gorgeous Dishonored, Prey, Dark messiah of might and magic and Deathloop. Redfall was not included in the list of great releases; it failed miserably due to problems that are very similar to those of Anthem.Why repeat then?? Because the developers could fix the situation. All the bugs were fixed long ago, and in recent months the developers have been poring over a huge update that would rework the gameplay, add content, and actually make the game worthy of their studio. In recent months, until what, you ask? Before the closure of Arkane Austin, a subsidiary working on Redfall, announced by Microsoft. Because in the eyes of the majority of gamers, Redfall is a lost game that makes no sense to return to.
And I’m just offended that the developers’ sincere attempts to fix the game were simply destroyed by Microsoft at the suggestion of public opinion. It’s also a shame that hundreds of thousands of players will never know that Bioware fixed their games and can still do well. And I know that’s exactly the case. Because I see the reaction to all the news about the upcoming Dragon Age release; Veilguard. People naturally engage in hatewatching. Under every news there are only comments that “there will be another garbage”. Can you imagine the pressure on developers now?? Namely, because of all this, we haven’t seen anything from the dragon age series for 10 YEARS. And we most likely won’t see as much from Mass effect. I’m afraid of what will happen if Veilguard screws up on release. If the game comes out with bugs or a couple of gaming publications don’t like the gameplay mechanics or that the game has “left its roots” even though the roots are already 15 years old and they were outdated 10 years ago. Then it’s all good and bad, Bioware will have every chance to close down and there will be no more games that could potentially come out from under the wings of this legendary studio.
(And now I’m faced with narrative dissonance in my story, because at the moment I can ideally move directly to the next 2 points, but I can only say about one at a time. Hm. We’ve captured this idea, and we’ll come back to it later.)
I can say that I even know why this happens. Why failures and failures are covered throughout the Internet, but transformations and rises of games from the ashes go unnoticed. One phrase – “the market has decided”. For a long time now, in any journalistic media, an opinion that destroys to smithereens the game/series/movie being reviewed, or, in short, any product being reviewed, has been gaining stable views and attracting a huge number of consonants. Because everyone knows that popular opinion on the Internet is a fact. And I don’t blame people now, there are no people who are subject to such influence. I was like that myself, branding a game uninteresting to me after watching a review, or even quitting one I had already started, which I liked, because I saw a negative review of it. I’m sure this happened to many people, it’s normal, that’s how the media works. I just don’t want people to multiply and spread bad opinions based on what they heard from someone, be it anyone or anything, a famous streamer, a reputable publication, it doesn’t matter, they’re all people, so please don’t mirror someone else’s opinion without owning your own. This is the first disadvantage of the situation.
But it’s EVEN WORSE when people fabricate hate to get on the hype train. I’ll explain with a personal example: the moment of release of Hades II. For context: the first Hades is my favorite roguelike, I completed all the achievements, I’m looking forward to the second part more than the guy from the store. I buy it right away on release and play it and feel that something is wrong. The gameplay feels sluggish, the enemies are just sponges for damage, it feels like the gameplay is artificially drawn out. I talk about this in the stream chat, I see that they agree with me, I go read the reviews on Steam (for a minute, 3 hours after the game’s release, the reviews will be absolutely objective, yes?), I see an opinion similar to mine and a plan is born in my head: “I’ll demolish this Hades 2 of yours in my review, I’ll collect the fiercest views”. After the stream I’m going to write an angry review. Half an hour later I go into the game again to record footage: and lo and behold, there is no confirmation of my opinion. The enemies are falling apart, the gameplay is dynamic and enjoyable, there is no trace of my complaints at all. I call up with friends on discord, turn on the broadcast, they confirm that the gameplay is vigorous and there are no noticeable problems.
I don’t know what the developers did, maybe they tweaked some sliders after the release, maybe they released a day one patch, but it’s not that important. The fact is that next I throw the half-written review into the trash and happily play another 20 hours of the gorgeous Hades 2. And it’s like Happy ending, anti-buhurt, everything is fine for me, yes? Yes. But 2 weeks after the game’s release, a video appears on YouTube that destroys the Hades sequel in all respects. And these were literally my intentions after the first launch of the game. But the main problem is? What’s 200 thousand. people will miss Hades II because some guy put hype above the truth. My opinion: these are *very bad words that moderation will not like* . Don’t be like that.
It’s just a shame for the efforts of the developers. (And now we are returning a little to the point when I said that many attempts to fix games and do something good after release go unnoticed).
And I think it’s important not to allow this to happen, that’s why. As a person who is trying to develop his own business and share it all with people, I can understand the developers. Let’s not pretend that games are made only by "greedy corporations" because believe it or not, there are still people in the gaming industry who are passionate about what they do. And in such things, outside support is very important and constant hate is very discouraging. Just imagine if somewhere in game studios there are developers who take these words to heart. All that trash talk that has no end in sight, from people who haven’t even played the game. Can you imagine how difficult it is after this to find the strength to make games again?.
It’s true that at least a little bit of faith in good things arose in me, thanks to one game. Cyberpunk 2077. You can laugh, yes, but it is the situation with cyberpunk that I see as a bright spot in all this black horror that I described above. Because despite the most disgusting release, when cyberpunk was not kicked only by the lazy… people for the most part (precisely the majority, this is the key here, unlike the minority with other projects) admitted that after a while cyberpunk became a good game. Yes, there are obviously reasons for this. cd project red has a HUGE reserve of trust. And again, it was possible to get on the hype train on the topic “LOOK, CYBERPUNK HAS BEEN FIXED, HOW AWESOME CD PR IS.”.Well, at least I’m not complaining.
I just https://leng4dcasino.co.uk/ wish this would be noticed more often. And I know that I can’t convince the whole internet. But I also believe that even if the voice is small and quiet, it is still better than silence. Therefore, if you understand what I was ranting about here and if you agree with me, then let’s start small. Let’s stop multiplying hate exponentially. We will form and value our opinions, and not replace them with others. Let’s replace senseless hatred with objective criticism. And we will believe in the developers. Notice their efforts and expect good games. Then perhaps the games will become good for us too, and future releases will be expected and the future of the gaming industry as a whole will look bright.
P.S:
Thanks for reading! I don’t promise to post something on blogs often, because my main activity is a YouTube channel (and studying at university). But one way or another, I hope we’ll hear from you again. Good games and good mood to you!
Best comments
But let’s look at the situation from the other side. There are excellent studios that simply drowned in the wave of hate that covered them after one or two unsuccessful decisions. I’ll give a couple of examples, because you can’t explain it in theory alone. Remember Bioware?
So, even here the hate was not out of nowhere.Andromeda is objectively weaker than the original trilogy. She became an openworld jerk, which no one asked for. She was bugged to the core. She made the most shameful facial animations of that time. She shit on the canon. And she teased the audience. There they had a colored employee who drank coffee from a mug that said "White Man’s Tears". Well, we kind of got what we deserved. The song “I’m just a Bioware worker” appeared for a reason.
Hate out of nowhere is when TLOU2 fans ran to Metacritic to downvote Ghost of Tsushima because it had a higher user score. This was really stupid and inappropriate.
Some pink snot, not an interesting idea.
Lately, more and more often I come across “bootlickers” on the Internet, who, at absolutely every fakap from developers, begin to raise shields and defend the idiotic decisions of mega-corporations.
I’ve been playing Hunt Showdown for the last year and a half. The game is very far from ideal and on every stream from the developers, on every questionnaire, in every topic on reddit from the developers, I dumped for discussion a bunch of problems that I encountered. Including scolding openly mocking decisions. Absolutely every time fanatics came and accused me of toxicity and endless demands for the game. “Yes, you are always dissatisfied!»
Over time, the problem was corrected one after another. Players are thanked for their strong feedback and fed with corporate vanliners from ChatGPT.
A week ago, a global update was released on a new engine, which promised the launch of a “new era” of the game. A designer inspired by the work of Activision came and ruined the entire interface in the game because marketers felt that monetization needed a restart. Now the game has not only rolled back to the early access stage, but all skins in the game now have rarities that dictate a new pricing policy. The new interface was intended as a tool to deceive players. It’s very easy to accidentally click where you didn’t want to and make a purchase you don’t need. Experience on the part of the players has dropped MANY TIMES. It became disgusting to enter the game.
I could give similar examples with Escape from Tarkov and Overwatch 2, but the idea here is extremely simple:
Game studios are not your friends. This is a bunch of marketers and effective managers. If they start to get impudent (and they do), we need to put them in their place. And love for hate has absolutely nothing to do with it. Most often, all feedback from players is collected by specially trained people, and not by the default developer or designer.
In the case of indie, this conclusion is completely unsuitable. In general, hate rarely happens there, but if we take your example with Hades, then the answer is on the surface. I, like many, expected the sequel to rethink the problematic gameplay, but received a worse reskin. I won’t go over every detail, but to fix this, I’ll have to redo the entire foundation. I know very well that a huge number of other turkeys will turn to Hades if they want to make a bagel. Expressing my negativity will make it clear that the game is FAR from ideal and there is no need to take everything from there.
My negative opinion also has a right to life. Excessive shoe kissing has never given a good result and will never give when it comes to capitalism. You just need to be reasonable. Praise the good, scold the bad. But this is “yes, we tried harder”. “It’s better to leave it to your loved ones. They need it more than random people on the Internet.
I would have erased the swear word from the text until Vanya came and staged an exterminatus.
According to the blog, it’s cool, but I don’t understand this line of behavior: if I don’t like something, then I simply exclude it from my life. There is already enough negativity in life, why force yourself to be poisoned by it??
Is it true that emotions can be contagious??
– Yes, almost like an infection)
You won’t save humanity, but it was interesting to read))
What you described also has the opposite effect.
Something bad is highly appreciated and they begin to talk about it and spread it, and the crowd effect is triggered in which instincts make you tremble without understanding what is happening “On the same wavelength”. It’s all mirrored, just like with hate.
A similar technique is very common in investments, when at the moment of a stock I start to grow for no reason, everyone begins to come up with the idea that this is justified growth, spread it, and even begin to believe in it themselves and everyone begins to buy shares of this company, increasing even greater growth. But then in the end of course you know what happens.
So what am I talking about. oh yes… to the fact that, most likely, this needs to be taken as a given of evolution and adapted to it. This changes over generations and depends on those who are at the source of the beginning of hate or hype, as an example, large bloggers with whom the discussion and dissemination of their thoughts begin.
This is human psychology. It’s hard to earn trust, but it’s easy to screw up. Therefore, once having received a unsuccessful game, we will expect a new failure from the authors in advance. The reverse is also true.
Good idea but dead. But first, swearing is banned in blogs, even under asterisks, correct it yourself before the mods see it. Secondly, hatred is not something bad, if you look around, read the news, look into history, it will become obvious. If the Catholic Church is about humility, love for one’s neighbor, turning cheeks and all this, then this very church organized a couple of dozen crusades. Why, I haven’t seen the church organizing something like that in the opposite, positive way. Let’s also remember trash streams, it would seem who needs it? To people. People, with all their culture, humanism, etc.d. remain animals governed by instincts, and warm feelings in people, like in animals, are evoked only by relatives, that is, children and parents. Hatred, disgust, aggression, all this is a defensive reaction, it is clear that a bad game does not threaten you in any way, but it has caused you negative emotions and this is enough to develop a reaction. You can’t do anything about it, unfortunately. This is how psychology works, people are more willing to write a negative review than a positive one, these are the basics of marketing. And hate doesn’t ruin games, and you yourself gave the example of Cyberpunk. It’s just that a lot of money has been spent on some games and they have to pull it out. And somewhere where the money is not big, you can score. And about:
Just imagine if somewhere in game studios there are developers who take these words to heart. All that trash talk that has no end in sight, from people who haven’t even played the game. Can you imagine how difficult it is after this to find the strength to make games again?.
Forgive me, if this is a business, then be kind enough to do your job well and provide a quality product. And you can smear snot here until you’re blue in the face, it won’t make anyone feel better, that’s the reality.
Everything is mixed up in this blog, horses, people and hate speeches.
Firstly, welcome to the real world and congratulations on the fact that you realized that there are people who really don’t like games, and with the help of hate and hatred towards them they splash out the accumulated negativity. This content is initially created negative, there is no goal to constructively review something, the goal is to trash something as much as possible and create the most toxic video filled to the brim with hatred. There are consumers of this kind of content, there are many of them, and in such places people get material for relaxation. The channels of such people are known, I’m not going to name them (especially since you named some yourself, although I don’t agree with all your examples), who knows knows. Trying to persuade such people not to toxic is akin to calling “Crook, don’t steal.”!» Good luck with that. This phenomenon is bad, I agree. Hating for the sake of hating without arguments is always disgusting and this should not happen. Let’s move on.
Secondly. In fact, not all critics of the game fall into the first category. There are people who really see problems in games and how they can try to describe them. Your task is to learn to distinguish the first from the second.
Thirdly. It’s time to start thinking with your own head, and not ride the hype train and change your opinion depending on the information field. Some assassins, for example, are still one of my favorite series and I will continue to play it. And no, I don’t think that yubifot, with all her stupid decisions, deserves the hate that you think (although some of them deserve it, perhaps). If I had listened to the haters from the Internet, I probably would have abandoned one of my favorite series ten years ago, because for some reason the loud majority decided that the series had gone downhill and it was time to crucify the company. And what you write in the paragraph about Hades 2 is some kind of brutal cringe, I can’t call it anything else. No, I admit that opinions can change over time, but there are usually good reasons for this, and not “well, I don’t know, I noticed it was bad, and I showed it to my friends and they confirmed it, and then I went in and didn’t see anything like that and again showed it to my friends and they didn’t see anything either.”. It’s like in general, this is what it was like? What were you playing under, I’m sorry? By the way, I played the game when the game was released on Steam in early access and I am ready to subscribe to every word about sponges and everything else (including what is said in the video, the preview of which you posted and did not name the channel, and I formed similar conclusions about the game in a couple of weeks, maybe months, I don’t remember how much passed between the release of the game and the video before that author posted his opinion. It’s okay, I got on the hate train a few weeks before its departure. The only difference is that I’m not a YouTuber with 105 thousand subscribers and I poured out my hate speech mainly to friends on discord and a colleague at work, who listened to me patiently, entered into cultural discussions and tried to convince me, but didn’t even call me an asshole, for which I thank them, I love them all). There’s nothing wrong with constructive criticism of games, it’s literally what games journalism and game bloggers should do. Well, also, this is literally what should be written in Steam reviews, but written consciously, with a cool head and given arguments, and the purpose of this should be to identify the problems of the game with a view to potentially correcting them, so that the developers read the feedback and listen to the opinions of the players and correct something (fortunately, early access exists for this) and not just “I didn’t like the game right now, I’ll smash everyone there”.
Well, the argument about “well, the developers tried, but you criticize them, it makes them feel bad” is generally a kindergarten-level argument. The developers tried, they did, I actually paid for it, and if I didn’t like something, I’ll write about it. Because maybe, just maybe, the developers made a mistake somewhere and didn’t realize their mistake, and my negative review, your negative review, the negative review of thousands of other players who also didn’t like it, will help the developer realize the mistake and redo everything so that it’s good. If, of course, this is possible. But if not, then at least they won’t fall back on the same rake a second time (like they did with Hades 2, yes).
A short conclusion from this entire blanket that I have spun here: criticism does not necessarily have the goal of harming the object of criticism. And the authors of the criticized object can and should use criticism for self-improvement. No negativity.
