In this video, I discuss why the fanbois don’t get it.
#1: Fanbois miss the broader context.
Fanbois tend to advocate one game to the exclusion of others. That’s short-sighted. It’s important for multiple games to be successful at any point in time. The more success stories there are, the more investment will funnel into the industry, and the more games will be developed, which is give us more choice as consumers.
#2: Fanbois blame other gamers for the failure of games.
This is terrifically illustrated by the ad hominem rant I share in the video. It’s the responsibility product company to deliver a great product. Don’t hate on the playas!
#3: Fanbois slap the label “hype” on new games.
Moreover, fanbois accuse other gamers who are playing or switching to new games as chasing hype, instead of recognizing that these new games may appeal to other players based on their merit or functionality.
Let me know what you think :)
P.S. I’ll never call any of you a “flakey ass gamer”, even if I disagree with your opinion.
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Taugrim's MMO Blog 
Good video! As a scientist, I am always very careful to distinguish between subjective and objective statements, and I try to place them appropriately.
For example, I have said many times “I don’t really enjoy WoW. I prefer SWTOR.” This subjective comment allows me to be objective with the following statement “I think there are a lot of things that SWTOR could and should learn from WoW.” If I were a fanboi, originally saying that SWTOR > WoW, then I would be contradicting myself with the second statement, Instead, I can follow the games and maintain a sense of journalistic balance when I write about them.
I think a lot of the current American media could learn a thing or two from this as well. Just because you like someone, something, or some ideology, doesn’t mean you should sacrifice journalistic objectivity on the altar of preference. People tend to be more black and white these days just in general it seems. Very extreme.
Thanks for posting this, and I still enjoy your videos, even though I am not playing GW2 yet, because guess what? I like games. Weird, huh?
I’m no scientist, but I think it would be an ongoing challenge to research and try not to let your hunches or biases affect how you interpret data.
If only there were more people in the world like you, there would be intelligent discourse between people of differing opinions.
These days I probably read as much content from new media companies (e.g. The Verge) and blogs than I do traditional media companies.
Well funny thing is Taugrim did say one time in his twitch stream live that he enjoy sci fi setting in swtor over the good old fantasy take on games like rift and wow etc.
Now i do find it strange that you left swtor ranked play because so many in Maven moved on.Sure sure they were MMO hoppers some of them but i think you could have gotten some new good players if you wanted on your server after transfear and proven yourself in ranked pre season better.Now what you play is of course your own choice.
Just find it funny that you want to follow the quitters to the “next big thing”
And you are a PvP player, GW2 require so little skills to play i mean it’s so easy
for so many reasons so i just think you would play something that is actually a challenge.
But hey what ever makes you happy as a gamer is the most importen thing in the end.
In the end i just think “fanboys” just want to defend the game they enjoy because there are so many quitters and hoppers who do nothing but flame and hate on what ever else they were playing before.And are now only trying to get others to move on aswell.
We will see after GW2, there are no big games coming out the next 2-3 years so we will see were people drop of for a while.I just hope what ever Titan is that it will actually be the next “wow” so we get a game that is trully successfull because the game is actually really good in every way.Not that wow is good now, wow have been garbage for years.
GW2 PVP is easy to learn, but has so many things to master. Each ability is a meaningful choice and that alone takes time to truly master. In addition, the fact that there’s no faceroll gear advantage making up for lack of skill makes this any true PVPers choice in game.
GW2 is only the “Next big thing” because they actually did a great job on the game. NCsoft didn’t spend millions on a media blitz. They just had a few beta weekends with the press and let them form an opinion, which helped to get people excited for the game. When they got their hands on it in beta, they raved about it to their friends and so on. Word of Mouth. That’s the “hype” everyone keeps talking about.
What’s the difference between media blitz hype and word of mouth hype? Media Blitz will have a pre-defined script telling everyone in the world what the game is and what it’s about. Word of mouth is purely based on the experiences of the people talking about it. So if those experiences are good, then it’s likely that the game is actually .. well.. good.
Exactly.
You say GW2 pvp is easy. It may be on the surface but there is a lot of complexity to it. GW2 pvp is not unlike moba’s in that regard (DOTA, LoL, etc). Sure, you have a very limited number of abilities but the map dynamics, team play, and character build create a significant amount of nuance that places the skill cap very high.
Actually, I’m a die-hard fantasy guy. Look at my logo.
I did find that SWTOR offered a good experience with the sci-fi setting. But at the end of the day, I tend to lean towards old-school fantasy.
Um, no.
We spent about 4 months in SWTOR trying to constantly backfill our ranks due to the number of people leaving the game. The churn sucked.
The juice was no longer worth the squeeze.
Moreover, I’m concerned about the future of SWTOR. As I said on GAMEBREAKER, the announcement of F2P seemed more to me a way of addressing the loss of subs on the EA earnings call, instead of something which had been well-defined and planned for.
This is so ignorant on so many levels.
GW2 IMO has the highest skill cap of any game I’ve ever played, by a mile.
By go ahead and do #3: attach the label of hype, instead of meaningfully discussing game mechanics.
What i said holds true if you like it or not, but hey if you think GW2 require more skills then other games then stick with a game for your skill lvl :)
You just managed point #2 from my video (ad hominem).
Two out of three!
id be interested in hearing your opinion on what other current mmo offers more skilled pvp combat than gw2?
This is actually the biggest reason I even bother tuning into Taugrims streams or reading his articles. I love that you’re objective and have your own opinion much like MikeB and arnt afraid to discuss with people who may share different views how you feel about certain games or mechanics (Also because you’re a pro Pvper lol). Good article cant wait to watch you stream GW2 and hear your opinions on class mechanics and so fourth till then cya!
You may see a lot more blog content and YouTube videos than streaming, for GW2. We’ll see.
What I will be doing is announcing on Twitter when I’m online and find a GW2 Hot Join sPvP server with room, in case people want to join.
Good points. I liked how you articulated you argument without sounding defensive.
I started following the blog because of your SWTOR PvP posts and, even though I have zero interest in Guild Wars, I continue to follow it because you strike me as my kind of gamer; ie someone who is looking for the same kind of MMO experience I am.
I dunno. Maybe that makes me a Taugrim fanboi. :D
Fan not fanboi :)
Seriously though, I know the games I play at a given point of time won’t appeal to everyone who reads this blog. But part of what I enjoy is the broader dialogue about game design and the industry.
There are some big games coming over the next year, will be interesting to see how they pan out.
Great video Taugrim. I enjoy your videos and perspectives on gaming and the industry because of, as you state in the vlog, the articulate and thoughtful way you come at the issues. You set the bar for discussion of gaming at a high level and it is too bad that more gaming discussion isnt in this vein.
Keep up the awesome work!
Thanks for the encouragement.
I have over the past year become increasingly publicly honest about my opinions on games. I don’t want my takes to devolve into negative dialogue, because there is too much of that already.
Well said Ed…fight the good fight!
I think it’s entirely acceptable to call something a “flakey ass gamer” if the gamer happens to be a croissant in the shape of a donkey. -speedplay
That is a scary visual :D
Awesome job Ed. Keep the rationality train rolling.
Well said, I couldn’t agree more.
Don’t waste your time or breath defending why you play what you play. There is an infinite supply of trolls out there that will never agree with you no matter what you say. Keep up the good work.
While this is very true, I do believe that some folks who I’d deem fanbois do not understand the issues with the way they are approaching defending particular game(s).
It not only undermines their own credibility, but it also create more noise for developers to sort out.
High 5, Ed! Logical gamers of the world unite!
I agree with you Ed on just about everything you said, however there is one small issue I have with the issue in blaming other gamers for the games problems. I do agree with you to extent that its up to the game company to make a compelling, decent, intriguing game and let the consumer make its mind up for itself. the issue I have is that (and this could come across as elitist, or me just getting older) the younger generation of gamer is just so much more demanding.
i was fortunate enough to get into swtor beta almost a year before it was released. i loved every minute of it, and im actually still subscribed because i love the class stories that much. ill be the first to say that from my time in beta the game really should have probably stayed in beta at least another 6 months, unfortunately i suspect ea did some string pulling and forced bioware to release it early (thats a discussion for a different time). that being said a lot of people bashed the game for not having easier accessability, such as a dungeon finder, the auction house interface not being to their liking, spaceports taking too much time to traverse and so on and so on.
my point being is that gamers these days seem to hold games far more accountable for some minor inconviniences than they did say 10 years ago, and that i believe is where you are seeing a majority of the gamers bashing other gamers. i could however be wrong so i urge you to take it with a grain of salt.
as always though, your thoughts and opinions often mirror my own and am quite thankful i came across you during the swtor show on gamebreaker =) cheers!!
Just to reply to your comment and I’m not trying to be defensive or anything so please don’t take it as such.
The issues that were in SWTOR might have been minor at least the ones you brought up. I personaly didn’t have to many issues using the AH I worked around them and went on my way. It’s the bigger issues that were there are the ones that caused people to stop playing and Ed addressed these as well or at least Gamebreaker in general did. My personal reason for leaving the game is I don’t like games that force me to grind to get optimal gear. I know a lot of games do this. I don’t play those. Ironically as soon as I get to the point that the grind starts I tend to stop. In no way is SWTOR or WoW bad games ( I lost a year of time to WoW) but its that kind of progression that makes it feel like a job and I have one of those already.
In short it wasn’t the small things that hurt SWTOR it was the bigger ones.
BTW Ed, good job with the microeconomics talk. It might give some people something to think about or not as someone proved above.
oh no i agree, there was a certain grind aspect to swtor that was just plain bad design. my theory and opinion as a whole were based around that people are just too critical of a game.
for example it just seems like more and more people are spoiled by the convienence of some type of dungeon finder, where you can simply queue and be paired with people whom you’ve never met and will most likely never see again. this is seen as a godsend by a majority of players because they may or may not have enough time to put together a group themselves. dont get me wrong this type of thing isnt completely bad but given the info we were back during beta it really seemed like swtor wanted to do away with cross server type stuff to strengthen its community. in the end however this turned away quite a few people and thus now a days if you dont launch with this type of feature a lot of people consider it a failure.
i agree, games should not feel like a second job, but at the same time there should be a bit of effort put into the experience
The MMORPG industry IMO is very slow to learn from its mistakes, as compared to other industries that involve technology products.
Look at the mobile phone industry. Apple came in 5 years ago and radically transformed the smartphone market. And the smart companies (HTC, Samsung) shifted to the new design philosophies. I don’t want to get into Samsung vs. Apple here, but if you look at an example like that, you can see how quickly companies adopt new thinking that makes sense.
The MMORPG industry has been too fixated on models, such as Blizzard’s WoW, which are one-time success stories that are not reproducible.
oh i totally agree. it appears that if a game doesnt release with millions of copies sold and have over 5 million subs in 6 months the game is not successful.
i also agree that the mmo industry is quite the hardheaded teenager that doesnt listen to its parents. it seems like every major mmo (in my opinion) just never seems to learn from other mmo’s mistakes in that they release them when they are no finished. like i said before i was in closed swtor beta and while they made huge improvements from beta client to beta client the fact of the matter is that game should have stayed in closed beta for probably another 6 months. same goes for WAR and AoC and all the other popular ip’s over the past 5 years.
i suspect that this probably has more to do with the bigger ups coming down on developers but thats tin foil hat area =)
IMO, success would be launching with several hundred thousand players and then sustainably growing that playerbase over time.
Most games hemorrhage subs heavily within a quarter of launch.
for sure, there was a mild amount of sarcasm in my comment about a game not being successful unless it sells millions of copies and has millions of subs =)
I don’t know where to put this, so I’m putting this here; just checked your specs: we use the same mouse (except mine has some dog bite marks). Cheap logitech ftw! Who needs extra buttons?
LoL, I love just the title of the video. We had a discussion about this on twitter some time ago and fanboys will just never get it that a thriving game market = win for all players.
Yep.
I finally got around to recording a video, to talk through the issue in more depth.
Only so much you can say in 140 chars :)
Hey Taugrim, nice job on this vlog. I really like how you present your views and opinions in an articulate and calm way. Obviously, there will always be haters and fanbois that don’t get it and that don’t have any respect for anyone or anything. That’s just what it is.
Whenever I see any hate posts, they remind me of a great line that the comedian Louis CK has in one of his shows about people that complain about something even though they don’t have the slightest clue how to create the thing that they complain about and that they won’t stop to think about this for a minute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpUNA2nutbk.
LMAO that’s a hilarious video.
I have been thinking about posting an article about system architecture, so that gamers can understand some of the complexities in building a game.
If you have insights into this and if you can explain it in a way so that people actually comprehend it youbshould go for it.
Regarding point no.2 i would for the most part agree with your view, but it kind of backfires a bit, in my opinion at least, due to the nature of many gamers these days. There’s obviously the fan-boys on one side as you pointed out, but there’s also the doom-saying overreacting group as well.
I agree that games should be played based on fun-factor. You enjoy it you play it, you don’t you move on. However many of the gamers nowadays are people that do not have a very broad perspective on things. Many are ignorant, others are just blinded by their own ideas, which in turn often harms a game. It may not be enough to “kill” a game, but it’s enough to create a bad hype or image around it, making entry into a title difficult for other people, mostly inexperienced ones, based on initial contact with the title.
I personally like to believe that many gamers nowadays are ignorant, and that ignorance breeds more ignorance. It is often the case that one person says X is bad, and the next YZABC guys follow with him because he said it, instead of actually doing research on it to see if they would actually enjoy it or not.
It’s often not a game’s fault for being bad. Now I’m not defending any game or pointing fingers either, but it is important to correctly identify the problem. Sometimes its the developer or the programer or the designer but quite often it is also the gamer.
Like you, i have played a lot of MMO’s and “jumped the hype”. Currently I’m trying to distribute my time between no less than 5 MMOs which isn’t really easy. It’s not that one game is better and one is worse, rather each game does something really good. This is why i believe gamers are often at fault. Ignorance, indecisiveness and spite make for bad companions in an environment where the main attraction is supposed to be socialization and most importantly fun.
If possible i would really like to hear from you and see what your take is on what i just said. I don’t expect you to straight out agree with my philosophy on ignorant gamers, but would you at least believe there is some merit to what i said or am i just being a paranoid doomsayer?
Well, I don’t believe people are so ignorant that they don’t try things for themselves.
Take Guild Wars 2 for example. If you read the blogs and message boards, opinions are varied on the game. Yet it has already sold 2MM copies, which is nuts. Even SWTOR with the Star Wars IP didn’t reach 2MM.
Is GW2 doing well because of hype? I don’t think so. It’s genuinely distinct from other MMORPGs, in positive ways.
I think you make a valid point with the 2 million copies. But let\’s not forget that GW1 existed previous to this one. Putting it in perspective it had an edge to swtor in that regard. SWTOR was a new title, no previous feat to it to know if it\’s good or bad. It was a blind pick to see what you get.Then there was also Warhammer which didn\’t help, and the closing of SWG which made many fans looking for the same experience disgruntled. With GW, you already know to an extent what you are going to get. It also meant ANet had some players from day 1 that would transition. They had a fan-base and much of that fanbase moved to this new game. SWTOR had IP, ANET had GW1. I think in the grand scheme of things ANET had the advantage here. What i meant by many gamers are ignorant is that often a potential player will be deterred from a game based on what others say. There are definitely many like you and others that will try a game and research but i don\’t think those people are the majority. I guess i just look at it from a very high perspective, but at least from my observations negative feedback has more power over positive feedback. Positive is always taken for granted nowadays instead of putting it in perspective of pro\’s and con\’s.
NOTE: I am not saying SWTOR is better than GW2 or viceversa, i just mentioned the two since you made a point about it. I think both games have their merits in some regard and both have faults in others.
Very fair point.
Comparing the sub numbers is apples-to-oranges.
That said, I was not surprised by SWTOR selling ~1.8MM copies, because of the fantastic job that BioWare did in marketing the game pre-launch, especially the 4 incredible videos (Return, Hope, Deceived, etc). And the IP is the most well-known Sci-Fi IP in the world, by a mile.
However, I am surprised that GW2 already broken 2MM. Not that many players in the current market are veterans of GW1. It wasn’t a widely-played IP. Only a fraction – less than on-third – of the people I know played GW1.
Agreed, both games have their merits. If I put on my business hat, I would have come to the opposite conclusion – BioWare had the far more valuable IP, because it’s truly mass market in terms of popularity. I couldn’t have named any of the classes for GW1 prior to researching GW2, but everyone knows what a Jedi Knight and Smuggler are.
I don’t know how long you were aware of GW1 or if you followed it at all. After all, their PR didn’t really do as much compared to other titles, not to mention it was a F2P title which usually passed beneath the radar due to not having actual subscribers. But honestly GW1 was a huge success. It had about 5 mil copies sold in 2008 or so, roughly 3 years after release, and a few more since then. It’s obviously harder to gauge the actual number of active players throughout, since you don’t have subscription numbers to go by, but the truth is, at least 6million people knew about GW1 before GW2 was even announced. GW2 probably even boosted a few more subs to GW1 due to the trophies and accomplishments that can be “transferred” to GW2. I still think Arenanet had the advantage here. IP only get’s you so far. Also just because someone knows the IP doesn’t mean they’d play it. Often i hear things like “I doubt it fits well into the universe, and i don’t want to ruin my experience with it” when it comes to huge IP titles. The fact that it is a huge IP makes it even more dangerous, because anything that doesn’t fit will create a huge turmoil. (see both SWG and SWTOR). Either way its apples and oranges like you said.
I didn’t know that GW1 had sold 5MM copies. That’s incredible, really.
That said, it never seemed to me that GW1 had the mindset that commensurate with 5MM people who purchased it.