The Image of Gamers

Gamers are a diverse bunch, we range from all sizes, ages, races, and personalities. We are a huge group of people and constantly growing. Everyone has an opinion and we are a very vocal bunch thanks most in part to social media. In the internet age there is no lack of forms to communicate or events for us to comment on. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, and thousands if not millions of forums are filled with gamers sharing their opinions and thoughts on thousands of topics. Unfortunately a vocal minority are  destroying the image of gamers all over. Recently Hello Games, creators of Joe Danger and developers of the soon to be released No Man’s Sky, announced that No Man’s Sky was being delayed a few months from June 2016 to August 2016, not a big deal seeing that it was a few months delay of a game that was announced in 2013. Some did not see it that way and what followed is extremely sad.

Hello Games is a fairly young company, founded in 2009 in Guildford England. The following year they released Joe Danger exclusively on PlayStation Network for the PS3.
It was a side scrolling game about a stunt motorcycle driver going through obstacles to continue to the next level. In the following years Joe Danger was released on XBox, IOS, and Android platforms. Joe Danger received good reviews and even has a metacritic score of 86/100. In 2012 Joe Danger 2: The Movie was released and was the only the second game released by the studio. Joe Danger 2 was more of the same but it’s based on a movie studio and Joe being a stunt driver. December 2013 during the Video Game Awards (VGAs) Hello Games announced their next game and it won the show. No Man’s Sky is probably one of if not the most ambitious game ever announced. No Man’s Sky lets the player make a custom ship and explore the universe. Sounds simple right, except the selling point of the game is the universe itself is said to have over 18 quintillion planets, each with their own plant life and life forms. Each planet provides a new experience for the gamer, allowing them to explore, mine, and battle over resources. The resources are used to upgrade and customize the players gear and vehicle. There is no conceivable way to explore every planet in the game which provides gamers with endless entertainment, needless to say this is an unprecedented game and gamers all over are excited to get their hands on it

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The game was set to release June 21st 2016 but unfortunately Hello Games announced that the game was delayed to August 2016. Given the scope of the game a normal person can understand maybe a bit more time is a good thing. Polish is the term most used by gamers when a game gets delayed, because developers use this time to clear the rough spots of the game so the game is a better product when released. This is also something fairly regular in the video game world. Video games get delayed all the time, sometimes for polish, other times its just to get out of the way of a larger games like the Grand Theft Auto Series or Call of Duty. These games, publishers know will dominate the sales charts and video games aren’t cheap, so to release your game along with one of these will greatly affect sales. The reason given for the delay was to add extra polish to the game. Gamers exploded when they heard the news, Sean Murray boss of Hello games tweeted that they have been receiving death threats because of the delay.

Sean Murray is able to keep a sense of humor during everything.

This is an unfortunate part of the gamer world, like it was said earlier delays are a part of the business to produce a better product. When games are released broken or rough they are torn apart in reviews and kills the games chances of becoming a big hit, even if the game is patch soon after, the damage is already done. Mass Effect’s latest game in the series Mass Effect: Andromeda was delayed earlier this year and was pushed into 2017. Mass Effect was easily one of the most anticipated of 2016 and while we didn’t have a set release date like we had with No Man’s Sky it was still expected in 2016. Bioware the developers of Mass Effect didn’t receive the same treatment as Hello Games following the announcement of the delay. Bioware is a larger development studio owned by Electronic Arts (EA) one of the largest publishers in the world, so to try to attack them with death threats would most likely end with authorities being involved. The cyber thugs that threatened the developers at Hello Games probably took that into account seeing that Hello Games at its largest is a staff of 15.

The saddest part about this is that after announcing No Man’s Sky, developer Hello Games’ studio was flooded on Christmas eve 2013 when a river bank broke. The Studio announced that “everything in the office is pretty much lost”. Sean Murray even said he considered canceling No Man’s Sky after the flood but instead it re-motivated the team to complete the project and together they rebuild the office and continued production on the game.  At that point the game was only set for PC and at E3 2014 Sony showcased the game at their press conference after becoming the exclusive console for the game.

The team attempting to repair the studio themselves.

As a gamer I was upset that the game was delayed but when I heard it was only for a few months I felt better, because I knew the game was right around the corner and for a game as ambitious as No Man’s Sky to be released almost 3 years after being announced is amazing given that there are games that have been in development for over 10 years. For gamers to attack the developers because they are improving the game is shameful and it makes gamers look like entitled babies and overall bad people. While the majority of gamers think more like myself and are completely fine with the delay, like stated before, it is a normal thing in the world of gaming. The vocal minority are making gamers everywhere look terrible, and we a large group and we need to speak up and drown out the vocal minority of entitled brats that are too impatient to wait a few months. A delay is never a bad thing because it is giving the developers extra time to make a better game for us to enjoy. Cuphead, Mighty No. 9, Final Fantasy XV, The Last Guardian are just a few games that have been in development for a while and been delayed repeatedly. These are all highly anticipated games that gamers will be playing the day they are released so lets not attack developers or publishers for doing whats right because we all know if the game is released and it’s not perfect or has a huge day one patch that vocal minority will still be out for blood. Just because we have access to developers and the game industry people doesn’t mean we need to share our opinions with them before the game is even released. Actions like this cause unnecessary stress and genuine fear in the lives of people who’s only goal is to entertain these spoiled brats.

Alison Rapp former employee at Nintendo.

Alison Rapp was a employee at Nintendo who was attacked by people online because of a comment she made regarding to localization of Nintendo games. Even though she stated she had nothing to do with the changes, this group started attacking her through social media and the attention caused Nintendo to look for a reason to separate itself from her. After discovering that she took a second job they used that as an excuse to terminate her employment with the company. These attacks were harsh, to the point that she needed to alert the authorities and even had her family looking out for suspicious activity. This is sad and completely unnecessary, this is a person working their dream job and must now look elsewhere due to a “boob slider”, yes a “boob slider”. A feature in the game that lets the gamer control the size of the woman’s chest in the game. Once again she said she had nothing to do with it but shes a woman and part of the localization team so they zeroed in on her.

We like to think of games as an art form, a beautiful creation made by many minds with the same vision to entertain the masses. The video games industry is still very young compared to other forms of entertainment. Around 40 years of brilliant minds pushing technology forward in name of video games. In that time we saw two paddles on a screen bounce a ball back and forth and now we have games that provide unique experiences to everyone who picks up a controller. Gaming is a billion dollar industry that spans to every aspect of our lives, from dedicated home consoles like Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox to set top boxes like Apples Apple TV and Amazon’s Fire TV to our personal cell phones, video games are every where but as long as childish actions like this continue video games will be looked at as childish because that is the imagine given by the community.