Hardcore gamer = someone who plays only cinematic grizzed white dude games and/or military fetishizing FPS

Casual gamer = anyone that is not a 15-25 yo male, and/or plays anything outside of the previously mentioned games, especially if those games are colorful.

So basically the gaming community is full of gatekeeping, misogyny, toxic masculinity and general chuddery. They make sure they’re the loudest voice heard when anything about games is talked about, and won’t be happy until all games a homogenous stream of bland, hyper-realistic but with a grey filter slog of mindless action with no heart or soul. And don’t you dare force them to read any dialogue or story.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      I’m old so to me MOBAs have always been “RTS, but stripped down and with a lot less map variety and basically zero story outside of excuses for why there are waifus and waifu costumes for sale.” meemaw

  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    The “ethical game journalism” days, to freeze-gamer gaters, looked like this. https://i.imgur.com/P37EDfX.jpg

    I know that’s an ad, not journalism, which is the point. They don’t want journalism. They want hype waves and to feel bazinga about what they buy without any downer talk whatsoever.

      • Retrosound [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Uhh…😅 I did…

        I thought it would basically be No Man’s Sky. Fly around to planets and do stuff. But the designer himself flamed me on USENET so I quit following it and never played.

    • Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      A lot of them didn’t even get that even the early Duke Nukem games were already mocking this shit as immature misogynist garbage. Which is how we got the dumbster fire that was DN Forever.

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Randy Pitchford has always been a piece of shit but a big part of it was not getting what made the Duke Nukem franchise funny and instead doing what he thought was funny in DNF, which was some really fucked up sadistic stuff that basically had a rimshot sound after it was presented.

  • Goblinmancer [any]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I dont understand how MOBAs becomes one of the biggest esports when gameplay consists of farming and the teamfights are full of visual bloats that unless you spend 100 hours reading the wiki including the fcking patch notes you understand absolutely nothing. Like just to give you a glance"buy physical attack because everyone does this and this guy wields a sword" but also stuff like “buy this magical attack because these dagger wielding assassin scales magic attack”. Why is the goddamn dagger considered magical?

    Like at least in stuff in counter strike the game despite some other tactics such as lineups it still overall easy to understand (plant the bomb and kill the enemies),.

    • Bloobish [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Same way that Harry Potter became a cultural icon, very fucking aggressive marketing to burn it into peoples brains everywhere they look. This isn’t a joke btw Harry Potter is an example of some of the most aggressive book/mass media marketing ever done and set a precedent for extracting as much capital as one can from a source.

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Same way that Harry Potter became a cultural icon, very fucking aggressive marketing to burn it into peoples brains everywhere they look. This isn’t a joke btw Harry Potter is an example of some of the most aggressive book/mass media marketing ever done and set a precedent for extracting as much capital as one can from a source.

        Agreed, and as another example, Game of Thrones was the Grown-Ass-Adultman version of the same kind of aggressive pervasive marketing and media exposure. I tried to watch that edgy hog slop many times, including “this part will hook you” awooga libertarian-alert hypersus clips recommended by associates, and long after I gave up and wanted to just ignore it I kept getting media blasted, everywhere, even in like doctor’s office waiting rooms, with magazines with front page WHO MURDERFUCKED THEIR WAY TO THE IRON THRONE THIS WEEK?! DAE LE RED WEDDING DAE LE SHAME hog slop smeared all over them.

        I learned way too much about that show through sheer involuntary oversaturation. It’s like it soaked through my skin. kombucha-disgust

        • Bloobish [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Yeah GoT was an interesting watch for me during college and was something that was a insta conversation starter whenever you just met someone and knew jackshit about them but were sure they at least watched GoT. It was also pretty amazing to watch it get morphed into another HBO skinemax show with similar asthetics very quickly (then again the books themselves also have some squick as well so GRR doesn’t come off completely clean).

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Epic G!mers got so locked into what Real Pro Esports Take This Seriously Please MOBAs were supposed to be that they bragged about how a foregone conclusion match could drag on for over a half hour and just invite more enraged slur flinging all the while. The “meta” of the entire thing is so bleak and joyless that when I directly asked a few enthusiasts, in person, what they actually enjoy about it, the most common answers were, I kid you not, “the winners make money” cryptocurrency and “the drama; people get so mad.so-true lea-why

  • TheCaconym [any]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I don’t care that much tbh because while the “gaming community” is indeed dogshit (personally I’ve stopped playing any sort of public multiplayer game since voice audio became the norm anyway), we also seem to be in a golden age of independent awesome video games, including specifically ones with dialogue and story. And the small sub-community of players of those are usually much saner and welcoming.

  • ennemi [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I don’t know if “post-contrarianism” is a term but I wish it was because it describes posts like this one perfectly

  • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I think the early 2000s PS2 era was the peak of modern gaming. Colourful games, decent 3d graphics. The FPS era hadn’t fully began on consoles yet.

    The less said about the late 2000s, the better. That’s when all the “gatekeeping, misogyny, toxic masculinity and general chuddery” really got kicked into overdrive. Every game got a sepia piss filter as well. And after that we got the blue filters which were somehow even worse.

    • Oh god I am in an eternal struggle against the „creatives“ and their constant use of disgusting filters which destroy the natural colors. Tho I must confess I loved the golden filter of deus ex human revolution and the grain filter of ME1 and yes even the brownish tints of dragon age, I know I am bad haha.

      • Moss [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Honestly some games benefitted from the piss filter, like Fallout New Vegas. If it were made with modern graphics I would want them to keep the piss filter instead of being vibrant like Fallou4 76

      • Shinji_Ikari [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Filters have their place tbh. Sometimes it makes a lot of sense aesthetically.

        The issue is falling back on it to the point it becomes a meme.

        • Sinister [none/use name, comrade/them]@hexbear.netB
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          1 year ago

          I am currently doing a replay of like old rpgs and I‘ve finished dragon age like a month ago, personally I didn’t find like sad at all, maybe if you like get the worst outcomes, the only thing that made me go „huh“ was when characters tell like random tales and they go „…and then they were brutally assaulted and murdered“ which often feelt like a bit edgy for edgys sake. Also like why would anyone defile the ashes? Tbf the brown filter did work for me only in like certain areas.

  • Abraxiel@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I agree with your complaints towards the apparent predominant gaming culture. But I also believe that there have never been more indie games that are contrary to that culture or just ambivalent to that culture than ever before.

  • Bloobish [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I think a big point is also the transition of everything being so damned online now (not gaming but communities and discourse) that what initially was gaming in the 90s and early 2000s (casual gamers, kid gamers, and then weird grown ass chud adults) were very much compartmentalized and separate. Nowadays with Youtube you had the fallout of gamergate create a self feeding subculture that propagates among dissatisfied mainly white young males who utilize one of their hobbies (gaming) as escapism from all the shit capital loves to do (alienation) and create an exceedingly angry stigma to project on anyone entering “their” space that does not conform. Add in how chuds screech the loudest and angry engagement clicks and comments lead to algorithm feedback and you have one of the worst video genres ever of usually a scruffy bearded angry lmayo being gobsmacked they have to look at a minority in a video game for even a single fucking second but utilizing safe dogwhistles such as “woke” and “sjw” to “debate about it” (though that second one is falling out of style).

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      The entire fake-friend “parasocial” streamer industry is fucked up. It meets a need that terminal stage capitalism established by feeding that need with the social equivalent of high fructose corn syrup. With a little fascist messaging, as a treat. heated-gamer-moment

    • The smash community has been pretty horrific over the years even by gamer standards.

      Street fighter just got a massive influx of new fgc players so I can’t really tell.

      Guilty gear community is very supportive of Bridget

      By the sheer virtue of being a mixed bag the fighting game community probably wins least toxic.

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        The smash community has been pretty horrific over the years even by gamer standards.

        There’s something about Nintendo fandoms that makes them more tribalistic and toxic on average than competing equivalents.

    • let_me_tank_her [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      since I’m a newbie and just getting into SF6, I’ve been trying to find good streamers to watch that haven’t been “cancelled” or problematic or are ragers when they lose. mainly stick with Justin Wong, Maximilian, and Japanese streamers lol.

  • FlakesBongler [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    In 1980 something, Nintendo of America made the decision to sell the Nintendo Entertainment System as a gendered toy

    This would later be considered a bad idea and roundly mocked

  • btbt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    These people should be locked in a room and forces to play nothing but 50 turn Mario Party rounds for the rest of time

  • Graphite22 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Whoever caused all this shit. Wtf dudes?? Especially cross with the people who made MMOs.

    I’ve been hearing The Wife Aggro jokes since I could remember my dad’s dial up modem. My dad made those jokes too.

    You can’t escape The Wife Aggro. It’s fucking impossible. If you call it out, you’re the bad guy. That dude is helping his The Wife!!! You don’t even have one, virgin.

    Yea there’s a reason why I can barely tolerate playing current WoW with the boys. I won’t even touch classic.

    The Wife Aggro is STILL THERE. MAKE IT STOP.

  • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I remember gaming always being seen as a “boys club” for as long as I can remember. They were thankfully pretty welcoming of me (being a brown guy and all) but girls playing games were either given the m’lady treatment or chastised for making a mistake that would get them seen as being bad at the game. Often both.

    • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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      1 year ago

      The sad part is that there have been girls and women playing and developing games since the beginning but they were mostly pushed into the background, so now they get accused of invading a so-called male space. Can’t win shrug-outta-hecks

      • ssjmarx [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        AFAIK the arcade boom was pretty popular with both men and women, since at that time it was a social hobby and kids were doing a lot of hanging out and hooking up at arcades. It wasn’t until the turn to console gaming, which was primarily an anti-social activity, that video game advertisements started really focusing in on young boys. Nintendo bears a lot of the blame here, since they defined the western market following the big crash, and they saw the NES as exclusively a boys’ toy - but it wasn’t just them of course, in particular I remember the OG XBox’s marketing doing a lot to create a “bro culture”, along with stuff like the channel G4, which I think was created intentionally as a reaction to the previously existing perception of gamers being nerdy.

        • Retrosound [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Children (overwhelmingly boys) who played vidya games were nerdy. There was a brief period during the Pac-Man era when vidya games were for everyone, and soon it went into hardcore weirdness. Games got hard and unless you had the patience to play again, and again, and again, and again…you can forget being a part of the crowd. Games with 45 levels when nobody ever got past level 4.

        • KhanCipher [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          and they saw the NES as exclusively a boys’ toy

          So there’s a bit more to this, if I remember all this correctly, Nintendo couldn’t exactly call the NES a ‘video game console’ when they started selling it in the US because the crash had pretty much made that a really bad financial move to call it as such. And also they had to sell it in the toys section to start with, which has had and still has a lot of segregation between boys and girls toys. And also considering how brick and mortar stores have acted for a long time, they likely had a bit of a hand in this in the way of demanding nintendo to pick if it was a boys toy or a girls toy or else they won’t stock it.