This comes up a lot, unfortunately, people online whining and complaining that a game isn’t what they wanted, therefore they demand that the producers recreate the game in their personal image, otherwise it’s a horrible game! Or, they insist that modders make the game something new, for free, of course, because they really, really wanted something different.
Stop being an idiot! If it’s not the game that you want to play, go play something else!
I’ve seen this a lot with Fallout 4 over the years, since it has an active modding community. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people whine that they don’t want to play a post-apocalyptic game, they want to play in the middle of the American Civil War or something like that. Well too bad! Yes, mods can do a lot of things, but you’re asking for an awful lot! Or the people who want the entire nature of the game changed. Sorry, you’re asking a bit much to alter the fundamental nature of the game into something it was never intended to be. If this isn’t the game for you, embrace it and go elsewhere!
Today, I saw someone whining about Cities:Skylines. It’s apparently not enough like SimCity. Well, if that’s what you want to play, go play that! This isn’t a game that holds your hand. It’s not a game that tells you what buttons to push. It’s not a game with endless challenges designed to keep the short-attention span theater interested. It’s a hard game with a lot of moving parts that you have to keep yourself invested in. If that’s not what you want, you’re in the wrong place!
Or, there’s State of Decay 2. There, the developers are still actively involved and making changes to the game while they’re working on the sequel. People keep demanding things, often contradictory things, because they don’t like the game as is. Well too bad! It’s one thing to fix bugs, it’s nice if they add some new content, but arguing over how fast the enemies move or what they look like, screw you.
This is really where I think the modern endless patching has gone awry. Back in the old days, you got the game that you were getting. If you don’t like it, don’t play it. It stopped developers from releasing a buggy piece of crap that gets fixed with a day one patch that’s often 10x the size of the original game. It rewards developer laziness and accelerated release schedules. It also allows the endless whining of immature players who think they now get to dictate how the game actually plays.
They do not.
People need to figure out the actual dynamics here. You are the consumer. You decide what to spend your money and your time on. The developers make a product, you choose whether or not you want to consume it. That’s it. You are not a partner. You are a wallet. In an ideal world, the customers and the producers are on the same page but they both have different goals. Customers want to have fun. Producers want to make money. Customers don’t get to be producers because they have access to the dev team. That’s just foolish.
Can we just stop? Fix your bugs and make the changes that the devs want to make, that’s fine, but stop listening to the endless whining of the entitled fans. You don’t have to do what they want! If they don’t like it, they can go elsewhere. In fact, I think it would be better off if they would, so the people who are enjoying the game can enjoy it in peace. Wouldn’t that be nice?
