Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

Is it just me or are the reactions to anything in video games people dislike becoming more and more concerning as time goes on? Seems to be some huge overreactions, which are more and more common. I'm finding it quite disturbing.
The latest two things being Concord existing and people apparently glad the developers will lose their jobs over it, suggesting it's well deserved. Now the price point of this mid generation update for the ps5 pro has people behaving in a very peculiar manner. I get this feeling of there being constant anger and entitlement, it's really sad to see. I guess the old saying of, "Don't read the comments," is as wise as ever.

@LieutenantFatman I actually agree with you, and think that’s a valid take wholeheartedly. Let it be known that both criticism and sarcasm should be welcomed, but I absolutely do feel there’s some line being crossed when there’s so much collective vitriol that you can’t say something positive.
No, scratch that, you can’t even say something neutral. You MUST be negative. It’s quite toxic if I do say myself. Obviously each one of us is entitled to a view, but being entitled to an opinion shouldn’t be a license for toxicity. But that’s just my two pennies.

@LieutenantFatman True. Although I feel like it’s not necessarily isolated to video game fandom. It’s arguably worse in our gaming habitat with the console wars and overall tribal mentality, but I’m seeing the phenomenon throughout society. Perhaps I’m jaded because we are in the throes of an election season over here in the States and good grief - overreactions, constant anger and entitlement, and just general promotion of negativity is par for the course.

The easy target to blame is social media, but I don’t know. Societally there’s a shift toward near constant pessimism. Although, I do think life is less toxic in the offline world. I saw something recently about how as humans we are much more civil and able to reach common ground if we simply get together and ‘break bread’ face-to-face, as it were. That didn’t seem to apply last night through! 😅 Lots of name calling back and forth at the debate. It wasn’t long ago that debates were civil and opponents would frequently agree on some topics. Seems that never happens anymore. Not to get political, but I’m just speaking widely as a societal norm and we see it with gaming too.

@Yousef-
Thanks, I appreciate it. And I very much agree, if you risk going against the angry consensus in these comment sections, be prepared for people being determined to ruin your day. People politely disagreeing but respecting each other's point of view seems to be quite an alien concept now.

@Th3solution
Yes, I think the Internet and being able to speak anonymously does change behaviours, often for the worse. And as a society we come to use it more and more.

But yes, politics and religion are those two topics which are always very risky to bring up with friends and family, when opinions / beliefs don't tend to match. Just wondering how close behind video games will end up being, haha.

@LieutenantFatman 😂
Things not to discuss at family dinner:
1. Politics
2. Religion
3. Anything related to the video games industry

@Th3solution tbf 1 and 3 always overlap when talking to a certain crowd.

@Th3solution “dos damn bibeo games are ruining our kids!”

@Th3solution I would struggle to talk about number 3 with my family. Only a couple of gamers, and that is not including my dad who plays the same handeful of games repeatedly, so has the same old stories to tell lol.

@LieutenantFatman A big of a late response, but I definitely agree with that too.

I mean, I can understand all the frustration and disappointment with the PS5 Pro being priced a bit too much and I think that criticism and negative opinions are allowed, it’s fine to express how unsatisfied you are with something, but I have seen some comments on other sites and some people do seem to be adding a lot of exaggeration and overreactions to their responses, and not allowing other opinions in favor of the Pro to be allowed. I feel like if someone said online how happy they are with the Pro and that they were going to buy it, someone else could just come in and say trash about the other person and how wrong they are for liking it. That’s pretty much what happens when there is a super negative reception to something, arguably it’s worse with video games.

A lot of gaming communities online can be super negative and unwelcoming, they might allow only one opinion on one thing and not allow any others, or just get extremely offended over that; an echo chamber essentially. Luckily the games I am into don’t have big communities online, but the really popular ones are the ones that tend to have really bad and negative followings and a lot of arguing like “this game is better than that!” or “this game is the best in the series and all the other games are garbage. You can state a small unpopular opinion talking negatively or positively on something and then someone just comes in and insults you for daring to have a different opinion than everyone else. It stinks that is what most people just do and it just ruins gaming for everyone. I am sure console wars has something to do with that as well, and just so many people trying to troll and tick each other off for no good reason.

@Pastellioli
Very true. I think it's far too easy to find echo chambers that will back any idea, no matter how terrifying or awful it might be.

@LieutenantFatman Echo chambers are way too common with almost anything online unfortunately…

An affront to several cultures at once, and also my arteries. Pizza supper and curry sauce.

@nessisonett that looks insanely delicious. Without the pizza, this would resemble an extremely common dish in kuwait.
Real question is how do you eat it? I presume you start with the fries and work your way down?

@Yousef- Depends on the person, I’d eat the chips off the top because it gets covered in the pizza cheese and then you eat the pizza below it. Just be thankful it’s not a pizza crunch, that’s when the whole thing is deep fried again with batter surrounding it, which may prove fatal. James McAvoy did a thing recently where he compared Scottish and English food which was pretty funny!

@nessisonett the pizza you’re describing sounds vile and I don’t mean that as an insult, though it’s probably an insult for my arteries. Still, the chips look great. Also How was the curry sauce?
Also haven’t seen much of James in a while. Appreciate the share.

Does anyone else ever feel like, as they get older, if they have been playing for a long time, they are losing their energy for huge open world rpg type games? Or for games where the minutiae and admin for getting the platinum is OTT. I personally feel, after completing DeS and RotR back to back recently that throwing myself head-first into ER and playing it all the time is a bit much, when I, like so many of us, have other things to do outside of gaming, responsibilties and so forth.

So, yeah, do you, like myself, feel that there is a point when you will eventually stop gaming and do other things? I know some of you have already stated with regard to a similar post I made before that you don't see any end to gaming being a part of your life, outside of circumstances changing and response-times potentially slowing down and whatnot, and if you do decide to move on and either pick up a new hobby or interest or perhaps simply stick with your remaining hobbies and interests, what will you fill that former gaming time with?

I, myself, am interested in exploring Black and Abstract European artists a bit more, as I have always been interested in them ,but not devoted too much time to the study of them.

Idk I just feel like after you have completed a long/big game

• in my case the Souls games, which are big to me at this age, to be fair there is no way I could complete a game like The Witcher 3 again (I know ER is a big game too, but there are ways of streamlining the experience) in the time that I completed it - I literally had to play for about eight hours a day towards the end of my playtime, just to get through it in a few months,that it has taken something out of you, like a part of your natural core energy has been permanently expended on the effort you put into completing the game, and you can never get it back.

Maybe I should just break it down into playing sparingly, or try to relax more when I play, or play more chill games in general.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN it sounds (to me at least) you definitely need to cut down on the playing time and also start mixing up the type of games you play. Playing a game for '8hrs a day just to get through it' - who is putting this deadline on you? What's the rush?
I'm lucky if I can get 2 hrs a day of an evening to game, so a larger game can take weeks or months but I look forward to it every day as its what I do to relax. And it's always wise to play different types of games to keep things fresh, 3 big open worlders in a row doesn't sound fun.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN hey friend. Good to see you again. And pretty interesting convo piece you’re opening up with.

Yeah, I think you’re likely worn out from games. That’s completely normal. You don’t have to push yourself and play when you don’t feel like it. A lot of gaming exhaustion has an extremely simple solution I’ll lay out in a minute.

Basically this is all Normal and you don’t have to be so dedicative about it. In fact, it might make you go even slower. Think about spaced repetition, all of us see it as a learning technique, but it is something you can repurpose for your hobbies. Proper breaks without pressuring yourself is actually more likely to keep you engaged in your hobby rather than religious dedication to it.

Yeah, having other interests is not just healthy, but also expands your horizons and is frankly recommended. I also think you shouldn’t feel bad if your life doesn’t revolve around gaming. Fatigue can consume us and make us contemplate permanent solutions to temporary problems, it blinds us from the long term. It blinds us from the realization we all later have that we just needed a time-out to explore other stuff.

So I’m really happy that you, in a sense, have already subconsciously came to this conclusion but may not have realized it yet. I hope you enjoy your other hobbies! Gaming is gonna be here waiting for you whenever you need to return to it!

@Yousef- Our chip shop curry sauce is an interesting thing. There’s probably some sort of very long story involving Empire and the wave of immigration in the 50s. It’s actually very tasty but not really a curry sauce as you’d know it, sort of just a cornflour-thickened sauce with curry powder and assorted flavourings. We get a similar sauce in our Chinese takeaways too, it’s morphed into its own thing by now. I think that’s part of why I think our takeaway food is modern Britain at its best, we have Italian chip shops that serve curry sauces and kebabs, we have kebab shops that sell pizzas, we have Chinese takeaways that serve literally anything known to man 😂