<![CDATA[Has the punchline worn thin? Emailers write in…]]>

I completely agree that the Hardcore and the desire of the games industry to appeal to them is one of the biggest problems, but I think you should drop the whole punchline shtick at the end of each post, it was nice the first couple of times, but like a good joke that gets run into the ground its kind of become silly at this point.

I think its constant usage detracts from the overall quality of the posts and the message that can be better delivered without using the line again and again.

Blizzard announcing a new TCG for Mac, Pc, and iPad called “Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft”:

Not many other people are saying this and it should be said. Loud and
clear and many times.

I think you may be right in your prior email stating that when
something gets popular it gets taken too seriously by the hardcore and
it gets ruined. I don’t think that game developers should get a pass
for this, either, they should know better, and Nintendo should have
known better (and damn well better after the Wii U and 3DS debacle).
However, I do see evidence of what you are saying.

When Mario went to 3D it lost a lot of gamers in the transition,
except for a few, were they Mario fans? Or were they also hardcore
Mario fans? Or just hardcore? Either way, when NSMB Wii came out we
really saw the vitriol come forth. When the DS and Wii took off we
really saw the vitriol pour like Niagara Falls. Why were they crying?
Because normal people were returning to gaming. People who don’t
talk about gaming all the time in forums or in real life. People who
actually HAD LIVES. When Mario went 3D the normal gamers got left
behind, leaving only the hardcore behind. Every Mario afterwards they
had to themselves…until NSMB came out. Then all of a sudden they
saw how unimportant and insignificant they really were but were in
denial about it. When Mario was no longer exclusively theirs and
would now be made and bent to the whims of these new normal gamers
(which of course failed because Shigeru Miyamoto may as well be a
hardcore fan of 3D for some damned reason) they lost it. With both
the Wii and Call of Duty the hardcore saw the power of normal gamers
as the entire industry tried (and failed) to bend themselves to these
gamers. This past generation the hardcore have seen just how
infinitesimal they truly are, and they are losing it.

It’s not just Mario, it’s Zelda, too. And Metroid. You yourself
don’t need to be reminded of the outrage your predictions and analysis
of Other M and Skyward Sword was before they even came out. To even
insinuate that Metroid Fusion wasn’t really a Metroid game but simply
Other M Lite lit a fire under the hardcore. And the reaction you got
when you started scrutinizing the developers. Tearing down the Game
God Myth really pissed them off, perhaps in the end because they
projected themselves on these developers. Surely they had to be
geniuses and could do no wrong? So how could we, surely we hardcore
can understand their vision when the rest of the world can’t?! But
then you tore the facade down. Nintendo isn’t populated with geniuses
and by proxy the hardcore’s sense of self-worth has been questioned.
Just as Miyamoto can’t accept that he has wasted years of his life
pursuing 3D, the hardcore can’t accept that they have wasted years of
their lives playing videogames.

And knowing this the hardcore are in denial everywhere, and becoming
more ravenous by the day. I was (and still am) a big fan of Resident
Evil, and used to be a fan of survival-horror games. However with the
advent of RE4, 5, and 6, the hardcore turned on the series as it
ushered in a paradigm shift that changed the genre entirely and even
brought in people who might not have played those types of games. The
most laughable complaint leveled at the series post 4 is that it is
“no longer Resident Evil.” “Really?” I wonder and everytime the
justifications are the same:

“They don’t play the same.”
(yes they do, all they did was get rid of the shitty static camera
angles and keep the camera squarely behind your back and allowed you
freely aim wherever you want).

“There’s no puzzles!”
(which is just fine as they were a relic of the series having one foot
in the archaic adventure game genre and were quite frankly ridiculous
after the third game, good riddance)

“They aren’t scary anymore!”
(HAHAHAHAHA. That’s why I was constantly on edge and freaking out
during my first playthrough of RE4, right? Also, most games aren’t
scary anymore after the first or second time you play them. Not even
precious Silent Hill can do this.)

“They ruined the story and characters!”
(yes, because the story and characters were so deep to begin with,
dear god, maybe it’s really the games being well made to activate the
imagination instead of “OMG Story and characters!”? just throwing
that out there)

“They’re action games not survival horror!”
(Which is why RE4 and 5 is one of the most replayed games I’ve played
in the last 13 years, the entire genre and RE itself was getting stale
and tired, so they combat disinterest and reinvigorated themselves
while their contemporaries–and the genre–slid into a niche-ridden
decline)

RE6 was made to be a compromise between the old games and new games,
to placate the whiny hardcore, and of course for their trouble they
still get criticized. And of course the port of RE Revelations is due
out soon which is supposed to be somewhat closer to the old games, but
I doubt the hardcore will put their money where their mouth is and
will find something to bitch about.

It’s the same thing with Call of Duty, I’ve seen. The hardcore have
infested the game and sucked all the fun out of it. Black Ops 2 was
made with the help of Major League Gamers. And who are most MLGers?
(wasn’t this the same issue with Starcraft 2 part 1?) Hardcore gamers
with no life outside of gaming. And the result is that the game’s
design wasn’t guided by what made the series successful to begin with
but “innovating” with bloated features while neglecting core issues
that have been plaguing the game for years now, making the games more
and more competitive instead about having fun, and the result is that
most normal people are walking away, leaving the series to die.

I’ve also been a fan of Shin Megami Tensei in the last few years and a
lot of people that have become fans of the series have come in through
the Persona 3 and Persona 4 games, which even though they are a
spin-off, have become the most successful games of the SMT brand,
bringing new people into the series….which the hardcore SMT fans
hate. Very. Much. Which is strange as far as JRPGs go are very much
grounded in reality in some respects. Playing some of these games can
lead me to history, to science, to the occult, to mythology, and pop
culture references to authors like Arthur Conan Doyle or Robert
Heinlein, to even discussions about philosophy in relation to the
content of the game. But rather than be welcoming the hardcore would
rather be hateful, and they wonder why the main series is now
relegated to handhelds instead of consoles today? While the spin-off
which was inviting will eventually see another console release.

These people have invested themselves so much into gaming they forgot
that there was a big world out there, and when for that brief moment
that world came crashing in on them, they couldn’t accept reality, nor
the stigma that their ilk brings, and they are lashing out. And all
you’ve done is hold up a mirror to this, as you’ve done all along, and
they can’t handle it.

Anyways, perhaps if you tire of ending each post with “the hardcore
must be destroyed!”, leave it in Latin like in your last post, at
least people might try to learn something interesting if they read
that without knowing what it mean.

I like you calling them ‘Major League Gamers’. I’ve noticed every hardcore gamer thinks they are in the NFL of video games. They love streaming their games because, hey, their gaming is the equivalent of the Superbowl, right? And everyone else is ‘Minor League’ or ‘amateur gamers’.

Readers may wonder why I keep attacking the hardcore. One reason why is that the hardcore keep creating a caste system out of video games. In their little totem poles, the hardcore are always placed on the top. Their complaining on message forums is like the equivalent of smoke signals to their gods, the game developers.

As long as you’re asking (presuming it’s a question you were actually asking for an answer to):

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that continuing to remind people that “The Hardcore must be destroyed” is as much a problem as the way you continue to remind people. A lot of times, it seems like you’re throwing in “The hardcore must be destroyed” in a way where you try to relate it back to the main subject of your post regardless of how relevant “The (videogame) hardcore” is to the topic. Even as a joke, one would start to get the impression that you blame the Hardcore for everything that’s wrong with the world and that because X is happening, clearly that’s a reason they must be destroyed.

Video games are failing? Hardcores fault, and they must be destroyed!

Europe bankrupt? Clearly, the Hardcore are to blame and they must be destroyed!

Nukes in Iran? How dare the Hardcore allow this to happen! They clearly must be destroyed!

And so on and so forth.

Again, this is only my opinion, but I think the “The Hardcore must be destroyed” wouldn’t wear nearly as thin and inclined to make one want to shout “YES! WE GET THE POINT!” if you either saved the line for for topics that directly relate to videogames, modified it so that it more directly related to the topic at hand (for example, topics about the energy industry instead ended with “The green energy nuts must be destroyed!” or such), and/or made it into a sort of signature posted at the end that wasn’t as directly related to the post itself. Sort of like what you did with “About “the hardcore must be destroyed”, or if you were to end every post with a “And remember, the Hardcore Must Be Destroyed!” or “Hardcoria delenda est!” that isn’t directly connected to the main body of the post.______________________________________

I’ll give up the punchline. At least for now.

The hardcore know who they are. Deep down, they secretly desire to be destroyed so they can have adventurous lives.