I’ve got just so many things in mind to rant about – that I’m not sure if I have the determination to finish writing all of them down. I’ll try and do this in an orderly fashion, but my thoughts are just all over the place now, so please bear with me.
Why Zynga shouldn’t even be in The Escapist’s 2010 March Mayhem
Why should Zynga be in? No wait, they ARE in the list. So the question should be, why are they even listed among the big game developers like Blizzard, Nintendo, Square-Enix, Rockstar, Bioware, etc? This is just a company who create mainly Facebook FLASH games, for crying out loud. And just because they kept posting links on their page, asking their FB players to go vote for them in the competition, they are winning every round. And now, they are pitted against Square Enix, and they are winning Square Enix too!
For those who didn’t know Square Enix, Final Fantasy is created by them, dammit!
All the supercasual FB players simply followed the link, allowed The Escapist application to access their Facebook profile, and viola they are allowed to vote and they voted for Zynga when they don’t even know what the hell Square Enix is! I’m not a fan of Square Enix, but even I’m starting (ok, I am currently) to get upset by this. Sure, Blizzard posted a link on their walls, asking their fans to support them. But that’s it – just one link, one post. Zynga? They post again and again on their wall whenever their competitor was edging them out in the polls. Oh gawd. As of now when I’m posting this, Zynga had edged out Square for more than 1,100 votes. If you actually add up all the votes in other division matchups, you can clearly see that the main bunch of Escapists had united on one front and voted for Square (even though a lot of them admitted in the thread that they didn’t like SE at all) just to bump Zynga off.
But nooooo, the Facebook Farmville sheep just came along, click “vote”, then went back to their Farmville. What can the serious gaming community do to stop this onslaught of supercasual FB-games-sheep? Nothing.
It’s really very upsetting to see legendary developers like Square Enix losing out to the likes of Zynga. Argh!
Blizzard Vs Nintendo
Sorry Nintendo, I know you created a lot of classics (Zelda, Mario, Pokemon, etc), but those were classics. I don’t even need to give an explanation on what happened to their Wii, and how Nintendo lost half of their loyal, hardcore fanbase due to that. Obviously, Blizzard’s the choice for me. I sure as hell haven’t played any Nintendo games before, but then again, I wasn’t interested to do so.
Lots of people are arguing about this. Childhood nostalgia versus the current company whose games are sucking their life and money out of them. Childhood nostalgia is something that’s nice. But hey, this is the 2010 March Mayhem. It’s supposed to be who’s the better games developer currently, and not who had the most classic game ever. Blizzard games have always been one of the top, when they decide to release one. And the reason they are taking so long to release a particular game is because they want to make sure that the game they release is what they want to release. These people are truly gamers, trying to make games that we, fellow gamers, will love. People voted down Blizzard because the “last patch never went past the loading screen for WoW” and “Where’s my SC2 beta key?!” – I have this to say to you: Too bad life sucks for you.
And then I see another one voting for Nintendo because “they’ve got better product support”. Say… what? Excuse me, how many consoles does Nintendo has? And you can get them all by buying from the shelves. The thing is, Nintendo consoles are all the same. If something goes wrong, obviously it’s easy to fix. Can’t fix? Buy a new one or exchange your faulty unit for a new one. It’s not that easy for a company like Blizzard who make PC games. How many of us actually has a DIY PC? How the hell can you expect the tech guys in Blizzard to know exactly what went wrong with your game when there’s no standard “configuration” for a PC?
If we are talking about WoW, sure a lot of people ran into problems during / after a patch day. Hell, I’m writing this now instead of playing WoW is also because I couldn’t get into WoW due to some problems with my PC. So? At least I’m not whining that I can’t get in, or saying that Blizzard guys are not doing their job. People complained that the forum tech guys did not come up with a solution. Oh please, the forum tech guys are just PR people who have a little bit of tech knowledge here and there, and a list of model answers that they could provide for the paid subscribers, that’s all. It’s the programmers that are working their asses off, trying to find out where the problems lie and to churn out a hotfix for the rest of us who couldn’t get into the game. A thread that I post in the official WoW (EU) Tech Support forum got pushed to the second page in a mere 15 minutes! Imagine the forum guys trying to answer those threads one by one… I’d definitely be exhausted by the 20th thread.
For those who were so impatient and blasting the forum techies that they were slow and non-responsive, I have this to say to you: You paying USD15 a month for the game doesn’t give you exclusive rights to have your problem solved. Everyone paid the same amount of money, so let’s just wait for your turn yeah? If you can’t wait… too bad. You still can’t play the game. Hur hur.
Okay technically this isn’t quite about Blizzard vs Nintendo, but at least I’ve got my rant on whiny Blizzard players out.
*Phew*
I was on the verge of commenting of the sad stage of the struggling little games industry here in Singapore, before I realised that I don’t have much steam to go on about it anymore. I’ve said my piece in a certain forum, and unless YOU are my friend and YOU want to know all about it, I’ll keep my mouth shut on this topic on my blog. If you really want to know, you can SMS / call / email / MSN me about it.
But really, if you are truly that interested, you should have just gone ahead with your passion and interest, and not linger around, trying to get opinions and reassuring yourself about your decision. Only those with the passion for making games can succeed in this industry. Those who actually asked me about “career progression in the local gaming industry” and “entry level pay” can just go take a dip in the swimming pool, because I’m NOT going to entertain you and your questions. Obviously you are NOT that passionate about this industry, so don’t even bother to try coming in. If you do, I can have a bet with you that you’ll leave the games industry in five to ten years time (assuming you can last that long), all disillusioned and looking for another career with a higher pay and better recognition elsewhere.
Yes! Finally got these out from my system. Feel so much better now… :D