I don't get "hating" games ...

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There is one thing I hate and that is inconsiderate behavior. I absolutely am NOT virtue signalling. It is actually kind of big problem for me because I will get confrontational with a stranger and call them out if I think they are being a rude asshole and I am in a mood. I am going to get killed one of these days if I am not careful but thankfully I am not as bad as I used to be because I don't want the Mrs to hurt because of my BS.

Nothing wrong with calling out someone who's being an ass...
 
So maybe it's just an unfortunate subset of fandom in general? I see similar things with DOCTOR WHO: there are fans who love it so much they hate the 98% of it that isn't their favorite Doctor / companion / writer / director / whatever. Just enthusiasm that's run amuck?!
The goal too often is to simply 'prove' that a game is shitty and even those who like the game are shitty. To those outside rpg fandom this would be bizarre, like someone disparaging the character of someone for liking a different boardgame.
I mean, having hung out in a lot of board game forums/facebook groups/etc... yeah that happens there, too.
I remember reading a screed by a guy about how Ameritrash board games made him so angry as their popularity proved "humanity is so stupid" due to their nature as games for intellectual inferiors :trigger:

This is much broader than Fandoms in my experience, it's just a specific form of one of the most tedious aspects of some people's behaviour: "Negative identity". People who never shut up about something they don't do and are obsessives with talking about how they don't do X, the reasons X is shit, how their life is so much better without X, have pejorative slang for X-ers, etc

The internet has worsened this where such groups have echo chambers now.

X can be sports, pets, marriage, kids, travel, boardgame types, music genres, it goes on and on.
 
A lot of the online “hate” I’ve seen involving games is due to (I think) the conflation of certain games with certain mechanics, leadIng to certain (assumed) playstyles, combined with the assumption that those playstyles are indicative of a certain sociopolitical mindset which conflicts with the hater’s dogma, thereby necessitating a lengthy screed against said game, which is really nothing more than an expression of hate towards the people who like the game. It’s personal, way too often.
 
Geese 2d20 coming soon from Modiphius!

Oh well, Mutant Chronicles 2d20 has its good points. I wrote a hybridized Twilight 2000/Mutant Chronicles system to replace it.

I think 2d20 is okay for some things. Star Trek seemed to work fairly well the time we played it anyhow. Even so, the points pools really put the GM in the adversary role, which is not much to my liking.
 
I still really hate how just about ever Rolemaster or GURPS thread on tbp gets a drop in staying it's too complex and stupid.

I still remember the first time I pitched Rolemaster for the guys I was running for ten years ago: "No offense, Vik, but you're the only person I can imagine actually playing Rolemaster."

Back when I had Big Dreams of being a "second party" developer/publisher for ICE, which is how I got into Rolemaster in the first place.

For me, there are a lot of games I have a very strong distaste for, and there are a lot of fandoms I actively hate-- strangely little overlap, there-- and there are a handful of designers (do not even ask me)... but the only actual games that I actually hate are games whose existence and/or popularity means that a game that I loved, and that abomination replaced, are never coming back and are never going to be good again. The only games I hate are games that murdered games I loved, are wearing my beloved game's skin as a suit, and demanding that I tell them why I don't love "them" anymore.

Which means that in my forty year history of hating every living thing on this planet, and a substantial majority of the inanimate objects, I can only think of two games where my distaste is harsher than "wow, never playing this shit again" or, in the case of Exalted, "please stop recommending this to me, it is literally the opposite of everything I asked for". Pretty much every other game that isn't for me, I can just accept that it isn't for me and just move on. Even Exalted, and 3.X/Pathfinder and other games whose fanbases I've grown to loathe over the years.
 
For me, there are a lot of games I have a very strong distaste for, and there are a lot of fandoms I actively hate-- strangely little overlap, there--

lol, no kidding. Some of my favourite games I just can't tolerate the majority of fans I've encountered online.

Back in the day I dubbed this "The Changeling Factor"

but the only actual games that I actually hate are games whose existence and/or popularity means that a game that I loved, and that abomination replaced, are never coming back and are never going to be good again. The only games I hate are games that murdered games I loved, are wearing my beloved game's skin as a suit, and demanding that I tell them why I don't love "them" anymore.


OK, I love THAT description
 
For me, there are a lot of games I have a very strong distaste for, and there are a lot of fandoms I actively hate-- strangely little overlap, there-- and there are a handful of designers (do not even ask me)... but the only actual games that I actually hate are games whose existence and/or popularity means that a game that I loved, and that abomination replaced, are never coming back and are never going to be good again. The only games I hate are games that murdered games I loved, are wearing my beloved game's skin as a suit, and demanding that I tell them why I don't love "them" anymore.

I think that's the heart of edition wars. Personally I think GURPS Second Edition is the best model for a new edition. Cardboard covers were added to the booklets and some errata was fixed. I honestly believe GURPS would be far more popular if they'd had better ranged combat rules in third edition. I can see why they felt the original system needed to change but the change was over complicated and slowed down play.
 
I'm going to play Devil's advocate here. I'm not prone to raging against any game, or really anything, but I try to see both sides of every argument. And I can think of a few things that get under people's skin.

New editions: If you enjoy the status quo, a new edition that you do not care for can materially reduce your pool of available players. If brand loyalty is involved, it can make you feel disconnected from your community or pushed to repurchase game material you never felt needed upgrading.

Dominant games: If you have a restricted access to players and there is a dominant game in your area (usually D&D but not always) that you don't care for, I can see how a certain amount of frustration can build up. More generally there can be an emotional reaction to what is subjectively perceived as the unwarranted success of the game as this somehow violated the law s of natural justice ("why does crap game 'X' get all the attention when game 'Y' is clearly better in every respect?").

Snobbish Games: games that come across as pretentious or which have a particularly evangelical fan base tend to become a target. To make it worse, perceived pretentiousness and evangelical fans often come together; there something about the high ambitions that draws the more passionate sort of players. It also tends to draw a fair bit of hostility. I know, I love prog rock. It has not always been easy to be a prog rock fan.

In the end we all have that irritate us. I really, really dislike Harry Potter. Doesn't mean I have to act on that.
 
With my pop-psychologist hat on I think there are a number of factors at play with this phenomenon.

First, lots of western culture is built on the Socratic method of thinking so we teach our citizens to be critical of things and to focus on flaws. That can be handy for spotting issues but it is a very confrontational approach unless handled with care (which most people don’t).

Second, there is a lot of personality investment in hobbies, and people identify with the things they like. They also project onto other people, so you get “everyone who plays D&D is...” and so on. Clearly, to quote Monty Python, “we are all individuals”* so this cannot be true. Pigeon hole-ing people is very counter productive to meaningful conversation. People rapidly become insulted by the negative qualities and things go down hill from there.

Third, I would agree that social media is, in general, a really bad mechanism for having meaningful conversations. Twitter is a megaphone, and no one ever had a proper conversation using one of those... Forums are the best option we currently have available to us IMO but they do fall victim to the domineering minority unless you are very careful.

Personally I have given up on confrontational interactions online. My work is emotionally demanding enough without my hobbies turning from a help to a hindrance.

*”I’m not...”
 
I don't think I can say I've ever truly hated a game. I've disliked a few games, but usually its a certain feature in a game that I dislike. However, I do hate some changes made to games when new editions have come out. Sometimes its a mechanical change that makes no sense, or a change in book format or a change to an iconic logo (Earthdawn I'm looking at you with hate filled eyes).
 
I've hated a lot of games good and hard, but I like to think I've grown up since then. These days, I try to see the beauty even in things that are definitely not for me, and I'm sure that does wonders for my blood pressure. Even the really horrible ones at least serve the purpose of being a morbidly fascinating window into the souls of their creators... and sometimes it's fun to pick them apart and try to figure out what they were aiming for and what a better way of achieving it would have been.

ETA: And conversely, if tons of people love a game that I can't see the appeal of, that's an excellent opportunity to try to figure out what I'm missing.
 
I find that the older I get, the less I hate things. Hate requires a constant set of reminders, otherwise you forget to hate. And that takes energy.

Now there are to s of things I dont particularly care for and many more that I'm utterly indifferent to. And some, like Blades in the Dark that I think I need to see in actual play before I understand how such a seemingly regimented game works in the wild.

But hate? That's too much like hard work.
 
I find that the older I get, the less I hate things. Hate requires a constant set of reminders, otherwise you forget to hate. And that takes energy.

My problem is that I have a mental illness that means I don't have that problem. Writing my other post in this thread was enough of a reminder that I had literal, clinical-definition flashbacks about the arguments I had over Gamma World d20. It was only fifteen years ago... who's counting?
 
Hey, that's mental illness for you.

You what's crazy? Expecting everyone else to accommodate your medical hypersentivity to conflict while deliberately provoking them.
 
I find that the older I get, the less I hate things. Hate requires a constant set of reminders, otherwise you forget to hate. And that takes energy.

As I've gotten older, I've found that I have enough "real world" problems that things I used to fly into a rage about on forums are pretty much nothing to me now.
 
I'm reading a lot of vitriol-filled reviews right now, actually. What astonishes me is less that these Nostalgia Critic wannabes bother making them - I'm reading them, after all, so clearly they must have some kind of appeal - and more that they can swear like sailors and accuse the writers of every human sin, while still claiming to stand for sensitivity and good taste.

I mean, maybe I'm just old-fashioned! Maybe calling everything you don't like "bullshit" and ascribing moral defects to people who don't play games the way you want them to is the height of civilisation these days! But in the world of me, there is something fundamentally contradictive in screaming abuse to people who don't live up to your standard of civility and decorum. :sad:
 
When people say they hate fandoms for certain games I think that is often just part and parcel of the broad generalizations, tribalism and confirmation bias you see online.

There are certain some partisans for some games who can be obnoxious but I don't buy that is exclusive to a specific game, I've encountered obnoxious, dogmatic fans for the OSR, 5e, 4e, 3e, 1e, Pathfinder, WoD, Storygames, Gurps, Palladium, Shadowrun, Mythras, BRP, Pbta, FATE, etc. That any one fandom is somehow worse than another I find highly unlikely.

There are certainly some corners of the net dominated by some cultish types who believe they have found The One Game to Rule Them All and shit all over anyone who wanders in and remotely questions their groupthink by defending the 'wrong' games but I highly doubt that is reflective of the majority of gamers.

People mistake online as representative of RL when it actually skews heavily towards loudmouths and dogmaticism.

Anyone who has spent any length of time on forums for instance should recognize the life cycle of a poorly ran forum: slowly groupthink develops, often pushed by the biggest loudmouths; more moderate, nuanced viewpoints are shouted down; diversity of viewpoints decline; a forum 'culture' is established with an unspoken pecking order, dogpiles, etc.

In the final stage the forum becomes so ingrown that anyone stumbling across it finds a bunch of impentrable ranting and griping, assumptions and even lingo that only the Elect understand. New members drop way off and even the notion of needing new members is dismissed. The forum becomes a graveyard and effectively dies, often with fewer than half a dozen regular posters repeating themselves endlessly into a void.

I've seen it happen over the years on music, movie and rpg forums. It is why so many companies shut down their forums, the time and effort to maintain them for a small number of cultish types who start to think of the forum as more important than the subject of the forum just doesn't make any sense.
 
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That was probably why I never got any "bigger" as a reviewer: I never felt the need to grand stand and try to shred someone's work to entertain people.
I love a negative review that's either informative or funny. Preferably both.

A lot of RPG reviews aren't though. They're just someone going "this is shit" repeatedly.
 
People mistake online as representative of RL when it actually skews heavily towards loudmouths and dogmaticism.
This is very true in my opinion.

I have a reasonable sized friend group via the hobby. Not one of them visits any RPG forums on even an occasional basis. So at best I represent less than 10% of the role players I know in real-life.

We who come shoot the breeze about RPGs are a tiny part of the overall gamer community.
 
These days, the fan-hate that stands out the most for me is that for music. By comparison, you can almost understand hating a game; they are much more of an investment. But hatred of music tends to be directed at songs and artists that the listener has never spent any time or money on. Plus, there's almost no such thing as bad music. There's boring music, and there's music that is entirely interesting to me. But most songs you hear on the radio or whatever are competent if nothing else. It's amazing how much loathing people manage to produce for music that merely fails to engage them.

It's really more about establishing an identity. You make it absolutely clear that music X is something you would never listen to, and in so doing, establish your own standards and thus quality and insight. It's amazingly shallow and I've done it for years.
 
I dunno, music's easier to understand hatred for because it is so often inflicted on people whether they want it or not. No one's going to force you to sit down and play Conan 2d20, but it's hard to go out in public without hearing music from other people's cars, on the overhead at whatever store you're in, or just some jackass walking around playing music on his phone speakers instead of using earbuds like a civilized person.
And there's this weird thing that music is accepted as a default based on popularity, regardless of quality or content. So yeah, I hate a lot of music.
 
lol, no kidding. Some of my favourite games I just can't tolerate the majority of fans I've encountered online.
I absolutely get this. More than a few times I've wanted to rap about something I enjoy only to find the online fans are jackasses I'd rather not be associated with.

People mistake online as representative of RL when it actually skews heavily towards loudmouths and dogmaticism.
That was a good thoughtful post but this line stuck with me in particular because I constantly have to remind myself of this.
 
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