Video Game Fanboys

One of the most amusing features of the game industry is the fanboys. On every forum they strut their stuff as the world experts on everything. Yet in reality they know very little, just what they glean secondhand from the internet. And they all want to grow up to be game designers, yet they have no idea just how few game designers there are in the world and how much dedication and sheer hard work it takes to get there. They don’t even know what a game designer actually does.

 

A feature of the fanboy is their irrational love for a brand of game console. An unconditional love that will suffer no criticism, no matter how fair and how slight. A blinding love that prevents them seeing any virtue in any other brand, no matter how much it is deserved. A part of this love comes from their emotional and financial investment in their console and the games for it. This represents the bulk of their income and the bulk of their leisure hours. Another part of this love comes from the fact that they haven’t discovered girls yet. When they do, and this can happen as late as their 20s or even 30s, they desert their console overnight for a new love that is even more demanding and even more expensive.

 

Another feature of fanboys is that they are keyboard warriors with unbounded aggression and disdain. This is all down to hormones and adolescence. Their bodies are telling them that they are men yet society tells them that they are still children. So they strut their stuff online, where they can’t be seen, like they are on some tribal rites of passage. Not realising how ridiculous they appear to those who are older and wiser.

There is much fun to be had from fanboy baiting. When the slightest insinuation will start a flame war imagine what a deliberate, well placed insult will do. They take the bait hook, line and sinker. In fact it is so much fun that I am sure that a good percentage of what appear to be fanboys aren’t fanboys at all. Just wind up merchants having some good sport.

But these fanboys serve an important function. They spend every penny they can on this industry. They are also the self appointed schoolyard experts who inspire many of their peers also to invest in gaming. And they are the people who create the online buzz that is so exciting and which helps to make this industry so dynamic. So don’t mock them too much.

Why do people become fanboys?

Firstly lets define what is meant by fanboy. What we are talking about is someone who has an irrational, emotional attachment to an inanimate piece of electronic equipment that makes them act in a manner that borders on the sociopathic and sometimes even crosses that border. Most gaming enthusiasts, even those who spend an inordinate amount of time and money gaming, are not fanboys. In fact fanboys probably spend a lot less time playing games than the true gaming enthusiast does. This is because, for a fanboy, the brand and the equipment are often far more important than the actual entertainment of playing games.

The vast majority of video game fanboys support the Sony brand. This makes them vehemently, sometimes aggressively anti Nintendo and anti Microsoft. This may sound pathetic to a normal balanced adult but it is true. Let’s look at some of the reasons that people become fanboys.

• Sony make sexy looking kit. Always have done, always will do. Lots of people will only buy Sony kit just because it looks so good. Nintendo kit is always just functional and the original Xbox was an ugly brick. Microsoft have learned their lesson with the 360 which is very nicely styled. It still isn’t a Sony though.
• The Sony brand dominated the market for a long time. To the point that in mass popular usage the word “Playstation” became synonymous with the word “console”. In the real world Nintendos and Xboxes are often referred to as “Playstations”. This is just like most people calling petroleum jelly “Vaseline” or vacuum cleaners “Hoovers”.
• Sony marketing baffles brains. With Playstation 2 they called the CPU the “Emotion Engine” and issued press releases on the wonderful and amazing things it would do for games. When the reality is that the Xbox was more powerful. Likewise they hyped up the Cell processor in the PS3 saying that the first PS3 down the production line would be the world’s third most powerful computer (this is just from memory so may not be exact, however the claim was outrageous) when in fact there is little difference between the capabilities of the PS3 and Xbox 360. In fact so far the vast majority of games run better on the 360.
• A lot of the great hardcore gaming franchises historically appeared first on Playstation. Mainly because for a long time there weren’t many other options for a developer. Just now the 360 has the best gaming catalogue in this generation but the fanboys haven’t woken up to this. They relive past glories and hope for future promises.
• Gamers spend a huge amount of time playing games. Sometimes 30 hours or even more per week. So the console becomes the gamer’s “partner” in his entertainment. It is his buddy in all the adventures that he has. So he becomes emotionally involved with his little friend. Even though it is mainly a moulded plastic box.
• Gamers spend a very high proportion of their disposable spend on their hobby. This is a big commitment that means making other sacrifices. So for this spend gaming owes something back. Something more than just entertainment. Something bigger and more fulfilling. Something emotional.
• Peer pressure, let’s face it, everyone is a lemming in one way or another. Look at all the yuppies in their BMWs because they have to have the badge. So it is with a certain demographic that Sony targeted with their marketing. If you were in this demographic it became more than cool to own a Playstation. It became essential for your self esteem. Because your peers would look down on you if you couldn’t walk the walk. And that meant you were left with little option but to buy one to gain the bragging rights and in turn put pressure on anyone in your peer group without a Playstation.
• It is an unfortunate male characteristic that they like to form gangs and then bully people who aren’t part of their gang. You see it in every schoolyard. And when men grow up they still do it but in other ways. At the football club, in the pub and at work. In fact anywhere the tribal genetics can break through the thin vaneer of civilisation. So it is with a Sony fanboy, he can get on the internet and join in harassing and bullying anyone and everyone who isn’t a member of his gang. In fact many fanboys enjoy this online warfare so much that they have little time left to actually play games. It is all very Lord of the Flies.
• Defending the honour of your family. To many fanboys the emotional invovement with their machine is such that it has become a member of the family in everything but name. So when something comes along that could be better in any way then it becomes a matter of honour. And the Wii and 360 are both better than the PS3 in some ways. So that means war. It is very obvious that if the competing consoles hadn’t been so good then the Sony fanboys wouldn’t have been so vehement and agressive. This is the biggest single factor in the current Sony fanboy phenomenon.

It is not just Sony Playstation that creates fanboys. Apple have the same effect (though to a lesser extent) with their computers and with their iPod/iPhone. And, quite interestingly, if you look at the reasons above many of them also apply to these Apple products.

The Balkanisation of the interweb.

The interweb is an amazing thing, open to all it puts the sum of human knowledge at your fingertips. And with blogs, forums, social networking and content aggregators it has opened up it’s amazing power to everyone. The led to a few golden years when people were largely positive and the interweb grew exponentially in richness.

These days are now over as increasingly people abuse the interweb and everything that is in it for their own narrow agenda. Now a world expert university professor can and will be shouted down by an ignorant 14 year old. And there are lots of ignorant 14 year olds in the world and they have lots of spare time on their hands. This alone has led to many valuable contributors walking away from the interweb, they don’t need the abuse.

A good example in gaming is the story aggregation and social bookmarking site N4G which has been truly excellent. In one place you could get a feel for what was happening to gaming news over the whole interweb. This made N4G a very valuable resource for keen gamers, industry professionals and journalists. It was the pulse of the games industry.

Now N4G is broken, taken over by Sony fanboys with a narrow agenda. If an article is submitted that could be considered to be in any way critical of Sony (which is quite easy, the way they have screwed up this generation) they pounce on it en masse, marking it down so it never make acceptance. Obviously any pro Sony stories are massively marked up so they get instant acceptance and rise to the top of the points scoring system. So the whole output of N4G is now massively distorted and has lost it’s value.

Not only that, the Sony fanboys also boost each other’s reputation on the social scoring system and knock the reputation of anyone who does not follow their agenda. So the whole social side is abused, distorted and now pretty much useless. To be fair to N4G, they are aware of this and are fixing it. However the fix inevitably means that the site will be less open and more restricted. A prime example of the Balkanisation of the interweb.

Then there was Fatbabies, a forum for games industry professionals. Lots of non professionals joined and ran amok, shouting down those who knew better in typical fanboy style. The site imploded and the game professionals moved to The Chaos Engine and made the site closed to access by outsiders with membership only by invitation to known industry professionals. So all the immensely valuable content created by these industry professionals can only be seen by themselves. This is typical of interweb Balkanisation reducing the availability of the good stuff to everyday users.

Also look at VGChartz, a potentially useful site with guestimates of industry activity. However it is difficult for anyone to take it seriously because on their front page there is a forum dominated by rabid, ignorant fanboys. Which makes any serious discussion impossible. So they lose credibility and are Balkanised.

And then there is Bruceongames. This site started with an open comments policy but started receiving so much vitriolic abuse from ignorant fanboys that now every comment is held until it is approved, which can be for days when I am travelling. Not only that, I send the abusive comments to Akismet, something the fanboys probably don’t know about. And Akismet progressively closes down that person’s rights on the interweb. So they are less able to be a nusiance in future. But which also means further Balkanisation.

I also run a great forum for artists, it is a friendly and supportive community for practicing artists. Yet a full 50% of people who join do so with a narrow agenda of promoting their goods or services and are mostly not even artists. This, obviously, is very damaging to the community. So I have been forced to make the rules stricter and to implement them more thoroughly in order to protect this great community. And once again it Balkanises the interweb a little more.

So every time the interweb is abused it leads to a reaction to prevent future abuse. Which means putting limits and restrictions down. The fanboys damage themselves because what they can get out of the interweb is being continuously throttled as a reaction to their stupidity.

This makes life very difficult for the online marketeer. Blogs and forums will be attacked by idiots which means that they need stricter rules and policing which reduces their quality and usefulness. Community liaison continually come up against agressive fanboys with a narrow agenda shouting down anything they don’t agree with. It is a changing reality that makes things a lot less Web 2.0 and a lot more like the we talk you listen days of old.