Is gaming culture going to shit?

So I was checking some indiegames and I found one called "Five Nights at Freddy's". In the sea of shitty creepypasta games that formed after slenderman its actually an ok game, all things considered.

Then I went to youtube to see some videos of actual gameplay: all I got was an assload of mediocre vloggers and their reaction videos. There were only 3 or 4 that were actual gameplay videos and none had more than 1000 views. The reaction ones were in the tens and hundreds of thousands, despite being only a day or two old.

TBH one of the things that is really getting me turned off about gaming these days is where the culture is going. Sure it was never a serious place, it was always a bit childish and dumb, but this is different. These assholes vloggers dont do this for free, in fact dont be surprised if they end up making more money than the developer of FNF. That dumbass swedish guy proved you can make some serious cash just by screaming like a bitch and editing it a bit.

And when theres money to be made theres an endless supply of assholes willing to ruin it for everybody if that means getting paid, which also means these assholes are here to stay. What sucks is that the popularity of these idiots only means the majority of gamers actually likes this, and that is just depressing. If it were a fad it should've died a while ago.

 

The whole "social media"-era brought out the worst of people, it's just an big example that the majority of people can't handle a platform which has an enormous reach. So I don't think the gaming culture is going to shit per se, however "back in the day" with limited internet it the whole culture surrounding games was different more 'friendly' and interger imo.

 

Doubt that most of the people who enjoy watching that are gamers. Vloggers have been very successful before they were using games. They are awful I don't understand the appeal (unless they are mostly informative). The randumb and intentionally bad gimmicks alway brings huge numbers to anything. Want to make cartoons but put little effort into it? Draw bad and make sure have have obscenities blurted out. People have made a career out of it without having to change their formula.To be honest I enjoy some of it myself, but I always acknowledge it is shit and prefer content with real effort.

 

Popular gaming culture by and large has been in the dumps for a while.

Popular game journalism is a huge circle jerk. Good critical writers exist, but it can be a chore to seek them out. It's hard to stand out, too.

A few sub genres of games have good communities, like the FGC - but fighters are a niche these days. I looked for something similar for FPS games to see what I could do to get better, but that was a mistake.

Even the 2nd hand market for older games is full of flippers. I'm not saying they should be giving away games to people who want them as a charity, but prices are inflated to ridiculous levels. Too many people, both buyers and sellers, don't know the real value of stuff...

The scenes on the periphery of gaming are pretty good though, like doujin, chiptunes and modding.

 

vloggers that do nothing but bitch are the most annoying ass holes on the net. What's worse as pointed out above, many of them get thosands of hits and make a nice sum of cash from it. It really pisses me off. They don't do any prep' or work on their videos apart from some simple editing if anything.

 

People watching dont want to learn anything, they want to be entertained. They think that they are above things like "Reality TV" or other popular TV shows, but they essentially watch the Youtube equivalent.

 

Vloggers and Let's Players all deserve to be put on an island with no communication where they can't bother humanity anymore. I cannot even decide which one is worse. Pewdiepie is one of the most idiotic childs, but Tobuscus is almost worse. He even runs a sub-show where he just walks around and tells people what comes to his mind, such as "Why are apples green? I don't know... maybe they are Flowers. Isn't that funny? I'm so funny. I'm hilarious... oh lol"... and this paraphrase is not even a slight exaggeration, it's exactly the kind of stuff he says.

It's depressing to say the least when, at the same time, really high quality YouTube channels (I don't mean other Let's Players, they're all bad!) starve and have to run on low or no funds at all despite artistic excellence.

 

That is why Assembler quit, although he had many more views than people covering similar content. I miss his uploads fuck.

 

Sometimes I get this vague feeling this, all this tolerated stupidity in our society this race to see who can lower the bar even further is going to come back and bite us in the ass, but then I think "nah, it wont get that bad"

Then I remember global warming and the people saying its not happening "cuz there still snow brah!" and I go "oh shit......."

 

All let's play & unboxing videos should result in a warning following a ban. They are both useless as far as I'm concerned. I think people sometimes watch these videos as if these people are their friends, someone talking to them about the things they like. This was readily apparent when I watched an AVGN let's play where he is out of character and the comments were just awkward at times. I only watched this particular video since it was an obscure game I liked, but it still sucked. His planned out AVGN videos are great. Watching him sit around as a person playing video games is not interesting to me, not that I don't see how it is to others.
They are still better than let's plays that have people just talking gibberish the whole time & being incredibly unfunny, I guess.

 

I really hate all of the forced reactions and faked emotions of lets players. I guess all you can do is ignore them but they're probably here to stay

 

You are being too heavy handed here. I think LPs are retarded as well, but not the ones that are guides (minimal commentary is ok) or showing off part of a game. Unbelievable that all LPs have become easy money machines.

 

Not too heavy handed, you are just misunderstanding me. I don't mind videos showing off game play or ones that show the whole game from point A to B, even with minimum commentary that is decent (none is preferred,) I dislike the videos with gibberish or ones that are just horrible in their speech, presentation & humor, yet they still amass a ton of views/followers.

 

cant argue with that

 

Sorry, but there is nothing innately wrong with Let's Plays/Full Plays that have comedic commentary. Sure, there are some really bad ones out there, but you have that with everything. I also find AVGN non-Nerd videos somewhat boring, but if you watch something like Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter or Game Grumps, they can be highly entertaining.

 

I was looking at videos for Sunset Overdrive since I want the bundle for the white XBOX ONE. The comments were just more annoying to read than the video was to watch.

The audience somewhat destroy my experience on YouTube lately, people can be such cunts on that site, it's starting to me think it's worse than HongFire, and 4chan rolled together. Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind watching gameplay but just as the OP mentioned many of them are just stupid reaction videos, the worst ones have to be for the horror genre. They overreact and scream for 10 minutes for no reason.

 

A good chunk of the lets play community is shit, with few exceptions like PBG's hardcore series. But that also has proper editing, instead of the 90% fumbeling around with little to no editing most lets plays have. Not to mention that a most let players and their following are almost cult like.

 

This shit is just the new fad to replace [insert synonym for "angry" here] game reviewers, it'll run out of steam eventually just like they did.

 

I really hope so, the whole thing is just annoying. I only find LP videos to be useful with the sound off so I can see some actual gameplay for a minute instead of trailers.

 

I don't know if you guys are aware of the "Two Best Friends Play" videos on Machinima that make their way to YouTube, but I find them pretty obnoxious. Two of my friends watch them, and that's pretty much all they watch. All I ever hear is yelling, swearing and miniscule nuggets of what I would classify as decent information. I really don't get why they're popular. Also if they are playing through an entire video game, isn't that taking away the livelihood of the game publishers/developers? I don't remember the specific court case but showing all of something for free that others should be paying for is technically illegal. Just strikes me as odd that people claiming to love video games are helping people AWAY from playing video games and bringing them to just watching.