Infographics – Right To Complain?

One of my pet peeves in the gaming world, and indeed, the world in general, is people who think that the world owes them a favour. People with a huge sense of entitlement, people who think they deserve the moon on a stick… and they deserve it NOW.

This came to the forefront recently in the gaming world, with the whole Mass Effect 3 ending thing. Some gamers are so disappointed by the ending of the trilogy that they are demanding a different one. This baffles me. Why should Bioware listen to these people? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying games companies should ignore their audiences, but it appears that some people think because they bought one copy of the game they are entitled to choose exactly how the narrative ends. This is like buying one share in Apple and then being disappointed when Tim Cook doesn’t pop around to your house to ask you what exactly you want to see in the new iPhone.

Of course, I haven’t actually played Mass Effect 3. I’ve been busying myself with other RPGs ‒ not to mention assault rifles, carbines, light machine guns and handguns. I’ve been playing Battlefield 3 non-stop since it came out, and I’ve also seen this sense of entitlement coming out over at the Battlefield blog. Battlefield 3 is in the process of having a large patch applied to it, to even out some irritating emergent gameplay behaviour (snipers riding UAVs to the top of buildings) and a few unfortunately unbalanced weapons (the USAS-12 shotgun, or the “portable apocalypse weapon” as I call it). The patch has been a while coming, but let’s not forget, this is not paid for DLC. The developers could have said, no, sod it, that’ll do. The game is perfectly playable, but ironing out these niggles will make it better.

When DICE announced that the patch was coming out on PS3 earlier than on both 360 and PC, there was uproar. From the comments on their blog you’d think that they had announced that they were going to come to every single non-PS3 player’s house to shit through their letterbox. Reading the comments depressed me. I even saw someone refer to DICE as “stealing their game”, which I suppose at least shows a fantastic emotional attachment to the experience that DICE have actually created.

The sense of entitlement was incredibly annoying to me, until I was suddenly struck by a thought. Maybe these people have more right to complain than ever before, and I can tell you why in two words: Online pass. For most games multiplayer is almost a bonus add-on that comes free with the main campaign, but with a game like Battlefield, does the fact that you paid for an online pass suddenly mean that you have the right to expect improvements in the online mode? Or is the argument that you are only paying for the servers, and if you end up stuck with the game as it was when it launched, tough luck?

Personally, I’ll take any add ons I can get, and keep on squeezing Battlefield 3 for entertainment hours like a huge, juicy, gaming lemon. I’m nearly 8,000 kills and 260 hours down, and may there be many, many more to come.