Looking back over the past several years, gaming communities have changed drastically. With each new generation of gamers, the complaining seems to increase as people demand more instant gratification. It is astounding to look at some of the gaming community reactions over some developer choices over the past several years, with death threats being considered perfectly common. In some gaming communities, you could have full on "player versus player arguments." This goes into the idea of entitlement. Is there an instance where this sense of entitlement can go so far as to actually be justifiable? Could entitlement be a gray area where there are instances where people should be able to speak up?
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Entitlement Being Not Okay to Do
Gamer entitlement as a whole revolves around the concept of the customer feeling that they have a right to something, broadly speaking. This idea has been widened to include game mechanics, features, and customization elements for a particular title. A lot of times these comments appear on the web as users feel that they could hide behind this veil of anonymity and hurl obscene comments at developers who, at the end of the day, are human beings like us; they are beings that have lives and duties to attend to. Part of me is grateful that I never got interested in game design due to the aspect of community outrage. Some say though that the ones that complain are the vocal minority and the majority of players have a vastly better experience. This idea of entitlement can nowadays be attributed to the average consumer who wants what they paid for.
In one way, customers pay for this item and now, with the age of cloud gaming and downloadable content, AAA titles are appearing on the market half-finished or padlocked behind a cage of paywalls. In one hand I see people who have paid good money for a title, and I do not blame them for asking for the content, but on the other hand, I abhor seeing gamers hurling obscenities over developer decisions and factors beyond consumer control. Look at Mass Effect 3 and how the game turned out. Massive fan rioting forced the developers to essentially release an alternate ending as downloadable content. The idea of bowing to public demand here just hurts inside, as the developers had to essentially shoehorn an ending built to satisfy a crowd.
Better yet, if you want this in more "relevant" terms, look at the releases of Pokémon X and Y and the Pokémon Bank/Transporter applications. Considering the games wanted everything to be on an even footing, the idea failed miserably when several territories did early releases breaking street date, and the issue of the Bank and Transporter not working for over a month in North America/Europe left Japan once again in the seat of domination on the WiFi ladders with their awesome creatures from previous adventures. You even get people complaining about the inconvenience of the procedures used to transfer the creatures around, again underlining the idea that gamers are becoming more demanding and wanting things instantly.
Looking at another case of entitlement, we need not look further than the GBATemp and MaxConsole forums and the Gateway 3DS debacle. Looking at the release of their beta firmwares, and the issues it has caused, the end result seems not worth it, as communities were in an uproar over the Gateway team not implementing certain features in time, panicking whenever the site goes down, being angry about release dates not being fulfilled, etc. I wonder whatever happened to the concept of "patience," because it certainly appears that people have no patience whatsoever. While some can argue that they paid good money and that they have some right to be able to demand excessively, on the other hand the end decision is in the hands of the developer. The way I see it now, the debacle is just a result of people's impatience and excessive demands placing unwanted pressure on a team to perform. However, can there be ways in which complaining is justified?
Can We Justify Being Entitled to Something?
From another angle, the entitlement theory can definitely be a gray area which in some cases can be completely justifiable. In one idea, entitlement may be justifiable in the instance of inequality. Game releases that are halted or ceased in one region over another for little explanation could definitely qualify here. With Nintendo, there's the idea of region locking, which many gamers have taken arms over. Seeing games getting released overseas with no hope of seeing the light of day here on the other side of the pond definitely is heartbreaking, especially since some of these games have received such fantastic input from the community. Another case is Nintendo's failure to release Rune Factory 4 to the European territories, or the release of exclusive limited edition hardware overseas. As a better example, I'll discuss the latest controversy of the Puzzle and Dragons mobile game. To sum it up, mass rioting in the community pages led to better content for North America.
Another recent example of gamer entitlement being entirely justifiable is the case of the mobile game called Puzzle and Dragons, a small but incredibly complex dungeon crawling RPG with Bejeweled elements. Three major territories have seen releases that garner lots of discussion: Japan, Europe, and North America. (I would totally suggest trying this game out if you have it in your area...) Japan is always the territory which receives the best benefits, and having played solely on the North American side, if I had known that I would be neutered with my experiences, I would have never played here. Basically, what happened recently was a huge debacle over the withholding of content, the silence of the North American branch in comparison to other branches, and the absolutely terrible treatment of the North American players in terms of features, events, and loot. For a more thorough rundown, you can go here. In the end, after essentially mass-rioting on the community Facebook page and threatening with boycotts for in-app purchases and the removal of means to access informational archives (a devastating move as the game is almost unplayable without outside help) from almost all communities, the North American branch started to treat the player base better with an event that rivals other territories. To drive the point home, on one side the North American branch does not make enough money as other branches, but on the other hand we are still customers, some of us having paid into the thousands for the content. Being treated as the red-headed stepchild and watching as we are fed table scraps while watching our big brothers eat with a gold spoon in their mouths makes for an agreeable justification, no?
I kid you not when I say that people were rioting over this cute egg-shaped creature. Any player of the game knows its immense value, and seeing other communities getting it free while North America was being withheld led to some very serious debate.
So there we have it. We have cases where being entitled is wrong, and cases where entitlement could be right. In essentiality, we have a gray area again! Personally, I find that entitlement is a double-edged sword that can be useless in getting a developer to give or perform some act that players think they have the right to, and other instances entitlement could be beneficial to put something on a more even footing in the face of inequality.
Summing this monster of a piece up, where are you guys on the idea of entitlement in gaming? What does the concept mean to you? Do you see gaming entitlement being a necessary factor or something that has no meaning? Do you have any further input to provide on? Whatever you have, feel free to comment below. Keep it clean though!