Five reasons to avoid fanboyism in gaming

A new console generation is about to truly begin which means thousands of gamers worldwide will again pick sides. With the Wii U continuing to sit in the background the biggest sides appear to be PS4 and Xbox One. The battle between Microsoft and Sony in particular (and the legions of so called ‘’Xbots’’ and ‘’Sony Ponies’’) has been an ugly one at times; arguably ever since Xbox 360 and PS3 there have been loyalists ready to defend their system and it’s respective company to the end. However some of these have taken this to the extreme, trashing every related article and disliking every related YouTube video. I am of course talking about gaming fanboys; aspects of the gaming community who seem to have multiplied dramatically with the advent of the eighth generation of gaming consoles. It’s been going on for many years and to me it shouldn’t be such a big part of the games industry these days. Here’s why…

1. It can fuel aggression and ultimately can make people very bad-tempered and unlikeable: What separates the fanboy from the unbiased opinion is the violent manner in which they defend their brand; their comments are often made up of a lot of capitalised speech, exclamation marks and sometimes spelling errors. This is especially dangerous for adults as there is often no one around, nor a system in place to prevent them from posting such comments to a website. Sometimes behaviour online can grow so bad it can transfer into the real world where the person will likely get quite the rude awakening from family, friends and work alike. As long as the angry comments continue unchallenged then the person posting them may well be lead to believe that this kind of behaviour won’t be punished whether on the internet or not.

2. It is often foul-mouthed and rude trolling rather than actual justification: Fanboys turn a blind eye to the positives of the system they don’t own and when they know they can’t deliver a reasonable argument (which is very often) they instead turn to overwhelming their opponents with gratuitous swearing in an effort to win the argument. In reality however they’re only digging themselves a deeper hole for this method only serves to highlight a fanboy’s inability to offer a constructive argument to their fellow gamer.

3. The facts are often unknown or completely overlooked: I’m not sure what causes this but it seems that whenever someone’s eyes are fixed on an internet page, they sometimes become fixated on a particular comment rather than what that person was commenting on. Fanboys are no strangers to this and their first instinct is not to read through the article above to counter someone’s argument effectively; instead they click on the reply button straight away and jump into trashing the person who insulted the system they are loyal to, without any regard for their opinion or whether what they are saying may well be true. This only makes their violent arguing redundant and lacking in substance.

4. It disrespects and insults the opinions of others: Fanboyism in gaming is often not limited to which system is the best but it often spreads to other outlets, especially reviews. Everyone on Gamespot probably knows about the amount of hatred staff member Tom McShea and Carolyn Petit got and are still receiving for their reviews on Grand Theft Auto 5, Batman Arkham Origins, The Last of Us, Fable: The Journey, and Zelda: Skyward Sword. A lot of people did strongly disagree with their judgement on these games but was it really worth yelling at them through the comments section, insulting them as professional critics and labelling them as wrong and unintelligent? Apparently a large amount of fanboys thought so and the obscene comments only continue to pour in, demanding that one person’s opinion be the same as theirs and some other websites. Multiple opinions are a GOOD thing, if everyone thought the same on a particular product then there wouldn’t be any point to reviews in the first. Opinions serve as a guide but it is up to the consumer to make their own judgement. If the fanboys remembered this then there would probably be a lot less bashing of review scores on the internet.

5. It hurts the image of gamers as a whole: The press and coverage of the gaming industry has always focused on the negative aspects, blaming and stereotyping it for criminal acts, laziness and unproductivity in the world because of a minority of misguided individuals who set a bad example. Fanboys are no different, leading the media to spread the word that all gamers are juvenile, inconsiderate and foul-mouthed. Fanboyist comments and attitudes only distract from the more civil conversations on the web that could be better highlighted were it not for a small minority that wrong the overall gaming community.

People may argue that diversity is important, which it is but when it comes down to it, fanboyism takes this to substantial levels of bitterness and rage. If everyone acted with an unbiased viewpoint the contests between systems and perhaps browsing through most gaming websites would be far more civil and pleasant. Almost anyone who owns one gaming system and not the other is guilty of fanboyist comments at some point or another; the ultimate solution is to think before typing and considering the positives (and negatives) of both the systems you own and the systems you don’t. Indeed this could be applied to any brand war but it seems that gaming has become the most intensive today and in my opinion needs to stop.