It’s time for another Source Gaming Roundtable and in this edition we have been asked by our Ultimate Patreon MR. JBRPG to give our thoughts on Fandom Entitlement in video games. Its a delicate topic for sure but what MR. JBRPG wanted us to discuss specifically was how fandoms can sometimes have fairly unrealistic expectations on the things they love and when it’s not met it can completely blind their view on a video game, regardless of how good it might be. Get ready for a bit of a soapbox article this time.
First off, I’m just going to start with a very big disclaimer that A) corporations are by design more powerful than people and B) often poor at producing art that accounts for disability, marginalization, identity, and inclusiveness. It is more than fair for fans to want games that respect their identities, account for their impairments or needs, and stay accessible in an incredibly volatile industry. Wanting Nintendo to have more nonbinary characters or make their lost games available or provide disability support is not the same as the phenomenon I’m about to shellack.
Now onto the complaining.
We writers for this Nintendo and Smash Bros. focused website are in a somewhat “advantageous” position for this topic, because Nintendo fandom—and in particular, the fandoms for Pokémon and Super Smash Bros.— can be awful. Bone chillingly, blood boilingly awful. I’ve seen a lot: death threats over controversial rosters, paranoia that the game might cater too much to other fans who have different interests, and at least one Smashboards user who used phrenology to determine Ganondorf’s “real world” ethnic makeup. And a lot of it does involve animosity over games that do not actively cater to their personal whims, or which have to abide by realities of game development that we’re often not faced with as players or fans. Everyone probably feels at least a bit strongly about the “ideal” face of their favorite things, but we’d be willfully blind to ignore the fans who expect their franchises to be a certain way and nothing else. And the degree to which they take it out on programmers, developers, and other fans.
One of the things I mentioned sticks out to me, though. The paranoia, not the deep and unabiding insanity of someone examining an official 3D render with long-discredited racist pseudoscience to claim that this character from the fictional fantasy kingdom of Hyrule is half-Indian, a quarter Jewish, and a quarter German. Paranoia is at the heart of toxic fandoms, because toxic fandoms involve a sense of ownership that goes beyond the genuine shared ownership of fiction. Creators create, audiences interpret and potentially influence, and that’s normal. But the worst fans who participate in this don’t care that this is a collective experience that everyone chooses to opt into. The worst fans are constantly worrying that creators will be supporting fans with other interests, or even serious needs, because that might mean that a sequel or a chapter won’t be made for them. It doesn’t help that the gaming industry goes out of its way to accommodate its most dug-in fans, whether through ultimately innocuous references or through garbage like that horrible Xbox fridge. It’s also specific to some series; Smash, for instance, is made by a guy who’s obsessed with giving as many people and as many fans as much as he can, to the point where the game often reads like it was made in part “for you.” I have an abundance of respect for Sakurai, but that direction, noble as it is, does create a feedback loop.
Of course, this reaches out from the parasocial relationships of these fans and their creators to these fans and other fans. It’s why you get gatekeeping and shipping rivalries and why, at my heart, I’ll never be able to fully respect the Smash competitive community. But let’s keep it focused on the question: fans and series. To an extent I think it would behoove studios and publishers to try to take some control on this discourse, even if they’re rarely the ones doing the harassment. Be open about the limits of their productions, not give too much attention to the loudest fans, but still take criticism and be explicit when you’re taking it. But we as fans also have our own duty to make these spaces less hostile, to not be mean and antagonistic and to call out this kind of toxicity. The culture or weird and toxic fan entitlement is the product of social changes far beyond any company or fan or fan community could ever be, but no matter where on the “creator / fan” spectrum we fall, we can try to make these spaces better.
As Wolfman stated above, as a very Nintendo-focused website we’ve seen it all from the various fandoms across the Nintendoverse. The big IPs like The Legend of Zelda and Pokémon have passionate fandoms that sometimes despise any form of change. The one that sticks out to me though is the Paper Mario fandom, which is currently back in spotlight thanks to the upcoming – and highly relevant to the discourse – Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door HD.
Now I’m going to start this by outright stating that the original Thousand-Year Door is the best Paper Mario game. And the fact that I have to state this upfront is a result of how fandom entitlement can make some passionate fans lash out at even the slightest negativity towards their favourite games, and worse any positivity towards the games in the series that they don’t like. Becasue I like Paper Mario Colour Splash, and Paper Mario: The Origami King and I’m not going to sit here and pretend for one second that they are bad games. Heck, even Sticker Star isn’t a bad game – it’s just incredibly mid and doesn’t reach the high-standards the rest of the series has set. Of course, just saying this would normally make some entitled fans be like ‘You like the newer Paper Mario game so you must hate the older ones?’. Literally acting on the definition of the ‘You like pancakes? You must hate waffles.’ meme.
And its incredibly silly because when fans act this way they not only make themselves and their own fandoms look bad but by closing off their mind they also miss out on some great games. I’m convinced that anyone who says that the last two Paper Mario games are bad have either never played them (and giving the poor sales of Colour Splash that’s almost certainly true) or went into it with the expectation of hating it and so never tried to give it any benefits. And I’m not saying fans should just shut-up and eat what Nintendo’s providing. I think it’s perfectly valid to be upset if the series has pivoted away from what you originally enjoyed it for, but just because its different doesn’t mean its bad, and I think that’s the crux of what I’m arguing here.
Fans are free to voice their discontent with the direction of Paper Mario on social media, as fans we’re allowed to let Nintendo know how we feel about the choices they’ve taken the series, but actively arguing down to or making fun of the part of the community that does like these games is just childish, and acting like there is nothing good in these games shows an embarrising lack of awareness.
This topic’s a strange one for me, but I can at least think of one case where a fanbase reacted strongly to something I didn’t think was justified. Pokémon casts the widest net of any franchise I can think of, so it’s only natural there’d be a lot of discourse over which games are best. Too bad it’s gotten to the point where some feel the need to excessively smear other installments, and the rest take defending their titles of choice way too seriously. As an aside, people have recently started claiming that the fandom’s favorite entry at any point is simply the one most people grew up with, but I think that’s a pretty reductive way of looking at things. Sure, there’s been an uptick in praise for the divisive X & Y as they’ve aged, but that doesn’t subtract from the amount of fans other games have.
Speaking of the Kalos region, that brings me to my main point: fans are already expecting a lot from the recently announced Legends: Z-A. Don’t get me wrong, I have high hopes for it, but I think anticipating a by-the-numbers evolution of Legends: Arceus or Scarlet & Violet would be a mistake. Namely, people weren’t happy to hear that Lumiose City will be the game’s only backdrop. This might be a far cry from the aforementioned Switch installments’ region-spanning overworlds, but it’s hardly enough information to start criticizing the decision. Personally, I think a mainline entry doing something so wildly different could only be a good thing. They’ve gotta be planning something really exciting for that enclosed space, right? Okay, maybe I’m the one with unrealistic expectations, but point being, it’s way too early to start making judgements. Despite my complaining, I’m nevertheless happy to say that Z-A’s reveal thrilled and united the fandom to a shocking extent. Here’s hoping it stays this way, and Game Freak’s latest experiment somehow lives up to all this excitement.
I’m not sure how current this will be by the time this article comes out, but I’ve been pretty depressed by the discourse around Dragon’s Dogma 2. The amount of gamers complaining about trivial microtransactions that don’t affect the game beyond a micro level is insane. Most of the DLC, while it’s really stupid that it exists in the first place, are just shortcuts to things that you unlock in the game by playing it. It doesn’t give you whole weapons like Resident Evil 2 or Devil May Cry 5. Those games didn’t get flack just for having their DLC, so what gives?
It feels like gamers just found a new punching bag and unfairly derided a game that has a lot of love and ambition put into it. I’m worried this will leave a lasting stain. This brings me to the other sticking point: I’m not even sure the performance issues are a justified critique, because most gamers literally do not care. Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring, and Baldur’s Gate 3 are games with extremely poor performance at release, and the latter two still have wildly poor framerates. The Last of Us hovered around 20 FPS on its original PS3 release. Why did I list these games? Because all four of them are widely considered to be the “Game of the Year” in the year they were released.
There’s no justification for this level of outrage other than gamers finding a new target to get artificially outraged at. It’s so dumb. It’s unreal. I play gacha games, I know what it’s like when developers actually gate stuff behind a paywall. Y’all are just babies.
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