Pitts' take here is embarrassingly bad for several reasons, but one I'll speak to at length is the charge that this is a "knee-jerk response from the games press and other observers" who reflexively "attack fans expressing disappointment."
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First and foremost, I and many, many other journos and critics were on the same side as angry gamers who were criticising EA and other companies for predatory MTX and lootbox practises. If we were "knee-jerk" I highly doubt that would've been the case.
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Secondly, I've strongly criticised the gaming press when I feel it's merited. Right out the gate at Gama, in my very first column there, I charged them (us) with fuelling video gaming's destructive hype culture. I do not shrink from such arguments.
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Thirdly, trying to shoehorn evo psych into this (yes, that actually happened) is a transparent attempt to lend authority to an otherwise thin argument that critical journalism is tantamount to gossip (hm, where have we heard that before?)
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The fact is that it's a *problem* that player passion leads to this incredible hatred, that we use these overwrought, violent terms to describe what should be no more than mild disappointment. How the hell can you be "betrayed" by Blizzard? They're not your friends.
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I love video games. Dearly. Have done, always will. And yet I can never find it in me to muster up the sheer overwhelming hatred some of these people display. They were harassing BlizzCon streamers, for goodness sake. It's overwrought, disproportionate, and excessive.
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It's fine to be disappointed in a game. I've been disappointed by so many gaming announcements but I don't lash out. There's a lot of water between "disappointment" and what we've seen this week.
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I have wounds that never healed properly: a shitty video game launch isn't among them.
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End of conversation
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I had forgotten how these so called "fans" reacted to the visual style of Diablo 3 when it was announced, nothing changes. We need to stamp down on this behaviour.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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That Blizzard made a blog post that was clearly designed to temper Diablo expectations before the event apparently counts for naught. That rabid fans somehow managed to twist it into "a massive diablo announcement" is an indictment on the fans, not blizzard.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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