Share your unfiltered, unpopular gaming opinions and let’s dive into some real discussions. If you come across a view you disagree with, feel free to (respectfully) defend your perspective. I don’t want to see anyone say stuff like “we’re all entitled to our own opinions.” Let’s pretend like gaming is a science and we are all award winning scientists.
My Unpopular Opinion:
I believe the criticism against battle royales is often unwarranted. Most complaints revolve around constant content updates, microtransactions, and toxic player communities
Many criticize the frequent content updates, often cosmetic, as overwhelming. However, it’s optional, and no other industry receives flak for releasing more. I’ve never seen anyone complain about too many Lays or coke flavors.
Pay-to-win concerns are mostly outdated; microtransactions are often for cosmetics. If you don’t have the self control to not buy a purple glittery gun, then I’m glad you don’t play the games anymore, but I don’t think it makes the game bad.
The annoying player bases is the one I understand the most. I don’t really have a point against this except that it’s better to play with friends.
Overall I think battle royale games are pretty fun and rewarding. Some of my favorite gaming memories were playing stuff like apex legends late at night with friends or even playing minecraft hunger games with my cousins like 10 years ago. A long time ago I heard in a news segment that toy companies found out that people are willing to invest a lot of time and energy into winning ,if they know there will be a big reward at the end, and battle royales tap into that side of my brain.
This is just my opinion
I don’t like Outer Wilds. I played it. I beat it. It was irritating almost all the way through.
That’s certainly the unpopular opinion, I loved that game!
Oh yeah I’m totally aware it is an unpopular opinion. I feel the need to bite my tongue every time there is a thread recommending it because I know I’m in the minority, and the person receiving the recommendations will probably enjoy it :)
Lmao I was just thinking about buying it during this steam sale
You’ll probably love it lol
Battle royale gameplay sucks though. I like competitive games but spending 15 minutes in empty buildings looting, then 4 minutes running from shots that I can’t tell where they’re from, then 30 seconds in a firefight only to die and have to wait for the rest of my teammates to die before I can play again… that’s objectively boring af.
When I get time to spend playing video games, I want to actually play, not spend the whole time just picking up items and guns I never get to use.
No game project should be AAA. It’s anti-creative, as developers must turn their game into something that appeals to the broadest audience, and it’s unstable, as companies bet their entire next 3 years of revenue on a single title. I’d much rather everything become B or C-tier developments. The great games that come from this development style simply are not worth it for the damage they do to the medium.
Agreed. I want creative games that take risks, yet the AAA gaming industry is all about eye candy and mass market appeal.
So I play a lot of indie and AA games instead.
I think there is still place for AAA games since a lot of them cannot be made by smaller teams.
I don’t think games like Zelda BOTW or even Elden Ring could have been made by smaller studios. At least not to the same scale.
I agree that such games couldn’t have been made by smaller teams. I love BOTW/TOTK, don’t get me wrong. They’re among my favorite games of all time.
Is it worth it though? Is the prospect of games like these worth the necessary instability, the restriction to creativity that they bring? I don’t believe so. Even if we lived in a world where crunch was illegal, that was enforceable, and it was perfectly enforced on a systemic level, I don’t think that our economic system is one where such games can be good for the artistic medium that is video games.
I have no issue with battle royales.
I have a huge issue with literally all microtransactions in every context. Cosmetics are not a justification. The only valid way to unlock cosmetics is to earn them with gameplay.
If you have microtransactions in any format in your game, you are a bad human being. There is no scenario where it is forgivable. If you have lootboxes, you should go to prison for the blatant unregulated gambling operation you are running.
Oh, well, I understand this sentiment but I’d ask everyone here to reevaluate why you hate them and then listen to these points to consider.
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Cosmetic items are created mostly by artists. Artists are only needed during certain time of development. So this is a way to keep them on a project consistently or to salary them.
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Most cosmetics are optional and add nothing to the game. In a single player game, just don’t pay for it. Evaluate each games value on the inclusions or exclusion of micro transactions. It’s not necessary to say “if it has them, it’s a worse game” because I’ve been ignoring them for awhile and my games are fine. Just evaluate the game as if they didn’t exist or as if they’re part of the price.
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Micro transactions support ongoing development. These offers keep projects going. I like playing games like Deep Rock Galactic and Hell Let Loose which are both smaller games by smaller studios. They keep their community alive with OPTIONAL content while producing free updates. It’s a great deal.
And lastly 4. People who buy plenty of these cosmetics and other transactions, often called whales, are subsidizing games for you. It’s cheap money for a development team for someone who wants to buy boosts or cosmetics or whatever. So why wouldn’t they do it?
If there are different classes of people based on being stupid enough to waste money, it’s by definition evil and exploitive. This model is designed for the sole purpose of breaking people’s brains to spend more than they should.
There is no valid way to distribute any cosmetic that isn’t earning it in game. The exact same game, with literally nothing changed but the addition of a purchase of a cosmetic, is worse for the mere existence of purchase bait. It’s the same thing as taking a TV show I bought and injecting ads.
“Free” content supported by these extremely invasive ads is worse than not having those updates.
They’re not subsidizing games for me. They’re taking games away by making them unconditionally unplayable. Charge a fair price. You’re worth it or you’re not. “We need to be disgusting shitbags for our game to exist” is evidence that your game shouldn’t exist, not that it’s possible for your behavior to be acceptable.
Loot boxes break people’s brains. Micro transactions aren’t inherently exploitative. They’re just cheat products. It’s like saying movie theater drink prices are exploitative. They are a bit. But then you also don’t have to buy them.
And the second part, yes and no. A lot of games that use those systems are free to play. It’s more like ads in a YouTube video. But say you did pay, cool, consider if it’s worth it or not. In some games with ongoing development like the ones I mentioned, I gladly pay the cosmetics price because I know that’s how I can support the devs while also getting a cool costume. If that’s not worth it to you, cool, doesn’t hurt you at all and you often still get free content. You just don’t get a cool hat. Guess the game is ruined.
It’s just such a simplistic way to look at it. It’s like gamers who whine incessantly about DLC in games. Like cool, if the game isn’t worth it don’t buy it?
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Unpopular opinion: I play Candy Crush and that makes me a gamer.
Now that’s an unpopular opinion! With a game like that (which is specifically designed not to be fun but to extract money from users) I’d say you’re not a gamer, you’re an addict ;)
Office workers played Solitaire on their work PCs before smartphones even existed, would they have called themselves gamers? I think a certain minimum degree of investment in a hobby/culture is required before you can name yourself as a participant, and Candy Crush doesn’t cut it imo.
would they have called themselves gamers?
I would
a certain minimum degree of investment in a hobby/culture is required before you can name yourself as a participant
The particular games you choose isn’t really relevant to this though. If you have 600 hours in Spider Solitaire, and you think it’s important enough to you that you’ll self identify as a “gamer”, who am I to be a keeper of the gates?
Exactly my point
I don’t have a high opinion on the “game” but who’s to say they don’t have 10000+ hours in Candy Crush?
If you have 10000+ hours in Candy Crush and nothing else, is gaming your hobby or is Candy Crush your hobby?
Both options are true.
People can exclusively play what they like. iRacing, WoW or Candy Crush are all valid.
That’s 2.3 hours a day, every day, since release in 2012, at minimum
Many criticize the frequent content updates, often cosmetic, as overwhelming. However, it’s optional, and no other industry receives flak for releasing more. I’ve never seen anyone complain about too many Lays or coke flavors.
Lots of people complain when some product they like is no longer available in favor of a ‘new and improved’ product. Remember ‘New Coke’? Patches and updates to games are the same thing, especially ones that significantly change the gameplay.
I, for example, liked Overwatch during certain time periods. That game is no longer available. There’s certainly people who play League of Legends or DOTA that feel the same way, though I wouldn’t know - the game they liked was at a certain point in its development, and since then changes have made it no longer the game they like. Same applies to a lot of MMOs - I liked Ultima Online, EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and others, but the games I like no longer exist even though the games technically exist.
The problem isn’t easily solved either - no updates may make some people happy but others will not be happy. The resources probably don’t exist to continue splitting the game and maintaining a stable version of an online game at each iteration, and even if they did, the player base would become too diffuse to be able to actually keep the game enjoyable with sufficient players. But it might be a fair criticism to say that updates come too fast for some of these games, and we need more time between them, or various other things. And there’s nothing wrong with people just griping, even if it’s something that can’t reasonably be stopped.
I’ve stopped advocating for PC gaming after about 15 years of being a PC enthusiast. It’s just too expensive these days. I think the Steam Deck is a good entry point, but not everyone wants a handheld console. I can 100% respect anyone who looks at the price of a gaming PC and just picks up a Playstation/Xbox for $500 instead.
I couldn’t care less about owning games physically. I’m way more likely to lose/damage them then lose access to their download.
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Probably very hot take for this community. The $1 for every hour of enjoyment is a stupid metric. People will spend upwards of $10 for a 2 hour movie or $5 for an hour-long album. Games have components of many pieces of media and many treat it’s worth lower. I’m all for saving money but it’s a different discussion regarding the value of the medium, especially when we just discuss it as the consumer-mindset of “hours of my life” vs. experience of enjoyment
I absolutely agree.
I do still use the metric, mostly to demonstrate that something that’s expensive is still a good value. For example, I’ve spent hundreds on Paradox games, but I’ve gotten over a thousand hours from them, so I’ve gotten incredibly good value from it.
I’m patient because I hate buggy games, not strictly because of cost, though I’ll buy something on a good sale if I notice it. If games released mostly bug free, I’d buy a lot more games closer to launch. I don’t have a lot of friends who play games, so there’s no pressure to buy things say 1, so I wait until the updates settle down.
A lot of people I talk to think that PC is the best platform. I agree that it is versatile and has the most options. I can’t stand playing games on my PC at this point, though. I spend all day fixing computers at work. I don’t even want to look at a computer after clocking out. To be able to play games for PC, but not use a computer, I’ve decided to get a Steamdeck.
Huh, I’m a software engineer, and when I get home, I’m excited to do stuff on my computer. I even like building software at home for fun.
I’m not big into tinkering with game settings though, I am much more excited about playing or making games than tuning them. So maybe that’s what you don’t like? I find the Steam Deck’s defaults to be extremely reasonable and it feels just like a console.
I don’t like using computers after work because it feels like work just turning it on. Idk why.
That’s fair. I just don’t have the same experience.
My hobbies are very similar to my day job (software engineer), but in a different tech stack (Python @ work, Rust @ home) and building different things (business logic @ work, distributed systems and games @ home).
Maybe it helps that I’m forced to use macOS at work (which I dislike), and I get to use Linux at home, so it really feels like separate things.
But then again, many of my coworkers don’t have personal projects at home, so I’m probably just weird.
Controllers are better than keyboard and mouse.
I play almost exclusively on PC, but I really don’t like playing most games on keyboard and mouse. Analog sticks are better for movement, triggers are better than mouse buttons, and wheel select is more fun than hotkeys. My main complaint is a lack of modifier keys (probably solved with buttons on the back), but overall the ergonomics is much better.
Its ok to be wrong buddy, you do you. 🙂
As a book and video game enthusiast, my unpopular opinion is that the average video game is a much better entertainment value than the average book.
I’ve played a lot of games and read a lot of books. When measuring dollars for hours, I think video games win.
On the one hand, I’ve put massive numbers of hours into titles like Zelda, Metroid, Harvest Moon, and Pokemon.
On the other hand, I’ve only gotten two or three read-throughs out of even some of my very favorite books.
And then the video game classics really put up some big numbers: after decades, I’m still enjoying PacMan, Frogger, and Galaga and their kin.
And then there’s the elephant in the room: Tetris.
If I had to pick - on a desert island - between an e-reader with every book ever printed, or one copy of Tetris on a Gameboy…it would be an agonizing choice.
This is the line of reasoning I used with my parents as a kid. Dollar per hour entertained.
But I think differently about it these days. I’m looking for maximum value per hour, with an eye towards minimal hours, and with a definite end point if applicable.
And value in this sense could be raw entertainment, but it could be something else, like exposure to new ideas and novel perspectives on life etc.
But I suppose that’s what happens when you get older and you’ve got less and less free time to fill.
I enjoy both books and games, and it’s really hard to compare them directly. Even if we stick to the same genre, games provide interactivity that books just can’t, while books provide so much more depth in story and often much better pacing.
It’s the same idea as reading vs watching movies, the book will feel so much more satisfying, but it’ll take days instead of hours to get through. Sometimes that’s worth it, shows it’s not.
These days I just don’t enjoy movies much anymore because I’m either looking for the depth of a book or interaction of a game. I just wish there were more video game adaptations of movies.
The price of modern games is often justified. I don’t buy many at release, but the ones I do buy have been more than worth the money.
The massive amount of work that goes into a modern AAA title is truly mind blowing. It’s gross that so little money goes to the people who actually make the games but certainly the effort is astounding even in titles that fall short of expectations.
