Because I said so . . .

Because I said so thats why...

Because I said so…

There is no more presumptuous a pundit than a blogger who perceives themselves to be profound. That’s my story and I ‘m sticking to it…

Why?

After a brief trek around the “blogosphere” lately I have been left feeling as if I had a rubdown with coarse grade sandpaper – in other words just irritated beyond words. (well almost beyond words or I wouldn’t be writing this would I?)  Now I appreciate that a blog and even a column is a given person’s opinion. That after all is what, generally speaking, brings you to a web site.   What is not acceptable, in any way, shape or form, is when an individual – and often it is someone with all the perception of a box of hammers – presumes to speak for all gamers.  Just think of it.  World of Warcraft has more subscribers than Switzerland has residents. Farmville, the flash based browser game has five times more than that.

To my knowledge (and I may indeed have it wrong), neither NCSoft, nor Cryptic Studios has announced how many subscribers they currently have for their respective games, Aion Online and Champions Online.  If I were to hazard a guess, it would no doubt be safe to say that neither game has one million subscribers or their marketing departments would be screaming it from the rooftops.  Even when Funcom just shipped  1 million Age of Conan boxes (not sold) they started shouting it. To which my response was, of course, shipped? Shipped where? Down the hall? Across the street? To the other side of town? Still, both games are likely to have at least several hundred thousand subscribers in their first month.

So here we are, a scant few weeks out for both Champions Online and Aion Online, and already we have seen bloggers pronounce edicts directed at both games along the lines of “The Honeymoon is over”. 

Quite frankly I haven’t seen such a load of crap since I was the caretaker for 1,000 rabbits (and that’s A LOT of rabbit crap).

It doesn’t matter if I don’t like a game. In the long run, it doesn’t even matter if columnists for places like PCGamer like a game. No one, no matter who they are, has the ability to speak for everyone. Consider movies such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.   Time and again reviewers plagued us all with their considered and self described “expert opinion.”  Yet when first weekend sales were counted up, the educated opinion of those reviewers who hated the movie may as well have been blown out their rectum as set in print. The movie, as well all know, was a financial success.

It's your game after all...

So if you enjoy playing a game, or are considering purchasing the game, don’t put it off just because some nebulous voice cries out in the streets of the global village that is the internet that a game “stinks” or that people no longer enjoy it any more. Or that players are quitting the game.  Tell the reviewer, columnist or blogger to blow it out their posterior and try it out for yourself.

After all, when it comes to the games that you, the reader, play, there is only one opinion that counts…

Yours.

 See you online,

Julie Whitefeather