#oneaday Day 969: Hate Speech

The Wii U is too much money for last-gen technology. The iPhone 5 doesn’t offer anything new. Kamiya-san should just die if he doesn’t bring Bayonetta 2 to Xbox 360 and PS3. Terraria coming to consoles is a slap in the face for PC owners.

These are all genuine opinions I have heard voiced in the last few days by people of varying degrees of intelligence and coherence. Every time I hear something along these lines, it just makes me a bit sad. In general, despite regularly ranting and raving about all and sundry on these very pages, I try to remain as positive a person as I can when it comes to technology, games and the like. I find new things interesting and exciting rather than something to be cynically derided; I also take the firm belief that if something doesn’t appeal to you, that’s fine, but there might be other people for whom it does hold an appeal and you have no right whatsoever to piss on their bonfire.

There are obvious exceptions to the rule above — if something is a shitty experience for everyone, then yes, it should be derided. But none of the things I mentioned above are shitty experiences, and certainly don’t deserve the negative responses they have received from some quarters. In some cases we don’t even know enough about the experience in order to declare it shitty or not.

The Wii U in particular is an interesting case. The console isn’t even out yet and people are already quick to predict its failure for various reasons; quick to criticise features that may change, or that no-one has seen as yet. It’s almost as if people want it to fail after the astronomical success that the Wii enjoyed early in its lifespan. Bewildering.

The iPhone 5 has a similar problem. Nothing Apple could have announced would have made everyone happy. And sure, Apple have a real arrogance problem, getting people whipped up into a frenzy over cable connectors. But the fact is, the iPhone is still a fucking amazing piece of technology that we take for granted every day. There are plenty of people out there who haven’t got one yet. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could have the best possible version of this awesome gizmo if they do decide to take the plunge? Well hey, look at that, they can.

And then there’s the anger about Bayonetta 2 being a Wii U exclusive. (Yes, someone actually did tweet a death threat at Kamiya-san earlier.) Bayonetta was an awesome game that not enough people played. Meanwhile, absolutely fucking everyone bitched about the Wii not having enough third-party support. So a prominent (if underappreciated) third party pledges support to its successor and everyone complains. (Well, apart from open-minded Bayonetta fans, most of whom seem to be more than happy to consider purchasing a Wii U purely to punch more angels in the face. Actual tweet from someone who is not me: “So Bayonetta 2 is going to cost me around £300. Let’s face it, for the sequel to the best action game ever made it’s probably worth it.” I concur.)

Finally, there’s the Terraria issue. This is perhaps some of the most obnoxious behaviour I’ve ever seen from the gamer community. Take a look. Essentially, the “problem” was that the Terraria developer, who abandoned work on the (already feature-complete) game in February of this year to spend some time with his new child (what a bastard!), had been teasing “something big” to the Terraria community. Said “big thing” turned out to be an impending console release of Terraria for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network (pleasecometoVitapleasecometoVitapleasecometoVita) — great news, right? A much bigger audience gets to play an awesome and underappreciated game!

NO! say the PC players of Terraria. YOU BETRAYED US WITH YOUR BASTARDISH DESIRE TO MAKE MONEY AND NOT GIVE US MORE FREE STUFF. What the f—

I… blargh. Seriously. Shut the fuck up and just enjoy life more. And get off my lawn while you’re at it.