#oneaday Day 181: Tolerance

Tolerance for flaws is, so far as I'm concerned, an admirable trait — whether we're talking about tolerating flaws in actual people, or in "things" such as creative works or products. Tolerating imperfections makes you more accepting, kinder, more empathetic and just generally a nicer person, in my experience; the people I most enjoy talking about games with, for example, are the ones who tolerate the flaws in their favourite games, seeing past them to the enjoyable and wonderful things that lie beyond.

It seems like an increasingly rare trait these days, sadly; I've lost count of the number of times I've seen a user review for a video game declare it "literally unplayable" because it dropped below 60fps at some point, or didn't support their sausage-like ultrawide monitor, or something like that. The reality of the situation is that yes, it's a shame that the game doesn't (insert complaint here), but when you notice an issue like this… take a step back and ponder whether it really impacts your experience and makes it impossible to enjoy. And if it does, consider whether or not you might not be setting unrealistic expectations for everything to be perfect.

Our World is Ended, the current Cover Game on MoeGamer, is a good example of this. The English text is full of typos and minor grammatical errors, which is a bummer for a text-centric game like a visual novel… but it hasn't affected my enjoyment at all, and it isn't relevant to the emotional engagement and investment I've felt in the whole experience. Thinking rationally about what a mammoth undertaking it must be to translate a visual novel of this size and complexity, I'm not surprised at all that the editing process must have been a nightmare — and maybe even cut some corners along the way, since localiser-publisher PQube isn't exactly a huge outfit.

I'm obviously not talking about tolerating things that actually are broken here. A game that doesn't work properly is worthy of complaining about. A situation like Fallout 76, where people were not provided with what they were promised, is worthy of complaining about. A situation like Diablo III's original launch, where the game actually was literally unplayable for a considerable amount of time — you couldn't log in or start the game! — is very worthy of complaining about! But something that is ultimately a minor hiccup to your overall enjoyment of something? Consider carefully whether you'd rather spend your time enjoying the thing you already spent your money on, or complaining about it.

In an ideal world, everything we buy would be absolutely perfect, with no problems and nothing to complain about. But we don't live in an ideal world; not even close. And so you can make a choice: you can be perpetually unhappy about the imperfections of literally everything, because nothing is perfect; or you can develop tolerance and acceptance, and perhaps even embrace those flaws and imperfections for their quirky charms.

I made my choice a long time ago!


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