I had an interesting discussion on Twitter earlier with Peter Skerritt of Armchair Analysis and Craig Bamford of Leveling Criticism. Peter argued that gamers had made their bed with regard to questionable business practices surrounding downloadable content, preorder bonuses and all of the other annoyances which this particular generation of consoles has developed — that since so many people have bought into these schemes over the last few years that it’s now too late to go back, that any sort of “action” is not worth taking, and that anyone feeling the need to speak out about it should understand that doing so will have negligible effect.

Craig, meanwhile, countered that “‘shut up and consume’ is just greasy”, noting that Mass Effect 3‘s controversial day-one DLC “prompted a huge backlash which the company had to expend serious PR resources to fix.”

I’m not going to get back into this specific argument here, but I did want to address some more general points which Peter, Craig and I discussed. Namely, the question of whether or not it’s worth complaining about something.

It’s easy to complain about things on the Internet. Start a blog or a Twitter account. Rail against anything you find personally objectionable. Talk up the people who agree with you and either ignore the people who disagree or get into very loud and public slanging matches with them. “Internet Rage” is its own meme now, though ultimately the concept of “the Internet being angry at something” has arguably done more harm than good to the concept of actual, genuine protest.

The trouble is that there’s an element of bandwagon-jumping. With any kind of disagreement, most people are going to come down on one side of the fence or the other. In the case of Internet arguments, those who are skilled in rhetoric will have very little difficulty in recruiting people for their side, as all it takes, in some cases, is a particularly persuasive YouTube video or an article featuring carefully massaged statistics to get people onside. People are lazy. If you lay an argument out on a plate for them, relatively few of them will have the inclination to go and research things for themselves. ‘Twas ever thus, and we even see this in the professional specialist press to a certain degree.

It loses its effect after a while, though. Words are just words, after all, and as any protestor worth their salt will undoubtedly tell you, actions speak far louder than words.

Or do they? I haven’t bought Mass Effect 3 but do I think EA give a shit about that fact? No, because a healthy number of people have bought Mass Effect 3, and those are the only people that EA care about. Those are the people that say to EA “what you’re doing is acceptable, please do it more.” It’s not just something that happens in video games. It happens with all sorts of shady business practices. The more people just accept something as “that’s the way it is” (houuuuuaaahhh!), the more likely companies are to want to keep pushing the boundaries a little bit further each time, like a toddler trying to figure out exactly how naughty is too naughty, only with millions of dollars instead of plastic things made by Fisher-Price.

Does that invalidate the criticisms that those people who object to it have? Does the fact that, say, EA has no need to take those people’s criticisms into account mean that they should stop speaking out against those things which they find unacceptable or distasteful?

Absolutely not. For if those people stop complaining, then we have no dialogue. We have no discussion, no debate. We simply blindly accept, consume, bend over, take it. You may be happy to blindly accept, consume, bend over, take it. You may believe that there are more important things to worry about in the world than whether or not a software company squeezes an extra $10-$20 out of its most loyal fans. You may believe the lines spun by public relations in an attempt to limit the damage done to a brand’s reputation. But that doesn’t mean that the people who don’t feel the same as you should be silenced. State your case. Come out from your corner fighting. You might change their mind — though given my experience of debates like this, you probably won’t — or you might at least give them an alternative perspective to consider, even if they ultimately end up feeling the same way.

In short, I believe that yes, it is worth complaining. In the video games case, Peter argued that complacency is what has led consumers to the point they are at now, where buying a $60 game is no longer the end point of the relationship between the customer’s wallet and the publisher’s pockets — it’s the beginning. If that’s the case, though, while it may be too late to salvage matters with regards to things like DLC, preorder bonuses, shady sales practices and all manner of other considerations, surely that’s a sign that consumers upset by all this should be more vocal in order to preempt publishers attempting to take advantage of them any further in the future?

Those expressing upset and annoyance at what they see as unfair shifts in business practices are now often accused of being “entitled”. But that’s simply lazy rhetoric. There’s a big difference between being “entitled” (typically used in this context to mean “expecting something for free”) and having very valid concerns about getting value for money or being treated fairly as a consumer. In the Mass Effect 3 case, no-one’s expecting something for free. They want to pay for the game, to support the developer, but they don’t want to be treated like idiots and/or bottomless cash pits in the process. Personally speaking, I don’t think it’s unreasonable or “entitled” to expect a complete product when you hand over your money for it. But, well, we’ve been over that already and I know far too well how futile it is for both sides to try and convince the other of their viewpoint.

The point: complaining or protesting may not have a direct or immediate effect. But it ensures that we continue to discuss, debate and consider things a little more carefully than we would otherwise if there was a complete consensus of opinion. It keeps things interesting, it prevents people from becoming too complacent and it allows people to retain their individuality rather than being treated as an amorphous mass of identical, anonymous “consumers”.

Sounds better than the alternative to me. But then you probably disagree. In which case you’re wrong, you entitled twat.