Decline Where did all the gatekeepers go?

[Delterius]

-This is how you destroy the very thing that you love.

thing we love...?

 

[MajorMace]

-This is how you destroy the very thing that you love. They will grow to resent you, and hate what you preserve. They will fight against it, and destroy it.

Ok the tone is a little dramatic but I agree with this. I think Dark Souls, the Dark Souls of difficulty gatekeeping/hardcore debate, is a great illustration of this.
The demands (there's no other way to present it, really) regarding an "easy mode" or "story mode" for Elden Ring are the culmination of some back and forth between two categories or retards.

On the left, retards who actually get agressive when you tell them you don't like the game because it's teh hard. I mean, I get it. I've heard and read some stupid shit about DkS. Like its supposed artificial difficulty or the "lazy trial and error" design etc. You might want to get nuts after the tenth comment like this, but the thing is these people react by agressively gatekeeping, while pointing out how they're true hardcor3 g4m3rs and how you're not. Which is pretty dumb.

On the right, retards who actually don't want to understand that some video game follows some design principles. Regarding Dark Souls and the Soulsborne in general, they're more or less identified by now : organic opposition, emergent gameplay and seamless solo/multi game modes. This last bit is important : DkS doesn't let you pick "multiplayer" in a menu, it's part of the same continuity as the single player game.
Same goes for the tutorial, which is always placed at the beginning (duh) and always under the form of messages, as in : no special tooltips or little videos and whatnot. Just gameplay.
You might think, hey, maybe the easy mode -if implemented- would be done the same. Well yeah fuckhead it's actually been there since Demon's Souls : summon a dude and stay at range. How hard is it ? You can tackle the entirety of almost all their games (maybe Sekiro is the exception) with this technique and you'll literally have nothing to do.

So where does this let us : well the retards on the right are upset about the retards on the left, because the latter insult the former's skills and intelligence and ego etc yitti yatti yatta. So they grow resentful. They want to strike back.
How many tweets have I seen go by which essentially read like "damn dark souls gatekeepers and their penis-meter difficulty nonsense, what would it cost to add an easy mode ?" and I'm fairly sure there is almost no actual expectation or desire behind this, beside the sheer idea of seeing the aforementioned retards on the right hurt in their gatekeeping hardcor3 g4m3r toxicity.

It's a shame really, because Soulsborne are neither the hardest games on the market (far from it even) and they do, indeed, include an easy mode and so since 2007.
But you now have people actively resenting its community, and the very games themselves through it.

 

[Casual Hero]

I think my original post was a little bit extreme, and I agree with most of the corrections and extrapolations you guys have written.

 

[Eyestabber]

Before the internet, you could decide with whom you shared your disks and for whom you copied them.

Yeah, let's have some memberberries.

When I was like 6-7, I had a "Computer Class" teacher that considered SimCity to be an educational tool. I remember finding her in the hallway with a pile o floppy disks and asking her to copy the game pretty please and...she actually did. My brother then did the copying and installing from the floppy disks, BUT I bought/formatted enough disks all by myself back then. My brother could no longer claim he got all our games since 7 y/o me would smugly reply "I got us Simcity! ".

Much later in life we had one of the first few CD recorders in our town. Back then the only way to get games was either knowing someone with a CD recorder OR following shady ads on the newspaper and paying people who pirated shit "professionally" for copies that may or may not work. Back in those days this:

Was a profitable investment.

Although I never got into recording stuff for money (except for small potatoes stuff like "give me 2 blank CDs: one for your game, one for my troubles") I did have the questionable honor of deciding who among my classmates was worthy of a copy of Warcraft 2.

By the time I got to high school CD/DVD recorders were much more common and trading games with other pirates gentlemen who also owned a recorder was the main way to expand your library of games, movies, music albums and whatnot. Oh, and back in those days some would also trade porn. See what looks to be a drug deal, but it's actually a CD case being passed around? Yeah, those dudes are trading p0rn. People who traded games didn't bother hiding.

Indeed, back in the day piracy was a lot more wholesome. Well, except for the guys recommending jackoff materials to each other, that shit was weird .

 

[J1M]

The only real gatekeeping I've met was on Linux forums, where newcomers were routinely told to rtfm and fuck off.
When I see the sorry state of Linux right now, I don't think its was much of a success.

Linux is better than it's ever been! I have a massive game library I can play so I don't have to dual boot with Windows anymore. A few years ago I couldn't say that.

The people who gatekeep Linux like the current state of Linux and want to keep it the way it is. They're usually either highly-technical power users and/or smug assholes who want to use their choice of OS as a way to gain nerd cred. They don't want to see their OS dumbed down for the masses and they're sick of Windows midwits who want Linux to be exactly like Windows but free.

Personally, I'm not a fan of gatekeeping Linux. For specific distros I think it's fine. But I think beginner-oriented distros like Ubuntu should exist. A larger userbase results in better hardware and software compatibility.

Didn't work for Apple.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

It's like in Crusader Kings when a dynasty reaches a high enough level of decadence and a tribe comes out of the desert to replace them.

"Noooo! Don't you realize that we were doing that 1000s of years before Crusader Kings was even cool!"
*Abbasid screeching intensifies*

 

[Alex]

Just goes to show that gatekeeping doesn't accomplish anything, right?

"No! You can't have this! You aren't good enough!"
-This is how you destroy the very thing that you love. They will grow to resent you, and hate what you preserve. They will fight against it, and destroy it.

If instead you learn to include them, and show them why you love the things you love so much, then maybe they will learn to love and preserve them too.

When has it ever been the opposite?

AH, you are wrong, but I know where you are coming from. I think, however, that you should just embrace gatekeeping... and finish that Megami Tensei game.

 

[OSK]

The only real gatekeeping I've met was on Linux forums, where newcomers were routinely told to rtfm and fuck off.
When I see the sorry state of Linux right now, I don't think its was much of a success.

Linux is better than it's ever been! I have a massive game library I can play so I don't have to dual boot with Windows anymore. A few years ago I couldn't say that.

The people who gatekeep Linux like the current state of Linux and want to keep it the way it is. They're usually either highly-technical power users and/or smug assholes who want to use their choice of OS as a way to gain nerd cred. They don't want to see their OS dumbed down for the masses and they're sick of Windows midwits who want Linux to be exactly like Windows but free.

Personally, I'm not a fan of gatekeeping Linux. For specific distros I think it's fine. But I think beginner-oriented distros like Ubuntu should exist. A larger userbase results in better hardware and software compatibility.

Didn't work for Apple.

Apple only cares about overpriced first-party hardware and software they can get a cut of the sales from. Gaming on Linux is better than gaming on macOS. Why? Because Apple doesn't give a shit about gaming.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Wtf is storyfaggotry anyways?

 

[Tyranicon]

Wtf is storyfaggotry anyways?

If combat/mechanics are the meat of a game, then story/narrative are the utensils. Sure, you can just eat it with your bare hands, and many do, but the more civilized way is to use some goddamn forks and knives.

In a different time and a different age, appreciating good writing (not just story) is the height of .

But there are so few examples of what is agreed to be good writing for modern RPGs that anybody who prefers story over gameplay is (rightly) ostracized.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I asked because every time I watch one of those Josh Worse MMOs Ever, he always says the story doesn't matter. I started to think that maybe all narrative was just being trashed upon.

Similar, hearing combat fags made me think that combat driven games were being shit upon. Or was it ceaseless Grinding I'm confusing it with? Then there were the VN crowd which I thought was the origin of story fagging.

I don't know. I played the games but never really knew some of the terms like boomer, blobber, etc. I need a gamers index of terminology to keep on hand.

 

[Rincewind]

I asked because every time I watch one of those Josh Worse MMOs Ever, he always says the story doesn't matter. I started to think that maybe all narrative was just being trashed upon.

Similar, hearing combat fags made me think that combat driven games were being shit upon. Or was it ceaseless Grinding I'm confusing it with? Then there were the VN crowd which I thought was the origin of story fagging.

I don't know. I played the games but never really knew some of the terms like boomer, blobber, etc. I need a gamers index of terminology to keep on hand.

I'm the same, half the posts on the codex full with these concepts and categorisations make my head spin. I had to look most of them up, e.g. "SJW", "based", etc. I'm still not 100% sure what they mean, though.

 

[Ismaul]

Before the internet, you could decide with whom you shared your disks and for whom you copied them.

Yeah, let's have some memberberries.

When I was like 6-7, I had a "Computer Class" teacher that considered SimCity to be an educational tool. I remember finding her in the hallway with a pile o floppy disks and asking her to copy the game pretty please and...she actually did. My brother then did the copying and installing from the floppy disks, BUT I bought/formatted enough disks all by myself back then. My brother could no longer claim he got all our games since 7 y/o me would smugly reply "I got us Simcity! ".

Much later in life we had one of the first few CD recorders in our town. Back then the only way to get games was either knowing someone with a CD recorder OR following shady ads on the newspaper and paying people who pirated shit "professionally" for copies that may or may not work. Back in those days this:

Was a profitable investment.

Although I never got into recording stuff for money (except for small potatoes stuff like "give me 2 blank CDs: one for your game, one for my troubles") I did have the questionable honor of deciding who among my classmates was worthy of a copy of Warcraft 2.

By the time I got to high school CD/DVD recorders were much more common and trading games with other pirates gentlemen who also owned a recorder was the main way to expand your library of games, movies, music albums and whatnot. Oh, and back in those days some would also trade porn. See what looks to be a drug deal, but it's actually a CD case being passed around? Yeah, those dudes are trading p0rn. People who traded games didn't bother hiding.

Indeed, back in the day piracy was a lot more wholesome. Well, except for the guys recommending jackoff materials to each other, that shit was weird .

Ahh, the good ol days when us nerds became cooler than the cool kids, 'cause we became legit outlaws and go-to guys for liberated programs.

That CD / DVD-RW drive wasn't a profitable investment in terms of money, but in dick size, maaaannn!

I knew all about CD and DVD -RW models back then. Such obsolete knowledge now. I got a collection of drives stored somewhere, and the one I currently "use" in my PC isn't even connected to the mobo anymore.

 

[Rincewind]

I knew all about CD and DVD -RW models back then. Such obsolete knowledge now. I got a collection of drives stored somewhere, and the one I currently "use" in my PC isn't even connected to the mobo anymore.

Yeah, I bought a Plextor with an SCSI interface as my first CD burner just because I could. It was quite expensive, but it felt so badass!

 

[Saerain]

It wasn't a thing until they accused it into existence. "Gatekeeping" as a concept is part of a hydra of cope that cultural Marxists created to abuse kulaks out of the cultural production means they wish to seize.

It's pathetic and evil, laugh at them and remove them.

 

[Zlaja]

But the more pressing question: where did all the dwarves go?

This is where the dwarves of Tamriel actually went:

Spoiler

 

[PapaPetro]

But the more pressing question: where did all the dwarves go?

This is where the dwarves of Tamriel actually went:

"... I'm just saying you can't just make 6 million dwarves disappear like that... where would you hide the mountains of disintegration dust?"

 

[Zlaja]

where would you hide the mountains of disintegration dust?"

Remember the ash storms around Red Mountain? Totally natural, I'm sure.

 

[Peachcurl]

W40k dwarves were disappeared as well.

The fucking elves are winning this, bros

 

[JamesDixon]

 

[ERYFKRAD]

W40k dwarves were disappeared as well.

The fucking elves are winning this, bros

If they are winning why are they still elves?

 

[Nortar]

But the more pressing question: where did all the dwarves go?

Give me a bag of gems and a barrel of ale and I'll tell you.

Spoiler

 

[Grim Monk]

How exactly are people supposed to "gatekeep" corporate commercial products that they don't own?

How could we have "gatekept" Fallout from these guys?

The only differance is that the incompetent ravishment of art by hackjob mediocrity is currently marketed as "social justice".

Instead of "broadened in appeal" its now "made inclusive".

The solution is also the same. Instead of keeping "gates" we keep the original "Creative Fire" burning inside each and every one of us.

Is Bethesda garbage somehow "Real Fallout" because they bought the IP from a French Vulture squatting over the corpse of Interplay.

VD making Age of Decadance, Styg creating Underrail, the modders making new adventures in the original engine are vastly more important to the legacy of Black Isle then whatever comes from the hacks in up in Maryland*.
(*Or hacks in "modern" Obsidian...)

Reject their mediocrity and create your own art!

Adopt the Samizdat Mentality...

 

[pomenitul]

They're all here, and they're fucking miserable.

 

[0wca]

There were never any gatekeepers. You can't effectively gatekeep people out of engaging in a hobby, especially one supported by a company that wants to make profit, which means selling more product. They are a boogieman created to invalidate all criticism of long time fans when the product is changed. You don't want the sequel to your favorite game to by extremely dumbed down? You're a gatekeeper who don't want to let younger people engage in your hobby.

Facts.