Reddit RPG Games
The problem with computer role-playing game fans is that many of them have devolved into RPG Gamers: they run after everything that's new instead of playing, mastering and modding what is historically best and inexhaustible.
They are like those flies that buzz from one new novel to the other, yet have never read the classics.
Thus do they lack reference points, historical context and good taste.
The natural habitat of such specimens is RPG Game subreddits. It is there that they swarm in order to refer to:
- computer games as video games or vidya
- cRPGs as RPG Games
- and RPGs as TTRPGs
It is there that they greet each other as casual gamers and celebrate their communal lack of gaming pedigree and aptitude.
Much of Subreddit Commentary is Fake
The upvote-driven behaviors of subredditors include:
- Posting low-effort, recycled memes instead of commentary (over and over again).
- Posting tiled tier-lists of their fave games instead of commentary (repeatedly).
- Posting links to fanwikis and YouTube vids to "prove" their points (instead of making original arguments).
- Posting tired old promotional artwork (pretending that it is rare, when anyone can Google it).
- Posting a photo of an old game box (pretending that it was found in the basement or attic after 20 years).
- Posting AI-generated imagery "as art".
- Repeating the top comment in the hope that their copied comment will also get upvoted.
- Parroting opinions that have proven to garner upvotes in the past, even though they don't hold the opinion themselves.
- Starting topics that have proven to garner upvotes in the past (repeatedly).
- Starting a topic in which the OP pretends to have finally beaten a game after 20 years of playing it on and off (a commonly parroted fake-scenario on subreddits, where being a proud giga-casual is in-vogue).
- Naming a popular reddit thing or expressing a popular reddit opinion in a topic that has zero relation to the thing or opinion.
- Expressing their emotions and agreement or disagreement via memes and emoticons rather than through their own writing.
- Copy-pasting famous lines from games instead of entering into meaningful discussion.
Such upvote-driven behaviors are of no value. Indeed, they represent the demise of computer game commentary in such echo-chambers; the death of commentary on that subreddit.
Computer games that receive critical commentary live on, they endure. If no one is publishing critical commentary about a computer game, if all they are doing is posting memes and other nonsense, commentary on that computer game is dead.
I don't doubt that many subredditors band together outside of reddit in order to manufacture upvotes that push their petty agendas (such as, for example, manufacturing fake acceptance or noise for a certain mod, game or website).
Subredditors often post nonsense instead of saying something original, interesting or insightful. But since they have nothing to say they reapply someone else's meme or make a tiled tier list on a generic tier-making site.
Laboring under the delusion that upvote tallies are indicative of one's credibility, almost everything subredditors post is tailored to tap into the "upvote" of an anonymous majority.
Fake optimism and enthusiasm are employed in order to gain upvotes as well. Constructive criticism and even-handedness, downvoted.
One could be forgiven for thinking the subreddit was populated by bots. But alas:
Before playing a game RPG Gamers want to know everything about it in advance. In this way they can avoid experiencing the game for themselves. They ask their "communities" (subreddits) if this build would be ok, if that class would be ok, if it's ok to do this or that, and so on.
Oh, and let's not forget: "Is such and such viable?"
And the invariable response: "Absolutely!" (a cringe-worthy exclamation that died off in the 90s.)
Truth be told, it is pathetic. Just play the game, experience it for yourself, come to your own conclusions.
But they don't have the patience to work games out for themselves. Games are to be "beaten" in the shortest time-frame possible, employing as little thought as possible. Then move on to the next game, rinse repeat. To them games are just products to be consumed: the more they can plow through the better off they will be.
They wouldn't even bother playing the game in the first place if they couldn't get a bit of social media attention for doing so (an "upvote", a "like").
The unwarranted attention makes them exceedingly vocal and opinionated for a week or so; enough time to spread their highly contagious ignorance of the game over reddit like a plague. Then: lose interest and consume next product.
RPG Gamers advertise new games and ignore older ones like they never existed: they refer to Baldur's Gate 3 as Baldur's Gate and Oblivion With Guns as Fallout.
They even advertise discounts despite the fact that current gen games are a dime a dozen. It isn't like paying £45 in 1987 for the latest combat flight simulator, but they act like it is.
RPG Gamers play games because they go on sale. But one day they may realize that just because something's cheap, doesn't make it good value.
With attention spans akin to lightning bolts they bounce off dozens of two-dollar cRPGs in their backlog, which makes them excited: so much so, that they need to tell everyone about their massive backlogs; how many games they "own" (but none of which they play) on their precious digital distribution platform.
RPG Game Remakes / Remasters by Hack-Devs
Due to these frivolous consumers and their flippancy, subpar developers make a mint by churning out one cheap knock-off after the other, or by tastelessly remastering the classics to match casual "sensibilities".
On a daily basis it is RPG Gamers that clamor for remasters of classic games: they want all classic games replaced with grotesque distortions that match their uncultivated, swine-like palates.
You see, it isn't enough to be the primary target-demographic of all new games, that won't do, they also want to sully the old ones via appropriation; that is, they seek to ascribe classic games to their generation of gaming, which they know to be feeble in comparison to the achievements of 1990s Computer Game History. In so doing they grossly distort the classic computer-game language every time they open their traps and tap on their phones.
Of course these noble remasterers never tire of telling gullible consumers how they have kept the classic game relevant by turning it into a service that is regularly updated for the benefit of all (always-on internet, constant patching).
Thus are they heralded as heroes for their expertise in what amounts to blood-sucking. They are not only admired and thanked for all their "hard work and dedication", but are even credited with bringing the games back from the dead when in actual fact the games were still selling well before the remasterer came along to "improve" them.
If an old classic isn't popular or requires some actual work to "improve", it won't be remastered. And that means 8 bit games from the 1980s have largely been spared from leeching by what could reasonably be termed fake game development.
What gets remasters are your API era games that already play well, look good and have maintained player-bases that can be tapped for profit; you know, the games that don't need remasters; the games you can wrap pixel-removing shaders around to make them appear as soulless, plasticized garbage that came out in 2024.
Amusingly, remasters go on sale on such a frequent basis that "sale" almost loses its meaning.
But of course the "sales" give hack-developers more opportunities to make "announcements" on social media. As do the incremental "updates" that fix bugs that were not in the original games to begin with (the remasterer injected novel bugs into an old game).
That is their business model. Truly, a glittering example of entrepreneurship.
The object of such spam is of course to replace the original classic with their distorted caricature; to apportion themselves credit for the classic game; to make money off an old game: nostalgia cashgrabs that leech off the classics. [1]
And when the hype of the remaster dies down the hack-dev often drops support in order to soil the next classic, leaving the community to pick up the pieces.
Remastered games often divide classic game communities between those who play the original and those who play the remaster, but the remaster can never replace the original because the original is historically significant and authentic, unlike the remaster which is not even footnote-worthy yet is often pushed to front and center by mainstream commentary.
Mutt-level mainstream commentary will even publish retrospectives based on newly-released remakes. Their retrospectives will not even feature a single screencap or passage of commentary pertaining to the original; indeed the original often goes unmentioned. Thus, in such cases, readers are not reading a retrospective at all, but rather promotional advertising for low-effort cashgrabs. SHAME.
A joke when it comes to computer games, Wikipedia mentions remasters in the first paragraph of its articles. Due to the priority given to such a triviality, one could be forgiven for wondering if hack-devs themselves added the mention. I mean, do we really think shameless self-promotion is beneath hacks?
And the remaster not only causes confusion in communities ("Which version are you talking about?"), but also causes the original to be unfairly criticized by ignorant, pig-headed newcomers lacking in historical awareness. [2]
Then, as often happens in human endeavors, the wild-eyed hack comes along to snatch a piece of the pie. In the name of the quick buck and click the hack cares not for the endeavor, the creative process or genre legacy, but only of shortcuts, leeching and leveling down to the lowest common denominator.
[1]
Hack-devs that frequently post micro-updates on public forums, yet do not contribute to community discussion, are also shameless spammers. Many of the spammers also loiter in forums in an attempt to control the narrative or reception of their remake. Because their remake cannot speak for itself. It is not good enough. Because it is a remake. Thus, they stoop to generating noise through spam. And their go-to? Subreddits: the most gullible computer-game "communities" on the internet.
[2]
For example, ignoramuses will complain that a game made in the 1990s does not have widescreen support even though widescreen displays were not found in the 1990s outside of graphics workstations, which set one back 20,000 big ones in the 1990s.
They complain about "black borders" when black borders don't exist, only resolutions and aspect ratios do. The game doesn't have black borders, they are simply running the game wrongly, aka User Error.
To them, hack-devs are towering geniuses for merely making games widescreen -- because installing a widescreen mod that came out 15 years ago is beyond the capabilities of casuals, most of whom are of console-stock: just seeing a DOS prompt is enough to make them recoil in horror.
But in the time it took the hack-dev to fix all the bugs and add achievements, story-mode, widescreen support and blurry post-processing shaders, the original developer had coded an entire game from the ground up -- 20 years prior.
The original developer is King, the original game is King.
But the peasant-level remake?
Not even footnote-worthy.
cf. Critical Computer Game Commentary:
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