Mr. Nash goes on a tear about one of the most annoying demographics in gaming.

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I’m With Stupid

We all have a good laugh at the sheer ignorance and unmatchable stupidity some fanboys are capable of. Swing by some of the popular message boards, hell, take a look at my inbox for the site, and you’ll be bombarded with pro system bias so potent it’ll make your head spin. It’s an inescapable facet of human nature, it’s aggravating, and it certainly isn’t going away anytime soon. So where does it come from? Here’s my take…

First and foremost it comes down to a lack of self-esteem. A lot of people can only afford one console, so they want to feel good about the system they own. Unfortunately when a highly anticipated title is coming to one of the systems they don’t own, they feel threatened. They need to break it down to build themselves up, hence feeling better once more about the one and only system they own. It’s no different than the old saying, “I’d rather push my Chevy than drive a Ford.” The gamer has made a choice in what system they’ll own for the current generation and there’s no turning back. The very notion that they may have made “the wrong choice” scares the hell out of them, and they need to construe what’s happening in the game industry to pad their ego and set them at ease again.

Of course the people behind the marketing for the consoles are well aware of this and will do everything they can to exploit it. We can’t blame them for being a contributing factor to the plague that is fanboy-ism, as it is their job to promote their system as best they can, but they contribute nonetheless. The funny thing is that

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the marketing campaigns for the respective consoles blast gusts of wind into the fanboy ship of the damned after the fact. While the slogans, development of a “cool” image for a product, and so forth do their part to help the systems find their way into people’s homes it has the unfortunate aftereffect of fortifying the fanboy mindset that their system truly is at the top of the heap, either numerically in terms of relative sales or spiritually in terms of public awareness.

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But quite possibly the single greatest purveyor of the fanboy phenomenon has to be websites and magazines dedicated to a single platform. Just browsing through many of these it’s hard to make it through a single paragraph without being inundated with dogma about how great their console compares to the competition.

The most discouraging part about this is that it’s hard to take a lot of these publications seriously. Not so much for their dogmatic drivel, but for the questionable nature as to how much the writers believe what they say. The approach of these publications seems to tap into the general lack of self-esteem fanboys suffer from, propping up their system while knocking the competition. It all leads to whipping the fanboys into a constant furor, and with any luck they’ll keep coming back for more with each issue or site update since it’s “so close to the mark”, “spot on with console XYZ coverage”, (and my favorite) “so unbiased”. And of course with this comes the business end of it all, as more money comes in from magazine purchases and subsequently advertising space in the publication, or simply garnering web advertising for a site that is particularly popular. Factor in that a lot of these single-platform publications are owned by the same publisher and it becomes even more obvious that there’s a few bucks to be made by setting the fanboys against one another. Possibly the most insulting part with the particularly bad offenders is that they have the nerve to take the moral high ground as they preach to the converted like they’re doing them a favor.

When all is said and done, though, it all comes down to that lack of self-esteem and an inability to have confidence in one’s purchasing decisions that makes the fanboys who they are. It’s not that one system has better graphics, or a better library, or a more ergonomic controller. These are all subjective, a matter of personal taste. Unfortunately these fanboys lack the confidence and ability to believe in themselves and their own values and opinions, thus they rationalize their position, and insult the competition to reaffirm to themselves that they made the right purchase for them. Contentment should come from within, knowing you are personally happy with your lot in life, but alas fanboys just don’t realize this and continue to look at what’s happening on the outside, often perceiving it as a threat to their fragile inner self. It’s just too bad that a lot of people in the industry see this too and are more than happy to exploit it, thus helping to perpetuate the problem.

Mr. Nash

June 14, 2003


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