Share your unfiltered, unpopular gaming opinions and let’s dive into some real discussions. If you come across a view you disagree with, feel free to (respectfully) defend your perspective. I don’t want to see anyone say stuff like “we’re all entitled to our own opinions.” Let’s pretend like gaming is a science and we are all award winning scientists.
My Unpopular Opinion:
I believe the criticism against battle royales is often unwarranted. Most complaints revolve around constant content updates, microtransactions, and toxic player communities
Many criticize the frequent content updates, often cosmetic, as overwhelming. However, it’s optional, and no other industry receives flak for releasing more. I’ve never seen anyone complain about too many Lays or coke flavors.
Pay-to-win concerns are mostly outdated; microtransactions are often for cosmetics. If you don’t have the self control to not buy a purple glittery gun, then I’m glad you don’t play the games anymore, but I don’t think it makes the game bad.
The annoying player bases is the one I understand the most. I don’t really have a point against this except that it’s better to play with friends.
Overall I think battle royale games are pretty fun and rewarding. Some of my favorite gaming memories were playing stuff like apex legends late at night with friends or even playing minecraft hunger games with my cousins like 10 years ago. A long time ago I heard in a news segment that toy companies found out that people are willing to invest a lot of time and energy into winning ,if they know there will be a big reward at the end, and battle royales tap into that side of my brain.
This is just my opinion
Battle royale gameplay sucks though. I like competitive games but spending 15 minutes in empty buildings looting, then 4 minutes running from shots that I can’t tell where they’re from, then 30 seconds in a firefight only to die and have to wait for the rest of my teammates to die before I can play again… that’s objectively boring af.
When I get time to spend playing video games, I want to actually play, not spend the whole time just picking up items and guns I never get to use.
Unpopular opinion: I play Candy Crush and that makes me a gamer.
Now that’s an unpopular opinion! With a game like that (which is specifically designed not to be fun but to extract money from users) I’d say you’re not a gamer, you’re an addict ;)
Office workers played Solitaire on their work PCs before smartphones even existed, would they have called themselves gamers? I think a certain minimum degree of investment in a hobby/culture is required before you can name yourself as a participant, and Candy Crush doesn’t cut it imo.
would they have called themselves gamers?
I would
a certain minimum degree of investment in a hobby/culture is required before you can name yourself as a participant
The particular games you choose isn’t really relevant to this though. If you have 600 hours in Spider Solitaire, and you think it’s important enough to you that you’ll self identify as a “gamer”, who am I to be a keeper of the gates?
Exactly my point
I don’t have a high opinion on the “game” but who’s to say they don’t have 10000+ hours in Candy Crush?
If you have 10000+ hours in Candy Crush and nothing else, is gaming your hobby or is Candy Crush your hobby?
Both options are true.
People can exclusively play what they like. iRacing, WoW or Candy Crush are all valid.
That’s 2.3 hours a day, every day, since release in 2012, at minimum
The price of modern games is often justified. I don’t buy many at release, but the ones I do buy have been more than worth the money.
The massive amount of work that goes into a modern AAA title is truly mind blowing. It’s gross that so little money goes to the people who actually make the games but certainly the effort is astounding even in titles that fall short of expectations.
As a book and video game enthusiast, my unpopular opinion is that the average video game is a much better entertainment value than the average book.
I’ve played a lot of games and read a lot of books. When measuring dollars for hours, I think video games win.
On the one hand, I’ve put massive numbers of hours into titles like Zelda, Metroid, Harvest Moon, and Pokemon.
On the other hand, I’ve only gotten two or three read-throughs out of even some of my very favorite books.
And then the video game classics really put up some big numbers: after decades, I’m still enjoying PacMan, Frogger, and Galaga and their kin.
And then there’s the elephant in the room: Tetris.
If I had to pick - on a desert island - between an e-reader with every book ever printed, or one copy of Tetris on a Gameboy…it would be an agonizing choice.
This is the line of reasoning I used with my parents as a kid. Dollar per hour entertained.
But I think differently about it these days. I’m looking for maximum value per hour, with an eye towards minimal hours, and with a definite end point if applicable.
And value in this sense could be raw entertainment, but it could be something else, like exposure to new ideas and novel perspectives on life etc.
But I suppose that’s what happens when you get older and you’ve got less and less free time to fill.
I enjoy both books and games, and it’s really hard to compare them directly. Even if we stick to the same genre, games provide interactivity that books just can’t, while books provide so much more depth in story and often much better pacing.
It’s the same idea as reading vs watching movies, the book will feel so much more satisfying, but it’ll take days instead of hours to get through. Sometimes that’s worth it, shows it’s not.
These days I just don’t enjoy movies much anymore because I’m either looking for the depth of a book or interaction of a game. I just wish there were more video game adaptations of movies.
A lot of people I talk to think that PC is the best platform. I agree that it is versatile and has the most options. I can’t stand playing games on my PC at this point, though. I spend all day fixing computers at work. I don’t even want to look at a computer after clocking out. To be able to play games for PC, but not use a computer, I’ve decided to get a Steamdeck.
Huh, I’m a software engineer, and when I get home, I’m excited to do stuff on my computer. I even like building software at home for fun.
I’m not big into tinkering with game settings though, I am much more excited about playing or making games than tuning them. So maybe that’s what you don’t like? I find the Steam Deck’s defaults to be extremely reasonable and it feels just like a console.
I don’t like using computers after work because it feels like work just turning it on. Idk why.
That’s fair. I just don’t have the same experience.
My hobbies are very similar to my day job (software engineer), but in a different tech stack (Python @ work, Rust @ home) and building different things (business logic @ work, distributed systems and games @ home).
Maybe it helps that I’m forced to use macOS at work (which I dislike), and I get to use Linux at home, so it really feels like separate things.
But then again, many of my coworkers don’t have personal projects at home, so I’m probably just weird.
Probably very hot take for this community. The $1 for every hour of enjoyment is a stupid metric. People will spend upwards of $10 for a 2 hour movie or $5 for an hour-long album. Games have components of many pieces of media and many treat it’s worth lower. I’m all for saving money but it’s a different discussion regarding the value of the medium, especially when we just discuss it as the consumer-mindset of “hours of my life” vs. experience of enjoyment
I absolutely agree.
I do still use the metric, mostly to demonstrate that something that’s expensive is still a good value. For example, I’ve spent hundreds on Paradox games, but I’ve gotten over a thousand hours from them, so I’ve gotten incredibly good value from it.
I’m patient because I hate buggy games, not strictly because of cost, though I’ll buy something on a good sale if I notice it. If games released mostly bug free, I’d buy a lot more games closer to launch. I don’t have a lot of friends who play games, so there’s no pressure to buy things say 1, so I wait until the updates settle down.
