Why Fanboyism?

I been thinking about fanboys for a bit and started to wonder what motivates them?  Now I know that people’s definition of fanboy is different, but I consider a fanboy as someone who blindly defends one company while at the same time totally disregards a rival company despite the quality of their products.  

Now as a kid, I grew up a total Nintendo fanboy.  I loved the NES, and bought everything Nintendo.  Of course, this also meant that I hated all things Sega, and totally wrote off the TurboGrafx-16.  This was great for the NES era, because, uh, well—Nintendo did no wrong.   Nintendo’s light gun was cooler than Sega’s light gun, Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy was better than Phantasy Star, Mario and Zelda were better than practically everything—done, end of story.  This continued through the 16-bit area for me as well.

It was only during the N64 era did my fanboyism start to falter.  I was defending Nintendo’s decision to stick with carts instead of CD’s saying things like “carts are faster”, “Nintendo has this crazy compression thing going so they can put a CD game onto a cart”, “developers don’t need the space of a CD anyway”—then Final Fantasy VII was announced for the PS1 and I was shocked.  I was so mad I e-mailed Nintendo asking how they could let this happen.  The summer before FFVII came out, I had a summer job a reluctantly decided to get a PS1 to prepare for the launch of FFVII.  I initially felt dirty—how could I get a non-Nintendo console?  But after a bit, I started to come around.  Resident evil was fun, Castlevania:  Symphony of the Night was fantastic, Metal Gear Solid was awesome, and of course FFVII kicked ass.  While I loved my N64, I was really appreciating having multi-consoles.  I no longer had to take sides.

The next generation, I was out of college and was making some money, and I started to branch out.  I got the Dreamcast, then the PS2, then the Gamecube, and even got an X-Box.  I was living the dream. 

This gen, I have all 3 systems, and love them all for their strengths and weaknesses.  Now today with the Internet and the message boards, it seems like the console war is as heated as it’s ever been.  A person who has a 360 bashes the PS3.  PS3 fanboys apparently hate Halo and FPS’s.  Wii users….well, they are saying some of the crazy things I was saying about the N64:  “well, the Revolution doesn’t have to do 720p like the 360, so games will look the same on a SD TV”, “You can’t tell the difference between a Wii game and a 360 game on a SD TV anyway”, “Nintendo is making Mature games now—for the hardcore”. 

I think that this blind loyalty to a single console and whatever games they have stems from the fact that gaming is expensive and most kids can only afford one console.  I mean $200 for an entry level 360 is still a lot for a kid.  So I can understand why they are trying to validate their purchase by undermining the competition—because the worst thing would be to spend all this money, and have your console fail (like the TG-16, or Jaguar, or..sigh…Dreamcast).  This would mean, of course, that the people who are the blind fanboys screaming how IGN is getting paid by Micro$oft, or Sony is buying Killzone 2 reviews, or everyone is teh biased against Nintendo is a single console owner.  This also assumes that crazy fanboys are a bit younger and can’t afford to go multi-console.  I wonder if this is true?  I have no data to back up this claim—I’m just keyboarding here.  Is fanboyism rooted in an economic divide, and not just brand loyalty and nostalgia?  Are people with multiple consoles still as defensive of their PS3 as a dude with ONLY as PS3?  Now that I’m a bit older and working/making money—I really couldn’t care about the console war.  I just want great games for any system, and if I really need a game (I’m looking at you Metal Gear Solid 4), I’ll get the system.  But if I still needed my parents to supply me with my gaming fix, I would probably only have one expensive as hell system and would be defending it to my last breath.

Perhaps only when the different consoles are all bargain bin prices and we're all rich thanks to the new Obama'ized economy will we have internet peace...that is until you go on a movies forum.

I been thinking about fanboys for a bit and started to wonder what motivates them?  Now I know that people’s definition of fanboy is different, but I consider a fanboy as someone who blindly defends one company while at the same time totally disregards a rival company despite the quality of their products.  

Now as a kid, I grew up a total Nintendo fanboy.  I loved the NES, and bought everything Nintendo.  Of course, this also meant that I hated all things Sega, and totally wrote off the TurboGrafx-16.  This was great for the NES era, because, uh, well—Nintendo did no wrong.   Nintendo’s light gun was cooler than Sega’s light gun, Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy was better than Phantasy Star, Mario and Zelda were better than practically everything—done, end of story.  This continued through the 16-bit area for me as well.

It was only during the N64 era did my fanboyism start to falter.  I was defending Nintendo’s decision to stick with carts instead of CD’s saying things like “carts are faster”, “Nintendo has this crazy compression thing going so they can put a CD game onto a cart”, “developers don’t need the space of a CD anyway”—then Final Fantasy VII was announced for the PS1 and I was shocked.  I was so mad I e-mailed Nintendo asking how they could let this happen.  The summer before FFVII came out, I had a summer job a reluctantly decided to get a PS1 to prepare for the launch of FFVII.  I initially felt dirty—how could I get a non-Nintendo console?  But after a bit, I started to come around.  Resident evil was fun, Castlevania:  Symphony of the Night was fantastic, Metal Gear Solid was awesome, and of course FFVII kicked ass.  While I loved my N64, I was really appreciating having multi-consoles.  I no longer had to take sides.

The next generation, I was out of college and was making some money, and I started to branch out.  I got the Dreamcast, then the PS2, then the Gamecube, and even got an X-Box.  I was living the dream. 

This gen, I have all 3 systems, and love them all for their strengths and weaknesses.  Now today with the Internet and the message boards, it seems like the console war is as heated as it’s ever been.  A person who has a 360 bashes the PS3.  PS3 fanboys apparently hate Halo and FPS’s.  Wii users….well, they are saying some of the crazy things I was saying about the N64:  “well, the Revolution doesn’t have to do 720p like the 360, so games will look the same on a SD TV”, “You can’t tell the difference between a Wii game and a 360 game on a SD TV anyway”, “Nintendo is making Mature games now—for the hardcore”. 

I think that this blind loyalty to a single console and whatever games they have stems from the fact that gaming is expensive and most kids can only afford one console.  I mean $200 for an entry level 360 is still a lot for a kid.  So I can understand why they are trying to validate their purchase by undermining the competition—because the worst thing would be to spend all this money, and have your console fail (like the TG-16, or Jaguar, or..sigh…Dreamcast).  This would mean, of course, that the people who are the blind fanboys screaming how IGN is getting paid by Micro$oft, or Sony is buying Killzone 2 reviews, or everyone is teh biased against Nintendo is a single console owner.  This also assumes that crazy fanboys are a bit younger and can’t afford to go multi-console.  I wonder if this is true?  I have no data to back up this claim—I’m just keyboarding here.  Is fanboyism rooted in an economic divide, and not just brand loyalty and nostalgia?  Are people with multiple consoles still as defensive of their PS3 as a dude with ONLY as PS3?  Now that I’m a bit older and working/making money—I really couldn’t care about the console war.  I just want great games for any system, and if I really need a game (I’m looking at you Metal Gear Solid 4), I’ll get the system.  But if I still needed my parents to supply me with my gaming fix, I would probably only have one expensive as hell system and would be defending it to my last breath.

Perhaps only when the different consoles are all bargain bin prices and we're all rich thanks to the new Obama'ized economy will we have internet peace...that is until you go on a movies forum.

I think it's pathetic when people complain and bitch about which video game console is better. Seriously, grow up people (not talking about you, TC). I've been playing the Xbox 360 for a little over a year now, but I'm dying to get a PS3 so I can play Killzone and MGS3.

lol consoles
lolololololol

This is a fascinating read, well done sir.

This is what motivates fanboys:

"I bought this system with my hard-earned money (or that of my parents'). I don't want to think for even a second that what I don't have is better than what I have. I made the right decision and anyone who bought the [insert competing console here] is wrong."

EDIT: which, after actually reading your post the whole way through, is exactly what you said. Well played, sir. But I have a backup plan, and it is this!

I believe fanbiyism is predominately rooted in a persons insatiable need to validate their purchase.  In order to defend that hill, it becomes necessary to denigrate anything on other consoles, as to otherwise, undermines that position.  It makes them feel better about themselves.

I think fanboyism is partially incited by the companies themselves, supported by the media and followed by individuals. It stems from the need for some companies to prove themselves. They are like insecure men that needs to brag about everything they do, the car they drive, how many girls they stay with, etc. They need others to believe into something they don't believe themselves.

For example, Microsoft is not known for videogames. So Microsoft is the "insecure guy" of this generation. It purposefully magnifies every little thing to make them look more than they actually are. And hide all the bad stuff. Also the insecure guy is always measuring itself against others. Sony and Nintendo have nothing to prove. Both are well known companies who created the greatest successes in the videogame history. So Sony is more like the "self-assured guy" who doesn't feel the need to give satisfaction to anybody else about what he does.

Also in this case a considerable portion of the so called "games media" jumped ship and started believing in the "insecure guy". So that's why you see people going out of their way to prove the 360 is better than the Wii or the PS3. They are not reporting facts, they have an agenda. Would they need to prove anything if it was indeed better?

It is difficult to explain the bias, I think examples are better to demonstrate how it works. For example, some time in January or December the data about game sales was released from NPD, several sites started going over it. So they said MGS4 had sold only 1,4 million or something around that. Immediately the responses were "Oh my God, this is bad" and so on. Some even suggested that a release for the 360 was imminent, because it was such a failure that Konami would have no option. Well, a few weeks later Konami released its data and showed they sold over 5 million units of MGS4 in 6 months and it was the main reason for the increase of revenue they had in 2008. Do you see what happens?

Another example. Some sites love to put comparisons of graphics between different systems. Whoever grew in the 8 and 16 bit era knows that graphics differences are obvious. Did you ever compare a Nintendo 8 bit with Genesis? Or Genesis with Super Nintendo? The difference was obvious. But the systems today don't show that difference. Why is that? Regardless of the lack of differences in multiplatform games the sites insist in placing one system as better than the other. The differences pointed by the said sites could be explained by how the different videocards render the scene, or the brightness or TV configuration, or even options disabled in the console configuration, like Full RGB or superwhite, or even the method used to connect it to the TV (HDMI, component, etc). The noise generated around it is not proportional to the so called "differences" in the games. See?

Of course it reflects on the consumers. Some will play the fanboy game because they are on the "insecure guy" side, and by extension they act "insecure" as well. They need to prove it. And after so much nonsense it is impossible for the others to stay quiet, so they will react to the "insecure guy" minions and will defend their systems because they honestly don't see things that way.

So today I think the biggest trolls and fanboys are the 360 users. The other consumers are just on the defensive position, trying to argue against an avalanche of nonsense put out by the so called media.

A person once gave me an explanation for such attitude from the media and predominantly American public that I think it makes sense. It is a kind of protectionism. In other words, they know that American videogames don't have success out of the US, at least not as much as the competition, and so they go out of their way to bash Sony as much as they can. It is a kind of a "revenge" thing, they try to do in the US what they believe to happen in Japan or elsewhere. Also, some American companies receive "special treatment", because their aren't scrutinized as much as companies from other countries, for example Rockstar with its GTA4. It was given 10s. Killzone 2, a game from Sony and developed by a Dutch developer, had every inch of it scrutinized and every "bad texture" was reason enough to take points from it. So in the end the American "games media" serves as a kind of promoter of the American games industry.

I'm not a fanboy of consoles, never has one swayed me more than the other.  If anything, I'm a fanboy of the individual games.
Most fanboys fail to recognize why they like the console so much-- it's just the games that are on it.

Go where the games go.

The term fanboy has been abused way too much (ironically by fanboys). Even people that aren't fanboys get branded as such (again, ironically by other true fanboys) because they might have something "unfavoring" to say about the competition. I've seen people make rational and well thought out comments only to have some dipshit waltz along and yell "fanboy" simply because they didn't like what that person had to say. To me the term "fanboy" is synomous with "ignorance." I don't believe a person who supports only one console is a fanboy because they probably have rational reasons as to why, or even two consoles.

For me I support Sony and the reasons are myriad. I did own a 360 for just short of two years BEFORE I bought a PS3. Now immediately a "fanboy" would label me such because of how I started this paragraph. It doesn't matter that I followed up with owning a 360 for almost two years. I've already been branded a fanboy in the eyes of that person regardless of actual FACTS to my cause or reasoning. That's what a fanboy does. They're not interested in understanding or getting to know the why's, all they care about is if you agree with them.

Another character trait of fanboys is their inability to rationalize. It's like arguing with a drunk. You can present facts to support your claims but in the eyes of a fanboy that's "meaningless propaganda." It's really astounding these people that get on the Internet and argue like infants over a console. It makes me wonder how these people (who are obviously schizophrenic) make due in the real world because as of yet I haven't met anyone in the real world that behaves as childish or irrational as they do. Amazing the power that anonymity grants, huh?

This blog is win. +1

"

For example, Microsoft is not known for videogames. So Microsoft is the "insecure guy" of this generation. It purposefully magnifies every little thing to make them look more than they actually are. And hide all the bad stuff. Also the insecure guy is always measuring itself against others. Sony and Nintendo have nothing to prove. Both are well known companies who created the greatest successes in the videogame history. So Sony is more like the "self-assured guy" who doesn't feel the need to give satisfaction to anybody else about what he does.

Also in this case a considerable portion of the so called "games media" jumped ship and started believing in the "insecure guy". So that's why you see people going out of their way to prove the 360 is better than the Wii or the PS3. They are not reporting facts, they have an agenda. Would they need to prove anything if it was indeed better?

I honestly think that nostalgia is the primary factor that contributes to fanboyism of any type.

"I honestly think that nostalgia is the primary factor that contributes to fanboyism of any type."

Rating -4 [ + ] [ - ]

"TeflonBilly said:

"Bullet_Jr said:

"I honestly think that nostalgia is the primary factor that contributes to fanboyism of any type."

Who gets nostalgic about the Xbox?"

The same people that refer to the N64 as the "old Nintendo""

"TeflonBilly said:

"Bullet_Jr said:

"I honestly think that nostalgia is the primary factor that contributes to fanboyism of any type."

Who gets nostalgic about the Xbox?"

The same people that refer to the N64 as the "old Nintendo""