VodkaDrunkenski

I've been an occasional lurker in these forums -- and a regular 8-4 and Bombcast listener -- for years, but this two-year-old thread finally made me register an account.

I enjoy a lot of the stuff Tim Rogers writes. I wouldn't say it's high literature (or helpful consumer advice). It's just rambly, personal, occasionally funny, occasionally irritating, occasionally thought-provoking chatter about video games. He's a bit of a bullshit artist, but bullshit can be entertaining sometimes. I do understand how his writing would drive some people up the wall.

What I don't understand is this:

Why do you guys all feel like it's cool to come on these threads and just vomit hatred on other people? It's so shitty and unnecessary.

People writing for Kotaku (or any games site) are not getting paid the big bucks. They are not doing lines of coke off of the breasts of supermodels. They are not life's lottery winners. They're just regular schmoes who are enthusiastic about a particular hobby and have a low-paying but fun job that involves that hobby.

If a person without talent -- or a person who's just an all-around "asshole" -- gets a job writing for a site like Kotaku, a grave injustice has not been done. It's not a big deal. Sometimes assholes are hired to write articles for blogs. This fact shouldn't threaten or enrage you. It's nothing to get angry about. It's not a reason to get nasty.

I honestly don't feel bad for wealthy celebrities who are ridiculed and who have their privacy invaded all the time. They pursued wealth and fame, and they're getting wildly overpaid, so there's a fair trade. But guys like Tim Rogers, or the guys on the Bombcast, are not wealthy celebrities. They're just regular people who write and talk on the Internet. They're also likely to see all of the nasty shit people say about them on comment threads.

You might think that you'd be able to laugh off a comment thread in which strangers go on and on about how worthless you are ... but you might be surprised.

The fact that someone wears pink sweaters, name-drops obscure rock bands, and has a writing style that infuriates you does not mean that you need to trash him viciously on the Internet. Just ignore him, and focus on being a decent human being.

I'm surprised to hear that a lot of y'all thought the games were impressive. The indie roguelike and the Panzer Dragoon clone looked cool, and MGS5 -- a multiplatform release -- seemed promising, but that was it for me. That Spark game looked like a not-very-fun cross between Populous, From Dust, and LittleBigPlanet. I'm sure Forza will be excellent, but will it be that much better than Grid 2 and the new Gran Turismo? Will it be better than DriveClub?

I understand that fans of the FPS genre can tell the difference between games like CoD and Battlefield, or Titanfall and Destiny, but to me, they're all alike, and not interesting. I also don't care for most Arkham Asylum/Ninja Gaiden style beat-em-ups. (These are just my preferences; I like strategy games, immersive role-playing games, arcadey old-school stuff, and games like Katamari, Portal, Pikmin and Odin Sphere that try to introduce new play concepts.) So there wasn't anything in the MS presentation that appealed to me.

I'm sure that those demos showed some graphical improvements from the current PC standard . . . but if so, the improvements were too subtle for me to detect. The Xbox One and PS4 games I've seen look current-gen to me. (Ryse, by the way, looked TER-rible. Lousy dialogue, lousy graphics, familiar gameplay, familiar setting.)

We'll see what Sony's showing tonight . . . but my feeling at this point is that I'll just collect retro games and play on PC for the next few years.