noname2200 said:
Hey, I get it, you're not excited in their new games, or any of the ports, and that's perfectly fair: critique away, with my full blessing! I won't even pretend that I'm not personally underwhelmed with the 2020 lineup at the moment. But they did just announce two new titles, each of which will legitimately excite/intrigue some people, and I think it's often important to be communicate our thoughts in a clear and accurate manner. If nothing else, that minimal level of restraint might discourage some of the histrionics that happen on this site.
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Warning: This is more of a reply to this entire thread rather than to anyone specifically, if you just want to argue how wrong Cerebral was on a literal level you are missing the broader point.
No, I am excited for the ports. I even said in the thread about Mario's 35th Anniversary that the gimmick releases look cool too. I'm just sniffing out a bad argument. The issue I have with this site when it comes to literal and non-literal Nintendo critique is that there's no nuance. You have one side that has basically bitched about Nintendo for almost every year they've been releasing games, and that side is a downer especially when the main user contributing to it (Curl) will start discussions only to talk about how they are too tired to continue arguing with people, even though they know what they are doing by constantly bringing up the same point every few days in the same threads over and over again: inviting discussion they will perceive as negative and too draining, and then quitting halfway. Rinse and repeat. Then you have the other side, which honestly makes more sense logically, but less sense emotionally. Because there is a difference between the two. Someone constantly bringing up a spreadsheet of literal new games or literal new releases isn't a great counter-argument for someone being disappointed, and the thing that kicks me is that most of these people also think or probably agree that this has been a disappointing year, yet they feel the need to fight emotions by bringing up a sheet to defend a multi-billion dollar corporation. And if I'm sounding like a douche right now, it's just because I'm being candid, I have no problems with the users in these threads, I'm just explaining a pattern I've noticed again and again since 2018. What I hate is that I agree with both of these sides equally. It gets annoying seeing hyperbole about how there's no games , especially since a lot of these users probably don't expand their horizons much outside a few select titles (mostly Nintendo games or games that "push the system", which is such a bad metric when so many games do that in different unique ways), but the funny thing is that by counter-arguing with lists of ports or AR games you are also being equally hyperbolic in thinking such an argument is a great defense against Nintendo criticism. Which to be clear, is what the original poster being replied to, Marth, was doing. It isn't, and bringing it up again and again doesn't change that.
I get it, it's a forum discussion and it's hard to make a nuanced point without writing a wall of text. Then do it. You already put in the effort to sign up for the site, to create an avatar, to have a presence. Frankly I'm sick of people not putting in the effort, or maybe nuance just doesn't come naturally (after all there is a lot of poorly thought-out walls of text on this site), but all you're doing by trying to save time with simplistic counterarguments is dragging out discussion into multiple replies before Nintendo releases another direct and the cycle starts again. It's a lot easier to just admit that one side (or in this example both sides) aren't invalid, even if what they say doesn't make perfect logical sense. And again, I'm not talking to you specifically, it's an attitude I see on the forum in general.
This forum constantly makes fun of the idea that if a game is releasing and a user ignores it as a new release, it's somehow unreasonable and stupid of them to do so. Do people not realize that this is actually how consumers work? Like, that's how consumers buy games. They usually don't look at a laundry list and say "well i'm not interested in any of this, but at least Nintendo is trying!" Yes, if you're a company and a big enough portion of your fanbase does not enjoy the software you're releasing, it might as well not exist. Especially if you're a company who's software validates the existence of your hardware. That's not even up for debate, that's just consumerism in general. You're selling a product, the fact that a product exists doesn't validate you as a supplier. A select amount of games releasing does not automatically validate a company's output, that's not how real life works, that's looking at numbers in a void. Now what validates Nintendo is that most of these releases sell a lot for what Nintendo expects out of them, some of their ports even end up massively surpassing what Nintendo expects. I expect the 3D All-Stars collection to be the same. That's also why smaller new releases are generally respected, they are new products made for a specific niche. So when you are trying to talk from a more fair general perspective on the trajectory of Switch's release schedule, something like say for example Kirby or 3D All-Stars is very respectable and hard to argue against. The issue is when you have games releasing that are both niche and not new releases, that are supposed to hold users' complaints over for months, which is what Pikmin 3 Deluxe discussion failed to recognize before the Mario ports were announced. Of course ironically now all those complaints were more or less invalidated, but then again that's only if we're talking from a "fair" perspective (I.E. someone also trying to convince others of their opinion). Because talking from a personal perspective, as extremely insular as it might be, is also totally fair. Somehow I doubt that if someone complained and tried to have a honest conversation about how they don't have anything to play because they aren't going to buy the Mario ports, that would go down well. It's tough because there's a nuance between talking about your opinion and talking about your opinion in relation to the market (I would say it's the equivalent of the difference between "objective" discussion and "opinionated" discussion, but the reality is both are equally opinionated because they come from people's viewpoints).
What frustrates me most of all is that this just seems so much more extreme than it was even in 2018, like the community just got worse as a whole. Because in 2018 I remember speaking fairly consistently on how much the year disappointed me, and that's despite the fact that that year got a new Kirby, a new Mario Party, a new Smash, a new Mario Tennis, a new Pokemon remake, Octopath Traveler, and ports of Bayonetta 1+2, Hyrule Warriors and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (all of which aside from Tropical Freeze were actually very good values). Looking back on it, that seems like a much better year than 2020. But you know, as much as I got a lot of replies calling my arguments bad or trying to invalidate my opinion as crazy or selfish, it wasn't nearly as much as users who say the same thing about 2020 get now, despite being a much worse year overall for releases.
I'm not even disappointed in this year to the same extent as I was in 2018, I've mostly been playing older emulated titles and backlog games anyways. I have enough to play, I like the Mario collection because I haven't played those games, I'm more than fine. But what I hate are bad arguments, or poorly thought-out comments. So when for example you reply to Cerebralbore and call him out on a technicality, all you are doing is shifting the point of the discussion, even if you didn't mean to. Because the point of Cerebralbore's comment was to indicate how he's not happy with Nintendo's release schedule, since Marth's original post was a sarcastic response to the attitude of many users in this thread, asking them if they were finally happy. That question is the point being addressed. Yes, Cerebral was wrong, but that's missing the forest for the trees. Isn't the fact that he couldn't even remember that there were any new games at all, more or less show that the attitude in his reply wouldn't change whether or not you corrected him? And yea, I know I'm defending a user who once tried to invalidate Pokemon Let's Go as not being a big release because of Metacritic, and thus defending maybe the worst example of the non-literal argumentative portion of this thread, I'm disgusting myself as well don't worry. But I think the difference is, for many consumers titles like those might as well not exist, whereas that isn't true for Pokemon. So why even bring it up in a discussion about the satisfaction level of a lot of users in this thread? It's not extremist to say that those titles don't really count for most people, or almost anyone at all, I feel like. And we all know that if someone in this thread came in saying that Mario Kart Live made their year, it wouldn't get that kind of attention. It's only because Cerebral was negative, and responded to someone else, that there needed to be multiple people jumping in with a rather mundane defense that again missed the broader discussion. I just wish discussion was nuanced, because every time I read this thread I walk away thinking everyone sounds ridiculous.
What's funny is that the 3D Mario collection being released so soon is probably an indication that there is a new holiday title, probably at least two, and thus this thread discussion will yet again be outdated most likely in a few months. But consider this a reference for when Nintendo has yet another poor release schedule.
