So how does this apply here?
Well, when a lifelong playstation gamer moves away from playstation to PC for example, that is all gone. It's just gone. Worse than gone. PC might already have its own associations in their heads that are decidedly negative for that person.
It isn't as if they can't enjoy video games any more. It isn't as if this isn't something that can't be adjusted. Like I said earlier it absolutely can and is continually adjusted. All your memories are just memories of the last time you remembered something anyway. People are plastic. Maybe in some ways less as we grow older, but still essentially plastic. But we can't deny the fact that context and headspace for which people enjoy a given thing, especially if that is an emotional thing, like, oh I don't know, a video game, are not always easy to let go of.
This manifests itself in different ways. It's why you will never convince, with logic, sound as it may be, a person to change their mind on something that was not born of logic in the first place. The fact is if Joe Gamer associates gaming with his Xbox, and his PC with the office, then an Xbox game being on PC, even if the experience is so much better on a PC, and he could make a cheap gaming PC with more options if he wanted to, you aren't going to change his mind. Heck, even Self Aware Joe Gamer may not change his mind, because you can't just fix a deeply rooted emotional association with logic. Not that easily and never completely. Now, part of just allowing yourself to grow as a human being is recognizing those limitations and realizing you can change them and experience new and different things. But also part of being understanding and emotionally intelligent on the other hand is recognizing that emotional association and this specific concept I've referred to with the shorthand of "headspace" and "emotional landscape" so far, are all part of what make us human beings. It's okay to let them be how they are, and learn to both expand them while also taking advantage of how powerful they are if indulged. If you truly love video games as a medium, both are valuable skills to develop.
The trouble we get into then here is when people attempt to rationalize their emotional experiences down to very simple point of interest. They associate mentally a noticeable thing with a noticeable emotion, and here's where it gets kind of funny but interesting, then create an emotional attachment to the idea of that noticeable thing ex post facto. So maybe a given sequence in a game was subconsciously extremely immersive for someone, but also there was a thing that happened in that sequence that they associate with that feeling. They will then try to convey that that thing they associated with the feeling was really really good and definitely was the source of that feeling they got, even if someone else who was not immersed in that experience can point to all the flaws in the thing that happened and how that thing isn't so great because it didn't affect them in the same way. You can say "well it's all subjective," but that is rather lazy.
Sorry if that was a bit confusing. Maybe for example, all sorts of things you do but probably mostly don't notice leading up to and including a given sequence in a game create a feeling of great pathos for you, and so then you are more receptive and ready to accept something as sad or moving. So a scene happens that you find really sad and moving. Then someone else points out to you how crappy and poor the writing was and how silly it sounds. That person didn't experience the same things as you to create that experience. You did, but didn't realize it. So for you, you point out an awkwardly and unrealistically written but earnest scene as something that created a moving experience, when really it was the whole of that gestalt leading up to that moment that enabled you to be receptive to that scene and not notice that ordinarily you'd find it silly. So when someone points out to you that the dialogue is silly and not realistic at all, you are incensed. How could they see that dialogue as silly? Well, it's pretty simple. Essential aspects that lead up to that experience didn't work for them. Just as equally they have probably experienced and enjoyed something you found silly because various things did not work for you. Heck, even if you both enjoyed the scene, different things may have been what did it for each of you, even if in English you'd list the same basic reason you enjoyed it, ANDDDDD, you could both be wrong in whatever simple thing you are ascribing the experience to. Most of what makes a game well beloved then is, I feel like it's pretty logical to conclude, is when it is so effective at nailing everything that everyone is able to experience what it sets out to experience for them.
My point is, that often we can mistake the things that really create experience for us for silly oversimplifications. That thing we ascribe it to might not even have anything to do with the true source of that experience. Even those of us who scorn intellectual analysis as boring and ruining the fun and magic of art and video games do this. Because all of us want to feel justified in feeling the way we do.
That's really what it comes down to. Our self image is threatened when the things we most deeply experience are trivialized. We have to justify our experiences because anything we deeply enjoy is reflective of who we are as people. I am not Chettlar because I find Viva Pinata delightful, and me being Chettlar isn't really accurately the reason I enjoy it; neither really totally begets the other. The fact is me being Chettlar is now for the past 7 years or so me being the guy who enjoys Viva Pinata, at least to a small degree. That's...kinda what people mean when they say art is a part of who they are, in my opinion. When I write music I show the world a part of me I can't express any other way. When I enjoy someone else's music, that is me responding to that person, and creating something else. An experience. A..me..unit sorta. That which I call my identity is amended whether I like it or not. Why else do people even lightly interested in a various piece of media adorn themselves either with avatars or memorabilia? Part of our identity is what we enjoy. When I justify why I enjoy a thing, I am justifying ME. And at some point somewhere with some thing, you reading this do that too. If you've read this, I've affected you whether you like it or not, whether you think I'm onto something or just an over-intellectual sycophant (I mean, I just used the word sycophant). As I talked about earlier, video games are some of the most involving of all mediums. Sure this combines with video games being enjoyed and created in huge part by anti-social nerds, a lot of whom never had to grow past being children and so reflect this reality in unfortunate and sometimes horrendous ways. But video games were always going to have such a strong effect on the people who play them, because by their nature they touch so many parts of us at once.
Alright.
Sooooo
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Let's plug this all in then. I get the previous part may have been a little boring, but I gotta make sure I establish some common ground here so I can get to the juicy bit. Hopefully the emotional headspace I created for you, lol, wasn't just "who is Chettlar and why has he assaulted me with this skyscraper of text?" I'm trying okay? It's a large topic.
Alright, well.
A lot of Playstation fans, whether they want to admit it or not, and not all of them, but many of them to varying levels, have used exclusives as their preferred means of justifying their being fans of the brand. Not just their purchase, but of the brand. Playstation. What that means for them. What emotional sparks that might gently but maybe imperceptibly begin to flare. I think for some of them, they view themselves as intelligent, discerning and logical people. To support this, they have to believe that the games they play are the best games ever made, or at least top notch in general. A few crappy games they dislike can serve as the sacrificial lambs to demonstrate to themselves and others that they are not mindless fanboys, of course. (Psst, this is not me implying that Sony games are all trash. But the emotional need some may posses more than others to place these exclusives at the very top of the medium is very much related to this. If you find yourself starting to feel defensive right now at that very implication, uh...maybe think about that for a minute. Because I've not even said whether I like Sony games. Actually that's not true, I already have. I mentioned Journey earlier as a hugely impactful game for me, because it truly was for me.) And this isn't to diminish the fact that these games, on their own, have created emotional experiences. Sony makes some quality titles. What I am saying that there is an emotional need to elevate them into the stratosphere that you might not be as immune from as you might think, even if you don't even like Playstation games and you're interests lie elsewhere.
This is why you have a number of journalists comment that they receive a lot of their death threats (if not due to them being anything other than cis male because of that whole big thing gamers™ have a problem with, but that's another topic) most often in relation to, you guessed it, their views on exclusive games. Not just Playstation games. This happens with Nintendo fans and xbox fans. But right now the topic is Playstation, so I've been using that specifically. Plus, let's not pretend that Sony's marketers are totally oblivious to their identity as a brand that builds major impressive cinematic experiences. They're pretty vocal about it honestly. So if you are profoundly affected by that marketing because all marketing in all of the world of branding of any kind is designed with the intent of validating that identity you've created, well, it's working.
Again this is not to specifically attack Playstation fans. Every person has this happen to them, because we are emotional creatures like I discussed before. I'm not even attacking capitalist marketing. Cults do this, states do this, small clubs do this, movements do this — anything and everything that has an interest in existing as an institution in your life does this. And it always will.
But the er, unsavory side of it is Playstation fans being ugly up to and including sending death threats to websites who didn't give Uncharted 3 10/10 reviews before they had even played the game themselves. That behavior didn't come out of the blue. It didn't just come from some aggressively mislead slaves to the marketing of Uncharted 3 who just believed foolishly that the game was great before it was on store shelves. It didn't just come from the black magic power of branding alone. It came from fans whose identity relied on Playstation being a brand of prestigious perfect video games. I will point out, meekly, but frankly, that the forum that was the precursor to this forum, was home to a lot of that senseless ugliness. Maybe not the worst of it, but some of it. But again, it's not senseless really. It's not reasonless most certainly. It's just a result of a lack of self-awareness of how deeply and profoundly the experience and identity of being a Playstation fan, even among those who didn't specifically identify as Playstation fans per se affected these people's views. Again, we all are affected by our emotions even in what we feel are our most rational moments. This is an example of how that applies here. Marketing was part of it, but not even close to all of it. It cannot create this out of nothing.
I feel strongly that trying to dismiss these people as corporate slaves is foolish, I need to note. It is an oversimplification that tries to distance the one making it from their behavior, trying to shift the blame to a system rather than acknowledge the human source of, and life factors leading up to, that behavior, be it as it may that that marketing did play its part in accentuating or accelerating that behavior. I really feel that much of what begat that behavior was something universal to us all. That maybe you reading this aren't so immature as to act in that way, but you are nevertheless affected by your favorite brand of video game, or your favorite happy video game place. It compels you to act the way you do, whether you've taken the time to see it or not.
Hopefully I've kind of shown some of the beautiful and ugly sides of what emotional identity and the headspaces we inhabit, that are so intimately tied to that identity, can be.
When you take away a Sony fan's rationale for defending his identity as a rational, logical, intelligent human being who enjoys Playstation because he is such, you lay bare and naked the fact that his love of Playstation was never truly rational, logical, or intelligent.
Certainly there were rational, logical, and intelligent reasons that may have got him there, but his love in the end comes from a humiliating and simple human reality. He loves his beeps and boops, his whirrs and start-up tune, his click of a face button and clack of an analogue stick. He loves the feeling of the couch under is butt. He loves the dim lamp light. He loves the logo that pops up and tells his lizard brain, "Game time! Fun time! Relax! The physical place you are in only serves along with the lights and sounds and trinkets to create the mental place you so enjoy. We all exist to simultaneously create a sanctuary and catalyst for what you love most." To explain to him his rationale is not, at least entirely, rational despite the part logic may play in it, the reason he loves Playstation, is humiliating, because it eats at, even if he doesn't realize it, the idea that he isn't who he thinks he is. He's a silly, lizard brained animal just like anyone and anything else. And his love for these experiences is inspired in huge part by silly things. And he wants to feel that it comes from intelligence and superiority. It's banal and boring insecurity, regardless of whether he's even ever been conscious of it.
He doesn't want to admit that at the heart of it, the reason he's a Playstation fan is for reasons he probably has already subconsciously written off as humiliating or silly. (He may have, in an ironic lack of self awareness used such an explanation to humiliate someone else and diminish their experience specifically to prop himself up. That isn't necessary at all, but if he's a jerk maybe it's happened. You don't have to be a jerk to have blind spots. We all do.) And he doesn't even have to have gone through ANY of these thoughts either. It probably just manifests in a vague fear of being threatened, his subconscious warning him that this person pushing him to recognize the very banal source of his identity is actually just an asshole, and he shouldn't think about it, but instead be mad at the asshole, or the person responsible. He tries to come up with all kinds of badly thought out rational reasons to defend his position and why his essentially selfish desires shouldn't be exposed as the petty things they are.
And you, the reader, probably do this with something, somewhere, in your life too. Maybe it's more serious, maybe it's more tiny. But that's your business to examine what silly things your pride doesn't let you accept. My point is that this is a human thing. Not something playstation fans do because they're dumb dumbs for some reason.
And the funny thing is? The cure to this is not that complicated. It's like, really simple. Accept that your lizard brain likes the beeps and boops and that the idea of what playstation is to you is in the end, just an emotion. Accept that you aren't any smarter than anyone else because of the games you enjoy. That your reasons for the way you game the way you do aren't super intelligent because at the center of it all, you are playing games to have fun, which is nothing if not the definition of emotional experience. You are going to do what you are going to do to engender that experience. I mean, really games are deeper than fun. Some of our favorite games we love because they were very seriously emotional, and not really the typical colloquial definition of fun, now that I really think about it. The fact is you are going to, subconsciously or not, do what you need to do in order to create those experiences for yourself. And that's okay. It's definitely good to explore the reasons why this happens. But analyzing your reasons for enjoying something is an intellectual pursuit of curiosity, not an appropriate avenue for justifying your identity, and certainly not an appropriate thing to use to deprive others of enjoying more things in the way most effective for them. If analyzing why something happens is not allowed to humiliate you or if it makes you feel threatened in anyway, well sucks to be you buddy because fact is you are a mortal imperfect human being and analyzing the reasons you are the way you are are going to be compromising in some fashion. I really don't know what to tell you other than to move past it, because you are seriously limiting yourself to some awesome opportunities to learn and grow as a person. I don't care if you're 15 or 50 or 31½.
The fact is, humiliating as it may be, you fancy the things you fancy is because they tickle your lizard brain and help create an emotional cocktail you enjoy.
If you don't recognize that, you won't realize how utterly silly it is that you are essentially arguing that someone should compell you to spend more money. Like, really at the end of it, it's an extremely illogical, silly fear of missing out. You've created a really silly idea, dress it up however you like, that you are missing out on something. If a game comes to more platforms, well clearly an exclusive has been deprived of you. You've got a silly animalistic instinct of valuing scarcity. You feel that if a game comes to more platforms, it's not special any more. So then it's not as special. But you've not lost anything, other's have gained something. But the FEELING of it being special is gone, so you feel that objectively something is missing. Well buddy sorry to break it to you but there is nothing logical about that, no matter how you want to dress it up. So much for being rational. Yes, games are created to sell consoles, but if a company moves to making those games for more platforms, you have not lost anything. You just feel like you have because the emotional puzzle piece that has disappeared from the equation if the feeling of scarcity and exclusivity everyone finds at least a teeny tiny bit alluring on some level.
More related to the general point of this entire post, you also fear missing out in a way that really is actually, funny enough, self imposed, and leads you to do silly things like, as I said above, imply that you WANT to be compelled to spend extra money. The fact is you want a rational reason to get a video game console and have the whole experience it provides you. If you don't have an exclusive game to justify that experience, then you are left facing that horrible, humiliating fact we talked about.
You don't want the console for rational reasons. You want the console because you want the emotional idea of that console. You want the console because of the emotional landscape it creates within you. Because you are a human being who needs things you don't want to recognize to exist in order to facilitate the fullest enjoyment of a video game possible. Exclusives helped justify that for you in a way that seems tangible and rational.
Your silly emotional and not-well-justifiable reasons for spending hundreds of dollars on a console aren't enough for you. You need to feel reasonable, rational, and intelligent for wanting what you want, even if you don't personally think you care. If you really didn't care, you wouldn't be asking someone to make you spend hundreds of dollars on electronics that in all essential ways do all the same things as the electronics you already own. You want stuff, and now you can't justify it, and that's humiliating to recognize how silly you are.
Thing is though...like, really the way to make peace with this, like I kind of covered, isn't that hard. Like, okay, I like silly things. Why care? Are video games not just a bunch of bleep and boops? They still create amazing experiences for you. If you want to spend $400 to feel better about yourself, spend $400 if it makes you happy. It was just as silly an expenditure when it had exclusives, because at the heart of it you are just indulging your emotions, and that's what these big toys are for. It is no less and no more a silly expenditure in a way that really, truly matters now that it doesn't. If all your games come to PC, you are still someone who enjoys themselves on your playstation or your xbox or switch. Go play your playstation or xbox or switch and be happy. You are a silly, irrational human being. Don't take yourself so seriously. Don't be an idiot with your money, but if what makes you happy is owning a box with a big X or a big P or lopsided face looking thing on it to play your games on, then that's what makes you happy. You're wasting so much energy trying to preserve your ego, and honestly in the end hurting yourself most of all by limiting your ability to grow as a human being.
Yeah, you are still a child. You like big toys. You like car go vroom. You like head blow off. You like sparkles shiny wow. You are depriving yourself and others of joy by insisting you are so superior to that. You're not intelligent by trying to make yourself appear intelligent or rationalize and justify your self-image. Ironically you're...kinda bein' stupid. So what. We're all stupid. Quit taking yourself so seriously. Go play video games you big dummy.
EDIT: Gonna include this as I bolded a TL;DR for the whole topic.
(He responded to his own post)
Well yeah, but the post is already extremely long, and I kinda hoped at that point people can kinda infer that with all this stuff going on, because it's complicated and I literally would need to write a book about it, that how people react to these things and where their attachments lie at their deepest make a big difference.
In the post part of what I relate to this specific example is exclusives mattering to a sony fanboy. Not every sony fan, but specifically the type of person who is having an emotional breakdown over this, or even feeling a bit jealous and isn't quite sure why. You can just choose to see it as bizarre and dismiss it as only something Sony fans do, or you can sit down and try to understand it. My point wasn't that everyone who likes exclusive games is going to have a break down if someone else gets to play them; it's that if your self image relates to your identity as a playstation gamer, which isn't always really a consciously pursued thing as it is informed by emotional context you may not even be aware of, and if that identity is justified by things you find reasonable and worthwhile, such as exclusive games or whatever other rational reasons you come up with to justify your emotional attachment, then removing those rational reasons that helped prop you up as an intelligent person, and revealing that really you just like what you like because you're a silly human being, well that's going to not feel very comfortable. It's a compromising realization.
If you are already secure enough as a person to have gotten over this in some other area in your life and just do not take yourself seriously as a person, it's likely you're not really going to struggle with this all that much. It's never that black and white, but yeah.
For me the reason I said I understand what this is like and want to explore it is because I know I'm pretty susceptible to FOMO, so things that touch on that affect me a lot. That's how it directly affects ME.
Point is everyone's cocktail of emotional context for experiences heavily plays into their identity, even if a lot of it is under the hood kinda. Probably if you feel worried about this it's just irrational fears and insecurities you may not even consciously stoke bubbling up to the surface, and my post was an attempt to examine that from the ground up. Why does this only manifest in some people but not others at least in the same way? Did my best to examine the underlying reasons so people can take their conclusions from there.
Now that I've slept on the issue, I think I'm just gonna quote this as my TL;DR, and then my even shorter TL;DR because sorry guys it's a big topic. Emotions are complicated.
www.resetera.com
