"If I Don't Like It, It Must Be A Mistake"

I don’t think it’s novel to point out that there is a tendency on the internet for people to assume “I don’t like this, therefore it is bad (either in terms of quality or morality).” 

It can be exhausting to come across when you’re scrolling through social media, especially when you want to talk about something you like but other people don’t (believe me, my taste for 3DS games generally considered mediocre at best is a curse).

But at the end of the day, the fact that people online can have motivated reasoning is less of an issue than the related concept that’s been more prevalent as more people have had access to creators across all mediums: “I don’t like it, it must be a mistake.”

Dragon’s Dogma 2 intentionally makes fast travel hard so you can take your time and traverse the world yourself. That’s not something everyone is going to enjoy but to hear some people tell it, it’s a failure of design or even a malicious act to get people to buy microtransactions rather than a deliberate choice that they just don’t agree with.

One of the ways I see this mentality come up is in discussions of certain game mechanics that, tragically, I really enjoy. 

No, turn-based RPGs are not old-fashioned. 

No, linear map design is not more limiting than open-world.

There was a point where these choices were could have been made because of hardware limitations, yes, but that doesn’t automatically mean that any use of it now is a failure to live up to modern hardware.

It’s ok to dislike something, I will never say otherwise, but I think there’s a danger of treating art that doesn’t live up to our expectations as not just bad but failures. Something that doesn’t do what it’s trying to do.

And I think this mindset is feeding the hype about AI, or at the very least is tied to it. What is the appeal of being able to create your own modifiable movies other than “finally, MY vision can be realized” instead of taking the time to appreciate someone else’s vision?

That’s what it comes down to really, the ability to appreciate someone’s vision. To say “I don’t like playing this, but I see what it’s trying to do.”

It’s an increasingly dying art — on the internet at least — to the point where if you go and tell someone something is supposed to be difficult like that, they’ll get defensive. As if the fact that a design element is intentional means you have to like it.

I know there’s a level of annoyance with being asked to see someone else’s point of view when that turn of phrase is mostly associated with getting people to see why people like myself and my friends shouldn’t have basic human rights, but we can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater because people are disingenuous.

My main hope is that this is just a symptom of me being too online, that actual creatives and people in power don’t see comments like this and take them as an objective measure of quality. That people's art doesn’t get cut up so it can look the way it’s “supposed” to.

I think that’s too optimistic, but it’s a nice dream.

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