PC World's Love to Hate: "10 Worst Consumer Tech Trends"
As with any industry, with all the good comes a mighty truckload of bad. The game world is filled with all sorts of things that don't really work to the benefit of the group as a whole, and are usually the target of rabid commentary from the masses. I must admit that I'm somewhat of a whiner when it comes to things working out in a fashion that I don't agree with, but opinions being like butts and all.
Erin Bell of PC World Canada created a fantastic article on the banes of the technology world. While not exclusively devoted to the gaming industry, it hits pretty close to home. Covering DRM, licencing fees and even this bit about fanboyism.
The definition of fanboy (or fangirl) is an individual who harbours a fanatic devotion to something without logical reason. In the case of consumer technology, it can be applied to a situation where a person's self-esteem and sense of self-worth is attached the success of a particular product or brand. Whatever happened to just buying the best product? Instead, consumer technology buyers are broken into hostile camps: Apple vs. Windows, PlayStation vs. Xbox, iPod vs. everything else. Read an article about a Windows product and you can count on a few Mac users showing up and leaving snarky comments about how much they love OS X. Why do people feel such fierce loyalty to a corporation? You can rest assured the corporation doesn't feel the same level of loyalty towards you.
So I have some brand loyalty, but if I have the cash I'll buy any console you sit in front of me. I own a virtual boy for pete sake! Anyway, it's a great read. Love it or hate it, it makes some great points.
10 Worst Consumer Tech Trends [PC World Canada]
[via GamePolitics]
Asterick
Posted to Video Games on 15 November 2007
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: bad practices, complaints, fanboyism, pc world, tech trends
The entire "Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD" thing is dead on. The whole issue is stupid. It's like they forgot about Beta vs. VHS.
I agree about the fanboys, too (though I must confess to loving OSX myself and my utter distaste when I'm forced to use Windows, but that's based on actual prefernces rather than blind devotion to a giant company).
Region encoding needs to die. I understand why it's done and I still don't like it. DRM on the other hand is necessary evil. Until the number of ethical people that pay for what they listen to/play/use outnumber the people that steal, DRM will exist in some form or another. [I'm well aware that people have all types of personal and anecdotal excuses for not paying for what they should, but it's still illegal and not giving credit or support to content creators.]
I find it ironic that on the same page they complain about web ads that "cover up whatever I was trying to look at" also features those obnoxious double underline links bring up ads on mouse over.
Oh, I hate those things. Is there a way to disable those? Because AdBlock sure doesn't...