Yesterday Nintendo released a video of Eiji Aonuma – the director behind most Zelda games for a while now – showing off some gameplay footage for the upcoming Breath of the Wild sequel: Tears of the Kingdom. The sequel to one of the most ambitious and acclaimed games for how big and alive its open world is. And somehow, they seem to be outdoing themselves with these sequel title to an already amazing game. Which is just ridiculous to me how they can do that like it’s nothing.

As a game designer and fan of the Zelda series for a while – as well as having played hundreds and thousands of hours of Breath of the Wild – I watched  this sneak peek video with excitement. Nintendo had already shown a few trailers and teased at new mechanics for the game, but this was the first time they were going to be shown in real gameplay footage. And let me tell you, what I saw left me extremely excited and amazed with what Eiji and his team had done.

Again, as a game designer (or so I call myself) I was absolutely impressed and amazed by the mechanics they had created for this sequel, and not only that, but how crisp and seamless they implemented them into a world that I thought I had already explored to its limits. And the fan kid inside of me was just constantly thinking “WHAT?!? HOW DID THEY DO THAT?!?”. So, as any fan with access to the internet, I got into youtube and saw that one of the gaming news channels that I follow had made a reaction video for this gameplay reveal.

In hoping to share my excitement with other fans and people in the media, I watched the video and sadly, I only left it with a weird taste in my mouth and a hate for gamers and their gaming leaks fueled hype trains.

In the last couple years I’ve started to notice more and more how gamers seem to be less impressed by things. And look, I kinda get it, it’s less interesting or exciting seeing a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE OPEN WORLD SHOOTER WITH HYPER REALISTIC GRAPHICS (queue epic surround sound) when all games claim to be “groundbreaking” or “revolutionary”, when it’s just a reskin of another game you’ve already played. Believe me, I get it. But god damn dude, I wish people started looking at things with a bit more joy in their little mountain dew covered gamer hearts.

When I finished watching this video reacting to the new Zelda game footage, the reaction of both the commentators in the video and the comment section was “Yeah I’m excited, but I’m not THAT excited. I was expecting more…”. And I feel like this is a pretty common reaction of the gaming community to reveals of such nature. I still remember people getting excited in the early 2000s over a dude showing off a shitty polygonal character jumping around in a 3 minute demo during E3. But now, gamers are not getting excited unless you show them their favorite video game character jumping out of the screen and giving them a brand new PS5 and full access to the game for free.

And look, I’m not saying that people don’t or can’t get excited for games anymore, they do and they can, but I also have noticed how the more passionate gamers who make the most noise, are always complaining. While the gamers that were super excited and happy with an announcement just go on with their days and appreciate the beauty of not using Reddit.

Look, you are 100% entitled to feeling and thinking whatever you want, I’m not writing this to make anyone feel like shit or to attack people that don’t like the things I like as much as I do. All I’m saying is that maybe we should take what we get and let ourselves get excited about the small things. 

Games have grown a lot in the last 10 years and have turned into a pretty mainstream thing. All this growth has also made the gamers more connected with the game developers. A lot of studios – specially smaller indie studios – make it a point to always have an open channel of communication with their fans, to give feedback and open the conversation because well, sometimes the fans of a series have great ideas about what would make said series cooler or better. I mean come on, just look at all the amazing fanart and fanfiction that the Sonic fans have created!

Actually, don’t… don’t look at it. 

Believe me, you don’t want to look at it.

But this open channel of DIRECT communication between the creator and the consumer has also led to some problems. Ask any game developer on twitter, they all have some pretty intense stories of fans approaching them in a not very friendly manner. Stories of harassment, death threats and just general shitines just because they couldn’t give the fan the specific date of release of the game down to the minute. Most times, not even the developers know when their game is going to be released, because that choice is in the hands of their publisher. But that’s another topic.

This direct contact with the creators of the game has given gamers – in my opinion – a sense of immense power over the games and the developers themselves. This type of creator-consumer interaction was made by developers that cared for their fans and wanted to do cool things for them, and yes, there are amazing and healthy interactions thanks to it, but also some pretty intense bad ones. And in my honest opinion, in this case, the bad ones do overshadow the good ones. Like… a lot. No one should be getting death threats because of Minecraft.

It’s cool that the fans can have a noticeable impact in the creation of the games they love, but I think that power is making them appreciate less what is being created and brought to them, because in the back of their head most of the active gamers online are always thinking “I could have done that better” or “They should have listened to us and done this instead”. And it’s this kind of thinking that is killing the joy out of cool things. Or at least that’s my take on it.

So, the next time you encounter someone like that or you catch yourself thinking “I could’ve done it better” – cos I’ll be honest, I have also been that asshole fan a few times – just stop, and try to think that while yes, maybe you’re idea could’ve been cool, is what they chose really THAT bad? 

I’m not asking you to stop your critical thinking or to turn off your sense of wanting more out of things, at the end of the day, it’s that same feeling and demand that has made the gaming world grow to where it is now. All I’m saying is, let’s get excited about the small things again. Let’s try to remember the days of pixelated textures and triangular polygon boobs. Get excited about what we get and stop getting mad about what we “should” have gotten.