Fanboy Confessions
Getting Acquainted
"Hello. My name is Josh Righter, from East Greenville, Pennsylvania, and I'm a Recovering Fanboy."
"Hi, Josh!"
Is being a fanboy as bad as being an alcoholic? Certainly not. But their common ground is this: they are both afflictions that have the ability to cloud one's mind and judgment.
A person who takes the occasional drink is not considered a drunkard, and similarly, someone who expresses a preference for a certain style, brand -- or, in our case, video game company -- is not necessarily a fanboy. Favouring Nintendo or Sony or Microsoft is not a negative action in and of itself. When left unchecked, however, sometimes a tendency towards a company can grow and fester until it reaches completely undesirable levels. What started out as a judgment based intelligently and logically on personal preferences and facts can end up as an ugly, blind following virtually injected with animosity toward the other camps, fuelled by an ostensibly unquenchable urge to justify the preference of the company in question by relentlessly attacking the others.
So: who cares?
I do, for starters, and you should, too. After all, the people described above are the ones destroying messageboards across the internet with idiotic posts ripe with intelligent commentary such as "xbOx is gay!11" and "the gamecub is for KIDDS!!!" They are the people who begin and/or perpetuate ridiculous rumours and false allegations borne out of a blind, burning hatred and unseeing loyalty. They are the people who are routinely banned from our forums.
And I was once one of them.
Sowing The Seeds
Before around 1995 or so, I was just your average, run-of-the-mill casual gamer. True, the only systems I had ever owned were the NES and SNES, but that was primarily because I thought that the Nintendo games I saw on television looked neater than the ones being advertised for the Sega Genesis. At this time, I had what I would call a healthy preference towards Nintendo; it was a decision based on the most important factor in gaming -- how much fun one can obtain with the game in question -- and it was not a decision that blinded me towards the strengths and benefits of other consoles from other consoles. In point of fact, I can remember seeing commercials for the PSX and being heartily impressed. Here was a system where you could move in all directions, and not just side to side and up and down! How was this possible? My friend managed to get a hold of one, and Battle Arena Toshinden, with its crazily zooming camera and spiffy rotations, blew us both away. However, I had just gotten my SNES about a year or so earlier, so the PSX was out of the question as a present from the parents, and hell if I had any money to buy one myself. But it wasn't an especially big deal; for all the tricks that the PSX threw at my retinas, I was still having a blast with Donkey Kong Country 2 and Ninja Warriors.
But my happy-go-lucky world was shattered at some point in 1995 by a little magazine known as Popular Science. Breezing through the latest issue one day, I happened upon an article about something called the "Ultra 64". It was Nintendo's latest system, the article explained, and it was set to revolutionize gaming. One look at the images of an early build of Super Mario 64 set within the text, and I completely agreed. In disbelief, I studied the three or four thumbnail-sized screenshots over and over. Mario looked even better than Battle Arena Toshinden, and plus, it was Mario! I did not own Super Mario World, but having been an insanely huge fan of the first three installments of the series on the NES, the prospect of a Mario game in full 3D left me, along with millions of other gamers, salivating.
I needed to find out more. As my poor Super NES sat in our television cabinet, accumulating a thin layer of dust, I was using my school's rudimentary "network" -- which consisted of a few hundred magazine articles on a computer -- to get answers to some of my questions. Soon, my head was pumped full of facts. The N64 would operate at 93.75 megahertz, almost three times as fast as the PSX. It would use the controversial cart media for its software, but this would eliminate load times found on disc-based systems, and many of the articles assured me that the audio difference between the CDs and the carts would be negligible at most. The games would cost a bit more, but was it worth it? Oh yes. The articles seemed to be sure of this, and I was sure as hell of it. The N64 was to be the world's most powerful gaming system, and before I knew it, I was on the bandwagon.
A Descent Into Ignorance
I passed the rest of 1995 and the first half of 1996 dreaming of the N64. I read and re-read the articles in the library. My friend (incidentally, the same one who owned the PSX) had a subscription to GamePro, and I began anticipating each issue more than he did, mercilessly tearing through the pages in search of any N64 information I could find, all the while blatantly ignoring any developments on the Saturn or the PSX. Meanwhile, I began squirreling away birthday and odd-job money in preparation for the purchase of a lifetime. I knew I wouldn't have it by the launch date, even after it was delayed from April of 1996 to September, but I was confident I'd have it within a few months of that. By the time my grandmother got me my very own subscription to GamePro in August of 1996, I was in up to my neck.
Simply put, the hype machine had worked on me in an almost unbelievably gigantic way. I was a full-fledged fanboy, and I made sure to act it. I smiled inwardly to myself if an answer in Algebra happened to come up as 64. I occasionally dropped in on PSX chatrooms on my friend's computer and yelled at the people within. Whenever I happened upon a Playstation at a friend's, I picked out every possible flaw I could find. I convinced myself that carts were every bit as good as CDs, and would only cost a few dollars more. I was confident that the N64's third party support was just a few months away, and that once they got a load of how well it would sell, they would jump from the Playstation like sailors from a flaming ship. I once made a password on my computer "PSXSUX".
It was bad.
Cured By Failure
Ironically, it was the N64's many disappointments that acted as my rehabilitation. Instead of the Betty Ford Clinic, my addiction was cured by seeing the myriads of Playstation games being released for every one N64 title. It was cured by seeing Final Fantasy 7 debut on the PSX. It was cured by seeing the press violently backlash against the machine they had so shamelessly lavished praise upon months earlier, claiming that Nintendo did not care about third parties, that the N64 was horrible to develop for, that they had designed the system around Mario 64.
It was not an immediate realization, of course. For quite some time, I refused to believe anything was wrong. Who needed third parties? Every N64 game was a winner, and every Playstation game was awful rubbish. Who cared that the games were a bit more money? They were on superior hardware, after all. Who cared that the PSX was effectively slaughtering the N64 in worldwide sales? The N64 had been released a bit later, and besides, people were stupid. They weren't enlightened like I was.
Finally, towards the very end of the system's lifecycle, at a time when the "Dolphin" began to slowly grip me the way the N64 had, I arrived at an epiphany: Nintendo was not perfect. In fact, they were decidedly imperfect. I still thought that the N64 was more fun than the Playstation, but I no longer denied the laundry list of problems that it had. And as the old junkie part of me tried to become religiously-obsessed with Nintendo's next console, the rest of me decided that enough was enough. From that point on, I started becoming the gamers I am today: someone who enjoys Nintendo products and systems over the competition, but is not afraid to acknowledge the problems of the company and the benefits of some of the others.
Helping The Future
So. Now I stand before you, a recovering fanboy. And if any of you are exhibiting the same symptoms I was, I hope that by now you are at least beginning to question your beliefs. No? Then here are a few facts I kept telling myself as the GameCube began to take shape and near its release date.
Nintendo is just a company.
This is one of the first steps to recovery. Acknowledging that Nintendo is not a friend, a father figure, or a deity, but rather a business enterprise, is an important realization to have.
Companies like to make money.
Gasp! It's shocking, I know, but contrary to popular belief, Nintendo, like most companies, is primarily concerned with revenue. One could make the argument that they are genuinely concerned with the satisfaction of their customers; perhaps this is true, but it does not change the fact that at the end of the day, Nintendo checks its books to make sure it's not in the red, just like any other company.
No company is perfect.
Nintendo is run by human beings, not flawlessly programmed robots, angels, or clones of Jesus. Human beings, while lovable creatures, are unfortunately known for making the occasional mistake, blunder, mishap, and wrong decision. Thus, companies that are run by human beings are also prone to make an incorrect judgment call every now and then. Do not be afraid to recognize these mistakes for what they are.
Other companies have good ideas, too.
It's true; no matter how much you'd like to think otherwise, not all good ideas come from Nintendo alone. Surprisingly, it is possible for other companies like Sony and Microsoft to have the occasional neat idea. Try not to hold it against them, and, if possible, consider purchasing the system and/or game in question. You might find that you have a begrudgingly good time with it.
I don't want to tell anyone what to do; following the advice given in this editorial without really knowing why would be no different than being a loyal drone of a videogame company. But I do hope that what I've said will make some of you think, and perhaps reconsider your feelings. Blind faith is something that occurs in all walks of life -- not just the console wars. Become a bit more open-minded with your gaming, and maybe the tolerance will spread like water to the other branches of your life. For your sake, and for the sake of those of us who have to listen to you, I hope so.