Nowhere-Fast.net

Happy 4th of July everybody.  In the way of fireworks, here’s a petition by Diablo fans who are unhappy with the art style in Diablo III.  They’re whining that the people who are, effectively, making a game for them are somehow doing it wrong.  Why are they doing it wrong?  Because they didn’t do exactly what these people want.  How foolish of them!  Everyone knows that all good artistic expression is created by pleasing your most rabid, vocal critics!

How valid their concerns are depends on how important you imagine fans are in this world of sequals and endlessly exploited intellectual property.  Certainly the success of any series is due to the support of the fans, but does that support buy them any editorial control?  My view, simply, is “no.”  I hate it when a good franchise is destroyed by a lack of vision or poor storytelling (I’m look at you, here, Wachowski Brothers - it’s not just Lucas) but I’m not going to get pissed off because they didn’t make my ideal version of the game or movie or whatever.  Also, I just can’t get myself worked up over this sort of shit.  It’s just not that important.

That’s the saddest part of this.  There are, if the numbers on that petition are to be believed, nearly 32,500 people who are so upset by the imagined “cartoonish” graphics in Diablo III that they have affixed their names.  They have registered their outrage on the Diablo forums and made it clear that they want nothing to do with this new Diablo game.  Apparently all they want is the exact same game as Diablo II only in 3D.

Well, I suppose that answers one question of mine.  Now I know why Blizzard only bothers to make three games.  That’s all people want from them - when they try something new they bring on the Nerdpocolypse.