An anonymous reader recently sent us an email trying to puzzle out the problem of criticizing a genre full of handouts.
“A lot of games are free to play these days. Whenever a F2P game has a free expansion, there are obviously going to be some people who don’t like some things about it. And there are also going to be some people who say that the first group doesn’t have a ‘right’ to complain about something they got for free. Is this true? Even if people didn’t pay for the expansion itself, doesn’t spending money on the game pay for content? And if you are funding the content, don’t you have a right to voice your opinion about it?”
My gut reaction is to reject the initial premise — when I’m writing about whether a game is good or bad, I don’t think charging less (or more obliquely) should be a free pass for a game to suck without comment. And yet at the same time, I’ve had it drilled into me that good manners means not complaining about something given to me freely — beggars can’t be choosers and all that. How do you reconcile this problem? How do you justify blasting “free” MMORPG content?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
