The Tragic Vulnerability of Gaming: Why Are We So Gullible?

October 23, 2021

I might as well have spent about six or seven years under a rock when it comes to modern gaming. I remember when GTA V came out like it was yesterday. I was so excited to play it after it had been out for a year, and the next thing I know, I completely zone out from modern gaming altogether. I stopped carrying about when the next Call of Duty was going to be out or what was new and exciting. The next thing I know, I’m 19 years old sitting in my dorm room and finding myself fascinated with all these games that I missed out on. I almost exclusively played the same GameCube and Xbox games for over half of a decade, but I had heard about tragedies such as No Man’s Sky being a complete failure when it first arrived. It simply was just something I thought I had moved on from.

Last year, for the first time in my life, I found myself excited for a new game coming out, and that game being Cyberpunk 2077. Funny enough, I actually had not heard about it before I met someone who I ended up having the biggest crush on. They got me interested in the game, and I was excited to flex on all of my friends telling them I preordered it. it was a very vulnerable time of my life. I was taking 18 credits and working third shift at FedEx, I was pretty damn miserable, but hey, at least I was able to afford the game, right?

I’d heard all the feedback and criticisms. I was horrified to hear that it was bricking older generation consoles and making computers with even the finest graphics cards freeze. I never finished the game, but for what it was worth for its two weeks of relevance, I thought it was fun but I knew it was very problematic and it wasn’t perfect by any means. but as I stopped playing the game, it was as if I felt more aware of my surroundings, or rather, the failures of CD Projekt Red. You mean to tell me that the people who made the Witcher 3, one of my favorite games, are also responsible for this? Well, after I did some more research, I learned that the Witcher 3 was not perfect on arrival either. Maybe it was just another No Man’s Sky, and so I decided to give it some time, but with every hotfix and patch, it doesn’t feel like it is improving. It’s been a year and I don’t hear about people raving over Cyberpunk 2077 like they do with No Man’s Sky, a game that had a lot of love and time put into it after its release. Cyberpunk had been teased for years, constantly being pushed back until it finally came out. Of course it was hyped with customizable genitalia and trans representation and posed as a more progressive game for our modern era, but in hindsight, it was all a ploy. Yes, we should be representing people of all identities, but it feels as if this was a deflector for the massive problems behind the game. They had several years to work on this game and yet there are still massive bugs that impacts the overall gameplay. CD Projekt Red had more than enough potential to prevent this. But instead, they have a broken game that was pulled from the Playstation Store and have exploited and gaslit people, including myself, into thinking that Cyberpunk will be better and that they care. But for me, I refuse to buy into it. Cyberpunk is a mess. Maybe someday, but I don’t expect that to be anytime soon.

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