I'm going to drop a major bombshell. Ready? Enthusiast gamers are jaded and cynical. Shocking, I'm sure. It's understandable. Company A sends out PR mouthpiece B to hype up announcement C, getting us all excited but ultimately letting us down when product D turns out to be a big fat F. We take rumors with huge spoonfuls of salt and roll our eyes when poorly kept secrets that we know to be true try to get covered up as rumors by those in charge. This divide between industry insiders and onlookers has made the latter very skeptical of just about everything the former says.

Perhaps we have become too skeptical, though. Lately, it seems that not a week goes by without an interview with or a sound bite from some industry figurehead that gets torn apart by bloggers and message board commenters trying to find the hidden meaning behind the person's words. Even the most straightforward statements are held up to intense scrutiny, and I am absolutely disgusted that we've become so bitter that we trust nothing and must stuff words in others' mouths.

My blood really came to a boil when Jim Sterling posted this Shigeru Miyamoto article earlier today. Miyamoto said that he was pretty bummed out during the Nintendo 64 and GameCube eras, so Jim as well as many of the commenters took that to mean that Miyamoto fancies himself a gaming god who hated having to serve those gamers who kept the company afloat during Nintendo's troubling years. I had trouble reading between the lines to find those words in the original article. I dunno. I was never all that good at critical reading back in high school. Maybe that's what Shiggy really meant to say.

Or maybe that's a load of garbage.

In the original CVG article, Miyamoto said:

"I was endlessly fascinated with 3D worlds, but what with all the issues I had to tinker with in terms of rendering and processing speed, it got to the point where I didn't know who was making the games any longer.

"This is a job where you have a plan and you polish it endlessly while getting help from others. If Nintendo's games fail to stand out as games that aren't made that way proliferate, then it shows that the creation process is for nothing, which made me very sad. That was especially obvious during the GameCube era; Nintendo titles were hardly even discussed by the [non-gaming] general public back then."

As opposed to the giant middle finger that Jim and others think he is waving in our faces, it would seem that Miyamoto, disillusioned by the increasing dominance of tech in the design process, was genuinely upset that the general public had Nintendo's competitors on their mind rather than Nintendo. That sounds very direct and understandable, right? But no! The results of Shiggy's epiphany were the DS and the Wii, bastions of evil shovelware! You were just waiting for the right moment to abandon us, weren't you, Shigster!?

Rabble, rabble, middle finger, middle finger, middle finger!

Guys! Do you honestly believe that these people are trying to insult us on a personal level? That every word they utter, every action they take, every move they make is so that they can have a hearty laugh at our "misfortunes"? Is it not possible that it is what it is, without any deeper meaning? This is seriously new depths of cynicism.

It's not just Nintendo either (though this Wii era has made gamers quite vehement towards the company's entire administration). It's anyone who happens to catch us in a bad mood. Take the announcement last year for Beyond Good & Evil 2, for instance. Ubisoft president Yves Guillemot said the company was making the game "more accessible" in order to "make sure that it's really done for the new generation that's come into video games." Naturally, this sent the Internet into an uproar over the loss of a "hardcore" game to the "casual" machine.

I'm sorry, but when did "accessibility" equate to "mindless minigame fest"? Michel Ancel, the creator of the Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil titles, was originally on board with the team behind Rayman Raving Rabbids when it was still a platformer. He didn't like the direction the game was taking and left the project entirely. Does that sound like a guy who will turn his dream project in such a completely different direction? "Accessibility" is only a naughty word because you guys made it one. Save points are accessible. Context-sensitive buttons are accessible. Stuff like that. Take a chill pill.

There are many more examples I could pull up, but I think I've made my point. We are too quick to jump down the throats of bigwigs and PR spokespersons because they dare to paint their company and current projects in a warm, bathing light so much that they must be BS-ing 24/7. They aren't out to get us. Why would they be? We are their customers. Why would they say anything to intentionally alienate their customers? Yes, even casual-happy Nintendo. What would any of these guys have to gain?

There is no hidden message. There is no secret agenda. Breathe. For the love of God, breathe!