“Killing Hype: How to Increase Joy Through Destroying Expectations”

When people ask me if I’m excited about a certain game, movie, or console, I always say the same thing. “Nah, not really. I killed hype a long time ago”. Their reaction is always one of bewilderment. Why would I do that to myself? What a sad existence to not look forward to anything or be jazzed about the new and shiny.

Me? Just the opposite. With the world of social media and mass marketing constantly assaulting us with lofty expectations, it’s easy to get caught up in the swirl. And it’s equally easy to get agitated or aggressive in the swarm of equally aggressive opinions. For me, the antidote for this toxicity was to destroy the source of the venom – destroy my expectations by ignoring hype.

But before we talk about killing said hype, let’s define the difference between expectations and entitlement.

Expectations vs Entitlement

Without consulting a dictionary, expectations are the hope something will come true, entitlement is the demand something comes true. For example, when I start my car in the morning, I expect the engine will turn on. When I hit the power button on my computer, Windows 10 should smile back at me. I’m allowed to expect this due to past experiences and universally decided norms.

But what happens when my car battery dies or my laptop blue-screens upon startup? My expectations are dashed and that stinks. It conjures up emotions of frustration, annoyance, and bewilderment. The thing that should happen, that happens 99% of the time, just didn’t.

But what if I felt entitled to my car starting? What if I felt by virtue of my selection of the vehicle, my world view, or by my very position in this society that the engine should turn over. No, the engine must turn over! What emotions would that illicit?

Venom. Rage. Steering wheel punching fury. How DARE this overpriced piece of junk die in my driveway. Can you believe the absolute gall of my computer to not POST? Doesn’t Sony know who I am? I’m a paying consumer. Who do they think they are slinging together some ridiculous pre-order scheme that locked me out of a day one PS5 purchase.

See the difference? The former may illicit feelings of mild anger, throw-your-hands-up-in-the-air disgust, or solemn dejectedness. The later breeds blood-boiling rage. Rather than a part of life annoyance, it’s an attack against your identity. Things must go the way I want because of who I am and the world I live in. And this intense indignation is what causes Twitter beefs, review bombing, and vitriolic social media discourse. We defend our entitlements to the death because our Microsoft fandom is our identity.

Now that we’ve defined our terms, time to explore how to free ourselves from social media indignation, Twitter bile, and unreasonable reactions in search of peace, contentment, and rare flashes of joy.

The Hype Killing Blueprint

Realize Entitlement is a Lie: While the above scenario probably doesn’t apply to most, if it does for you (it did for me), realize one essential truth: you are entitled to nothing. From the clothes on your back to the job you have to the very breath in your lungs, nothing is promised to you. Your citizenship in a country doesn’t provide you inalienable rights, your existence on this planet doesn’t guarantee an 80-year life, your status as a gamer doesn’t come with pre-defined privileges.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t have rights. Free speech, social justice, etc. are basic principles of civilized society. But all of that was earned through struggle, strife and perseverance. Nothing was gotten for free.

Everything Will Disappoint Eventually: Nothing will last forever, nothing is designed to be perfect. No matter how much you crave a Series X, at some point, it’ll let you down. Regardless of the PS5’s launch lineup, something about about the console will be less than optimal. Just the way the world works, especially when the thing in question comes from a soulless corporation. Which brings me to…

Stop Putting Your Trust in Soulless Corporations: There’s an old axiom that states, “corporations don’t care and bosses can’t be your friends”. While the second half of that statement can be subjective, the first one is truth.  A corporation, as an entity, is designed to make money for shareholders. As such, you and your wants are secondary to the almighty margin. Of course, the people inside the corporation can care (they often do) but they are all beholden to the company who, by its very nature, can not.

So why are we so obsessed with them? Microsoft vs Sony feels more like sports team fandom than a choice in service provider. Attach your loyalty to the company / game / platform that will serve you best, knowing full well they only care about profits, not you as a person. Treat them with the same arm’s length understanding of that deal, and that’s one less emotional attachment you have to tangle with.

Downgrade Your Entitlement to Expectations, Expectations to Simple Wants: Without rehashing a topic I discussed on Story Mode many moons ago, as people, we’ve upgraded our opinions to beliefs and our beliefs to convictions. That’s why we lose friendships over Empire vs Jedi, sling insults at strangers online over which Mario game is best.

Similarly, our expectation hierarchy’s been skewed. Simple wants are now expectations and expectations are now entitlements. Time to bring that back to reality. We should have hundreds of wants. I’d like for the PS5 to be backwards compatible to the PS1. It would be great if the Xbox Series X was under a certain price. Those are healthy wants. But if we bump them up to expectations, if they are dashed, we open ourselves up to heartache and pain. And as we’ve discussed, we should have zero entitlements.

Trade Bad for Sub-Optimal: Another change in mindset, not everything is bad. In fact, most things aren’t. Usually, in the world of gaming at least, things are less than optimal. Falls short of the mark, however you personally place the target.

Problem is, online at least, everything is bad. This game sucks, that console’s a piece of garbage, etc. While some things are objectively bad (predatory play-to-win mechanics in $60 games, broken games requiring Day One patches, etc), most of our unmet wants have sub-optimal solutions. Accepting these products as inherently flawed will ease the tension when they inevitably fail or let you down.

Don’t Fear Being “Out of the Conversation”: This is specifically tied to the Sony vs Microsoft battle, but can apply to anything you’re looking forward to. Games will always be there when you’re ready for them and you have more media at your fingertips right now than you’ll ever consume for as long as you live. If you can’t get a PS5 at launch, play something else. Do something else. It’s OK to not be at the forefront of the conversation or second / third / ten-thousandth to the experience.

What We Can Do Instead

OK, I get it. The above sounds pretty bleak. But on the other side of this self examination lies a peace and comfort difficult to find in our video game fandom.

Accept a Work For What It Is: Rather than grit your teeth at every gaming offense, take them for what they are. Consumer products designed to bring you some level of fun. If you need to run a PC game at minimal settings, fine. If a console comes in at a ridiculous price, don’t slam the company (they’re soulless, they don’t care). Make an informed decision. Accepting the world of gaming at face value with little expectations makes every interaction a more pleasant one.

Trust People Not Pitches: Rather than submit to groupthink or a game’s blockbuster trailer, find a community of people or a critic you trust for game information. Many people hate critics these days. I say find one whose beliefs match yours and use them as a resource. Engaging in the online swirl of negativity only adds bile to your heart. Curate where you get your opinions from and you’ll find yourself in a better place overall.

Play Sub-Optimal Games: In a world of reviews, Metacritic, and Twitter, we gravitate towards the top 10% of gaming experiences. If it’s below an 8 out of 10, we don’t bother. Try playing those 7’s and even 6’s. Chances are, if you’re willing the stomach the flaws, there’s joy to be mined from the experiences. And those less than optimal games usually come at a more than optimal price.

Be Constantly Surprised as Opposed to Constantly Let Down: Cutting out the hype gene may feel like killing joy, but I think it’s the opposite. It’s trading unhealthy expectations for healthy surprise. It’s a peaceful sense of curiosity as opposed to a consistent barrage of unmet wants. Imagine if you played Mario 3D All-Stars with a sense of “don’t-know-what-to-expect” energy as opposed to “this better have updated textures”. You’d truly appreciate these classics for what they are, not for what you want them to be.

Be at Peace: In the end, this is all about contentment. Being secure and serene where you are with what you have. The more we lust over the new hotness, the less we stay focused in the wonders of right now. Your Steam library or gaming backlog has years worth of content just waiting to be played. The PS5 will still be here in one, two, heck five years. And all the bugs will be worked out. If the pre-order goes south or Walmart sells out in five minutes, it’ll be OK. And the more you’ve killed your hype, the closer you’ll be to this truth.

Start a New Conversation: Being first to the bowl means being first to the conversation. My question is, so what? Rather than fight and claw to that day one purchase, try something different and start your own narrative. Maybe it’s a rad retro game you discovered for the first time or an indie title that nobody knows about but everyone should. The upside of this insane world of social media is you’re bound to find likeminded people willing to engage you in your newfound fandom.

When In Doubt, Be Kind to Others (And Yourself): Before I drop my kid off at school every morning, I tell him the following: be kind, listen and obey the first time, work hard, have fun. The first and most important on the list is be kind. If you’ve killed your hype and sit at peace with what the future of gaming will bring, you’ll automatically be more empathetic to those still in the swirl of anger and resentment. And even if this doesn’t apply at all to the topic at hand, it’s a good phrase to live by.

The world of gaming will be changed irrevocably very soon. The excitement is at a fever pitch and that’s fine. It’s OK to be jazzed about a coming console, game, or experiences. But when that child-like exuberance grows from anticipation to obsession, that’s when the bitterness seeps in. Just do a simple search on Twitter for PS5 / XBox hashtags and you’ll see the ugly side of this fandom.

So let’s retire the hype gene, put away the obsessive fandom, and breathe a sigh of relief. Games are meant to be fun experiences, taken as they are without the marketing pomp and circumstance designed to churn up likes, page views, and unearned anticipation. If we can fly above that storm and see games for what they are, we’re setting ourselves up for a world of entertainment and the occasional dopamine hit of expectation-free joy.

Writer, gamer, and beer geek, The Thunder Mage conjures words from the ether for a number of sites and publications. He currently serves as Lead Blogger and Music Writer for https://www.theaustinot.com (Austin culture) and has written for Texas Highways magazine, the Entertainment Weekly blogging community, and various film review sites. When he’s not mixing literary alchemy, he enjoys chasing his three-year-old around and advocating for video game accessibility on Twitter to the git gud sect.

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