5 Stages of PSN Grief

At the time of this writing, the PlayStation Network has been down for 2 1/2 weeks. With no end in sight, and only vague promises from Sony, fans have taken to the internet to well voice their opinions. At first, it all just seemed like random shooting into the wind, but after seeing an article today asking which was worse, Red Ring of Doom or PSN outage, it finally dawned on me. Fans weren’t randomly complaining, they were actively going through the 5 Stages of Grief.

For those who don’t know what the 5 Stages of Grief are, its the common process that a person who lost a loved one goes through after their death. The five stages (and they tend to follow in order) are Denial/Isolation> Anger> Bargaining> Depression> Acceptance. Now while these words won’t mean much on their own, join me on this minor journey.

Denial/Isolation: This one is fairly simple, and really was kind of bought on by Sony’s silence for the first week or so. This was simply people believing that it was only a temporary bump in the road. The service will be back online in no time. They would just go trophy hunting while they wait for the service to return. Sure, it lasted for a few days, but then things started to wear on…

Anger: This is the emotion/stage a lot of people seem to be stuck on. Now anger takes a lot of faces, but in this case it really manifests itself at finger pointing. Do we blame Sony for having incompetent security? Do we blame hackers/Anon for breaking into the service? Do we blame “ignorant” fans who don’t know the full story? Do we blame the people who make fun of PSN when their system isn’t as secure? And if not finger pointing, there is always overt anger. “How could Sony do this? I’ll never trust them again. I’ll never buy another Sony product!” Yeah, you got anger in many different forms. And you still do to a big degree.

Bargaining: Now this stage may be a bit of a stretch if you know the actual stages of grief. In this sense, I think the bargaining is more trying to rationalize the outing. “Oh Xbox Live was down for 2 weeks back in 2007, and people got over it!” “Isn’t the RRoD worse than this?” The idea is they are simply trying to justify the length of the outage as something minor… a bump in the road in their head. And for some it works.

Depression: This one is fairly simple as it seems to be the stage a lot of people are currently stuck on. “PSN will never come back.” “Sony won’t have it running until e3.” “Sony will continue to lie to us.” Yeah, as Sony takes longer to put the service back online, fans begin to worry more and more. And its to be expected, they still don’t have a date to wrap their head around.

Acceptance: This is a stage that is still in progress. But acceptance seems to take on two forms. Accept the service is currently down and focus on single player games or another console. Or the more extreme version is buying Xbox Live Gold and getting you’re feel of online gaming that way.

I’m sure most won’t agree with my observation, but not trying to pass it off as fact. Just something I’ve noticed from observing various reactions on Twitter, n4g.com and forums to the whole PSN situation. Let’s hope the service is back online soon.

Earl Rufus

The owner of this little chunk of the internet. Enjoys having a good time and being rather snarky!

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8 Responses

  1. Tom Ato says:

    I have gone through all theese stages and am now sitting happily on stage 6 – Rationalisation.

    I realise and accept that the PSN is down and that sucks however I am now looking on the brighter side to see just how lucky I really am. See, as a PS3 owner I have great single – player games like Yakuza, Demon’s Souls, Uncharted, God Of War, White Knight Chronicles, Infamous, MGS4, Ratchet & Clank and Heavy Rain to keep me entertained until the PSN servers come back online. Sure, not being able to sync my Trophies for my single – player games is a bit of a nuisance but it’s only temporary.

    However things could be much worse. If I owned an inferior console like the 360 I wouldn’t have ANY of those great games I just mentioned to enjoy. I’d literally be stuck with an overpriced online service that doesn’t have any exclusive games to justify it’s existence, not to mention the terrible graphics, unstable hardware and wonky controller.

    No, I consider myself fortunate to be a consumer of Sony. The PSN being down is a kick in the teeth but it WILL come back online soon (Hopefully) and in the meantime Sony have done an excellent job making sure their consumers have a plethora of AAA exclusives to tide them over whilst the servers are down. However I don’t see Microsoft doing anything about the fact that the 360 hasn’t had a decent exclusive game in the past 3 years.

    PSN or no PSN Sony are still the most reliable brand out there for real gamers and that’s a fact, so there’s no danger of me switching to an inferior console just because the PSN’s been down for 3 weeks.

    • Penguin says:

      An interesting viewpoint. Sounds like you are stuck in the bargaining stage really.

      • Tom Ato says:

        Let’s just say I know a good thing when I see it. I feel sorry for anyone who decided to switch to a rival console just because they have had to lay off Call Of Duty’s multiplayer for awhile. How long do you reckon it’ll take them to realise they made the biggest mistake of their lives when they can’t play any of the big releases this year like Uncharted 3, Infamous 2, Twisted Metal, Resistance 3 or The Last Guardian?

  2. Balram says:

    depressed outta lak of online gameplay?
    wot happened 2 LYFE?!?!?!
    duz nobody hav 1 any more??
    i got 14 platnum trofiz, but aint touched ma ps3 for a WHOLE 2 YERZ!! <;OO
    maaaan, i fought internet wozza breakthru, but look at how we're all gettin dependant on it :11

  3. Gamer3476 says:

    Luckily for me, I skipped from Denial all the way to Acceptance. In the time down, I almost platinumed Dead Space 2, Portal 2, platinumed, and Sly cooper 1 and 2.

    • Penguin says:

      See that’s the spirit! Games still exist with or without online

  4. Nino_M says:

    My PS3 has become an excellent waste of space.

  5. Ad says:

    I think I went straight to acceptance when I realised I could attack my backlog of unplayed games without being distracted by the lure of multiplayer 😀

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