Responsibilities of the Consumer in the Entertainment Industry?

[Kreekakon]

Ok, time for another nice happy discussion thread where you can throw your own two cents around! Been a while since my last one.

So here's a little topic my mind landed on when I was taking the train home today. I'll throw down the bare essentials out here in bold, and elaborate on it a bit later after that:

When it comes to media/entertainment does the consumer have a responsibility to try, and coerce the industry into making what they believe is better work, or is it just fine to let everyone like what they like?

Ok that was the tl;dr version, now comes the elaboration, and I hope to god that it doesn't end up too short to make the tl; dr completely pointless.

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Whenever we buy things in entertainment, be it novels, watching movies, or playing games we'll end up liking some of them, and hating some of them.

Sometimes we'll also use the opportunity to take a look at the respective industry to observe the state it's in. We'll be happy when we see it as we like it. Things get slightly more complicated if we don't like the state of it however.

I'm mostly thinking about this from the perspective of gaming, so I'll mostly be using those as examples primarily.

In the example of Call of Duty, which has been a yearly released game for some time now, is a game that some people deem to be a lackluster game. However it is still immensely popular, and has vast support from its production studio as a result to continue the trend of continued development as is.

Some people will view this trend of lack of innovation as a "plague upon the industry", and desperately are hoping that it changes so that our industry can use these resources, and talent to make more innovative, fresh, and ultimately more engaging titles for us to enjoy.

However, there is the second crowd of people who simply like Call of Duty for what it is, and will continue to buy, and support it each subsequent year it is released. Some people on the internet will go as far as to say "It is casuals like you who are dragging this industry down" to mock the supporters of what they believe is a lackluster series, and allowing it to continue to thrive.

Are these people (Fans of COD) at fault however for liking such a game? Say the naysayers of COD did get through to the publishers, and they did axe the series. There would be some very sad people who liked their COD who now no longer have their fix of the game.

Are we legible to dictate what is good for the industry based on our beliefs on what is correct, and scoff other people who "don't know better"?

That brings me to another part of the discussion regarding the direction of the industry being supported by people who supposedly "don't know better".

TotalBiscut has brought up this notion at least once in my memory, and he says that we should educate people who like "bad games" such as Facebook clicker apps, and the sort. Educate them to discover better games, and be set free from the lie that they were living.

From one point of view this would seem like a horribly elitist thing to say for "bringing the unenlightened to the REAL good games". From another point of view those were objectively bad games, and it really is a decent thing to encourage one to know better about it. How do we draw the line on such a thing?

The main point that I'm trying to get may seem a slight tad different at a glance from what I proposed in the beginning of the thread, but I assure you the core concept of it is the same:

Is it fine to try, and sway consumer bases into what we believe is correct in an industry, or is it just fine to let them continue what they're doing because there is evidently a group of people supporting them to continue doing so? And are these people "wrong" for liking what we view may very well be "objectively bad"?

Leave your thoughts below! I'd really love to hear all of your thoughts on this! Also if anyone has other thoughts regarding the "responsibility of a consumer" that I haven't touched on in this topic, feel free to leave thoughts about that to!