I feel like the majority of gaming communities are trash and negatively affect gaming as a whole.

zamardii12

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This may come off as a rant, but I feel like this issue is very important since a lot of us enjoy gaming and have for many years. I was reading this thread on Reddit about how the Steam forums for Borderlands 2 are being inundated by people who bought Borderlands 3 through the Epic Store. Now this may not seem like a big deal but this comment on the associated Polygon article I think I completely agree with.

(The bold italic below is the response I agree with)


"This is the issue of running a store with poor community features. That said, it may make more sense to do this over at reddit as opposed to steam, but steam does have a large community as well.

Kind of shows you that Epic has a lot of work to do on the community side of their store, among other things.

Still not a fan of the store looking like it is made for tablets."

"Does Epic though? By not having forums and comment/voting areas they don’t have to worry about even thinking about mitigating community behavior issues. The fact that steam is having to do damage control for a game they don’t even sell is comical and should convince Epic not to bother.

This is coming from someone that only uses steam for my entire gaming library. The communities are largely trash and no matter what Valve does they are going to get bashed. Epic would be smart to avoid the mechanic of community all together. Stay a store front and let the studio’s and developers deal with communal areas where the trolls can build their bridges to lurk under."


Here is another perfect example from within the Modern Warfare subreddit:

"Unpopular Opinion: This community is going to ruin this game before it even comes out"

Why cant people just let the devs actually change the game into something that feels different than goin back to what we’re use to? They want CHANGE and you guys want to go back to old shit. Ive heard complaints that the characters feel too heavy and need to feel lighter. YOURE CARRYING BODY ARMOR. ur not suppose to feel like fucking Icarus flying around the map. Jump shotting and shit still works just get use to it. And this mini map bs (yall knew it was comin) i can give two fucks if they put it in or not but holy shit can people just learn to deal with it? Now that they put mini map ON CONSTANTLY people are complaining they want to see red dots again. Wasnt that the argument? Not to chase dots on the map? Just let the devs make the game they wanted to make and complain about actual issues like waiting 5 minutes for a cruise missile or doors acting like saloon doors when you run through them. Get ur priorities straight for fucks sake


People just can not fucking let go and let developers do their thing. They are afraid to take risks because there are people out there who are just WAY to involved and want things to their liking. I remember not that long ago there was some YouTuber who was saying shit about what he wants changed in whatever beta, and the developers listen to this shit. May not even be a good suggestion... in fact I remember a lot of people saying so but who is the developer going to listen to? Who should they listen to? Should they listen at all?

I mean you read a news story online, and the news articles will literally pick random Twitter comments to reinforce their stance on the issue... who gives a fuck what these people think?

Back before the internet was more widespread you MAYBE had a focus group and some testers to assist in finalizing a game... you didn't have a god damn social media outbreak that inherently validates everyone's stupid opinions. If it were up to me I wouldn't have any community nonsense for a game... release it, if people like it they'll buy it, and if not they won't. The market will take care of itself... but as long as we give credit to everyone's opinion we won't get new gaming experiences and new ideas have no space to flourish b/c they'll get shot down immediately by too many people who have nothing better to do with their time.
 
it's like scarlet letter all over again... seriously though, this is first-world problems, we gotta complain about something, it's in our blood, and what else is there in life than a thing designed to entertain but leaves us unsatisfied? of course these people would be better off joining a dojo or somethin, exercise can really help expel tons of that negative stuff we build up inside, which will in turn make the video game "scene" much more fun I think. we all just lazy and misguided now, that's mostly it... go outside and punch some pumpkins, kick some leaves, or something more productive like paint a neighbor's house (seriously, volunteer on some city-building activities, they are really fun once you get into it, probably more rewarding than building that minecraft house)
 
Absolutely agree, gamers are basically trash and get worse the larger the community is. Like NeoGaf/ResetEra. The communities are just so large and just straight up toxic to be part of. And then there is the weird sense of entitlement that gamers seem to have. As if developers need to be catering to them at all times.

I definitely prefer smaller communities of the more level headed variety of people.
 
The only thing that has changed in the past 25 years of games and the internet is the number of people voicing their opinions has increased. Opinions and attitudes are the same. Whether or not developers are acting on internet criticism and suggestion is questionable. The larger issue with game development is the growth of data usage, in my opinion. Making development decisions based on player data with no human context is a big mistake. Look at what is happening to Fortnite. On the other hand you can't completely ignore the gaming community, either, especially with multiplayer games. Look at the Anthem disaster.
 
Its not the community (it never is) its the fact that those with issue/complaints will complain more frequently and more often on issues than those without. The internet then give these people a platform to scream their complaints over and over to a large audience.

This is interchangeable with poor behavior as well, those gamers that are well behaved (most of them) are pushed out of most communities as they fill up with vitriolic mouth breathers that flood discord/vent/IGN/etc with their never ending stream of thoughts. Pushes the rest of us out leaving those communities to rot in their own toxicity.

Same thing is happening across the board in entertainment and politics.
 
ugh, if only gearbox has forums.... but wait... they do. just seems like toxic entitlement to me. you do x else we internet brigade you. current example, look up warframe on steam. they fired some chinese translator dude and now they are getting brigaded. gg social monitoring.
 
I was reading this thread on Reddit
There is your issue.

I completely disagree on the other hand. "brigading" as they like to dismissively call it now, is not a problem, it is a symptom of a problem.
The problem being that developers and publishers treat gamers as a commodity and not as their clients. They don't hear them, and they don't give them a platform, and when they do they moderate wrongthink.
Which makes the platform pointless in the first place. When the official forums start deleting threads about complaints that's when you get "brigading".

If devs were addressing complaints clearly and honestly there would be no brigading. And that doesn't mean they have to cater to every complaint. It means they need to answer every complaint that got traction. And not trough some know-nothing smug community manager that has zero actual access, who just likes to show off his "powers". All we see is community managers and blue check marks on twitter talking trash about the gamers "how dare those vermin have preferences". While they might release some completely dismissive statement trough official channels. More often they attack the complainers ad hominem. What do you think would happen if any other industry acted so antagonistically to their own customers as gaming does recently? If this behavior was in a brick and mortar store they would not just get fired but probably sued.

And finally a word on why calling it brigading is especially stupid. Because the name suggests it is an organized effort to tarnish their reputation. When that couldn't be farther from the truth. "brigading" is the cries of disillusioned fans who all act as individuals.
Don't want brigading: treat your customers / fans with the respect they deserve, sometimes it helps to remember: without fans you wouldn't be where you are.
 
M76 I’ll preface this post with I’ve done no researching to have all facts.

I essentially agree brigading isn’t organized and often is disillusioned fans wanting their voices to be heard.

If the Warframe example is true and they let go a Chinese translator isn’t that purely within the developers purview and power? At no point should a developer expect to have to justify removing an employee for any reason. Gamers aren’t owed explanations for every single thing regarding a game/developer.
 
M76 I’ll preface this post with I’ve done no researching to have all facts.

I essentially agree brigading isn’t organized and often is disillusioned fans wanting their voices to be heard.

If the Warframe example is true and they let go a Chinese translator isn’t that purely within the developers purview and power? At no point should a developer expect to have to justify removing an employee for any reason. Gamers aren’t owed explanations for every single thing regarding a game/developer.
This is the first time I hear about that warframe story, so I have no opinion on it whatsoever.
 
Developers can either work on their games or they can engage in a endless cycles of making explanations of why they are doing the things that they are doing or the final option is to have community managers that do explaining.

What other businesses do you have that routinely engage in Q&A with customers? Do you have discussions with your shoe company or with your car company? Sure there are shareholder meetings, but owners are not customers.

Many types of engagement turn negative. People have a reaction and will rip the company for months. If they said nothing people may grumble but they won't have the rampant negativity when they don't like the direction where a game is headed.

But player feedback you say. Well, they can either produce something, or they can continually restart and rework it from scratch. Companies cannot please everyone. Trying to do so will ensure that they please nobody.

Time costs money. The more time wasted on bullshit the more explanations given, the more reworks, the more money gone. This is not trivial. It sinks a lot of companies.

The huge AAA developers can afford to do this perhaps. Smaller companies cannot afford to get involved with any distractions.

Look at all this bullshit CDPR is having to put up with and make explanations against. Trans issues, racism issues, gunplay issues. Ok, you say, but they need changes... Well fuck so they should redesign their game yet again to please some fringe audience of the internet?

Treat gaming like any other product. If you don't like what was produced then don't buy the game. And never buy any games made with a promise of future additional content. What you are buying may be all you ever get.
 
I said exactly the opposite, they should not redesign the game to cater to anyone, but if they do they should at least be honest about why they are doing it.Remember CDPR needed to explain why they changed the original concept, the original concept needed no explanation. And they changed it to pander to some fringe audience of the internet, so nice falling on your own sword there.

I treat gaming exactly as any other product. And if car companies start calling me entitled or toxic, I'll brigade them too. Do you not remember gillette?
 
You know what gamers want? They want to play the exact freaking game they have already been playing, with exact same mechanics but maybe on new maps. People moaning about the division 2, how it is not like the division 1. Well, there is an answer for that, just play 1 instead. Companies are going to do what they need to do to give their game the widest possible appeal so they can sell it to as many people as possible and then they can sell those people cosmetics and shit. If nobody is playing then the model fails. If hard core gamers nuke noobs to the point where they abandon the game then the model fails. That is not to say the model always works. Destiny 2 became more noob friendly. It was changed later. The end result, you are just playing a game. Game companies are producing a product that has to feed them and their families. Negative publicity can have devastating consequences for them. Like CDPR having a male/female slider. Holy shit talk about the stupidest thing to complain about. "I want to play as a man". Ok, put it all the way on "M"
 
This thread reminds me of some interviews of pioneering Atari game coders.

(I'm paraphrasing below, but this is the basic idea)

Interviewer: "How did you know your game was going to appeal to women? What decisions did you make to make that happen?"

Female coder: Looks at interviewer like they were on drugs - "We just made games we wanted to play."

Interviewer just sits there looking like an idiot.
 
This is the first time I hear about that warframe story, so I have no opinion on it whatsoever.
First I’ve heard of it as well but like I said I don’t see how a company should need to answer to gamers for their hiring/firing decisions.
 
I agree but it is not exclusive. There are to many whining babies out their that believe their opinion is the only one that matters.
This is very true, more so with the look at me teen and early 20 year olds that make up a big part of the the more vocal gaming bunch.
 
China is 100% outrage culture. It is fairly common for them to dox people. In this case perceived x against China and China is offended
 
Gamers are so cramped up playing COD in their NYC one room apartment they have no idea consciously what they are doing with their life. Thus blame the game company that may or may not give a rat's ass about them.
 
Its not the community (it never is) its the fact that those with issue/complaints will complain more frequently and more often on issues than those without. The internet then give these people a platform to scream their complaints over and over to a large audience.

This is interchangeable with poor behavior as well, those gamers that are well behaved (most of them) are pushed out of most communities as they fill up with vitriolic mouth breathers that flood discord/vent/IGN/etc with their never ending stream of thoughts. Pushes the rest of us out leaving those communities to rot in their own toxicity.

Same thing is happening across the board in entertainment and politics.

Qft
 
Its not the community (it never is) its the fact that those with issue/complaints will complain more frequently and more often on issues than those without. The internet then give these people a platform to scream their complaints over and over to a large audience.

This is interchangeable with poor behavior as well, those gamers that are well behaved (most of them) are pushed out of most communities as they fill up with vitriolic mouth breathers that flood discord/vent/IGN/etc with their never ending stream of thoughts. Pushes the rest of us out leaving those communities to rot in their own toxicity.

Same thing is happening across the board in entertainment and politics.

You said it well. It's honestly tiring to go to any game communities because of pile of shit that runs through them. I love playing games, and to discover new games I'll just scour the steam store or maybe a few games sites. Things are made easier now with refunds so I can experiment and return games I don't think I'll like. I'll try and stay away from the gaming culture as much as possible.
 
First I’ve heard of it as well but like I said I don’t see how a company should need to answer to gamers for their hiring/firing decisions.
But I still don't know what the story is.
 
Its not the community (it never is) its the fact that those with issue/complaints will complain more frequently and more often on issues than those without. The internet then give these people a platform to scream their complaints over and over to a large audience.

This is interchangeable with poor behavior as well, those gamers that are well behaved (most of them) are pushed out of most communities as they fill up with vitriolic mouth breathers that flood discord/vent/IGN/etc with their never ending stream of thoughts. Pushes the rest of us out leaving those communities to rot in their own toxicity.

Same thing is happening across the board in entertainment and politics.


/end thread.. aireoth summed it up perfectly.
 
some volunteer chinese translator on warframe got canned for spilling NDA type stuff, people upset
https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1128157-a-volunteer-translator-was-treated-unfairly!/
Thanks, I read the post, but this is more like a reaction, than the actual story.

But from what I gather someone was doing something good for the community for free that the company refused to do themselves, and they banned him. So I can understand that people are upset.

I can already tell that "a company shouldn't need to answer to gamers for their hiring/firing decisions." is about as big of a twisting of the truth as it gets.
 
Thanks, I read the post, but this is more like a reaction, than the actual story.

But from what I gather someone was doing something good for the community for free that the company refused to do themselves, and they banned him. So I can understand that people are upset.

I can already tell that "a company shouldn't need to answer to gamers for their hiring/firing decisions." is about as big of a twisting of the truth as it gets.

It's more like he did it with their cooperation, but from what I gather, he had access to pre release parts of the game to translate, and he leaked some info he should not have + he was very vocal against cetain things the developpers did in regards to the translations and as a result he got "fired" with the usual internet outrage as a result.

He should have played by the rules he did not and now suffers the consequences. Barely newsworthy imo. Some more context below
https://www.fanbyte.com/news/warfra...iew-bomb-over-chinese-translator-controversy/
 
I guess I would argue that many of these "AAA" publishers are doing way more harm to gaming than toxic gamer communities.

That said, there are definitely some assholes out there and gamers are no exception.
 
tl;dr: a bunch of new lazy chinese DE employees did not appreciate their google translations being questioned by a volunteer translator so they got him deleted. there may be other stuff involved but that is all I got out of it.
 
I can already tell that "a company shouldn't need to answer to gamers for their hiring/firing decisions." is about as big of a twisting of the truth as it gets.

How is that twisting the truth? I didn’t read the story and I stand by that a company doesn’t need to answer to us about terminating employees. Much less volunteer employees.
That’s my entire stance, in probably 99% of cases, it isn’t our business.

Sorry if it chafes you that I’m willing to let a company run itself.
 
nothing wrong with people expressing their opinions...the real issue is people don't like hearing opposing viewpoints that differ from their own so they label it as 'toxic'...member xxx doesn't like Borderlands 3 but I do- so he is a 'hater'
 
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nothing wrong with people expressing their opinions...the real issue is people don't like hearing opposing viewpoints that differ from their own so they label it as 'toxic'...member xxx doesn't like Borderlands 3 but I do- so he is a 'hater'
That hits the nail on the head. The problems in communities usually start when people start complaining about other people complaining. And that includes this forum. I can't count how many times I read something along the lines of "We're tired of hearing you complain about multiplayer games"

And then the culling starts of people who don't tow the party line. And the larger the community the worse it gets. As the party members start ganging up on dissenters and start ridiculing them. Now that's what I call toxic.
 
How is that twisting the truth? I didn’t read the story and I stand by that a company doesn’t need to answer to us about terminating employees. Much less volunteer employees.
That’s my entire stance, in probably 99% of cases, it isn’t our business.

Sorry if it chafes you that I’m willing to let a company run itself.
Because it's not as clear cut as you made it sound. A volunteer is not an employee, and technically he cannot be fired. He can be barred from volunteering. But that's just semantics.

The real issue is that he was doing something very helpful for the community, that they very much appreciated. Something the company wasn't willing to do on their own dime.
Even if he did sg. stupid by revealing secrets barring him from doing any further volunteer translation is punishing the community for his mistake. So the community has every right to be upset about it.
 
Because it's not as clear cut as you made it sound. A volunteer is not an employee, and technically he cannot be fired. He can be barred from volunteering. But that's just semantics.

The real issue is that he was doing something very helpful for the community, that they very much appreciated. Something the company wasn't willing to do on their own dime.
Even if he did sg. stupid by revealing secrets barring him from doing any further volunteer translation is punishing the community for his mistake. So the community has every right to be upset about it.
Firstly, it’s not how I made it sound. I was not the first one to bring up the subject of digital extremes and I prefaced that I didn’t know the story either.

Secondly, it is that clear cut still. Volunteer or not he still has to play by their rules. If he doesn’t do that he doesn’t get to play. He himself is the one hurting the community by depriving them of his translation work. The nebulous details of his claims against actual employees are practically a “he said/she said” situation. Basically he has no real rights. Like breaking rules on here and getting banned. It’ll be your own fault.

Lastly, since games began there have been bad translations. And there have been knowledgeable fans online that freely translate those games. Digital Extremes fan base is large enough I’m sure there are others. If people want to bitch about the poor translation they’d be right to, that’s a valid complaint. Complaining that the guy doing it for free isn’t allowed to anymore is plain ignorant.
 
I myself am done with the gaming community. Have been for years now. Once you're married with children and other responsibilities, that stuff just doesn't matter anymore. I still play games, and I especially love playing video games with my children (Streets of Rage 2 co-op with your son anyone? A blast!), but I pretty much have no involvement with the community at large. Hell, most of my posts here are in GenMay and the Soapbox these days anyways. It's a lot more interesting. :)
 
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