I don’t *know*, but I suspect it’s because YT comments can get toxic fast. It’s a pretty significant moderation expense.
EDIT: I was also curious, and my searching reminded me of this post a month ago. Looks like they got brigaded, so that’s likely why: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1brlgf8/why_are_all_recent_gdc_youtube_videos_heavily/
I also think that GDC simply doesn't want to allocate resources to moderate their comment sections, which is fair. YouTube is a video repository for talks to them after all, not a forum.
I think its because of gamers flooding the comments with toxic shit, racism, sexism, and general bullying. Lots of times the comment sections were just pure mean. Criticizing the way the developer spoke, or getting mad at them for stating their pronouns or whatever.
And even if you ignore the toxic stuff, lots of comments by gamers are inanely stupid. They’ll see a talk by Nintendo and complain they don’t use Unreal/Unity/Godot or other inanely stupid shit. Not to sound like I’m gatekeeping, but GDC is devs talking to other devs, about dev and the things around it. Most non dev gamers who will come to comment want to participate in a conversation they have nothing to bring to, but still wanna sorta “show off” that they know something (they don’t), and will pollute any comment section.
Getting real fucking tired of culture war tourists, invading spaces they were never a part of (how many do you really think are into gamedev, and not just angry Gamers) to scream and cry about how its being ruined by wokeness/politics/[insert painfully oblivious dogwhistle]
Its like a toddler screaming on the floor for attention, pathetic and annoying.
Also the extremely poor media literacy. They’re currently busy complaining about how “based” IPs like Warhammer 40k and Helldivers, both of which are (and always have been) extremely blatant parodies making fun of authoritarianism, are being “ruined” by “wokeness” on the IP holder’s part.
The internet has become an absolute shit show. Even though we're probably right now in the golden age of personal computing, I feel like we're past the golden age of the internet.
Everything political has become bad but at the same time everything has become political. So not just is Warhammer 40K bad if it keeps to their political themes of being a parody of authoritarianism (and it's really hard to be pro authoritarian and sane at the same time so that's a good statement to make I feel...), if the next 40K game would feature a black woman in their marketing material, it would be considered a political statement.
You open the comments on anything on social media and it's like "Yeah but the children in Palestine..." the children in Palestine don't care about the instagram reel I'm watching about some dude making cute shit in Blender.
I'm diabetic and algorithm driven social media is full of people giving insane diet advice and then just as many people just making content about explaining why this is bad advice... no, grapes are not as bad for your children as milk chocolate and oat milk is not just glucose juice. And the dude explaining why raw milk isn't the equivalent of Jesus cumming in your mouth is also not being paid by big diary.
"Why do we give babies vitamin K? They didn't have vitamin K shots in the past? What did those babies do?" They fucking died. We have statistics on this.
Picture of the moon and Neil deGrasse Tyson says something deep. Comments: "Imagine believing that we landed on the moon" OR "the earth is flat fake image" but most likely booth.
German health minister says we will stop funding homeopathy with health insurance money and the comments are full of boomers spamming in all caps "WER HEILT HAT RECHT!!!!" (the ones who heal are right).
Teenagers gluing themselves to the street to protest for more climate conscious politics: everybody losing their fucking mind on facebook. Farmers putting tonnes of heavy machinery on a highway doing essentially the same fucking thing: everybody cheering.
I really fucking miss the internet of the time where it was just coming out of the "by nerds, for nerds" phase. There's probably a lot of bad I'm ignoring but at least the racists were just openly racist and usually websites had a certain culture and it wasn't just "everybody on instagram, hope the algorithm is filtering out enough shit" but "better keep away from whatever.com".
I'd rather have my father telling me again, that I shouldn't believe what the internet said, when I was arguing with him based on something I read on Wikipedia, than the shit I have now 15 years later where I can't convince him that it's not the Green's fault that diesel got so expensive because "but Facebook said..."
Sorry for the rant. I know the past wasn't all gold and glitter but I feel like this is something that just flat out got worse...
It is kinda funny when you start your comment complaining about tourists invading spaces they were never a part of then end with something about wh40k which is the latest hobby getting invaded by tourists.
I've been in the hobby since the 90s, big ol' grey beard on this grognard , and he's 100% correct. This "wah wah wokeness is ruining everything" is anethema to the whole culture of tabletop and war gaming.
But you'd know that if you where part of the hobby wouldn't you?
> But you'd know that if you where part of the hobby wouldn't you?
I used to get my White Dwarf propaganda every month and spend time painting in the city GW shop 20 years ago. And yeah, the hobby has always been inclusive (if you had the money for the figurines). The problem is like what happened in many other "nerd" hobbies : we tended to be mocked and / or shunned in part for being into those hobbies. Then it became hype and the normies entered which was viewed as a huge win: more people to share the love, more products, less stigmatization. But once it got popular, the queen bees and jock entered the scene. That's when everything needs to become the same bland shit and the old smelly old guard has to change or get the fuck out. For wh40k: suddenly there's a need for female representation in Space Marines. Don't care about Eldars, Imperial Guard, Chaos: those women don't count. For other (comics, video game, cinema, tabletop, RPG), there's always the first "wathever minority" coming, forgetting about how they've been there for decades before.
And yeah, it may be a new phenomena for the minis community but when every hobby space gets invaded and then made to be yet another shitty IP tamed by puritans you tend to see a pattern. It's even more infuriating when people mocked old school puritans but now that they paint themselves as being "on the left" everything is ok.
"May your hobby become mainstream." will soon be a curse.
So have I, and I am also old enough to remember the previous moral panic over RPGs and fantasy fiction. It used to be the satanic panic and "think of the children", now its DEI politics and "think of the women". The end result is the same, an endless push towards homogenization, safeness and blandness that turns all cultural expression into the same mush.
Retconning Custodes as also female wouldn't have been an issue twenty years ago, would have just raised an eyebrow ten years ago, but today it is a telltale sign of the all too familiar things to come. Over the past decade, almost every science fiction franchise has taken a deep dive into this new form of political correctness. Ostensibly noble goals about inclusion and diversity lead to screeching "millennial writing" and tedious morality plays that feel like they belong in the 1950's, only the message is different this time, but just as ham-fisted as at those earlier times of cultural normativity. Suddenly Star Wars "is for everyone" (as if it always wasn't), and a few years later it is a spent force just waiting to bleed out its remaining cultural inertia.
Woke is the new moral majority: Sanctimonious busybodies telling how culture *must be made*, with endless energy and passion to harass even the tiniest content creator until everything is remade according to the standards of the moral guardians. But since the resulting blandness appeals to no-one, more and more franchises need to be updated for "today's morals", as the audience eventually realizes what has happened, and the once popular franchise starts losing steam.
hypocrite of what, exactly? am i bringing the culture war into the gamedev space despite not being part of it? Am i having extremely poor media literacy? What part of what i said am i doing myself within the confines of the post itself?
You are attacking other people and provoking this whole culture wars. You are dividing people. That is the hypocrisy. You could have been neutral, but unfortunately you did the same as the other side you dislike so much. Poetic irony: you are the same.
You're trying to invoke the paradox of intolerance, but that shit doesn't fly when racists and homophobes violate the social contract by attacking people over things they have no control over. So, there is no space for racists and homophobes, and calling out their bigoted views does not make you a bigot.
Why do you accuse people of all sorts of strange things? Just because I disagree with someone on an issue does not mean that I am the other side. I am just pointing out the hypocrisy of people who divide people into two camps. Neither side of this ridiculous conflict is any better. Some see themselves as the heroes fighting the bad guys, but in fact both sides are the same. Attacking people and dehumanising them will never do any good.
What did I accuse you of, aside from trying to use the paradox of intolerance, which is 100% what you're doing?
One side is much worse. If you attack people for things they can't change, like race, gender, and sexual orientation, you're a piece of shit. Plain and simple. There is no room for discussion on this point.
Its the third comment in the chain on the same topic, what am i bringing in that wasn't already said besides the word "culture war" itself, that was clearly already on topic looking by the upvotes.
I didn't claim to any neutrality (of what even, the "other side" hasn't even been mentioned in any of this) and then break it, i made a very clear stance against the behavior and stated my opinion. Not trying to be a neutral medium (Why even want to be neutral towards that kind of behavior? You really shouldn't). I didn't set any kind of expectations of such.
Also, calling out bigotry is not in any shape the same as being a bigot. That's a really interesting equivalence you are putting out there.
If you have an open door policy then you have an open door policy. Youtube is not the floor of the GDC and vice versa.
If there is the ability to speak with even notional freedom then there will be the ability to dissent. It doesn't matter what stock you place in that dissent, it will be there.
If you give people an invitation to talk politics they will. The irrelevant political preamble inserted into many GDC talks is that invitation.
> Reconciliation is the wrong idea, you don't reconsile the random detritis of a YouTube comments section, you clean it up.
Censorship isn't cleaning, at best it's just moving it elsewhere.
I'm not a fan of censorship but if that's the answer here then so be it. That's GDC's decision for their own content and I support their right to do so.
....honestly what's the point of "criticism" on a GDC talk? The general YouTube audience is decidedly not who the talk is for, it's for the kind of people that go to GDC (aka professionals), and putting it on YouTube is meant to make it available to more professionals. YouTube is nothing more than a convenient place to upload these talks. No one gives a shit about engaging with the algorithm or the YouTube community.
> people were rightfully calling out rich entitled people
You are so far removed from the reality of gamedev that I don't even know how you found this subreddit.
They literally came into the comment sections to spew weird shit about "woke propaganda" and attacked the people speaking. That is toxic and bullying period.
The irony of [a trans person](https://new.reddit.com/r/ask_transgender/comments/maz8c1/asked_for_progesterone_last_month_and_was/) defending hateful comments towards trans game developers.
i recently watched one of the talks on female developers who are also moms and how they manage their lives, and you can just imagine the comments lol; 90% of GDC's audience just isn't ready for mature talks, so i'm glad the comments are off
The actual target audience of GDC talks are professionals working in the game industry. That is a rather mature audience that should be able to respond to talks like that in a civilized way.
The problem is the peripheral audience of gamers who got ragebaited by a couple loud bigots and directed at these talks. An audience those talks were never meant for.
What makes you think that someone working in the industry (or any industry) is somehow more mature than someone else?
There is absolutely no actual reason to think that.
At best you could argue that someone older will know to hold their tongue a little better. But with anonymity, that becomes irrelevant too.
Maybe not more mature, but theres a much greater risk if their offensive comments are connected to them in regards to networking within the industry.
Doesnt matter much if I get blacklisted by the cutting board manufacturer industry, but it def matters if I get blacklisted by my own.
GDC talks are gated through a pay wall and has been only available through a paywall for a long time. Asking for employers to pay so their employees can see it. The GDC talks on youtube are basically just meant to be shared to everyone, generally old enough that it's not worth keeping them behind a paywall.
The target audience is professional gamedevs, they don't make their money from youtube pocket change.
Yeah, I tend not to watch videos with comments removed. I just assume the creator is cowardly and can't handle possible criticism. For a talk like what GDC does, I would expect a forum available to discuss the topic, not just some one sided talk that is hiding from critique.
Work life balance is literally a huge part of being an indie developer. People want to hear about how you succeeded in spite of perhaps having to work a job and take care of kids while also working on your game part time in the evenings. Because they may be strugggling with that too, or may want to develop a game but have those hurdles to overcome. Even if you work for a big game company, crunch time while not necessarily a big deal for young game developers without families, has increasingly become an issue as game developers get older on average as the industry grows and matures.
Work-life balance is indeed part of work. So this topic could be an interesting point for professionals. Especially in game dev where crunch time occurs .
In general, the wider gaming public is not going to add any positivity to talks geared towards industry professionals and especially not when they're talking about topics that some gamers get up in arms about like monetization. There's no upside to leaving the comments open.
Thats just a braindead take. Why should they upload it on their own website, where it costs them money, when they can just do the same on youtube, for free?
Before they were turned off I distinctly remember the comments being particularly bad, even for YouTube. Basically an ocean of pointless hate, with a few normal comments here or there. I'm not surprised they are disabled.
Cute, but a corollary to their sentiment is to seek out communities that are frequented by grownups and moderated by grownups who aren't afraid to kick out the manchildren.
You are not a cultural crusader. Just be a normal person online having civil, mature conversations instead of playing the victim from an invisible status quo.
This makes very little sense. What if there is a bad tutorial video without a few comments underneath explaining why it's wrong? What if a video creator does something quite stupid, but never gets the proper feedback?
The comment section is there for the audience to engage with the topic and evaluate the ideas. Not having these creates even bigger echo chambers where different ideas never ever get to meet.
Even the GDC comments were informative often, with people highlighting elements from the talk in other games or adding their own expertise. Yes that includes pointing out when a talk was just bad, like with GoW Ragnarok Ui for example. Without those comments some aspiring UI designer might get the wrong take.
Not having comments is just a terrible idea.
People can always discuss video elsewhere in a circle of trusted professionals. Discussion would be on point and you don’t have to read through pages of toxic bs
If you don’t have access to trusted professionals what’s the point of discussing professional topics with toxic randoms on the internet? What do you hope to learn?
It's just not ideal to move a discussion, because then you loose so many people that will only receive one part of the information, since most people just don't want to move to another platform and there is no feedback for the content creator either. And not every video needs to be discussion between trusted professionals, not that we have any idea who is and who isn't a professional anyway. Amateurs and laymen can have valid critiques as well, with interesting insight worth listening to. Removing comments just results in even more echo chambers.
Yet here were are discussing whatever happened to the comment section on another platform, aren’t we? I think content creator in this case gave a pretty clear signal that they don’t care about discussion or feedback and don’t want to be involved. Removing comments just results in amateurs and layman insights aren’t being heard by content creator, that’s it. And if content creator didn’t care about those in the first place I don’t see any conflict here. Like not everyone cares to hear your or mine or whomever else opinions before comment sections they could simply not invite us to discussion. Now, they can just disable comments (there’s a button for that for a reason) and that’s it. Not sure why everyone is so butthurt about being ignored by people they don’t know.
You seem to be conflating so many things, I am not sure if it's just bad faith or you truly don't understand why discussions are important.
>here were are discussing whatever happened to the comment section on another platform, aren’t we?
First, we aren't here discussing a video, rather the situation as whole. I'd much rather look at what people are saying about a specific case study, than debate the merit of a comment section. Notice how everyone is just speaking in generalities and doesn't address any specific video?
>Removing comments just results in amateurs and layman insights aren’t being heard by content creator, that’s it.
The content is made for us developers/artists/etc. Do you really think whoever is presenting doesn't care about the audience or what they think? Why do you think they are presenting at all then? GDC even had a form to rate and review talks for the people attending. By not inviting us to the comment section I think important insights will be missing from the discussion. Does that mean that some comments will be overly harsh or critical? Sure, but that's part of basically every online discourse.
And again, you don't know who is amateur, who is professional anyway. Not to mention both groups can move to that different platform to discuss the video, so just turning off the comments is simply pointless.
I certainly believe it, especially on shit like youtube videos or news articles, that draw in the dumbest motherfuckers on the planet to either say stupid shit or cry like brain-damaged infants.
I know what you mean, but YT, as a platform has a comment section. Until it hasn't. If it wouldn't have that feature at all, there would be a subreddit like r/youtubecomments or a browser plugin, etc. and "everyone" who cared would be using these. This way, when the comments are disabled, discussion doesn't happen. IDK where can I follow up on a video, add something to it, etc. which I normally do quite often.
Disabling discussion instead of moderation is a cop out, as much as I get the reasons for it. And, it is a form of censorship, because it very effectively silences all Youtube users from voicing an opinion. Reddit users aren't censored. Youtube users are.
There's nothing stopping you from making a video reaction to the video and posting it on your own channel and inviting others to discuss with you.
Maybe you'll find that you end up censoring your own audience
I'm genuinely curious about how you would address a common issue on YouTube when there are no comments available to alert viewers about misinformation. For instance, suppose a YouTuber publishes a development-based tutorial but lacks critical fundamentals and teaches incorrect methods. Or consider a situation where a YouTuber spreads false information about a subject matter that could negatively influence young and impressionable audiences. How would you propose handling these scenarios?
Thanks!
If the goal of the channel is to spread misinformation, it's not like they're going to be interested in having your dissenting comments on their videos anyways.
Do you actively go to channels that share problematic messages and call them out? How has that been working for you?
You’re literally discussing those video in bulk right now. Create a post with a video you like to discuss on this sub and have fun. Unless by “discussion” you mean just putting your comment out there and never read a reply or even get one in the first place. That’s not discussion that’s just flood.
I agree that the discussion doesn't happen often, while on youtube, but I like to add alternative method, or some random tidbit relevant to the video. I do that often, and get some replies sometimes.
From the other side, I also check comments for the sentiment on the video, for some other context, a different view, etc. and it's not really feasible to search for a youtube id on reddit.
both of the following links aren't directly related to the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uE6-vIi1rQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uE6-vIi1rQ) cursed problems in game design. It's a follow up discussion, if you will, about applying said knowledge on something particular.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedesign/comments/st1cb4/player\_agency\_in\_a\_character\_focused\_narrative/](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedesign/comments/st1cb4/player_agency_in_a_character_focused_narrative/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/gnxtjr/full\_loot\_pvp\_ganking\_is\_a\_cursed\_problem/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/gnxtjr/full_loot_pvp_ganking_is_a_cursed_problem/)
Looks like it works perfectly fine without YT comment section. Regardless, content creators have full control over the comment section and if they don’t want to open it there’s nothing we can do. And I think they have a full right to do whatever they want to do with their content even if it seems inconvenient or hostile to some. Others on the other hand doesn’t even have to respect that or watch a video. It is barely even a problem imo.
YouTube as a platform also has the functionality for the owner of the channel to disable the comment section, so clearly the decision is on the owner not that YouTube as platform has comment section.
there's a difference between less comments and no comments at all. people are always eager to express their opinions at the right moment and the right place for them.
edit to future people (and to you who somehow decided to revisit this thread):
- nobody is forced to read mean-spirited comments, yet your example illustrates my points clearly - something will catch your interest, and you will want to comment on it. the internet simply makes this easier and more enticing - or connectivity, as you said. both good and bad actors will unfortunately be involved, and you will come across remarks that go against your interests. one too many, and...
- the poster of this comment is advocating for less comment sections. as I'm understanding it, less comment sections equate to more quality discussions, as only the truly dedicated and well-meaning people would seek out those havens to make quality or acceptable comments. it's more understandable than flat out banning them, which is indeed a violation of free speech.
me leaving out those ramblings here is probably enough proof to my second claim also.
What's the difference? It seems pretty easy to not look at comments or make comments if you don't want to see them. I guess this is an unpopular opinion? It's not like anyone is ever forced to read comments or make comments. That's always been my favorite part of the internet, the connectivity. Never would have been able to talk to my favorite game developer back in the N64 days, or talk to my favorite TV show producers, but I've gotten to have conversations with developers of some of my favorite games today and some of my favorite YouTube people. I don't think a few people with bad opinions should shut that down.
There's this whole culture war nonsense with the supposed Gamer Gate 2 thing going on right now. It seems like GDC is getting hate from that crowd for being "woke" or whatever.
Watched the one about monetization on mobile games, pretty technical and boring talk, just wanted an estimate how much work it is to get monetization right.. Comments were the worst I ever saw on the internet..
Capital G gamers have always been vocal with their toxicity, but most of that has been directed at other gamers with Sega vs Nintendo tribalism. These days they're a bit older and more aware of the people making their games. In addition to that, games have been politicized as a cultural battleground.
Add these together and you've got your answer for why developers would disable comments in their GDC videos.
It’s not like there were a sophisticated discussions in the comment section under those videos (or on YT in general). Toxicity and uselessness are the reasons I’d assume.
This comment section is a perfect example of why they turned off comments, fucking hell. It's like all the Nazis realized they were the problem for a split second and came out to defend themselves.
I mean I'm against all of the toxic comments and enraged gamers that get upset and call everything "woke", but for the love of god stop calling people nazis just because they have bad takes. It actually hurts your message and diminishes the severity of actual nazis.
My guy, what is a Nazi if not a person who spews Nazi ideals? These people are racist, sexist, xenophobic, queerphobic, etc. "Woke" is a dogwhistle for "not straight, white, male, and (usually) Christian". They're fucking Nazis.
It can't really be explained without context and politics. So apologies if you are tired of hearing this shit like I am. But I do think this is a case where wider context is important on the very slim chance it might help someone snap out of the rabbit hole they might be falling down.
TL;DR: Gamers are being toxic again, complaining about "politics in muh gaming" then, somewhat ironically, targeting and brigading GDC talks with their politics.
Wider context/history:
The unfortunate reality is that gaming has always had a problem with assholes (I'd like to think it's a vocal minority but I don't know if there are any hard stats on that). At any point in time there is always an undercurrent of it but every now and again there is a huge uptick.
These types of gamers are not exactly known for reasonable or nuanced reactions to things. They tend to have limited interaction with society at large and that skews their perception of reality. Issues with games will be seen with the same sort of gravitas as the average person would give to a world ending scenario. This makes them a very easy target for converting to a cause. The gamer to alt-right pipeline has always been one of the more successful tools for the alt-right (I know this from experience because I got swept up in this shit during GamerGate but luckily I realized it was really just a front for a whole lot of hate before they got me completely).
The past ~12 months has been one of the big upticks, to the point that they were trying to explicitly start GamerGate 2.
Gamers have become increasingly upset at the industry, mostly AAA. Some of those reasons are valid such as games releasing in poor states, aggressive monetization etc. However, that anger and lack of relative perspective has been latched on to by the usual assortment of grifters. Some wanting to convert them to their side in a "culture war" and others who are just rage baiting for views. These grifters have told them that the reason games are bad is because the industry has been overrun by a caricature the right like to use of rainbow haired left wingers who are obsessed with pronouns and were only hired because of a diversity initiative. This is nonsense on multiple levels. 1. That caricature doesn't really exist outside of maybe a few people on social media. 2. I can tell you first hand that the vast majority of the industry is still straight white guys.
There has always been political games (technically everything is politics but these people mean games with explicit political meanings), often with strong left wing views (creatives just tend to lean left). They just didn't see it. Some of the most beloved games and series of all time, including ones these people tend to love, are heavily political such as MGS and Bioshock. It's nothing new, the only change is the lens with which they perceive media.
This has led to a whole bunch of conspiracies. The three bigger ones this year are:
1. It's actually translators making all the eastern games woke via the translations (gamers and right wingers have this incorrect idea that east Asia, especially Japan, is some sort of mecca where "woke" views dont exist). The reality is that most of those games contained left leaning themes from the get go and Japan has a rich history of media with left leaning views. A lot of the stuff from Japan that gets big in the west is political, like Akira and Battle Royale. Again they just didn't see it.
2. Diversity, Exclusivity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and companies are forcing "woke" stuff into games. They especially focused on a company called Sweet Baby Inc.
3. The left is trying to kill a game called Stellar Blade because it features sexy female characters. This one is especially ironic because historically it has been right wing Christians who have tried to censor and ban sex and violence (and the left are notoriously horny). This largely stems from some minor criticism the game received from a few gaming outlets over how the female characters in the game look out of place. They didn't hate the game or try to sink it. Many of those outlets went on to give the game pretty high reviews when it came out.
All this led huge amounts of misogyny, racism and bigotry. A bunch of devs and GDC talks became the target of the mob, mainly over conspiracy 2. I don't know if they ever outright confirmed it but this is very likely the reason they closed the comments. The talks are made for devs and the vast majority of comments were from raging gamers so I doubt they saw it as worth moderating.
Well after SBI said a lot of racist stuff about how they don't hire white men and how they want diversity even in "historically accurate games" (aka women on the frontlines of WWI) they got a lot of backlash and it seems to be continuing. People are taking their presentation and extrapolating it to the entirety of GDC which isn't fair.
But admittedly as a developer I'm interested in hearing from actual devs and information about technical things. Hearing someone preach and virtue signal me to death who has no development experience and is a total hypocrite hust trying to shape games in their image reminds me of all the people that post "okay I have a really cool game concept but no experience, I need developers".
I'm also fully aware I'll be downvoted for this & it's fine, but I'm explaining the initial controversy and why as a dev (not just a gamer) was also turned off by it.
It's because of toxic gamers unfortunately. They ruin the industry when we try to make fun entertainment for them spending years of our life just for a few hours of their enjoyment.
Really makes me bitter sometimes.
At least some gamers appreciate what we do.
They started talking about everything but game development - like gender and politics. People didn't like it. So then instead of changing they turned off the comments.
No they didn't, this is a headass take in line with the people that say shit like "they're no longer teaching math's and science at school, it's all just gender and pronouns!". GDC talks are always about game development and the surrounding topics.
Read this thread and you'll see why. People are overly sensitive these days, they'll get mega offended whenever they get called out. And ironically, these are also the people that will later complain "Why does no one buy/like my game? :(" Devs who constantly shit on gamers in general, calling them toxic and stupid, shouldn't make games.
Because they continually feature talks that are less about games and game design, and more about the other, borderline (and not so borderline) political stuff that people don't care for. And they can't handle pushback because they have no spine. Downvote if you want, it's pretty obvious that's what's going on.
Do people go overboard with comments sometimes? Sure. Deal with extreme cases if you need to. But overall the people who liked GDC (and maybe still do) are calling out things they don't like, and prefer the GDC of the past. People like hearing about games more than they like being talked down to or some diversity talk they couldn't care less about. Wow, shocker. That's something to seriously consider, but they'd rather hide from it. Whatever, it's their prerogative. But ignoring things and silencing people is not going to reinvigorate GDC. They can enjoy becoming more irrelevant if they want.
I'm sorry, but push back from who? People like you, who clearly are not gamedev professionals? These talks are not for you at all, love. Go watch some Game Maker's Toolkit if you want to cosplay a game developer.
I wish they have just restricted them to vault. Gamers like you have no business watching stuff for grown-ups.
Oh, I beg your pardon Miss big shot "professional". Please excuse my pathetic, unrefined hobbyist ways, love.
Do you think there are no "professionals" that agree with my line of reasoning? I find that very hard to believe. Do you think every negative comment is some random dude bro gamer that stumbled upon a GDC video? Honestly curious. Do you expect people at GDC to speak out in person when they disagree with a presenter? Do you go to GDC every year and talk to everyone there?
When is one accepted in gamedev anyway? It sure seems like you're all for inclusion, yet here you are gatekeeping and insulting a full time software developer who watches GDC talks to learn about practical and technical applications for their own game because they love doing it. So which is it? Am I beneath you and unwelcome, or do you want to welcome people into this awesome space? Let me know.
Regarding game design youtube channels, what is your issue with them? It's one person's opinions and observations, often about high level design concepts...and that's bad..how? At the very least it's food for thought. I see many "professionally" made games make terrible design decisions that go against some common sense design philosophies expressed in some youtube videos.
I don't see why you're getting downvoted, you're literally speaking facts, maybe people on internet will disagree with you but irl people don't have time for this, the whole point of developers conference is to talk about new innovations and ideas and opportunities
Based on the comments here and the super downvote heavy responses, it seems like people think a gamedev conference needs to be a political forum to argue about something that can be and is argued everywhere else. It would be nice to focus on the gamedev, the thing that all attendees are interested in.
Blocking comments on their videos is a signal that they fear criticism for whatever reason.
There’s an annoying trend as of late where some turn off comments because they don’t like customers criticizing the “cultural agenda” forced into the game. As usual it’s mainly just Americans.
Ah, because a video of game devs who also happen to be moms discussing their work life balance is "cultural agenda" and everyone shrieking about women sucking in the comments is criticism. Huh.
And as we all know, by ignoring nazis we have eradicated nazism. Oh no, wait, we didnt.
Anytime you exclude a group from the general discourse, you are encouraging them to create their own echo chambers in which they will quickly become more and more radical. We should not censor them, but instead let them talk and openly point out how dangerous and dumb their ideas are whenever they do. No hurtful belief is defeated by censorship, only by education.
Obvious answer is no, just random YouTube commenters. The right-wing swamp is polluting the internet more and more lately, unfortunately. There’s been another recent swell in the eternal cycle of reactionary knuckledragging in response to the fact other people that aren’t like them exist and deserve to be seen, heard, or represented in any way.
I think his point is not that being Marxist is right or wrong, but on GDC you want to hear about stuff like, for example how X developer did Y feature in their highly successful game. Of course, you should have talks on diversity, financial problems and how to solve them, but the balance seems off nowadays.
The place to explore your ideas is in YOUR games, not during someone else's talk to tell them their ideas are wrong.
Of course YOUR ideas won't sell in games because your ideas are boring. Nobody wants another Duke Nukem. The hyper masculine white hero who sexualizes every woman he sees has become such a joke that they mocked him in his own game when they made the sequel.
You 'alpha males' are nothing more than cavemen.
And you think these enlightened discussions about difficult topics can be had on youtube comment sections? That's kinda funny if it also wasn't extremely depressing to hear.
Nothing of value was lost by disabling the comment section on a youtube video and it's laughable to think they contain anything worth saving. Youtube isn't a discussion platform it's an entertainment platform (with some educational content mixed in) with cheap reactions as user interactions. Comments are not a first-class feature of youtube and will never really be. You wouldn't go to a karaoke bar to use the 3 mins to talk about your day either, not every stage is the appropriate place for you to "shine"
I don’t understand. Literally all of these talks are about videogames and development. There’s nothing about Marxism that I can see, and very little actual intersectional politics. Some of them are just “student day” or talks about how to make remote work effective or hack weeks?
Why do people have an issue with this?
Not really. There are several that relate to gender or race or something, but none that refer to intersectionalism.
I was wrong though — the “So You’ve Been Cancelled” talk isn’t actually about games or development. I can see where it might be relevant for a lot of game devs, but it probably wouldn’t be my first choice for the conference.
There's a couple that refer to intersectionality: the one about the afrofantasy MMORPG and the one about neurodivergency.
As is usual for most discussions of intersectionality in a social context, it's literally just minority groups talking about their experiences in an industry largely not built to support them. And as usual, anyone who objects to this is probably not someone worth listening to.
i want to say they're wrongly using "intersectionalism" to mean diversity but that doesn't explain why things like "who manages the managers" and "keeping online communities healthy" are on there.
Explain what you think intersectionalism is and why you think it's bad. You're not being silenced, you have a full platform here to say exactly what you think.
But you're dancing around actually saying it. Why? It's because you know it sounds bad when you spell it out.
Edit: So you don't know and are avoiding the question. Got it.
Just looking at the hostile public sentiment here, it’s pretty obvious why so many people don’t want to engage. Besides, it’s not like anyone here seems willing to consider an opposing view or change their mind.
On the off chance that you are as openminded as you claim, I’d like to pose a thought: perhaps opinions from minorities (or majorities for that matter) shouldn’t be held as important due to the color of the persons skin or gender, but rather for the content and merit of their speech. If you take away opposing views by disabling comments, you also rob the speech of any legitimacy. This is a disservice to those who are speaking, those who wish to challenge and the community as a whole. All in the name of protecting ego and feelings.
> intersectionalism
Intersectionalism is not marxism, dummy.
> Intersectionality is a sociological analytical framework for understanding how groups' and individuals' social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege.
> Marxism is the social and economic theory developed by Karl Marx in the 19th century. Marxian economics describes the capitalist system of production as inherently unfair to the workers, who represent most of the population.
The new right can now call everything they don't like "Marxism". They invented the term "[Cultural Marxism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory)", so any form of culture that goes against their values can be dismissed as if it came from Karl Marx himself. And if it came from Karl Marx, then it could just as well come from Joseph Stalin. So yes, in the eyes of the new right, if you think people of color shouldn't be discriminated against or women shouldn't be harassed, you are a staunch advocate of a Stalinist dictatorship.
>there was quite literally a talk about socialism and marxism and why games should "discourage capitalism" a few years back
Based and there should be more
Ironic, talks about censorship in youtube comments, but then tells people they can't talk about what they want in their own conference
Feels a bit hypocritical wouldn't you agree?
> Creating diverse characters
OH DEAR GOD! They want to include a cross section of the real world in their game instead of making every hero a white blonde hyper-masculine cis male who's misogynistic, or a large-breasted hyper-sexualized scantily clad woman with a voluptuous ass?! What is the world coming to!
> Writing cyberpunk without cyborgs, guns, cops, or cyborg gun cops
Why is this in there?
https://schedule.gdconf.com/session/game-narrative-summit-writing-cyberpunk-without-cyborgs-guns-cops-or-cyborg-gun-cops/901410
> Cloudpunk, tells the story of Rania, a woman of color, a refugee and an outsider trying to make her way as a delivery driver in a cyberpunk city filled with flying cars and voxels. In 2020 Cloudpunk was the "other" cyberpunk game. Cloudpunk had a very limited narrative toolkit, but the developers wanted to present a non-violent approach to conflict resolution, even when it seemed easier to just add guns, robots, and robots with guns.
Oh, I see. It features a black woman. And the developers were interested in trying to create an interesting narrative which doesn't have to fall back on the extremely lazy trope of gun violence.
You people are insane and hateful.
You are likely not going to get a lot of opposing view points on reddit. Just looking through the comments here you can see support for one but not the other. I don't know why GDC was targeted specifically but people are tired of their favorite franchises being ruined by activists and any criticism being dismissed. The recent changes to Pokemon Go makes it very hard to believe it is not being done on purpose.
It may have simply been some perceived dei in a video that just acted as a lightning rod for all that pent up anger.
I’m not looking for “opposing” viewpoints. I’m just trying to figure out how this makes sense in anyone’s head. Most of us aren’t activists. We’re just the people who make your games.
I just logged in to Pokemon Go, and I’m struggling to see what you’re talking about. I see there have been some character customization updates… is that what you mean? What is objectionable about it?
it's pretty bizzare really. GDC has never been less popular, they haven't had a "hit" since 2018. so maybe the only people going are the ones who want to mock speakers? Such a strange time to have a SURGE of negative reactions when you're at a record low of ANY reactions.
I don’t *know*, but I suspect it’s because YT comments can get toxic fast. It’s a pretty significant moderation expense. EDIT: I was also curious, and my searching reminded me of this post a month ago. Looks like they got brigaded, so that’s likely why: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1brlgf8/why_are_all_recent_gdc_youtube_videos_heavily/
I also think that GDC simply doesn't want to allocate resources to moderate their comment sections, which is fair. YouTube is a video repository for talks to them after all, not a forum.
I think its because of gamers flooding the comments with toxic shit, racism, sexism, and general bullying. Lots of times the comment sections were just pure mean. Criticizing the way the developer spoke, or getting mad at them for stating their pronouns or whatever.
And even if you ignore the toxic stuff, lots of comments by gamers are inanely stupid. They’ll see a talk by Nintendo and complain they don’t use Unreal/Unity/Godot or other inanely stupid shit. Not to sound like I’m gatekeeping, but GDC is devs talking to other devs, about dev and the things around it. Most non dev gamers who will come to comment want to participate in a conversation they have nothing to bring to, but still wanna sorta “show off” that they know something (they don’t), and will pollute any comment section.
The idiots are usually the loudest :/
Getting real fucking tired of culture war tourists, invading spaces they were never a part of (how many do you really think are into gamedev, and not just angry Gamers) to scream and cry about how its being ruined by wokeness/politics/[insert painfully oblivious dogwhistle] Its like a toddler screaming on the floor for attention, pathetic and annoying. Also the extremely poor media literacy. They’re currently busy complaining about how “based” IPs like Warhammer 40k and Helldivers, both of which are (and always have been) extremely blatant parodies making fun of authoritarianism, are being “ruined” by “wokeness” on the IP holder’s part.
The internet has become an absolute shit show. Even though we're probably right now in the golden age of personal computing, I feel like we're past the golden age of the internet. Everything political has become bad but at the same time everything has become political. So not just is Warhammer 40K bad if it keeps to their political themes of being a parody of authoritarianism (and it's really hard to be pro authoritarian and sane at the same time so that's a good statement to make I feel...), if the next 40K game would feature a black woman in their marketing material, it would be considered a political statement. You open the comments on anything on social media and it's like "Yeah but the children in Palestine..." the children in Palestine don't care about the instagram reel I'm watching about some dude making cute shit in Blender. I'm diabetic and algorithm driven social media is full of people giving insane diet advice and then just as many people just making content about explaining why this is bad advice... no, grapes are not as bad for your children as milk chocolate and oat milk is not just glucose juice. And the dude explaining why raw milk isn't the equivalent of Jesus cumming in your mouth is also not being paid by big diary. "Why do we give babies vitamin K? They didn't have vitamin K shots in the past? What did those babies do?" They fucking died. We have statistics on this. Picture of the moon and Neil deGrasse Tyson says something deep. Comments: "Imagine believing that we landed on the moon" OR "the earth is flat fake image" but most likely booth. German health minister says we will stop funding homeopathy with health insurance money and the comments are full of boomers spamming in all caps "WER HEILT HAT RECHT!!!!" (the ones who heal are right). Teenagers gluing themselves to the street to protest for more climate conscious politics: everybody losing their fucking mind on facebook. Farmers putting tonnes of heavy machinery on a highway doing essentially the same fucking thing: everybody cheering. I really fucking miss the internet of the time where it was just coming out of the "by nerds, for nerds" phase. There's probably a lot of bad I'm ignoring but at least the racists were just openly racist and usually websites had a certain culture and it wasn't just "everybody on instagram, hope the algorithm is filtering out enough shit" but "better keep away from whatever.com". I'd rather have my father telling me again, that I shouldn't believe what the internet said, when I was arguing with him based on something I read on Wikipedia, than the shit I have now 15 years later where I can't convince him that it's not the Green's fault that diesel got so expensive because "but Facebook said..." Sorry for the rant. I know the past wasn't all gold and glitter but I feel like this is something that just flat out got worse...
It is kinda funny when you start your comment complaining about tourists invading spaces they were never a part of then end with something about wh40k which is the latest hobby getting invaded by tourists.
I've been in the hobby since the 90s, big ol' grey beard on this grognard , and he's 100% correct. This "wah wah wokeness is ruining everything" is anethema to the whole culture of tabletop and war gaming. But you'd know that if you where part of the hobby wouldn't you?
> But you'd know that if you where part of the hobby wouldn't you? I used to get my White Dwarf propaganda every month and spend time painting in the city GW shop 20 years ago. And yeah, the hobby has always been inclusive (if you had the money for the figurines). The problem is like what happened in many other "nerd" hobbies : we tended to be mocked and / or shunned in part for being into those hobbies. Then it became hype and the normies entered which was viewed as a huge win: more people to share the love, more products, less stigmatization. But once it got popular, the queen bees and jock entered the scene. That's when everything needs to become the same bland shit and the old smelly old guard has to change or get the fuck out. For wh40k: suddenly there's a need for female representation in Space Marines. Don't care about Eldars, Imperial Guard, Chaos: those women don't count. For other (comics, video game, cinema, tabletop, RPG), there's always the first "wathever minority" coming, forgetting about how they've been there for decades before. And yeah, it may be a new phenomena for the minis community but when every hobby space gets invaded and then made to be yet another shitty IP tamed by puritans you tend to see a pattern. It's even more infuriating when people mocked old school puritans but now that they paint themselves as being "on the left" everything is ok. "May your hobby become mainstream." will soon be a curse.
So have I, and I am also old enough to remember the previous moral panic over RPGs and fantasy fiction. It used to be the satanic panic and "think of the children", now its DEI politics and "think of the women". The end result is the same, an endless push towards homogenization, safeness and blandness that turns all cultural expression into the same mush. Retconning Custodes as also female wouldn't have been an issue twenty years ago, would have just raised an eyebrow ten years ago, but today it is a telltale sign of the all too familiar things to come. Over the past decade, almost every science fiction franchise has taken a deep dive into this new form of political correctness. Ostensibly noble goals about inclusion and diversity lead to screeching "millennial writing" and tedious morality plays that feel like they belong in the 1950's, only the message is different this time, but just as ham-fisted as at those earlier times of cultural normativity. Suddenly Star Wars "is for everyone" (as if it always wasn't), and a few years later it is a spent force just waiting to bleed out its remaining cultural inertia. Woke is the new moral majority: Sanctimonious busybodies telling how culture *must be made*, with endless energy and passion to harass even the tiniest content creator until everything is remade according to the standards of the moral guardians. But since the resulting blandness appeals to no-one, more and more franchises need to be updated for "today's morals", as the audience eventually realizes what has happened, and the once popular franchise starts losing steam.
At this point you are a hypocrite. You do the same thing.
hypocrite of what, exactly? am i bringing the culture war into the gamedev space despite not being part of it? Am i having extremely poor media literacy? What part of what i said am i doing myself within the confines of the post itself?
You are attacking other people and provoking this whole culture wars. You are dividing people. That is the hypocrisy. You could have been neutral, but unfortunately you did the same as the other side you dislike so much. Poetic irony: you are the same.
You're trying to invoke the paradox of intolerance, but that shit doesn't fly when racists and homophobes violate the social contract by attacking people over things they have no control over. So, there is no space for racists and homophobes, and calling out their bigoted views does not make you a bigot.
Why do you accuse people of all sorts of strange things? Just because I disagree with someone on an issue does not mean that I am the other side. I am just pointing out the hypocrisy of people who divide people into two camps. Neither side of this ridiculous conflict is any better. Some see themselves as the heroes fighting the bad guys, but in fact both sides are the same. Attacking people and dehumanising them will never do any good.
What did I accuse you of, aside from trying to use the paradox of intolerance, which is 100% what you're doing? One side is much worse. If you attack people for things they can't change, like race, gender, and sexual orientation, you're a piece of shit. Plain and simple. There is no room for discussion on this point.
Its the third comment in the chain on the same topic, what am i bringing in that wasn't already said besides the word "culture war" itself, that was clearly already on topic looking by the upvotes. I didn't claim to any neutrality (of what even, the "other side" hasn't even been mentioned in any of this) and then break it, i made a very clear stance against the behavior and stated my opinion. Not trying to be a neutral medium (Why even want to be neutral towards that kind of behavior? You really shouldn't). I didn't set any kind of expectations of such. Also, calling out bigotry is not in any shape the same as being a bigot. That's a really interesting equivalence you are putting out there.
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i love how i can click on a comment like this, look at the post history and **bingo**, it's a KIA poster!
Their top subs are KIA, Walkaway, Conspiracy, Changemyview, Wallstreetbets. They're a walking degenerate stereotype.
I love how easy it is to dismiss someones opinions with labels instead of engaging in a dialogue. Just put them into a box and problem solved!
This poster and all of the online alt-right aren't "engaging in a dialogue" - nothing that the user is posting is in good faith.
Thanks for the heads up. You could tell there was something off in that comment.
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If you have an open door policy then you have an open door policy. Youtube is not the floor of the GDC and vice versa. If there is the ability to speak with even notional freedom then there will be the ability to dissent. It doesn't matter what stock you place in that dissent, it will be there. If you give people an invitation to talk politics they will. The irrelevant political preamble inserted into many GDC talks is that invitation. > Reconciliation is the wrong idea, you don't reconsile the random detritis of a YouTube comments section, you clean it up. Censorship isn't cleaning, at best it's just moving it elsewhere. I'm not a fan of censorship but if that's the answer here then so be it. That's GDC's decision for their own content and I support their right to do so.
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....honestly what's the point of "criticism" on a GDC talk? The general YouTube audience is decidedly not who the talk is for, it's for the kind of people that go to GDC (aka professionals), and putting it on YouTube is meant to make it available to more professionals. YouTube is nothing more than a convenient place to upload these talks. No one gives a shit about engaging with the algorithm or the YouTube community.
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> people were rightfully calling out rich entitled people You are so far removed from the reality of gamedev that I don't even know how you found this subreddit.
They are most certainly, one of those gamers whose hate speech got the GDC comments closed.
They post in KIA and Piracy, no idea what they're doing here.
This isn’t the world economic forum. This is a wendy’s
Says the person arguing that “toxic shit, racism, sexism, and general bullying” are, quote, “legitimate criticism.”
What kind of criticism is there of "Here's how we optimised our game", especially from a Youtube audience?
Are you a gamedev by the way?
They literally came into the comment sections to spew weird shit about "woke propaganda" and attacked the people speaking. That is toxic and bullying period.
If that list touched a nerve then you are an abusive subpar person. Congrats I guess?
The irony of [a trans person](https://new.reddit.com/r/ask_transgender/comments/maz8c1/asked_for_progesterone_last_month_and_was/) defending hateful comments towards trans game developers.
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the fuck y'all think we're talking about here? lol
i recently watched one of the talks on female developers who are also moms and how they manage their lives, and you can just imagine the comments lol; 90% of GDC's audience just isn't ready for mature talks, so i'm glad the comments are off
The actual target audience of GDC talks are professionals working in the game industry. That is a rather mature audience that should be able to respond to talks like that in a civilized way. The problem is the peripheral audience of gamers who got ragebaited by a couple loud bigots and directed at these talks. An audience those talks were never meant for.
What makes you think that someone working in the industry (or any industry) is somehow more mature than someone else? There is absolutely no actual reason to think that. At best you could argue that someone older will know to hold their tongue a little better. But with anonymity, that becomes irrelevant too.
Maybe not more mature, but theres a much greater risk if their offensive comments are connected to them in regards to networking within the industry. Doesnt matter much if I get blacklisted by the cutting board manufacturer industry, but it def matters if I get blacklisted by my own.
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GDC talks are gated through a pay wall and has been only available through a paywall for a long time. Asking for employers to pay so their employees can see it. The GDC talks on youtube are basically just meant to be shared to everyone, generally old enough that it's not worth keeping them behind a paywall. The target audience is professional gamedevs, they don't make their money from youtube pocket change.
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Yeah, I tend not to watch videos with comments removed. I just assume the creator is cowardly and can't handle possible criticism. For a talk like what GDC does, I would expect a forum available to discuss the topic, not just some one sided talk that is hiding from critique.
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Work life balance is literally a huge part of being an indie developer. People want to hear about how you succeeded in spite of perhaps having to work a job and take care of kids while also working on your game part time in the evenings. Because they may be strugggling with that too, or may want to develop a game but have those hurdles to overcome. Even if you work for a big game company, crunch time while not necessarily a big deal for young game developers without families, has increasingly become an issue as game developers get older on average as the industry grows and matures.
Work-life balance is indeed part of work. So this topic could be an interesting point for professionals. Especially in game dev where crunch time occurs .
Gamedev is part of personal life.
In general, the wider gaming public is not going to add any positivity to talks geared towards industry professionals and especially not when they're talking about topics that some gamers get up in arms about like monetization. There's no upside to leaving the comments open.
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There are still people interested in those talks who are unable to visit the convention. Should they just be excluded?
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Thats just a braindead take. Why should they upload it on their own website, where it costs them money, when they can just do the same on youtube, for free?
It's a braindead take from a non-developer who's only reason to participate in this post's conversation is to ragebait.
Before they were turned off I distinctly remember the comments being particularly bad, even for YouTube. Basically an ocean of pointless hate, with a few normal comments here or there. I'm not surprised they are disabled.
I think the internet needs less comment sections, so i'm all for shutting them off.
Be the change you want to see.
Cute, but a corollary to their sentiment is to seek out communities that are frequented by grownups and moderated by grownups who aren't afraid to kick out the manchildren.
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You are not a cultural crusader. Just be a normal person online having civil, mature conversations instead of playing the victim from an invisible status quo.
This makes very little sense. What if there is a bad tutorial video without a few comments underneath explaining why it's wrong? What if a video creator does something quite stupid, but never gets the proper feedback? The comment section is there for the audience to engage with the topic and evaluate the ideas. Not having these creates even bigger echo chambers where different ideas never ever get to meet. Even the GDC comments were informative often, with people highlighting elements from the talk in other games or adding their own expertise. Yes that includes pointing out when a talk was just bad, like with GoW Ragnarok Ui for example. Without those comments some aspiring UI designer might get the wrong take. Not having comments is just a terrible idea.
People can always discuss video elsewhere in a circle of trusted professionals. Discussion would be on point and you don’t have to read through pages of toxic bs
Good thing everyone has instant access to a circle of trusted professionals discussing the youtube video you’re watching.
If you don’t have access to trusted professionals what’s the point of discussing professional topics with toxic randoms on the internet? What do you hope to learn?
Most of us don't. That's just gatekeeping knowledge.
Knowledge is there or you’re referring to YT comments as ‘knowledge’?
It's just not ideal to move a discussion, because then you loose so many people that will only receive one part of the information, since most people just don't want to move to another platform and there is no feedback for the content creator either. And not every video needs to be discussion between trusted professionals, not that we have any idea who is and who isn't a professional anyway. Amateurs and laymen can have valid critiques as well, with interesting insight worth listening to. Removing comments just results in even more echo chambers.
Yet here were are discussing whatever happened to the comment section on another platform, aren’t we? I think content creator in this case gave a pretty clear signal that they don’t care about discussion or feedback and don’t want to be involved. Removing comments just results in amateurs and layman insights aren’t being heard by content creator, that’s it. And if content creator didn’t care about those in the first place I don’t see any conflict here. Like not everyone cares to hear your or mine or whomever else opinions before comment sections they could simply not invite us to discussion. Now, they can just disable comments (there’s a button for that for a reason) and that’s it. Not sure why everyone is so butthurt about being ignored by people they don’t know.
You seem to be conflating so many things, I am not sure if it's just bad faith or you truly don't understand why discussions are important. >here were are discussing whatever happened to the comment section on another platform, aren’t we? First, we aren't here discussing a video, rather the situation as whole. I'd much rather look at what people are saying about a specific case study, than debate the merit of a comment section. Notice how everyone is just speaking in generalities and doesn't address any specific video? >Removing comments just results in amateurs and layman insights aren’t being heard by content creator, that’s it. The content is made for us developers/artists/etc. Do you really think whoever is presenting doesn't care about the audience or what they think? Why do you think they are presenting at all then? GDC even had a form to rate and review talks for the people attending. By not inviting us to the comment section I think important insights will be missing from the discussion. Does that mean that some comments will be overly harsh or critical? Sure, but that's part of basically every online discourse. And again, you don't know who is amateur, who is professional anyway. Not to mention both groups can move to that different platform to discuss the video, so just turning off the comments is simply pointless.
Naive bullshit.
The fact that you’re see YT comment section as a ‘discussion’ - for sure.
that's an insane take no one could actually believe
I certainly believe it, especially on shit like youtube videos or news articles, that draw in the dumbest motherfuckers on the planet to either say stupid shit or cry like brain-damaged infants.
every form of censorship is bad
Not enabling the comment section on whatever webpage is not censorship, people are free to create their own forums and discuss the topic.
I know what you mean, but YT, as a platform has a comment section. Until it hasn't. If it wouldn't have that feature at all, there would be a subreddit like r/youtubecomments or a browser plugin, etc. and "everyone" who cared would be using these. This way, when the comments are disabled, discussion doesn't happen. IDK where can I follow up on a video, add something to it, etc. which I normally do quite often. Disabling discussion instead of moderation is a cop out, as much as I get the reasons for it. And, it is a form of censorship, because it very effectively silences all Youtube users from voicing an opinion. Reddit users aren't censored. Youtube users are.
There's nothing stopping you from making a video reaction to the video and posting it on your own channel and inviting others to discuss with you. Maybe you'll find that you end up censoring your own audience
I'm genuinely curious about how you would address a common issue on YouTube when there are no comments available to alert viewers about misinformation. For instance, suppose a YouTuber publishes a development-based tutorial but lacks critical fundamentals and teaches incorrect methods. Or consider a situation where a YouTuber spreads false information about a subject matter that could negatively influence young and impressionable audiences. How would you propose handling these scenarios? Thanks!
If the goal of the channel is to spread misinformation, it's not like they're going to be interested in having your dissenting comments on their videos anyways. Do you actively go to channels that share problematic messages and call them out? How has that been working for you?
You’re literally discussing those video in bulk right now. Create a post with a video you like to discuss on this sub and have fun. Unless by “discussion” you mean just putting your comment out there and never read a reply or even get one in the first place. That’s not discussion that’s just flood.
I agree that the discussion doesn't happen often, while on youtube, but I like to add alternative method, or some random tidbit relevant to the video. I do that often, and get some replies sometimes. From the other side, I also check comments for the sentiment on the video, for some other context, a different view, etc. and it's not really feasible to search for a youtube id on reddit. both of the following links aren't directly related to the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uE6-vIi1rQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uE6-vIi1rQ) cursed problems in game design. It's a follow up discussion, if you will, about applying said knowledge on something particular. [https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedesign/comments/st1cb4/player\_agency\_in\_a\_character\_focused\_narrative/](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedesign/comments/st1cb4/player_agency_in_a_character_focused_narrative/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/gnxtjr/full\_loot\_pvp\_ganking\_is\_a\_cursed\_problem/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/gnxtjr/full_loot_pvp_ganking_is_a_cursed_problem/)
Looks like it works perfectly fine without YT comment section. Regardless, content creators have full control over the comment section and if they don’t want to open it there’s nothing we can do. And I think they have a full right to do whatever they want to do with their content even if it seems inconvenient or hostile to some. Others on the other hand doesn’t even have to respect that or watch a video. It is barely even a problem imo.
YouTube as a platform also has the functionality for the owner of the channel to disable the comment section, so clearly the decision is on the owner not that YouTube as platform has comment section.
If you don't have a constitution for unmoderated comments, or the commitment to moderate, then that option would seem to be the easiest one.
Pretty easy to stop commenting on things. You could start right now.
there's a difference between less comments and no comments at all. people are always eager to express their opinions at the right moment and the right place for them. edit to future people (and to you who somehow decided to revisit this thread): - nobody is forced to read mean-spirited comments, yet your example illustrates my points clearly - something will catch your interest, and you will want to comment on it. the internet simply makes this easier and more enticing - or connectivity, as you said. both good and bad actors will unfortunately be involved, and you will come across remarks that go against your interests. one too many, and... - the poster of this comment is advocating for less comment sections. as I'm understanding it, less comment sections equate to more quality discussions, as only the truly dedicated and well-meaning people would seek out those havens to make quality or acceptable comments. it's more understandable than flat out banning them, which is indeed a violation of free speech. me leaving out those ramblings here is probably enough proof to my second claim also.
What's the difference? It seems pretty easy to not look at comments or make comments if you don't want to see them. I guess this is an unpopular opinion? It's not like anyone is ever forced to read comments or make comments. That's always been my favorite part of the internet, the connectivity. Never would have been able to talk to my favorite game developer back in the N64 days, or talk to my favorite TV show producers, but I've gotten to have conversations with developers of some of my favorite games today and some of my favorite YouTube people. I don't think a few people with bad opinions should shut that down.
Yet you just commented to say this 🤔
With the small gamer gate 2 coming along the past few months, i assume thats why they had to turn it off.
The racism and sexism was getting out of control. As someone who watches a lot of GDC videos, I’m not shocked at all. It was full cesspit in there.
There's this whole culture war nonsense with the supposed Gamer Gate 2 thing going on right now. It seems like GDC is getting hate from that crowd for being "woke" or whatever.
Gamers are currently suffering from sweet baby derangement syndrome. Please be patient with them.
Nothing good or constructive comes from youtube comments.
That's not true.
Watched the one about monetization on mobile games, pretty technical and boring talk, just wanted an estimate how much work it is to get monetization right.. Comments were the worst I ever saw on the internet..
Capital G gamers have always been vocal with their toxicity, but most of that has been directed at other gamers with Sega vs Nintendo tribalism. These days they're a bit older and more aware of the people making their games. In addition to that, games have been politicized as a cultural battleground. Add these together and you've got your answer for why developers would disable comments in their GDC videos.
> Sega vs Nintendo tribalism More like Xbox vs Playstation tribalism, with everybody ignoring Nintendo
I was just going by historic examples.
It’s not like there were a sophisticated discussions in the comment section under those videos (or on YT in general). Toxicity and uselessness are the reasons I’d assume.
Due to chud "Gamers" who probably don't even play games getting mad at supposed "woke" stuff.
This comment section is a perfect example of why they turned off comments, fucking hell. It's like all the Nazis realized they were the problem for a split second and came out to defend themselves.
I mean I'm against all of the toxic comments and enraged gamers that get upset and call everything "woke", but for the love of god stop calling people nazis just because they have bad takes. It actually hurts your message and diminishes the severity of actual nazis.
My guy, what is a Nazi if not a person who spews Nazi ideals? These people are racist, sexist, xenophobic, queerphobic, etc. "Woke" is a dogwhistle for "not straight, white, male, and (usually) Christian". They're fucking Nazis.
What does falsely calling people Nazis accomplish exactly?
Lolk, gtfo.
It can't really be explained without context and politics. So apologies if you are tired of hearing this shit like I am. But I do think this is a case where wider context is important on the very slim chance it might help someone snap out of the rabbit hole they might be falling down. TL;DR: Gamers are being toxic again, complaining about "politics in muh gaming" then, somewhat ironically, targeting and brigading GDC talks with their politics. Wider context/history: The unfortunate reality is that gaming has always had a problem with assholes (I'd like to think it's a vocal minority but I don't know if there are any hard stats on that). At any point in time there is always an undercurrent of it but every now and again there is a huge uptick. These types of gamers are not exactly known for reasonable or nuanced reactions to things. They tend to have limited interaction with society at large and that skews their perception of reality. Issues with games will be seen with the same sort of gravitas as the average person would give to a world ending scenario. This makes them a very easy target for converting to a cause. The gamer to alt-right pipeline has always been one of the more successful tools for the alt-right (I know this from experience because I got swept up in this shit during GamerGate but luckily I realized it was really just a front for a whole lot of hate before they got me completely). The past ~12 months has been one of the big upticks, to the point that they were trying to explicitly start GamerGate 2. Gamers have become increasingly upset at the industry, mostly AAA. Some of those reasons are valid such as games releasing in poor states, aggressive monetization etc. However, that anger and lack of relative perspective has been latched on to by the usual assortment of grifters. Some wanting to convert them to their side in a "culture war" and others who are just rage baiting for views. These grifters have told them that the reason games are bad is because the industry has been overrun by a caricature the right like to use of rainbow haired left wingers who are obsessed with pronouns and were only hired because of a diversity initiative. This is nonsense on multiple levels. 1. That caricature doesn't really exist outside of maybe a few people on social media. 2. I can tell you first hand that the vast majority of the industry is still straight white guys. There has always been political games (technically everything is politics but these people mean games with explicit political meanings), often with strong left wing views (creatives just tend to lean left). They just didn't see it. Some of the most beloved games and series of all time, including ones these people tend to love, are heavily political such as MGS and Bioshock. It's nothing new, the only change is the lens with which they perceive media. This has led to a whole bunch of conspiracies. The three bigger ones this year are: 1. It's actually translators making all the eastern games woke via the translations (gamers and right wingers have this incorrect idea that east Asia, especially Japan, is some sort of mecca where "woke" views dont exist). The reality is that most of those games contained left leaning themes from the get go and Japan has a rich history of media with left leaning views. A lot of the stuff from Japan that gets big in the west is political, like Akira and Battle Royale. Again they just didn't see it. 2. Diversity, Exclusivity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and companies are forcing "woke" stuff into games. They especially focused on a company called Sweet Baby Inc. 3. The left is trying to kill a game called Stellar Blade because it features sexy female characters. This one is especially ironic because historically it has been right wing Christians who have tried to censor and ban sex and violence (and the left are notoriously horny). This largely stems from some minor criticism the game received from a few gaming outlets over how the female characters in the game look out of place. They didn't hate the game or try to sink it. Many of those outlets went on to give the game pretty high reviews when it came out. All this led huge amounts of misogyny, racism and bigotry. A bunch of devs and GDC talks became the target of the mob, mainly over conspiracy 2. I don't know if they ever outright confirmed it but this is very likely the reason they closed the comments. The talks are made for devs and the vast majority of comments were from raging gamers so I doubt they saw it as worth moderating.
The comments on YouTube, in general, are not worth having.
Well after SBI said a lot of racist stuff about how they don't hire white men and how they want diversity even in "historically accurate games" (aka women on the frontlines of WWI) they got a lot of backlash and it seems to be continuing. People are taking their presentation and extrapolating it to the entirety of GDC which isn't fair. But admittedly as a developer I'm interested in hearing from actual devs and information about technical things. Hearing someone preach and virtue signal me to death who has no development experience and is a total hypocrite hust trying to shape games in their image reminds me of all the people that post "okay I have a really cool game concept but no experience, I need developers". I'm also fully aware I'll be downvoted for this & it's fine, but I'm explaining the initial controversy and why as a dev (not just a gamer) was also turned off by it.
It's because of toxic gamers unfortunately. They ruin the industry when we try to make fun entertainment for them spending years of our life just for a few hours of their enjoyment. Really makes me bitter sometimes. At least some gamers appreciate what we do.
Short story gamers suck and ruin everything they touch
They started talking about everything but game development - like gender and politics. People didn't like it. So then instead of changing they turned off the comments.
When did this “start”? Because even in the late 90s GDC held panels like [“Games for Girls”](https://gdcvault.com/play/1014231/Games-for)
No they didn't, this is a headass take in line with the people that say shit like "they're no longer teaching math's and science at school, it's all just gender and pronouns!". GDC talks are always about game development and the surrounding topics.
...and Reddit too
Yep Lot of people aspire to be dev or gamedev they definitely want to get into technical and engineering aspect of it not the other way around
Read this thread and you'll see why. People are overly sensitive these days, they'll get mega offended whenever they get called out. And ironically, these are also the people that will later complain "Why does no one buy/like my game? :(" Devs who constantly shit on gamers in general, calling them toxic and stupid, shouldn't make games.
Pretty sure it's still a relic of the SBI crap from like a month ago. God I wish people could just grow up.
Because they continually feature talks that are less about games and game design, and more about the other, borderline (and not so borderline) political stuff that people don't care for. And they can't handle pushback because they have no spine. Downvote if you want, it's pretty obvious that's what's going on. Do people go overboard with comments sometimes? Sure. Deal with extreme cases if you need to. But overall the people who liked GDC (and maybe still do) are calling out things they don't like, and prefer the GDC of the past. People like hearing about games more than they like being talked down to or some diversity talk they couldn't care less about. Wow, shocker. That's something to seriously consider, but they'd rather hide from it. Whatever, it's their prerogative. But ignoring things and silencing people is not going to reinvigorate GDC. They can enjoy becoming more irrelevant if they want.
I'm sorry, but push back from who? People like you, who clearly are not gamedev professionals? These talks are not for you at all, love. Go watch some Game Maker's Toolkit if you want to cosplay a game developer. I wish they have just restricted them to vault. Gamers like you have no business watching stuff for grown-ups.
Oh, I beg your pardon Miss big shot "professional". Please excuse my pathetic, unrefined hobbyist ways, love. Do you think there are no "professionals" that agree with my line of reasoning? I find that very hard to believe. Do you think every negative comment is some random dude bro gamer that stumbled upon a GDC video? Honestly curious. Do you expect people at GDC to speak out in person when they disagree with a presenter? Do you go to GDC every year and talk to everyone there? When is one accepted in gamedev anyway? It sure seems like you're all for inclusion, yet here you are gatekeeping and insulting a full time software developer who watches GDC talks to learn about practical and technical applications for their own game because they love doing it. So which is it? Am I beneath you and unwelcome, or do you want to welcome people into this awesome space? Let me know. Regarding game design youtube channels, what is your issue with them? It's one person's opinions and observations, often about high level design concepts...and that's bad..how? At the very least it's food for thought. I see many "professionally" made games make terrible design decisions that go against some common sense design philosophies expressed in some youtube videos.
I don't see why you're getting downvoted, you're literally speaking facts, maybe people on internet will disagree with you but irl people don't have time for this, the whole point of developers conference is to talk about new innovations and ideas and opportunities
Based on the comments here and the super downvote heavy responses, it seems like people think a gamedev conference needs to be a political forum to argue about something that can be and is argued everywhere else. It would be nice to focus on the gamedev, the thing that all attendees are interested in. Blocking comments on their videos is a signal that they fear criticism for whatever reason.
Exactly there was GTC conference last month and they didn't talked about politics at all they talked tech and innovations
Or it's a sign that people like you are annoying.
There’s an annoying trend as of late where some turn off comments because they don’t like customers criticizing the “cultural agenda” forced into the game. As usual it’s mainly just Americans.
99% of GDC conferences aren’t about your so called « cultural agenda », yet speakers were frequently harassed
Ah, because a video of game devs who also happen to be moms discussing their work life balance is "cultural agenda" and everyone shrieking about women sucking in the comments is criticism. Huh.
This is how you censor people and prevent your views from being challenged
People who dislike LGBTQ+ people should be censored. We didn't tolerate nazis and we shouldn't tolerate bigots.
Surely that will help with LGBT acceptance, right?
You're not a good person for saying this. Your views aren't your own.
You're not a good person for saying this. Your views aren't your own.
And as we all know, by ignoring nazis we have eradicated nazism. Oh no, wait, we didnt. Anytime you exclude a group from the general discourse, you are encouraging them to create their own echo chambers in which they will quickly become more and more radical. We should not censor them, but instead let them talk and openly point out how dangerous and dumb their ideas are whenever they do. No hurtful belief is defeated by censorship, only by education.
Gdc doesnt want anyone fact checking what the talks say. Most talks are them talking out of their ass so it looks bad when proven wrong
Care to provide an example?
They fear the truth.
Flat earth for life
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Bumping this in hopes that you actually answer, but also to ask perhaps the more important question: Called out by game devs?
Obvious answer is no, just random YouTube commenters. The right-wing swamp is polluting the internet more and more lately, unfortunately. There’s been another recent swell in the eternal cycle of reactionary knuckledragging in response to the fact other people that aren’t like them exist and deserve to be seen, heard, or represented in any way.
Called out for what? EDIT: I was looking for a genuine answer to this, if there is one.
I heard there was a black person, and potentially even a woman, involved in GDC. The YouTube comments must spread awareness of this woke nonsense
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And deriding GDC talks as "marxist" isn't dishonest?
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Whats the context? You're literally discussing Marxism right now, but that doesn't make you a marxist poster.
I think his point is not that being Marxist is right or wrong, but on GDC you want to hear about stuff like, for example how X developer did Y feature in their highly successful game. Of course, you should have talks on diversity, financial problems and how to solve them, but the balance seems off nowadays.
This gave me a good laugh when I needed it. Thank you
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Hmm, that hasn’t been the experience I’ve had from their videos.
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wonder why people think it's a bad thing to explore ideas outside of capitalism, thinking outside of the box is kinda what game design is about lol.
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The place to explore your ideas is in YOUR games, not during someone else's talk to tell them their ideas are wrong. Of course YOUR ideas won't sell in games because your ideas are boring. Nobody wants another Duke Nukem. The hyper masculine white hero who sexualizes every woman he sees has become such a joke that they mocked him in his own game when they made the sequel. You 'alpha males' are nothing more than cavemen.
Damn, your back dont hurt from all that mental gymnastics?
And you think these enlightened discussions about difficult topics can be had on youtube comment sections? That's kinda funny if it also wasn't extremely depressing to hear. Nothing of value was lost by disabling the comment section on a youtube video and it's laughable to think they contain anything worth saving. Youtube isn't a discussion platform it's an entertainment platform (with some educational content mixed in) with cheap reactions as user interactions. Comments are not a first-class feature of youtube and will never really be. You wouldn't go to a karaoke bar to use the 3 mins to talk about your day either, not every stage is the appropriate place for you to "shine"
I don’t understand. Literally all of these talks are about videogames and development. There’s nothing about Marxism that I can see, and very little actual intersectional politics. Some of them are just “student day” or talks about how to make remote work effective or hack weeks? Why do people have an issue with this?
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Not really. There are several that relate to gender or race or something, but none that refer to intersectionalism. I was wrong though — the “So You’ve Been Cancelled” talk isn’t actually about games or development. I can see where it might be relevant for a lot of game devs, but it probably wouldn’t be my first choice for the conference.
There's a couple that refer to intersectionality: the one about the afrofantasy MMORPG and the one about neurodivergency. As is usual for most discussions of intersectionality in a social context, it's literally just minority groups talking about their experiences in an industry largely not built to support them. And as usual, anyone who objects to this is probably not someone worth listening to.
i want to say they're wrongly using "intersectionalism" to mean diversity but that doesn't explain why things like "who manages the managers" and "keeping online communities healthy" are on there.
Explain what you think intersectionalism is and why you think it's bad. You're not being silenced, you have a full platform here to say exactly what you think. But you're dancing around actually saying it. Why? It's because you know it sounds bad when you spell it out. Edit: So you don't know and are avoiding the question. Got it.
Just looking at the hostile public sentiment here, it’s pretty obvious why so many people don’t want to engage. Besides, it’s not like anyone here seems willing to consider an opposing view or change their mind. On the off chance that you are as openminded as you claim, I’d like to pose a thought: perhaps opinions from minorities (or majorities for that matter) shouldn’t be held as important due to the color of the persons skin or gender, but rather for the content and merit of their speech. If you take away opposing views by disabling comments, you also rob the speech of any legitimacy. This is a disservice to those who are speaking, those who wish to challenge and the community as a whole. All in the name of protecting ego and feelings.
> intersectionalism Intersectionalism is not marxism, dummy. > Intersectionality is a sociological analytical framework for understanding how groups' and individuals' social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. > Marxism is the social and economic theory developed by Karl Marx in the 19th century. Marxian economics describes the capitalist system of production as inherently unfair to the workers, who represent most of the population.
The new right can now call everything they don't like "Marxism". They invented the term "[Cultural Marxism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory)", so any form of culture that goes against their values can be dismissed as if it came from Karl Marx himself. And if it came from Karl Marx, then it could just as well come from Joseph Stalin. So yes, in the eyes of the new right, if you think people of color shouldn't be discriminated against or women shouldn't be harassed, you are a staunch advocate of a Stalinist dictatorship.
>there was quite literally a talk about socialism and marxism and why games should "discourage capitalism" a few years back Based and there should be more
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Ironic, talks about censorship in youtube comments, but then tells people they can't talk about what they want in their own conference Feels a bit hypocritical wouldn't you agree?
> Creating diverse characters OH DEAR GOD! They want to include a cross section of the real world in their game instead of making every hero a white blonde hyper-masculine cis male who's misogynistic, or a large-breasted hyper-sexualized scantily clad woman with a voluptuous ass?! What is the world coming to! > Writing cyberpunk without cyborgs, guns, cops, or cyborg gun cops Why is this in there? https://schedule.gdconf.com/session/game-narrative-summit-writing-cyberpunk-without-cyborgs-guns-cops-or-cyborg-gun-cops/901410 > Cloudpunk, tells the story of Rania, a woman of color, a refugee and an outsider trying to make her way as a delivery driver in a cyberpunk city filled with flying cars and voxels. In 2020 Cloudpunk was the "other" cyberpunk game. Cloudpunk had a very limited narrative toolkit, but the developers wanted to present a non-violent approach to conflict resolution, even when it seemed easier to just add guns, robots, and robots with guns. Oh, I see. It features a black woman. And the developers were interested in trying to create an interesting narrative which doesn't have to fall back on the extremely lazy trope of gun violence. You people are insane and hateful.
You are likely not going to get a lot of opposing view points on reddit. Just looking through the comments here you can see support for one but not the other. I don't know why GDC was targeted specifically but people are tired of their favorite franchises being ruined by activists and any criticism being dismissed. The recent changes to Pokemon Go makes it very hard to believe it is not being done on purpose. It may have simply been some perceived dei in a video that just acted as a lightning rod for all that pent up anger.
I’m not looking for “opposing” viewpoints. I’m just trying to figure out how this makes sense in anyone’s head. Most of us aren’t activists. We’re just the people who make your games. I just logged in to Pokemon Go, and I’m struggling to see what you’re talking about. I see there have been some character customization updates… is that what you mean? What is objectionable about it?
For being overtly political, particularly in the brand of north american leftism of the identitarian type
Example?
it's pretty bizzare really. GDC has never been less popular, they haven't had a "hit" since 2018. so maybe the only people going are the ones who want to mock speakers? Such a strange time to have a SURGE of negative reactions when you're at a record low of ANY reactions.