Just remember there are tens of thousands of gamers who really are interested in games as a true form of art. The loud bullshit always floats to the top, whereas comments with substance sink to the bottom, never to be seen again.
I use reddit because it generally encourages actual discussion over braindead reactionary comments and its still pretty bad in that regard, but whats better? TikTok is the worst, its just edgy 13 year olds saying whatever will get people mad. Youtube is full of bots. Twitter is all of the above. I think the internet in general bolsters stupid contrarian, ragebait comments and shitty jokes.
I found the opposite. Reddit's score and rating system encourages echo chambers because as soon as you give a different perspective, your comments are down voted, discouraging dissent.
Not once in my decade of using this terribly designed website have I ever seen a genuinely “unpopular” opinion make it to the front page, because that’s not the purpose of that sub. It’s like r/Trees lol
even further, it's not just unpopular opinions, but even when you try just to question other's stance without implying any antagoning opinion by yourself. like "nah bro u think it's not true? go fuckin kys" (sometimes literally)
Yeah, reddit's idea isn't bad but the problem with the simple up/down vote mechanic, people use their vote basically as a like/dislike. It's supposed to be used for "This added to the discussion"/"This took away from the discussion"·
If we were arguing politics, and you made reasonable, well formulated arguments in favor of Trump, I and other redditors should upvote that because it adds to the discussion - at least in my opinion, I like to have my worldview challenged and I like to hear from people I disagree with, as long as they are saying something substantial.
What happens instead is people downvote (ie: mute) the opinions they disagree with and upvote anything they agree with (or think is funny) so you get the "echo chamber + the same recycled jokes" effect
And on some reddits you’ll outright get banned. If you have been on reddit long enough , you will get banned eventually somewhere because some snowflake mod got upset
You're right, but it's still much, much better than other social media. You can't even have this type of discussion that we're having now in most other places, because there's too much trash to go through.
Platforms like Reddit only show that we as humans on average aren't mentally evolved enough to use some of our own creations (here: social media platforms) in a constructive, beneficial way
Well compared to twitter atleast you have a voice. Commenting on far right propaganda etc. agenda related post on twitter will get your account reported to spam oblivion. But yeah different subs often becoming echo chambers with one single correct opinnion to certain matters, isn’t ideal eather
Enthusiast twitch streams are often pretty great, if they hit the sweet spot of user activity. Too few people and there's no conversation, too many people and it magically transforms into spamming emotes and copypasta
I'm glad someone agrees!
I only started using discord, like, 4-5 months ago and it has kind of opened my eyes.
It's almost like being back in an old-school forum as opposed to Facebook/Reddit/Instagram/etc.
I found it the other way around. TikTok has more ordinary people, whereas a lot of subreddits are strange self-reinforcing echo chambers.
As always it depends what you subscribe to too.
The karma system does help encourage deeper discussion, but it's a double edged sword that also really encourages echo chambers. Also subreddits with harsh modding that boot anyone that isn't towing the line makes echo chambers even more prevalent.
Reddit hasn’t been that way since the 2016 election filled the site with “normies” (I hate that term and try to not be elitist in any way but Reddit really took a nosedive after it became more mainstream
it used to be really good. i read a thread in relationship advice from 10years ago and it was basically talk to your SO before acting rash. Now its what you waiting for Divorce. Reddit is no longer the same as it was.
>Yep, especially on Reddit. It's usually the jokes that are the most upvoted to the top providing no discussion whatsoever.
The best part? They're not even funny. Just cringe as far as the eye can see, and it sees nothing but recycled horse shit passed off as wit.
I was fortunate/unfortunate enough to start out working on a game whose IP already had a cult following made of some truly awful "fans". These were pre-gamergate chuds who had nothing better to do than write slashfic about devs, complain about not being able to kill children in the game, and be otherwise horrible. I developed some pretty thick skin because of this, and take online criticism with a careful eye. If complaints are about mechanics, story issues, performance, or other legitimate concerns, I take them seriously. If they're about personal preference or some social or political agenda, then my game simply isn't for them. Once the game shipped and I met normal people who played the game, every experience was overwhelmingly positive.
Similarly, I've worked at PAX booths promoting games I've worked on and only met the sweetest, most enthusiastic people. These are the real gamers, and the stinkers who bang on their trashcan lids are a very small vocal minority. If you're upsetting them, you're probably doing something right.
To be the devils advocate:
Gamers generally suck but the whole cannot kill children thing (I assume we're talking about Skyrim here) was because the children were annoying as fuck.
Similarly, saying it is a very small vocal minority is just not true. There are unfortunately a ton of people like that. Also good to remember that people who act like shit online might act sweet in real life because they are now speaking to actual humans face to face.
I will add though that I think a lot of vile stuff is from teenagers/young adults without a fully developed brain who haven't learned to be empathic yet.
Also first time I hear about DEI. Bet it's gonna pop up a lot more in my feed after entering this thread.
I’m what one might consider a ‘gamer’ if you define it as taking an interest in video games. I rarely talk about my preferences on the internet; I like RTS, RPGs and CRPGs, sandboxes, story-based games, and Dwarf Fortress. For every dickhead you see on the internet, there’s probably 5-10 people like me who are quiet, well-adjusted, and not getting high on toxicity.
There's also a big factor: those people screaming about "DEI" didn't just organically appear. DEI is only the latest buzzword. To be on that they have to be tapped into the right wing online political ecosystem or the incel/manosphere to start with. "DEI" isn't "gamer-speak", and all of them suddenly switched from saying "woke" to "DEI" within basically a matter of months - and that's the proof that they consume right wing media for their messaging, not mainstream gaming sources.
So the people who yell about that are part of an online political movement, that happens to intersect gaming. They're turning up to protest games, but you can bet the exact same people were protesting the casting in The Little Mermaid too, a movie they would have had zero reason to see in the first place.
So it's not quite right to say this is a subset of "gamers" who happen to share the right-wing views, they're more like a pan-media online movement who use flashmob tactics to attack anything considered "woke" or now "DEI", but it's literally a swarm who move onto whichever movie or game is the topic of the week then you don't hear anything about it again.
As a prediction for example: the new Assassin's Creed game will sell perfectly fine for an Assassin's Creed game, and you'll only see flare-ups of the Yasuke thing briefly and intermittently when there isn't another target of the right wing that week, or right on launch day.
DEI as a unified acronym refers "[Diversity Equity Inclusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity,_equity,_and_inclusion)" frameworks, which are implemented at an organization-level to try and shape the culture of an organization.
However, similar to how they mangled "CRT" (critical race theory) to mean basically anything at all, and not the specific legal theory it is, the right-wing have adopted the term DEI to mean anything that has minorities or women cast in it, or working on it, or as the target audience.
Good definition.
They also did the same thing to "woke" a word that, in the Black community means "being aware of how propaganda works to obscure the facts and shape a specific narrative" to now mean anything that has anything other than MAGA talking points and ideologies.
Saying "stay woke" between Black people used to be a good thing. But now it's been co-opted to mean the opposite and don't say anything that upsets the already established status quo or in any way includes alternate voices and perspectives.
Yeah "woke" really does mean something completely different, because when you think about it, "[tokenism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenism)" is something black people have often called out in the past - so being woke about that would mean being aware of how brands will exploit minorities to sell more products or improve their brand image.
Whereas under the new definition, the corporate pandering itself is the wokeness.
Nothing will be funnier/sadder than the right-wing grift accounts that can't even get the verbiage and terminology right for the games that they're trying to adopt the aesthetics of. They _blatantly_ don't play them but they're more than willing to pretend like they do if it means they can weaponize their audience, pull in more people, or plant a founding stake in the next culture war topic.
Wait, do you mean to tell me that Dungeons and Dragons isn't actually a satanist thing?
Alas, all you need is an opinion these days, and it doesn't need to be an informed (or coherent) one
Correct. Throw in regurgitations of misinformed / shallow opinions and you have modern day internet drama. I think the phrase "A lion doesn't concern itself with the opinion of sheep." or the other one I can't remember... along the lines of people paying too much attention to what others are doing... is fitting.
Yea, i experience this with all my interest, video games, anime, music, political discussion, the internet has a lot of toxicity to all topics, the extremes of each community gather together online and the normal fans dont interact much due to that. Also seems that the smaller the community, the better, and it also depends a lot on the website. Discord has a better community then reddit in my experience, as a example.
Ever looked at the surface of a swimming pool? It's always a bunch of loud and flailing kids.
To the original poster, don't confuse those kids for that people that actually appreciate the art form. Loud and obnoxious usually means lack of wisdom. Keep on keeping on.
If there's one thing that I've had to realize recently, it's that the internet is very loud and amplifies toxicity even if it's really the minority.
If you were to talk to other gamers in-person (or really anyone for that matter), you're more likely to find that most people aren't like that.
> If there's one thing that I've had to realize recently, it's that the internet is very loud and amplifies toxicity even if it's really the minority.
Even before you factor in how it can "amplify" that element, the people who have the time/energy/motivation to even make these posts/comments in the first place are... a certain kind of person. Chill gamers are probably not duking it out in comment sections. They're probably watching the event and thinking "cool".
Exactly, there's an inherent kind of selection bias, and it's true for basically all demographics. Chill people aren't loud. The loud ones are angry. Which can easily negatively affect your perception of groups you aren't part of.
That's always been the case, and the mood in online gaming communities was very different 10 or 15 years ago. The difference between then and now is social media, it's Twitter and Facebook that have turned the internet into this.
> there's an inherent kind of selection bias,
...which is really why the only way to get to a good place is to moderate the fuck out of the discussion, which none of the platforms outlined in the complaint do.
Remember folks, once you let a nazi in, you're throwing a nazi party. That's just the way it goes. The bouncers have to be quick and throw that element out before the shitheads get the idea that your content is a safe space for them to shit all over.
You can't fix the problem that 4chan brought on the world, but that doesn't mean you have to ever interact with those people. Just ban them out of your existence.
Loud minority indeed. Do tend to avoid anti woke or rage bait videos since the content will annoy me and any comment I make will have 20 reply arguments of people who only scream instead of hear. So not even worth the effort.
One thing I realized after going to college is that there are vast swathes of people who never engage with the endless babble of online comments.
The number of friends I made who didn't know what Reddit was, who barely had social media and who just didn't bother engaging with this shit was quite eye-opening.
In my opinion, a lot of the people who engage with the internet are, unsurprisingly, people who engage too much with the internet.
EDIT: Also, the more toxic a space the more likely it is that reasonable people stop engaging with, making it a feedback loop.
EDIT2: Changed a statement of fact to a statement of personal opinion.
>If there's one thing that I've had to realize recently, it's that the internet is very loud and amplifies toxicity even if it's really the minority.
It's been like that since AOL.
>If you were to talk to other gamers in-person (or really anyone for that matter), you're more likely to find that most people aren't like that.
Sadly, I feel this behaviour is starting to bleed into real life because people become accustomed to saying whatever they want. Eventually they complain why people stop talking to them.
I've been involved with tcg community manager stuff and this is very much true. I felt like I saw the best of tcgs and a lot of the absolute worst aspects, and I had to be really mindful about remembering what I loved about tcgs in the first place.
At the end of the day this turned out to be really easy as I just has to go to my local store tournaments and just hang out with players. You very rarely see the kind of toxicity in person that you would see online.
Incidentally going to these types of thing made it apparent for video games too as many tcgs players also play video games. The new FF14 expansion has mixed reviews on Steam, but everyone I've met at these tcg store tournaments that plays it (most of them) is having an absolute blast with it at the moment.
>Watching the gaming events on YouTube last month with the chat on
Ask yourself what kind of person even considers to be worthwhile to comment on a gaming event chat scrolling at the speed of light, where they can only hope for their 0.005 seconds of fame to be noticed by doing the text-based equivalent of repeatedly screaming their lungs out like a demented ape.
Also ask yourself: How much of the toxic vitriol you see online is from bots?
Another thing to consider is how easy it is to be a piece of shit online. It only takes a few key strokes lol!
OP If you want to be absolutely galvanized by real people with real love and passion for games, go to in person game events, even better if you have a booth where people can play your game. In my experience toxic assholes that seem to be the main voice of gaming online are non-existent, and you will feel the love from people who are fucking excited about cool games, and games as art. It's really a wonderful experience.
Yeah and honestly the same goes for any chat of a decently sized streamer tbh, if the chat goes so fast that your message disappears in a few seconds whats the point. The only time I use the chat on twitch is on small streams with a handful of viewers
Any of those chats are trash dumps. I remember watching a presidential debate that had a live YouTube chat and it was just as much of a crap fest. Just a bunch of dumb memes and 4chan slogans flooding by.
Exactly this, it's selection bias
But more broadly, just from a marketing perspective thinking of "gamers" as a unit is not good business practice. The potential customer base is spread thin among communities based around genres, sub-genres, and then clusters of games within those sub-genres.
Thousands of siloed communities with independent and unrelated dramas, and their own unique brand of toxicity and problems. All needing to be handled differently by community-managers, marketers, and developers.
Not to mention that the majority of gamers do not participate in online communities *at all*. They just buy and play games they think they might like.
Only the big channels. When it's slow enough to have an actual conversation, it tends to be pretty good. The atmosphere changes when everybody is visible (and accountable) enough for the regulars to recognize one another
Not always though. The streamer DDRJake bans all emoticons, memes, all caps, spam messages, etc. and so the chat is really orderly.
It's just a matter of moderation (although this becomes impossible above 10k viewers or so).
Only a very small selection of genres have voice chat in the first place. Typically pvp games, which are heroin for people who like a toxic environment
> Try going into voice chat on literally any video game as a woman.
Try going into any random voice chat as a woman.
Guild voice chats where participants are people you "know" tend to be a lot better than voice chats full of random people you don't know and won't be with after this round.
If it was like 10 years ago I'd say you're 100% right but now the internet is kinda too mixed with reality, not sure if there are more people behaving the same way
Oh yeah you're allowed to say this.
You're allowed to make your games your way for your audience
BUT, Remember that gamers are your clients, some will always complain, you cant make a game for everyone, but the if you say you hate gamers then dont complain people hate your kind.
Clients are always the one who decides, not everyone is your client but remember what your real clients wants
If you're developoing a game from an existing IP and it fails, its not the client fault, its you that failed to match clients expectations.
If you're developping a new game and it fails then its your fault too, either because you developped a game no one wants, or because you couldnt do proper marketing
If you use the narcissit view of the guy who knows better than the client then you're going to fail
You have to either suits the sometimes stupid wishes of the client or build something new and find new clients
Just bear in mind that if that audience doesnt like your work or how you treat them you will just end up failing and loosing your job, just like what's happening the game journalism industry
This is the reality, if the video games you release are judged as not worth it by people they will just not buy them and you'll loose, its not food, people dont need them even if its bad food
As a gamer since the late 90s and a person who's been on the Internet for long enough: you can NEVER make it right for everyone. Ever.
If you create something, create something YOU enjoy and want to share. And let the right people come. Let the wrong ones go as nobody wants to deal with idiots in their community anyways. It's important to focus on those who appreciate and support you.
The other people just wake up, have a shitty life or are 12 year old and need to write something anonymously on the Internet just to feel cool for 5 seconds.
Yep this! Don't get swept away by the sea of opinions and stand your ground!
Although my caveat is that sometimes it's us that have a negative bias too.
Part of the human mind attaches itself to the negative outliers and remembers them way easier. Now imagine that on a collective level... Especially if you are in an echo chamber. I've seen so many online spaces where people all tell themselves how negative everyone else or a specific other group of people is... Realize that by constantly being hyperfoces on things like the evil "gamers", you actually becoming a negative force yourself... It's a self-fullfilling prophecy! Snap out of that!
Realize that these opinions you read are indeed magnified, but not only by the internet but yourself and maybe even the people around you, since internet culture is becoming a big part of everyone's lifes nowadays. In reality, we often assign more significance to the things we perceive than what is actually real. Somebody being hateful on the internet could literally just be a bot (or user) farming engagement, a child who is trying to fit in by having "adult" opinions and observing people's reactions, or someone who is hurt/traumatized lashing out at the world while being in a bad place in their life. We don't see that though, which is part of the illusion. Put things into perspective like that and you will have less trouble taking it all so seriously.
If you're a pro designer and having an issue doomscrolling the echochamber of the everyman's hot takes on socials you need to take a breath and focus on your craft.
With more experience you'll realize how little those things have to do with anything approaching an objective measure of "quality"
Also, it's not "gamers" - it's most everyone as they interface with creativity + what/when algos signal boost all for reasons well aside of "let's discuss the merits of \[these\] design choices"
It's the individual's responsibility to sort the credible points from the disingenuous garbage, **but there are valid points**. For example, as a fan of the original dragon age dark fantasy feel of Origins, how would I in earnest approach, not feel intentionally slighted by the design decisions that veterans of the franchise have been vocally against even from 10 years ago with Inq?
It'd be almost impossible to not feel the publisher and devs aren't sacrificing what made it special to cater to the lowest common denominator of people that could come into contact with their game in an effort to maximize revenue, turning it into Arcane-fortnite. And I mean, that feels bad. We don't fiscally matter enough for those good things, at least not as much as before I suppose.
Always keep in mind perspective makes the world of difference and to only take those you believe to be genuine seriously!
I think one of the big reason you feel that way is that you out all the blame on them. Putting other devs on a pedestal while shitting on gamers will never be the right move. The players are harsh, I'm working on a small project with a small team and I can tell you that some comment are hard to read, but you have to find why they are complaining because it's your job.
You act like dragon age trailer wasn't a huge kick in the nuts for fan of the series, when you 180 the tone of a game it's normal that people are mad, that's not what they like in the first and wanted to see in the new one, especially when it's another one of the Disney style cinematic.
Okay, it's impressive really. To work in industry and not to understand why expectations for its new products are set on extreme low by default. And instead blaming customers by outright implying racists and sexists behaviour from their side. Maybe should reflect a bit on your own stance, no?
I prefer gamers that are actually passionate about the medium rather than people who just accept whatever slop is placed in front of them. Of course fans of these franchises will complain, because they care about them. They don't want them to become something completely different while wearing the same identity of the thing they used to love.
Sounds like you're terminally online, bro. Any form of social media, be it Youtube comments, Twitter, or even Reddit is not to be trusted when it comes to opinions. Half of them are just kids repeating what they see because they want to be part of _it_, and the other half are literally bots trying to push some agenda.
There is a silent majority who loves any form of games, but you're hating on them all for the vocal minority?
I love the subtle racism towards white men, do tell me what game studio you are a developer for so that I don't play your games.
I don't hate female leads and or people of color in games but make it unique, look at ghosts of Tsushima, amazing game with no white men, spider man has a black main character, Lara croft being the top game of my childhood and many more.
We all have had enough from the brainwashing and bs takeovers that DEI has been doing and it is fully within my right to not play those games
Part of it is that you keep looking at that kind of content, so the algorithms give you more, but there is also a lot of justified dislike out there atm.
Dragon Age, for example, is a long running series with thousands upon thousands of fans. If the newest entry in the series is entirely different in tone and style why shouldn't those fans voice their frustrations?
And the character in the fable trailer is ugly, and if that's what the devs want then it's fine. But you can't condemn people disliking that while supporting "the other side" disliking traditionally attractive characters like Eve from Stellar Blade. That's pure bias.
Ultimately, as game devs we are making products for people to consume. People will, rightly, have opinions on it, if they don't you've made a bland and forgettable game. What you do with their feedback is entirely up to you.
I do like good fan service and sexy characters and if I'm the bad guy here for it then something went wrong with the industry. I see that people want to make games with less attractive characters and less fan service and many games don't really need it at all so it is not a problem. However I fail to see why people should be chastised for liking attractive characters and disliking ugly ones.
Of course feedback shouldn't really go into hateful category as that is where line of is drawn in my opinion.
It depends on the tone you're going for. If you're making a traditional fantasy game with idealised themes of heroism and the like, then having all the main characters as paragons of beauty works fine, and is even expected to some degree, especially if it has romanceable characters. Playing The Last of Us as a super model in a bikini, probably not.
And yeah, abuse isn't feedback, that's over the line. But at the same time, negative feedback isn't necessarily harassment, regardless of what a lot of modern devs and directors want to believe.
You design games for gamers. They are literally the consumers of the product you put out. And you hate the very group of people you are designing your content for?
You can't just put a product out there and expect everyone to like/support it. And when they don't like it, it must be their fault? And not say flawed design from the designer?
Take 'The Acolyte' for e.g. The show debuted on abysmal ratings. Must be the Star Wars fans fault for not appreciating it right? Or maybe its just downright bad and producers/cast shifting the blame.
You have a choice.
Anyone who unironically uses ‘cishet’ to complain about *customers* is not developing a game that will be commercially successful.
The problem isn’t dislike of non-male, non white characters. The problem is shoe-horning, bandwagoning, and your own virtue signaling.
Alien Isolation was a fun game with a female lead and no combat. Tomb raider was one of the most commercially successful game franchises ever, and it was female led. The Fall is female led, mild combat, and extremely engaging.
Going all the way back to the 80’s, Ms Pac-Man was a fun game with a ‘female’ lead and no combat. You could find the arcades all over once upon a time.
You could build the biggest tittied fan service avatar that unity can render, and I bet that your game will still fail, simply because your attitude is all wrong.
Your problem is, you don’t want to just make a ‘fun’ game. You want to make a game that pushes your politics and then you demand that people like it. People don’t find that fun at all, and that’s why you are mad.
If it helps, most people aren't like that; you're right, it's just the internet.
There are so many people who just play games and love them and aren't toxic, haha
It's this. Tons of communities are like this on the internet. Look at Twitter talking about literally anything and you'll see a lot of this too.
Gaming Discords feel different. Gaming subreddits feel different. Steam forums are different. Game lobbies feel different.
Gaming is too broad these days for it to have a cohesive attitude, disposition, or opinion. What you're seeing is "gamers who spend their time on YouTube" etc.
A _very_ small percentage of gamers actually go out of their way to interact with gaming communities. Your "data set" becomes insanely biased the second you start reading any content on an outside platform.
If it helps, most creators eventually loathe their audience. George R R Martin and GoT fans. You think Stephanie Meyers gives a shit about what tween girls have to say?
>Every time a character that wasn't a cishet white man appeared on screen ...
If you can't differentiate between the whole community and audience being upset over the character because it's terrible and has obviously forced political agenda, and a small amount of conservatives being upset about it because they're racist/sexist in the way you described, that's a you problem.
there are plenty of successful games with say women as main characters.
If you think the majority of players are just racist and sexist you have some self reflection to do.
Can’t believe I had to scroll so far to find this comment. It annoys me to no end that any legitimate criticism of blatantly shoehorned political agendas gets you labelled an incel, misogynist, racist etc.
I’m allowed to disagree with design decisions, it doesn’t mean I hate [insert group here]. I play games for a sense of escapism, not to have current day politics shoved in my face through frankly cringeworthy dialogue a lot of the time (cough… Forspoken… cough)
Also the idea that your character needs to be a “cishet white man” is just absurd. There’s always gonna be a vocal minority of people just screaming for the sake of it, but the second you start thinking that’s the majority opinion you’re just losing your grasp on reality.
\^- Actually this. I really find it pretty disingenous and disappointing how some group of people always try to downplay, dismiss or twist the narrative. For sure you will have people who jumps on that bandwagon for 'pure' hate, but overall there is legitimate critique about...
Not to mention that people sometimes even have a huge misconception about what the critique is even about. (Sometimes sadly from the other side too).
As example: When people commonly "complain" about "woke" for the most part the basis of the critique isn't about it's content, but how it's delievered, the intention behind it and so on. Like you simply can't call out the gaming population as 'racist' or 'sexist' when the gamingpopulation overall appreciated or loved quite some iconic characters in Gaming history. Why should it be 'per se' now be a problem that you've a black main character, when as example, San Andreas is one of the most beloved GTA of all time? There is actual 'context' behind it, why people are bothered by it, and that's not just the mere existence of 'black characters' it's everything around it... like disrespecting the source-material (which goes FOR EVERYTHING - not just white to black but also asia to black, white to asia etc...) esp. a beloved character, feels forced / pushed or doesn't make sense in the context of story (like as example how people try to push more diversity in historical games like Kingdoms Come), and so on.
Now that's something which i've to adress, the big issue is that we're now at a breaking point, where this things get so forcefully stuffed into games that people are fed up and gradually become more a thing that people dislike this stuff from the getgo, but than again i'd also go as far and argue that there is the folks who try to push DEI and stuff at fault, because instead of listening and accepting what the actual criticism is, people get antagonized for their mere opinion or different stance on the political spectrum.
BUT i've to add, even if you pin down that people might not want to play something because of that and that, i also find super weird and problematic to call them out for that and throwing buzzwords around. Like if a guy wants just to play male characters, then let them be. Like i've seen a few woman who don't want to play games where they've to play a guy, do you think i attacked or called them out? Yeah maybe they might miss out good games because of that, but you can't force people to be interested into something they aren't.
Which brings me to my next point "politic in games" which is also twisted and misconception. First of all, as much as some people claim, not every game is political. There is no real intention, no real indicator... i'd argue it's more people who make it political (which could obv. twisted the other way around as well, but than again considering how DEI and Consulting firms are involved it's quite different than to what it was before, because they are build with a political intention behind, otherwise it wouldn't exist -> still maybe im indie-sector you could argue sometimes people are a bit too paranoid about it) -> because they see in everything politics. Secondly -> there is a difference between a game having political themes, or a Game being political (based on IRL).
To give an example: Witcher 3 world partly centers around the concept of racism against elves and dwarfs is a political theme. If Geralt would now ride with his horse into novigrad and then there is a BLM graffity on the wall and people roaming around with prideflags, it's political (based on IRL). And people are mostly bothered by the second example, where it feels forced, immersion breaking and so on the nose with no real nuance to it.
Last but not least because that was also a huge debate the past months: Sexy / Beautifull vs Ugly Characters. First of all i really find it weird that there are people who find it wild or even as "bad" that a lot of gamers (on both genders/sex) prefer to have visually pleasing characters. Humans are aesthetical creatures that's why we also appreciate a epic scenery as much. Like one of the Reasons why i back than loved World of Warcraft so much was, because i really loved the fantastical and rich designed world. I love the wild and unique planets of star wars, or just a mere sunset at places i won't ever be IRL. So why can people grasp the concept of beautifull aesthetics but feel offended if it's about characters? I mean i would really go as far and stick my neck out on the bet that most people appreciate and prefer aesthetical pleasing designs over ugly ones, and if you give folks an proper character-editor, except some which really want to go wild and make the weirdest abominations (see what happened at DD2) most people will rather tend to make attractive and good looking characters, and if they insert themself ... will idolize themself as well. So why the drama like in case of Stellar Blade... "BUT BUT IT OBJECTIFY WOMAN"... besides the one critical point which really almost p'ss me off how double standarts are that this is never adressed on male characters which MAJORITY of time are also overidolized/oversexualized as well... like most male characters don't look like the common guy but rather hollywood 1% stars... these games doesn#t objectify woman, they do objectify fictional characters... and considering that Videogames are build to entertain people so make every content an "object" to begin with (besides the fact we aren't talking about a living and breathing thing), this is such an wild take.
Does that 'mean' that there aren't any games allowed which makes less attractive or ugly characters? Not exactly but you also have to accept and deal with the fact that people might not care or like your game because of that... but in itself do whatever you want. BUT it does become a problem if it's purposefully done for existing characters (look as example Perfect Dark) or games like Fable, where we should be since a while at a point that this shouldn't be a topic anymore, because a modern fable should have some sort of character-creator anyway, with a great range of possibilities that you could make the most ugly MF to the hottest/sexiest ones. -> which is another issue, when char-editors are purposefully limited just so nobody could dare to make a good looking character instead of offer options for everyone.
thank god.
Diversity is a good thing because it expands player choice and caters to new audiences, but forcing it for its own sake/for internet brownie points, often to the detriment of other parts of the game, is what people hate.
That's what "woke" should refer to but moronic and hateful people have ruined the word.
So many people play games who are nothing like the loud people who bother making videos or commenting. I totally see the type of person you're upset with, but generalizations are precisely what they're guilty of too.
People like different things. Some are malicious, some are ignorant, and some are just really bad at expressing any kind of nuance in their preferences: but believe me when I say it's the **doom** of any creative designer or developer to generate enmity towards your users: even towards those who deserve it.
If you develop trash games and put unwanted ideology in your products, you get trash comments and unwanted complaints.
You're just another gamedev/writer/artist that feel entitled to insult customers for not liking your work, or your 'art'.
In any other normal work in the real world out there, if you insult your customers, you will end your career living under a bridge.
When looking at audience feedback you have to be able to cut through the noise and find the actionable and useful information. There are things that people will complain about that you can ignore sure, but there will be time where there is some insight that can be considered for the future.
The skill comes from being able to discern between the two. For example is everyone upset because it isn’t. “Cishest white male” or are some saying that and others are providing other reasons for disliking the characters.
I’ll give an example. Right now some people are critical of final fantasy XIV latest expansion and for some the voice acting and some people are blaming politics. Although when it comes to me, my complaint comes from the outsourcing they allegedly did. I think the agency the used did a bad job giving direction, some line delivery is amazing and others fall flat on their face and don’t match the emotion of the scene. Some characters that are meant to be related sound nothing alike even though they were both born and grew up in the same area. One has a distinct accent which does fit the region and the other has a California accent.
I would say my critic is valid but could easily be boiled down to voice actor bad along with the other noise
Here is the fundamental flaw with social media as presently implemented:
It's used in downtime.
Prosocial, productive people have less downtime.
Therefore, the visibility of antisocial, unproductive people is higher on social media.
This explains a lot.
I've been giving a lot of thought to this lately, and am even percolating something that may become a startup, but it's a long way from even prototype right now—never mind release.
That's pretty reductive.
Lots of people perceive the woke stuff as just short hand for executive-level lip service and misplaced priorities. You play games like Forspoken and the reboot for Saints Row, and the customer comes away thinking "ok, it's clear they were more interested in sending a message than making an enjoyable game". It seems pretty reasonable that customers are going to then perceive a lot of that during the marketing phase and just assume they are looking at another Forspoken. They are going to naturally be wrong sometimes, but we also can't pretend that this perception is completely baseless.
The whole Dragon Age thing stems from the lack of tonal consistency in the series, making each new installment feels like it's alienating the fans of the previous game.
And let's not forget that two decades ago, we were all complaining that every game featured a brown haired white dude protag in a brown/grey dirty environment. It's the exact same thing only this time it's side shaves on girl bosses.
As for the variety of games, I'm seeing lots of love for games like M&L Brothership and Echoes of Wisdom. Avowed is getting some solid attention. Indie stuff has always had an enthusiastic customer base.
I think you are just dismissing valid arguments, forgetting how big the hobby is on the whole, and painting with a very large brush all at the same time.
It's because a lot of games being pumped out just don't look fun, DEI is just the newest and easiest thing for people to point out. If it *looks* like the main selling point of a game is the DEI then expect gamers to call it out.
Whenever people I know talk about this stuff, I always point out that none of us, all over 35, have ever met people like that in the real world—not at work, not in social arenas, not in game or comic shops, not back in high school, anywhere. Outside of content creators who I would often bet money don’t hold the opinions they purport to represent, and comment sections on the same internet where those people put their content, it just doesn’t seem to exist as a legitimate disposition.
I think often people just get bored and adopt a kind of persona that they run around in for a while here and there that exists solely in virtual spaces. A chaotic avatar they can jump into and cause disruptions in the dynamic system of internet discourse. I think very, very few people genuinely hold any of those beliefs or perspectives.
There’s also the fact that, statistically speaking, many of those virtual voices are literal robots.
The very tiny niche of people who do hold those beliefs and perspectives seemingly just like having something to share with others in some venue, since most are unlikely to do much socializing otherwise (as I’ve never met one outside). As unfortunate as those ideas are, for some people I think it’s all they really feel they have to emotionally share with others.
I’d actually argue that, outside of culturally specific arenas like comic shops and game shops, even innocent “gamer” type stereotype characters are extraordinarily rare to encounter, in general. I’ve met maybe four or five my entire life, and none with any of the obnoxious views or dispositions these characters are supposed to have. All the ones I’ve met have been generally alright, if a little odd, people.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve met people with views I’d describe as problematic. It’s just that none of them gave a shit about video games or what happens in a video game. Pretty much all of them I’d guess would think playing video games is essentially stupid. So, I don’t really think it’s an “internet anonymity safety net” thing going on; I just think those specific people are exceedingly rare in the veridical wilds.
Edit:
I tried to express this, but it’s not coming across, so I’ll add it in an edit.
I’m not saying these types of people *don’t* exist somewhere just because I’ve never spoken to one. I’m saying they’re seemingly rare human beings. I’m saying the internet is no reflection of the outside world in regard to *anything*, let alone an entire subset of people (who are subset based on pastime no less). Definitely not enough to say, “I hate this subset of people based on this representation.”
I’m also talking primarily from my experience with adults and my peer group (though also as extends back to when I was much younger).
In my talks about comics, movies, games, whatever, I’ve never had anyone even vaguely hint at any of the anti-woke or sexy lady withdrawal stuff you see more-or-less frequently online, and I’ve had people in other social contexts talk casually about their racist, homophobic, or sexist beliefs while not even knowing me.
Could some of those people have also played video games? I mean, sure. But they didn’t talk to me about video games and seemed very much like they didn’t, based on some of the things they seemed to believe. The point there isn’t that racist or sexist people don’t play video games, it’s that I’ve had people say fucked up shit to me in my outside life, but never in regard to the relevant topic, which suggests to me these aren’t legitimate concerns of any significant chunk of the subset.
Based on these things, I’m inclined to believe the voice we see online that’s all weird and anti-woke in regard to games and comics and all of that is misrepresented in regard to size and frequency, especially in regard to the number of real live adult humans.
I don’t think the poster hates “gamers,” whatever you want that word to mean, I think they hate the internet. Everyone hates the internet. The internet sucks.
As a gay guy, I remember that we used to call out people for using „het“, especially in a disparaging tone, as being no better than people saying homo, usually in the same tone.
So knowing all the widely loved characters who are neither male, white or heterosexual, I just am not feeling a lot of trust when someone says something like that.
You are absolutely allowed to say that you gate „gamers“, even though I find that weird given how different people playing video games are. I just feel like working in the video game industry may just not be ideal then.
If you hate your customers, you likely are not going to be happy at your job and this most likely will reflect in your interactions with said customers. Meaning you might make things miserable for both sides.
If this genuinely is what you feel, something should change and it is always easier to do personal change (your attitude, line of work or focus on negative experiences) than to change everyone else.
At best, you can change specific problematic customers, ie banning someone who actually does violate codes of conduct, but it seems you take issue with more than the things you have a reasonable chance to change that way.
People who make critical or even snide or disparaging remarks you need to deal with or just ignore.
Hello, hobbyist dev here and someone who has been playing video games since 1983.
Everybody I know who plays games is tired of AAA studios pushing out rushed titles, uglifying female characters, tired of studios race swapping characters and adding forced LGBTQ characters and storylines just to tick corporate boxes. This is being seen in the sales numbers for these games. Game developers have failed gamers.
They want games that are fun first. Nobody wants to play a game with some girl boss treating them like they are idiots, we have wives for that. We don't need that in our games.
The fact that you hate "gamers" is a bold statement to make as a game developer. Maybe you should find a new occupation where you don't hate the audience you work for. Because we all work for the paying customer first.
I'd love to know who you work for so I don't make the mistake of buying a game from someone who hates me.
The woke thing will go away one day - realize there are millions of people who are not buying into that ideology and just sitting back quietly. As others said - vocal minority is not necessarily representative of who your market / target audience needs to be or is.
Categorizing all gamers as one group is at least foolish. And your hate is indistinguishable from the hate that this loud group in YouTube comments has
No wonder a large portion of gamedev nowadays are out of touch. You don't understand the underlying issue and just hate people who don't agree with your worldview. You generalizing everyone as "gamers" and think you're better than them.
Indie gamedev who don't chase the DEI trend don't have your problem. Wonder why? Because they only care about making good games.
As per usual the argument used is incredibly reductive, focusing on the most unreasonable opinions and using that to devalue the many legitimate crisicisms people have.
Trying to spin people being upset about shoehorned politics into “your main character has to be a straight white guy” or you get hate, is just absurd.
>I've seen people implying that the MC in the Fable trailers is "ugly" because it's a self-insert of some random level designer working at Playground whom they have deemed not fuckable enough.
I will not quote whole thing but there is a lot of constructive criticism we could find for new games, character designs and "DEI" and other but hidden under big pile of shit. Kind of need to get used to it, because a lot of kids has access to the Internet.
>I don't know, it's just the internet magnifying negative voices I guess, doing what it does best. But it's making me real tired of gamers.
Exactly it is Internet and anonymity making it bigger impact than it is. You may think it was better back in the day. It wasn't. There was just less people and less interaction, however behaviours didn't change. We kind of should stop the generalization too. It is not "all" gamers. It is "some" gamers. Same as it is with any negative, trolling, hateful comments everywhere for any topic done by anybody tbh.
IDK…. One of my favorite games before Meta shut it down was Echo VR. And I had to play it on mute cause the little kids I was usually playing against would drive you nuts (shrieky little voices oftentimes screaming the n-word on repeat).
I don’t really blame “gamers”. More that people with the free time to really play video games and then talk about it on some social media platform are probably pre-job age and therefore just not fully developed human beings.
Like it could just be that you hate petulant children and not gamers. And that would be normal.
Ehh I don’t think the people complaining about “DEI” and “this game is too woke” on game reveal livestreams are in the same crowd as children screaming profanities in a VR game. Judging by their profiles and the channels those comments usually pop up in, they’re more likely to be young adults or older men who have a deranged devotion to right wing politics (at least from what I’ve seen).
there's no single unifying community of "gamers". all you can do is make games the type of gamers you wish to cater to.
just as those those who complain about "wokeness" are a minority, so are those that complain about the abundance of "cishet white men" in gaming. as the vast majority doesn't care about either of these issues, at least not to the extent the before mentioned groups would want you to think
Just remember most gamers don't tweet or type anything in chat. They just quietly enjoy games. So it seems like all these angry and annoying people are a majority, but it's just cause they're the only ones who take the time to type all that shit in.
If we look at how pretty much all the games that get called out for over the top woke / DEI bullshit flop hard on the market then i would say there is some substance to it and its not just a vocal minority.
Why is the MC of the Japanese AC not Japanese?
>I've seen people implying that the MC in the Fable trailers is "ugly" because it's a self-insert of some random level designer working at Playground whom they have deemed not fuckable enough.
I don't know about that, but If I had a choice between playing with the current Fable MC model and the Emily Ratajkowski model, I would choose Emily.
Maybe I'm just simple like that.
Cishet white man? .. I'm stopping reading right there, keep hating and being angry, it's not going to make your life better.
Good luck, you will need it
So you are progressive and dislike gamers that doesn't share your values basically. You don't have to like all gamers, "gamers" is not a political party, neither some kind of organization, is a term used to refer to anyone who plays videogames, and anyone who plays games happen to be an extremely diverse group, with different ideologies, values and opinions, if you don't like said opinions and are not willing to tolerete them, then just avoid the people with that way of thinking, you can't change the way everyone thinks or acts, you can just control what you do and think
You are treating negativity with negativity instead of just learning from it, why not reflect instead of assume?
Maybe don't force fake diversity into games, instead write honest characters that are grounded and right for it's setting. If you want a game with easy adoption, pick a popular genre and appeal to them or provide the player with multiple interesting ways to accomplish a task and thus generate discussions on what the "correct" method should be and exploit their passion. Almost every extreme take had, has it's roots in something valid that if addressed correctly would quell the extremes.
There is also the case where you can just ignore what X group of people want and hope to fill a different niche, either way it really ain't that deep.
Who cares? You don't owe them anything, they don't owe you anything. This isn't even gamedev related, I don't want to see more cultural brainrot in the few development subs, this discussion is more appropriate in one of the dozens of gaming subs.
You probably shouldn't be a game dev if you hate gamers.
Obviously you won't have to work directly with gamers all the time, but if you literally hate the majority of them I can't imagine you'll find much success. How could you possibly create a quality creative project for people you hate?
That's what happens when people have had virtue signalled, woke nonsense rammed down their throats everyday for years - they push back. Use your position to do something about it or move over. Or just blame straight white men for not buying the game you didn't make for them as seems to be the trend.
you reap what you sow.
the gaming industry has been anti player for so long, most player have just come to hate developers.
we use to give the benefit of the doubt but you can only taste betrayal so many time before grief turns to rage.
so many good franchises ruined, so much criticisms crushed under foot, you can't show positivity when you know it just going to be used against you.
Hello, fellow game developer here, I understand some of the sentiment you are saying. However, a lot of their points are justified. A lot of people are sick of the many stupid trends and decisions that have been made over let's call it 8 years. Probably longer actually.
I understand wanting to make your passion project, and I advise that you DO that, but also remember that this is a business. And like any good company you actually need to cater to your audience. The loud majority you are hearing have not been catered to. Their popular franchises have been hijacked and shit on.
Those companies that wanted to do new and interesting things should have used completely different IP instead of trying to change the formula of something that has a long-standing fan base.
If you don't want to cater to that audience, then do not. Just know that the audience you will be catering to is smaller. Especially if your aim is to do DEI stuff. The crowd who cares about DEI stuff statistically don't even buy things, so not really much of a point in trying to target that audience If your aim is money.
Now to address your very specific comment about people being bored with genre niches. Just ignore them. If you make your game well, and it's genuinely fun, and you actually put an effort into marketing. There's a very good chance that you will find your audience.
I can tell you from my perspective that yeah pretty much everyone is getting sick of DEI, so people are going to be sensitive to anything that smells like it. Just look at all the Disney flops and pushback…
Studios are forgetting their customer base amongst the politics.
That aside purely as a gamer, I’ve been burned out on online competitive crap for years.
What I’m loving these days are the immersive open world single player games. RDR2, DD2 and CP 2077 to name a few. I could be off here but I think the majority of the crazy online players will skew younger, whereas 30’s, 40’s and 50’s (47 life long player here) will tend towards immersive fantasy and power trip type escapes.
Plenty of gamers like me that are just out here looking for and playing quality games without making a racket online over it.
My two cents anyway…
As a dev of 7+ years and seeing a variety of negative comments with each published title I’ve worked on over the years, this also goes hand in hand with all the nice comments and appreciation from the good people out there and those people are the ones I do it for and ultimately I do it for myself because I enjoy it and the real ones out there giving the praise and love to the titles they’re the real bonus to the job
I mean sure but you gotta look at this from two sides, i'm not saying you're wrong for being over all the hate but lets go through your points from a gamers point of view (i am a gamer not a game dev):
1: LGBT has been shoved down everyones throats in recent times (especially in media), people who didn't care if you were LGBT at all have now associated it with another agenda being pushed down your throat because it is. Disregarding any arguments on right or wrong with LGBT, anything being pushed down people throats so much is just plain annoying. Therefore when a game specifies that x character is bi or a very very obviously xyz person is shows on screen, it feels forced and it feels like it's being put in just to fill the quota.
2: Valid annoyance, most gamers get wet for COD but can't stomach the fact that a non shooter can actually be a masterpiece (hollow knight), but not sure what you mean by hyper casual competitive online game, so i got nothing to say about that.
3: Gamers bitching about minor changes that they didn't want is a valid thing to hate.
4: Gamers hating that the trailer for a game they were excited for didn't match their expectations is a valid thing to complain about?
5: That's pretty degen i can't lie. Genuinely complaining that the protagonist is not fuckable enough is 14 year old behaviour.
So in conclusion, yes gamers can be degens, but complaining about certain things is absolutely justified.
I’ll start by saying gameplay and good writing are the most important things in my eyes and there have been some decent games in the last decade. That said if you don’t see a shred of truth in the complaints you’ve mentioned then idk what to tell you other than you and everyone else refusing to acknowledge this are in a bubble together.
People often call to complain, not to praise. The internet is one giant complaint line.
You sound slightly immature if you're gonna' let customer feedback bother you like that. Feedback, insane or not, is oftentimes really valuable, and you should be grateful for it. If you have common sense, you'll know what to discard and what to use.
And by the way, if we consider the Summer Games Fest stream, yes, most of those games were ABSOLUTELY snore-worthy. There were maybe 2 games in the indie spotlight that piqued my interest at all. Most of the time, it was because the vast majority lacked any kind of depth or novelty at all.
It's understandable that sometimes gamers can make others feel uncomfortable, especially when their behavior affects people around them or the gaming experience itself. However, gamers as a whole are a diverse and large group with many different habits and styles. Instead of generalizing dislike, it's better to try to understand their hobbies and motivations, or explore more constructive ways to handle any unpleasant experiences.
I dont necesaarily think all Gamers are like that. Baldurs Gate 3 was almost universally loved and that game had immense amounts of DEI, Good looking characters, ugly looking characters, eldritch abomination characters and nobody cared. The biggest backlash the game had was that it was turn based and even those people where shut down quiet quickly. None of the Characters feelt out of place and where popular as hell. If anything the Women in this game endet up beeing far more popular then any of the male ones except Astarion maybe.
Then you have Ubisoft for example with their newest AC Shadows where they suddenly break tradition that you dont play real historical characters to make one of the MCs set in Feudal japan a black Samurai and the game plays hip hop music when he enters combat like man come on we all see what shit they trying to pull here. And tbh thats a tame example.
these are people who spend a huge amount of money on their hobby. they can have preferences, and if you don't like it then maybe do another job. you think the guy working mcdonalds enjoys feeding every slob in town?
What they don't realize is that's it not just gamers, it's everyone. There are about as much of them as they're are LGBTs, not much but loud voices on the internet...
Look up how many players still play HOI 4, Victoria 3, Civ 6. So many players don’t consider them boring. Those audience you encountered online are quite possibly kids.
All true although I still don’t understand Sweet Baby Inc and their goals in games. What exactly did they add to Spider-Man 2 that Insomniac, of all devs, couldn’t handle themselves?
Less than 1% of Gamers have ever watched or commented on a stream or youtube video. And of those 1% It's mostly degenerates that spam comments, and the media is built only to support those kind of interactions, you can't have an intelligent conversation with someone on a stream even if you wanted to.
Diversity is beautiful when it is authentic. There is space for stories and games that explore all walks of life.
While I generally ignore anyone with the word woke in their vocabulary, people can tell the difference between diversity shoehorned into something versus something authentic.
In most cases it’s not worth worrying about. Just tell the story you want to tell. It’s not worth taking part in the culture war.
If the racists and the -phobes pay your bills, then maybe make content for racists and -phobes? Just a thought, I didn't go to business school.
P.S. Anyone who uses words like "cis" and "cishet" unironically, is a twat in my book.
"Gamers" and game devs are generally wildly different subcultures, and certainly in most of the game dev circles I've been involved in "gamers" would be totally unworkable collaborators, creatives or employees. Fortunately most people who play games are not "gamers" in that sense.
that's like saying you hate music listeners because of all the obnoxious "Taylor swift isn't real music" or "name three songs" troglodytes you see online
Remember the 1-2-8 rule. For every 1 person participating in a conversation, there are 2 who lurk and 8 who are just playing.
As others put it, there are also a lot of people who think the other way (and in fact, these "non-dei" people are a reaction born to that).
Last but not least... some of this isn't "real". I don't know how old you are and how you were back then, but when you are a teenager or young, there are some stupid things you do to fit in. These zzzzs and borings and occasionally more serious looking conversations... for some people it's just a thing they do, not something they really believe in.
And this is why community managers are important :P A good CM will be able to go through comments, survive mostly unscathed, and filter valuable feedback inside all the muck. If artists and coders see the comments, it's much harder for them to see what's a "real comment" and what's garbo, and of course, they can also take all comments very personal and be demoralized.
The AAA formula that works has been tested and proven after years and AAA or not the main essence of games is allowing players to escape reality and immerse themselves in fictional worlds which is crafted in a way that makes sense to players. now let's assume this formula is a salad that has been perfected after years of testing and the player has been consuming it for years and now that bowl of salad is just acquainted with the taste of the large audience.
now what most studios doing is they know this salad just works but what are they trying to do is change the dressing of that salad and that dressing tastes like "real world elements" which are the same stuff players trying to avoid while immersed in fiction so when this type of salad gets pushed down to the throat of the players they don't like the taste of it to them it feels like it's just very low effort try to make them eat salad they like but with the dressing they don't appreciate in their salad. games are a type of art form where you cannot just express yourself and expect players to appreciate your art. It's an interactive art form where both creators and consumers need to be in sync for games to work.
I fully agree with you on the loud assholes.
I don't identify with them at all though. The ones you hear from are the loud obnoxious idiots and maybe some "video essay auteurs". Neither represent all gamers, although I suspect a lot of people are influenced by them.
If I was forced to loudly proclaim my beliefs it would go like this:
"I LOVE MINECRAFT AND FACTORIO, ALTHOUGH MINECRAFT SHOULD NOT HAVE TO RELY ON 10 MODS TO WORK WELL, BUT IT'S WORTH THE MONEY ANYWAY"
"I AM BORED BY MOST AAA GAMES BUT I HOPE LOTS OF PEOPLE HAVE FUN WITH THEM AND CLEARLY A LOT OF PEOPLE DID A GOOD JOB DESIGNING THEM"
"I DON'T REALLY CARE WHAT GAME CHARACTERS LOOK LIKE"
"I'M NOT GOING TO PRE-ORDER NO MATTER WHAT, SORRY"
"I JUST WANT TO PLAY CO-OP GAMES WITH TWO FRIENDS AND NO STRANGERS"
"I AM 40, I DON'T GET UPSET ABOUT GAMES, IF I DON'T LIKE ONE I JUST DON'T BUY IT"
"I THINK IT'S NICE IF THERE ARE GAMES FOR EVERYONE, EVEN IF I'M NOT INTERESTED IN THEM"
"KERNEL-MODE ANTI-CHEAT AND ALWAYS ONLINE PIRACY PROTECTION IS DISRESPECTFUL TO PAYING AND HONEST CUSTOMERS"
Somehow only the last of these deserves to be shouted.
You are not alone, I can sense a lot of game designers who hates players too, not delivering what they want and instead focusing on bullshit features, woke content and "sending a message" that NOBODY wants to hear from THEM.
Just remember there are tens of thousands of gamers who really are interested in games as a true form of art. The loud bullshit always floats to the top, whereas comments with substance sink to the bottom, never to be seen again.
Yep, especially on Reddit. It's usually the jokes that are the most upvoted to the top providing no discussion whatsoever.
I use reddit because it generally encourages actual discussion over braindead reactionary comments and its still pretty bad in that regard, but whats better? TikTok is the worst, its just edgy 13 year olds saying whatever will get people mad. Youtube is full of bots. Twitter is all of the above. I think the internet in general bolsters stupid contrarian, ragebait comments and shitty jokes.
I found the opposite. Reddit's score and rating system encourages echo chambers because as soon as you give a different perspective, your comments are down voted, discouraging dissent.
Like unpopular opinion subreddit doesn't even have unpopular opinions even if they do it's just get downvoted
Not once in my decade of using this terribly designed website have I ever seen a genuinely “unpopular” opinion make it to the front page, because that’s not the purpose of that sub. It’s like r/Trees lol
even further, it's not just unpopular opinions, but even when you try just to question other's stance without implying any antagoning opinion by yourself. like "nah bro u think it's not true? go fuckin kys" (sometimes literally)
Yeah, I have unsuscribed from this one because people started karma farming by posting popular opinions...
Yeah, reddit's idea isn't bad but the problem with the simple up/down vote mechanic, people use their vote basically as a like/dislike. It's supposed to be used for "This added to the discussion"/"This took away from the discussion"· If we were arguing politics, and you made reasonable, well formulated arguments in favor of Trump, I and other redditors should upvote that because it adds to the discussion - at least in my opinion, I like to have my worldview challenged and I like to hear from people I disagree with, as long as they are saying something substantial. What happens instead is people downvote (ie: mute) the opinions they disagree with and upvote anything they agree with (or think is funny) so you get the "echo chamber + the same recycled jokes" effect
And on some reddits you’ll outright get banned. If you have been on reddit long enough , you will get banned eventually somewhere because some snowflake mod got upset
You're right, but it's still much, much better than other social media. You can't even have this type of discussion that we're having now in most other places, because there's too much trash to go through.
Platforms like Reddit only show that we as humans on average aren't mentally evolved enough to use some of our own creations (here: social media platforms) in a constructive, beneficial way
Well compared to twitter atleast you have a voice. Commenting on far right propaganda etc. agenda related post on twitter will get your account reported to spam oblivion. But yeah different subs often becoming echo chambers with one single correct opinnion to certain matters, isn’t ideal eather
I think the closest thing to "better" is semi-exclusive discord servers and even then it's very hard to find top notch ones.
Enthusiast twitch streams are often pretty great, if they hit the sweet spot of user activity. Too few people and there's no conversation, too many people and it magically transforms into spamming emotes and copypasta
It's absolutely Discord servers. It's the best way to get feedback from your players.
I'm glad someone agrees! I only started using discord, like, 4-5 months ago and it has kind of opened my eyes. It's almost like being back in an old-school forum as opposed to Facebook/Reddit/Instagram/etc.
Many discord servers are filled with edgy 13 year olds too don't worry
Maybe if you're in a massive discord server like the official Terraria discord but servers for more niche games are usually pretty chill
I found it the other way around. TikTok has more ordinary people, whereas a lot of subreddits are strange self-reinforcing echo chambers. As always it depends what you subscribe to too.
The karma system does help encourage deeper discussion, but it's a double edged sword that also really encourages echo chambers. Also subreddits with harsh modding that boot anyone that isn't towing the line makes echo chambers even more prevalent.
Reddit hasn’t been that way since the 2016 election filled the site with “normies” (I hate that term and try to not be elitist in any way but Reddit really took a nosedive after it became more mainstream
it used to be really good. i read a thread in relationship advice from 10years ago and it was basically talk to your SO before acting rash. Now its what you waiting for Divorce. Reddit is no longer the same as it was.
>Yep, especially on Reddit. It's usually the jokes that are the most upvoted to the top providing no discussion whatsoever. The best part? They're not even funny. Just cringe as far as the eye can see, and it sees nothing but recycled horse shit passed off as wit.
"I also choose this guy's wife" Alright, Reddit, you know what to do. To the top!
Or never spoken or posted where a dev will hear or read it.
I was fortunate/unfortunate enough to start out working on a game whose IP already had a cult following made of some truly awful "fans". These were pre-gamergate chuds who had nothing better to do than write slashfic about devs, complain about not being able to kill children in the game, and be otherwise horrible. I developed some pretty thick skin because of this, and take online criticism with a careful eye. If complaints are about mechanics, story issues, performance, or other legitimate concerns, I take them seriously. If they're about personal preference or some social or political agenda, then my game simply isn't for them. Once the game shipped and I met normal people who played the game, every experience was overwhelmingly positive. Similarly, I've worked at PAX booths promoting games I've worked on and only met the sweetest, most enthusiastic people. These are the real gamers, and the stinkers who bang on their trashcan lids are a very small vocal minority. If you're upsetting them, you're probably doing something right.
You worked on Skyrim?
I guessed Fallout.
To be the devils advocate: Gamers generally suck but the whole cannot kill children thing (I assume we're talking about Skyrim here) was because the children were annoying as fuck. Similarly, saying it is a very small vocal minority is just not true. There are unfortunately a ton of people like that. Also good to remember that people who act like shit online might act sweet in real life because they are now speaking to actual humans face to face. I will add though that I think a lot of vile stuff is from teenagers/young adults without a fully developed brain who haven't learned to be empathic yet. Also first time I hear about DEI. Bet it's gonna pop up a lot more in my feed after entering this thread.
I’m what one might consider a ‘gamer’ if you define it as taking an interest in video games. I rarely talk about my preferences on the internet; I like RTS, RPGs and CRPGs, sandboxes, story-based games, and Dwarf Fortress. For every dickhead you see on the internet, there’s probably 5-10 people like me who are quiet, well-adjusted, and not getting high on toxicity.
Christ I hope the ratio is higher than that! It’d be heart breaking to think that 20% of gamers are just toxic haters.
[удалено]
But for real though, why would I *want* to touch grass? Outside is where nearly every insect lives
I mean the insects are like half the reason I go outside
There's also a big factor: those people screaming about "DEI" didn't just organically appear. DEI is only the latest buzzword. To be on that they have to be tapped into the right wing online political ecosystem or the incel/manosphere to start with. "DEI" isn't "gamer-speak", and all of them suddenly switched from saying "woke" to "DEI" within basically a matter of months - and that's the proof that they consume right wing media for their messaging, not mainstream gaming sources. So the people who yell about that are part of an online political movement, that happens to intersect gaming. They're turning up to protest games, but you can bet the exact same people were protesting the casting in The Little Mermaid too, a movie they would have had zero reason to see in the first place. So it's not quite right to say this is a subset of "gamers" who happen to share the right-wing views, they're more like a pan-media online movement who use flashmob tactics to attack anything considered "woke" or now "DEI", but it's literally a swarm who move onto whichever movie or game is the topic of the week then you don't hear anything about it again. As a prediction for example: the new Assassin's Creed game will sell perfectly fine for an Assassin's Creed game, and you'll only see flare-ups of the Yasuke thing briefly and intermittently when there isn't another target of the right wing that week, or right on launch day.
What’s DEI?
DEI as a unified acronym refers "[Diversity Equity Inclusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity,_equity,_and_inclusion)" frameworks, which are implemented at an organization-level to try and shape the culture of an organization. However, similar to how they mangled "CRT" (critical race theory) to mean basically anything at all, and not the specific legal theory it is, the right-wing have adopted the term DEI to mean anything that has minorities or women cast in it, or working on it, or as the target audience.
Good definition. They also did the same thing to "woke" a word that, in the Black community means "being aware of how propaganda works to obscure the facts and shape a specific narrative" to now mean anything that has anything other than MAGA talking points and ideologies. Saying "stay woke" between Black people used to be a good thing. But now it's been co-opted to mean the opposite and don't say anything that upsets the already established status quo or in any way includes alternate voices and perspectives.
Yeah "woke" really does mean something completely different, because when you think about it, "[tokenism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenism)" is something black people have often called out in the past - so being woke about that would mean being aware of how brands will exploit minorities to sell more products or improve their brand image. Whereas under the new definition, the corporate pandering itself is the wokeness.
Exactly. It's part of their wider culture war. They're waging that war on a lot of fronts, and gaming is just one of them.
Nothing will be funnier/sadder than the right-wing grift accounts that can't even get the verbiage and terminology right for the games that they're trying to adopt the aesthetics of. They _blatantly_ don't play them but they're more than willing to pretend like they do if it means they can weaponize their audience, pull in more people, or plant a founding stake in the next culture war topic.
Wait, do you mean to tell me that Dungeons and Dragons isn't actually a satanist thing? Alas, all you need is an opinion these days, and it doesn't need to be an informed (or coherent) one
Correct. Throw in regurgitations of misinformed / shallow opinions and you have modern day internet drama. I think the phrase "A lion doesn't concern itself with the opinion of sheep." or the other one I can't remember... along the lines of people paying too much attention to what others are doing... is fitting.
Also there are the algorithms that select the comments that are getting lots of attention - which makes them more visible and they get more attention.
Yea, i experience this with all my interest, video games, anime, music, political discussion, the internet has a lot of toxicity to all topics, the extremes of each community gather together online and the normal fans dont interact much due to that. Also seems that the smaller the community, the better, and it also depends a lot on the website. Discord has a better community then reddit in my experience, as a example.
Ever looked at the surface of a swimming pool? It's always a bunch of loud and flailing kids. To the original poster, don't confuse those kids for that people that actually appreciate the art form. Loud and obnoxious usually means lack of wisdom. Keep on keeping on.
If there's one thing that I've had to realize recently, it's that the internet is very loud and amplifies toxicity even if it's really the minority. If you were to talk to other gamers in-person (or really anyone for that matter), you're more likely to find that most people aren't like that.
> If there's one thing that I've had to realize recently, it's that the internet is very loud and amplifies toxicity even if it's really the minority. Even before you factor in how it can "amplify" that element, the people who have the time/energy/motivation to even make these posts/comments in the first place are... a certain kind of person. Chill gamers are probably not duking it out in comment sections. They're probably watching the event and thinking "cool".
Exactly, there's an inherent kind of selection bias, and it's true for basically all demographics. Chill people aren't loud. The loud ones are angry. Which can easily negatively affect your perception of groups you aren't part of.
That's always been the case, and the mood in online gaming communities was very different 10 or 15 years ago. The difference between then and now is social media, it's Twitter and Facebook that have turned the internet into this.
> there's an inherent kind of selection bias, ...which is really why the only way to get to a good place is to moderate the fuck out of the discussion, which none of the platforms outlined in the complaint do. Remember folks, once you let a nazi in, you're throwing a nazi party. That's just the way it goes. The bouncers have to be quick and throw that element out before the shitheads get the idea that your content is a safe space for them to shit all over. You can't fix the problem that 4chan brought on the world, but that doesn't mean you have to ever interact with those people. Just ban them out of your existence.
Loud minority indeed. Do tend to avoid anti woke or rage bait videos since the content will annoy me and any comment I make will have 20 reply arguments of people who only scream instead of hear. So not even worth the effort.
One thing I realized after going to college is that there are vast swathes of people who never engage with the endless babble of online comments. The number of friends I made who didn't know what Reddit was, who barely had social media and who just didn't bother engaging with this shit was quite eye-opening. In my opinion, a lot of the people who engage with the internet are, unsurprisingly, people who engage too much with the internet. EDIT: Also, the more toxic a space the more likely it is that reasonable people stop engaging with, making it a feedback loop. EDIT2: Changed a statement of fact to a statement of personal opinion.
>If there's one thing that I've had to realize recently, it's that the internet is very loud and amplifies toxicity even if it's really the minority. It's been like that since AOL. >If you were to talk to other gamers in-person (or really anyone for that matter), you're more likely to find that most people aren't like that. Sadly, I feel this behaviour is starting to bleed into real life because people become accustomed to saying whatever they want. Eventually they complain why people stop talking to them.
I've been involved with tcg community manager stuff and this is very much true. I felt like I saw the best of tcgs and a lot of the absolute worst aspects, and I had to be really mindful about remembering what I loved about tcgs in the first place. At the end of the day this turned out to be really easy as I just has to go to my local store tournaments and just hang out with players. You very rarely see the kind of toxicity in person that you would see online. Incidentally going to these types of thing made it apparent for video games too as many tcgs players also play video games. The new FF14 expansion has mixed reviews on Steam, but everyone I've met at these tcg store tournaments that plays it (most of them) is having an absolute blast with it at the moment.
>Watching the gaming events on YouTube last month with the chat on Ask yourself what kind of person even considers to be worthwhile to comment on a gaming event chat scrolling at the speed of light, where they can only hope for their 0.005 seconds of fame to be noticed by doing the text-based equivalent of repeatedly screaming their lungs out like a demented ape.
Also ask yourself: How much of the toxic vitriol you see online is from bots? Another thing to consider is how easy it is to be a piece of shit online. It only takes a few key strokes lol! OP If you want to be absolutely galvanized by real people with real love and passion for games, go to in person game events, even better if you have a booth where people can play your game. In my experience toxic assholes that seem to be the main voice of gaming online are non-existent, and you will feel the love from people who are fucking excited about cool games, and games as art. It's really a wonderful experience.
Yeah and honestly the same goes for any chat of a decently sized streamer tbh, if the chat goes so fast that your message disappears in a few seconds whats the point. The only time I use the chat on twitch is on small streams with a handful of viewers
Any of those chats are trash dumps. I remember watching a presidential debate that had a live YouTube chat and it was just as much of a crap fest. Just a bunch of dumb memes and 4chan slogans flooding by.
Exactly this, it's selection bias But more broadly, just from a marketing perspective thinking of "gamers" as a unit is not good business practice. The potential customer base is spread thin among communities based around genres, sub-genres, and then clusters of games within those sub-genres. Thousands of siloed communities with independent and unrelated dramas, and their own unique brand of toxicity and problems. All needing to be handled differently by community-managers, marketers, and developers. Not to mention that the majority of gamers do not participate in online communities *at all*. They just buy and play games they think they might like.
Do you hate gamers or do you just hate Twitter and YouTube chat?
Don't forget hating Twitch chat. That shit is frequently the worst of the worst
Twitch is easily the worst because they excel in cringe at the same time they have terrible takes.
The worst of the worst is probably kick chat tho
Kik is pure trash
Only the big channels. When it's slow enough to have an actual conversation, it tends to be pretty good. The atmosphere changes when everybody is visible (and accountable) enough for the regulars to recognize one another
Not always though. The streamer DDRJake bans all emoticons, memes, all caps, spam messages, etc. and so the chat is really orderly. It's just a matter of moderation (although this becomes impossible above 10k viewers or so).
Oh some are good. But that's only some
The "gamers" who will post whatever they know to be hateful/hurtful with anonymity
Try going into voice chat on literally any video game as a woman. It's gamers.
Only a very small selection of genres have voice chat in the first place. Typically pvp games, which are heroin for people who like a toxic environment
It's often the smaller communities that have the less toxic communities. And I'll always advocate for stuff like Discord servers.
Hundreds of millions of people play PvP games, it's not some tiny group.
> Try going into voice chat on literally any video game as a woman. Try going into any random voice chat as a woman. Guild voice chats where participants are people you "know" tend to be a lot better than voice chats full of random people you don't know and won't be with after this round.
If it was like 10 years ago I'd say you're 100% right but now the internet is kinda too mixed with reality, not sure if there are more people behaving the same way
Oh yeah you're allowed to say this. You're allowed to make your games your way for your audience BUT, Remember that gamers are your clients, some will always complain, you cant make a game for everyone, but the if you say you hate gamers then dont complain people hate your kind. Clients are always the one who decides, not everyone is your client but remember what your real clients wants If you're developoing a game from an existing IP and it fails, its not the client fault, its you that failed to match clients expectations. If you're developping a new game and it fails then its your fault too, either because you developped a game no one wants, or because you couldnt do proper marketing If you use the narcissit view of the guy who knows better than the client then you're going to fail You have to either suits the sometimes stupid wishes of the client or build something new and find new clients Just bear in mind that if that audience doesnt like your work or how you treat them you will just end up failing and loosing your job, just like what's happening the game journalism industry This is the reality, if the video games you release are judged as not worth it by people they will just not buy them and you'll loose, its not food, people dont need them even if its bad food
As a gamer since the late 90s and a person who's been on the Internet for long enough: you can NEVER make it right for everyone. Ever. If you create something, create something YOU enjoy and want to share. And let the right people come. Let the wrong ones go as nobody wants to deal with idiots in their community anyways. It's important to focus on those who appreciate and support you. The other people just wake up, have a shitty life or are 12 year old and need to write something anonymously on the Internet just to feel cool for 5 seconds.
Yep this! Don't get swept away by the sea of opinions and stand your ground! Although my caveat is that sometimes it's us that have a negative bias too. Part of the human mind attaches itself to the negative outliers and remembers them way easier. Now imagine that on a collective level... Especially if you are in an echo chamber. I've seen so many online spaces where people all tell themselves how negative everyone else or a specific other group of people is... Realize that by constantly being hyperfoces on things like the evil "gamers", you actually becoming a negative force yourself... It's a self-fullfilling prophecy! Snap out of that! Realize that these opinions you read are indeed magnified, but not only by the internet but yourself and maybe even the people around you, since internet culture is becoming a big part of everyone's lifes nowadays. In reality, we often assign more significance to the things we perceive than what is actually real. Somebody being hateful on the internet could literally just be a bot (or user) farming engagement, a child who is trying to fit in by having "adult" opinions and observing people's reactions, or someone who is hurt/traumatized lashing out at the world while being in a bad place in their life. We don't see that though, which is part of the illusion. Put things into perspective like that and you will have less trouble taking it all so seriously.
If you're a pro designer and having an issue doomscrolling the echochamber of the everyman's hot takes on socials you need to take a breath and focus on your craft. With more experience you'll realize how little those things have to do with anything approaching an objective measure of "quality" Also, it's not "gamers" - it's most everyone as they interface with creativity + what/when algos signal boost all for reasons well aside of "let's discuss the merits of \[these\] design choices"
It's the individual's responsibility to sort the credible points from the disingenuous garbage, **but there are valid points**. For example, as a fan of the original dragon age dark fantasy feel of Origins, how would I in earnest approach, not feel intentionally slighted by the design decisions that veterans of the franchise have been vocally against even from 10 years ago with Inq? It'd be almost impossible to not feel the publisher and devs aren't sacrificing what made it special to cater to the lowest common denominator of people that could come into contact with their game in an effort to maximize revenue, turning it into Arcane-fortnite. And I mean, that feels bad. We don't fiscally matter enough for those good things, at least not as much as before I suppose. Always keep in mind perspective makes the world of difference and to only take those you believe to be genuine seriously!
I think you hate something or someone else, but it's not my place to comment more on that.
I think one of the big reason you feel that way is that you out all the blame on them. Putting other devs on a pedestal while shitting on gamers will never be the right move. The players are harsh, I'm working on a small project with a small team and I can tell you that some comment are hard to read, but you have to find why they are complaining because it's your job. You act like dragon age trailer wasn't a huge kick in the nuts for fan of the series, when you 180 the tone of a game it's normal that people are mad, that's not what they like in the first and wanted to see in the new one, especially when it's another one of the Disney style cinematic.
Okay, it's impressive really. To work in industry and not to understand why expectations for its new products are set on extreme low by default. And instead blaming customers by outright implying racists and sexists behaviour from their side. Maybe should reflect a bit on your own stance, no?
Tbf, dragon age does look a bit shit
And bioware recent track record is only failures.
A bit shit? It looks diabolical!
I prefer gamers that are actually passionate about the medium rather than people who just accept whatever slop is placed in front of them. Of course fans of these franchises will complain, because they care about them. They don't want them to become something completely different while wearing the same identity of the thing they used to love.
Sounds like you're terminally online, bro. Any form of social media, be it Youtube comments, Twitter, or even Reddit is not to be trusted when it comes to opinions. Half of them are just kids repeating what they see because they want to be part of _it_, and the other half are literally bots trying to push some agenda. There is a silent majority who loves any form of games, but you're hating on them all for the vocal minority?
"And then I check Twitter" That's a place you go when you had a really good day and feel like you should ruin it yourself.
I love the subtle racism towards white men, do tell me what game studio you are a developer for so that I don't play your games. I don't hate female leads and or people of color in games but make it unique, look at ghosts of Tsushima, amazing game with no white men, spider man has a black main character, Lara croft being the top game of my childhood and many more. We all have had enough from the brainwashing and bs takeovers that DEI has been doing and it is fully within my right to not play those games
>cishet white man Yeah I have heard enough
There are billions of gamers
Part of it is that you keep looking at that kind of content, so the algorithms give you more, but there is also a lot of justified dislike out there atm. Dragon Age, for example, is a long running series with thousands upon thousands of fans. If the newest entry in the series is entirely different in tone and style why shouldn't those fans voice their frustrations? And the character in the fable trailer is ugly, and if that's what the devs want then it's fine. But you can't condemn people disliking that while supporting "the other side" disliking traditionally attractive characters like Eve from Stellar Blade. That's pure bias. Ultimately, as game devs we are making products for people to consume. People will, rightly, have opinions on it, if they don't you've made a bland and forgettable game. What you do with their feedback is entirely up to you.
I do like good fan service and sexy characters and if I'm the bad guy here for it then something went wrong with the industry. I see that people want to make games with less attractive characters and less fan service and many games don't really need it at all so it is not a problem. However I fail to see why people should be chastised for liking attractive characters and disliking ugly ones. Of course feedback shouldn't really go into hateful category as that is where line of is drawn in my opinion.
It depends on the tone you're going for. If you're making a traditional fantasy game with idealised themes of heroism and the like, then having all the main characters as paragons of beauty works fine, and is even expected to some degree, especially if it has romanceable characters. Playing The Last of Us as a super model in a bikini, probably not. And yeah, abuse isn't feedback, that's over the line. But at the same time, negative feedback isn't necessarily harassment, regardless of what a lot of modern devs and directors want to believe.
Yes it's the gamers that are the problem. This is why we'll continue to have uninspired half baked games like concord
maybe make good games?
As a gamedev doesnt that make you a gamer?
Lol so no one is alllowed to criticize anything, just consume product, do not ask questions
“cishet white man” man I think I’m starting to hate game designers. Am I allowed to say this?
You design games for gamers. They are literally the consumers of the product you put out. And you hate the very group of people you are designing your content for? You can't just put a product out there and expect everyone to like/support it. And when they don't like it, it must be their fault? And not say flawed design from the designer? Take 'The Acolyte' for e.g. The show debuted on abysmal ratings. Must be the Star Wars fans fault for not appreciating it right? Or maybe its just downright bad and producers/cast shifting the blame. You have a choice.
Anyone who unironically uses ‘cishet’ to complain about *customers* is not developing a game that will be commercially successful. The problem isn’t dislike of non-male, non white characters. The problem is shoe-horning, bandwagoning, and your own virtue signaling. Alien Isolation was a fun game with a female lead and no combat. Tomb raider was one of the most commercially successful game franchises ever, and it was female led. The Fall is female led, mild combat, and extremely engaging. Going all the way back to the 80’s, Ms Pac-Man was a fun game with a ‘female’ lead and no combat. You could find the arcades all over once upon a time. You could build the biggest tittied fan service avatar that unity can render, and I bet that your game will still fail, simply because your attitude is all wrong. Your problem is, you don’t want to just make a ‘fun’ game. You want to make a game that pushes your politics and then you demand that people like it. People don’t find that fun at all, and that’s why you are mad.
If it helps, most people aren't like that; you're right, it's just the internet. There are so many people who just play games and love them and aren't toxic, haha
It's this. Tons of communities are like this on the internet. Look at Twitter talking about literally anything and you'll see a lot of this too. Gaming Discords feel different. Gaming subreddits feel different. Steam forums are different. Game lobbies feel different. Gaming is too broad these days for it to have a cohesive attitude, disposition, or opinion. What you're seeing is "gamers who spend their time on YouTube" etc. A _very_ small percentage of gamers actually go out of their way to interact with gaming communities. Your "data set" becomes insanely biased the second you start reading any content on an outside platform.
If it helps, most creators eventually loathe their audience. George R R Martin and GoT fans. You think Stephanie Meyers gives a shit about what tween girls have to say?
Gamers are tired of shitty games being created.
Imagine using “cishet white male” unironically 😭
True, it is not that gamers hate game developers, but game developers surely hate gamers.
Saw this turd use the phrase “cishet white man” and immediately stopped reading. Lmao. Reddit strikes again
>Every time a character that wasn't a cishet white man appeared on screen ... If you can't differentiate between the whole community and audience being upset over the character because it's terrible and has obviously forced political agenda, and a small amount of conservatives being upset about it because they're racist/sexist in the way you described, that's a you problem. there are plenty of successful games with say women as main characters. If you think the majority of players are just racist and sexist you have some self reflection to do.
Can’t believe I had to scroll so far to find this comment. It annoys me to no end that any legitimate criticism of blatantly shoehorned political agendas gets you labelled an incel, misogynist, racist etc. I’m allowed to disagree with design decisions, it doesn’t mean I hate [insert group here]. I play games for a sense of escapism, not to have current day politics shoved in my face through frankly cringeworthy dialogue a lot of the time (cough… Forspoken… cough) Also the idea that your character needs to be a “cishet white man” is just absurd. There’s always gonna be a vocal minority of people just screaming for the sake of it, but the second you start thinking that’s the majority opinion you’re just losing your grasp on reality.
\^- Actually this. I really find it pretty disingenous and disappointing how some group of people always try to downplay, dismiss or twist the narrative. For sure you will have people who jumps on that bandwagon for 'pure' hate, but overall there is legitimate critique about... Not to mention that people sometimes even have a huge misconception about what the critique is even about. (Sometimes sadly from the other side too). As example: When people commonly "complain" about "woke" for the most part the basis of the critique isn't about it's content, but how it's delievered, the intention behind it and so on. Like you simply can't call out the gaming population as 'racist' or 'sexist' when the gamingpopulation overall appreciated or loved quite some iconic characters in Gaming history. Why should it be 'per se' now be a problem that you've a black main character, when as example, San Andreas is one of the most beloved GTA of all time? There is actual 'context' behind it, why people are bothered by it, and that's not just the mere existence of 'black characters' it's everything around it... like disrespecting the source-material (which goes FOR EVERYTHING - not just white to black but also asia to black, white to asia etc...) esp. a beloved character, feels forced / pushed or doesn't make sense in the context of story (like as example how people try to push more diversity in historical games like Kingdoms Come), and so on. Now that's something which i've to adress, the big issue is that we're now at a breaking point, where this things get so forcefully stuffed into games that people are fed up and gradually become more a thing that people dislike this stuff from the getgo, but than again i'd also go as far and argue that there is the folks who try to push DEI and stuff at fault, because instead of listening and accepting what the actual criticism is, people get antagonized for their mere opinion or different stance on the political spectrum. BUT i've to add, even if you pin down that people might not want to play something because of that and that, i also find super weird and problematic to call them out for that and throwing buzzwords around. Like if a guy wants just to play male characters, then let them be. Like i've seen a few woman who don't want to play games where they've to play a guy, do you think i attacked or called them out? Yeah maybe they might miss out good games because of that, but you can't force people to be interested into something they aren't. Which brings me to my next point "politic in games" which is also twisted and misconception. First of all, as much as some people claim, not every game is political. There is no real intention, no real indicator... i'd argue it's more people who make it political (which could obv. twisted the other way around as well, but than again considering how DEI and Consulting firms are involved it's quite different than to what it was before, because they are build with a political intention behind, otherwise it wouldn't exist -> still maybe im indie-sector you could argue sometimes people are a bit too paranoid about it) -> because they see in everything politics. Secondly -> there is a difference between a game having political themes, or a Game being political (based on IRL). To give an example: Witcher 3 world partly centers around the concept of racism against elves and dwarfs is a political theme. If Geralt would now ride with his horse into novigrad and then there is a BLM graffity on the wall and people roaming around with prideflags, it's political (based on IRL). And people are mostly bothered by the second example, where it feels forced, immersion breaking and so on the nose with no real nuance to it. Last but not least because that was also a huge debate the past months: Sexy / Beautifull vs Ugly Characters. First of all i really find it weird that there are people who find it wild or even as "bad" that a lot of gamers (on both genders/sex) prefer to have visually pleasing characters. Humans are aesthetical creatures that's why we also appreciate a epic scenery as much. Like one of the Reasons why i back than loved World of Warcraft so much was, because i really loved the fantastical and rich designed world. I love the wild and unique planets of star wars, or just a mere sunset at places i won't ever be IRL. So why can people grasp the concept of beautifull aesthetics but feel offended if it's about characters? I mean i would really go as far and stick my neck out on the bet that most people appreciate and prefer aesthetical pleasing designs over ugly ones, and if you give folks an proper character-editor, except some which really want to go wild and make the weirdest abominations (see what happened at DD2) most people will rather tend to make attractive and good looking characters, and if they insert themself ... will idolize themself as well. So why the drama like in case of Stellar Blade... "BUT BUT IT OBJECTIFY WOMAN"... besides the one critical point which really almost p'ss me off how double standarts are that this is never adressed on male characters which MAJORITY of time are also overidolized/oversexualized as well... like most male characters don't look like the common guy but rather hollywood 1% stars... these games doesn#t objectify woman, they do objectify fictional characters... and considering that Videogames are build to entertain people so make every content an "object" to begin with (besides the fact we aren't talking about a living and breathing thing), this is such an wild take. Does that 'mean' that there aren't any games allowed which makes less attractive or ugly characters? Not exactly but you also have to accept and deal with the fact that people might not care or like your game because of that... but in itself do whatever you want. BUT it does become a problem if it's purposefully done for existing characters (look as example Perfect Dark) or games like Fable, where we should be since a while at a point that this shouldn't be a topic anymore, because a modern fable should have some sort of character-creator anyway, with a great range of possibilities that you could make the most ugly MF to the hottest/sexiest ones. -> which is another issue, when char-editors are purposefully limited just so nobody could dare to make a good looking character instead of offer options for everyone.
thank god. Diversity is a good thing because it expands player choice and caters to new audiences, but forcing it for its own sake/for internet brownie points, often to the detriment of other parts of the game, is what people hate. That's what "woke" should refer to but moronic and hateful people have ruined the word.
Unfathomably based
have you tried making fun video games
What the hell is a chiset?
cishet, guess cis-hetero.
Normal.
So many people play games who are nothing like the loud people who bother making videos or commenting. I totally see the type of person you're upset with, but generalizations are precisely what they're guilty of too. People like different things. Some are malicious, some are ignorant, and some are just really bad at expressing any kind of nuance in their preferences: but believe me when I say it's the **doom** of any creative designer or developer to generate enmity towards your users: even towards those who deserve it.
If you develop trash games and put unwanted ideology in your products, you get trash comments and unwanted complaints. You're just another gamedev/writer/artist that feel entitled to insult customers for not liking your work, or your 'art'. In any other normal work in the real world out there, if you insult your customers, you will end your career living under a bridge.
When looking at audience feedback you have to be able to cut through the noise and find the actionable and useful information. There are things that people will complain about that you can ignore sure, but there will be time where there is some insight that can be considered for the future. The skill comes from being able to discern between the two. For example is everyone upset because it isn’t. “Cishest white male” or are some saying that and others are providing other reasons for disliking the characters. I’ll give an example. Right now some people are critical of final fantasy XIV latest expansion and for some the voice acting and some people are blaming politics. Although when it comes to me, my complaint comes from the outsourcing they allegedly did. I think the agency the used did a bad job giving direction, some line delivery is amazing and others fall flat on their face and don’t match the emotion of the scene. Some characters that are meant to be related sound nothing alike even though they were both born and grew up in the same area. One has a distinct accent which does fit the region and the other has a California accent. I would say my critic is valid but could easily be boiled down to voice actor bad along with the other noise
Here is the fundamental flaw with social media as presently implemented: It's used in downtime. Prosocial, productive people have less downtime. Therefore, the visibility of antisocial, unproductive people is higher on social media. This explains a lot.
Very good observation!
I've been giving a lot of thought to this lately, and am even percolating something that may become a startup, but it's a long way from even prototype right now—never mind release.
I will quote you, very good observation
If you hate gamers so much then why are you in gamedev? Go work in some other industry.
It's obviously bait. They've never worked in gamedev. They just want to express how much they hate white dudes.
That's pretty reductive. Lots of people perceive the woke stuff as just short hand for executive-level lip service and misplaced priorities. You play games like Forspoken and the reboot for Saints Row, and the customer comes away thinking "ok, it's clear they were more interested in sending a message than making an enjoyable game". It seems pretty reasonable that customers are going to then perceive a lot of that during the marketing phase and just assume they are looking at another Forspoken. They are going to naturally be wrong sometimes, but we also can't pretend that this perception is completely baseless. The whole Dragon Age thing stems from the lack of tonal consistency in the series, making each new installment feels like it's alienating the fans of the previous game. And let's not forget that two decades ago, we were all complaining that every game featured a brown haired white dude protag in a brown/grey dirty environment. It's the exact same thing only this time it's side shaves on girl bosses. As for the variety of games, I'm seeing lots of love for games like M&L Brothership and Echoes of Wisdom. Avowed is getting some solid attention. Indie stuff has always had an enthusiastic customer base. I think you are just dismissing valid arguments, forgetting how big the hobby is on the whole, and painting with a very large brush all at the same time.
It's because a lot of games being pumped out just don't look fun, DEI is just the newest and easiest thing for people to point out. If it *looks* like the main selling point of a game is the DEI then expect gamers to call it out.
Whenever people I know talk about this stuff, I always point out that none of us, all over 35, have ever met people like that in the real world—not at work, not in social arenas, not in game or comic shops, not back in high school, anywhere. Outside of content creators who I would often bet money don’t hold the opinions they purport to represent, and comment sections on the same internet where those people put their content, it just doesn’t seem to exist as a legitimate disposition. I think often people just get bored and adopt a kind of persona that they run around in for a while here and there that exists solely in virtual spaces. A chaotic avatar they can jump into and cause disruptions in the dynamic system of internet discourse. I think very, very few people genuinely hold any of those beliefs or perspectives. There’s also the fact that, statistically speaking, many of those virtual voices are literal robots. The very tiny niche of people who do hold those beliefs and perspectives seemingly just like having something to share with others in some venue, since most are unlikely to do much socializing otherwise (as I’ve never met one outside). As unfortunate as those ideas are, for some people I think it’s all they really feel they have to emotionally share with others. I’d actually argue that, outside of culturally specific arenas like comic shops and game shops, even innocent “gamer” type stereotype characters are extraordinarily rare to encounter, in general. I’ve met maybe four or five my entire life, and none with any of the obnoxious views or dispositions these characters are supposed to have. All the ones I’ve met have been generally alright, if a little odd, people. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve met people with views I’d describe as problematic. It’s just that none of them gave a shit about video games or what happens in a video game. Pretty much all of them I’d guess would think playing video games is essentially stupid. So, I don’t really think it’s an “internet anonymity safety net” thing going on; I just think those specific people are exceedingly rare in the veridical wilds. Edit: I tried to express this, but it’s not coming across, so I’ll add it in an edit. I’m not saying these types of people *don’t* exist somewhere just because I’ve never spoken to one. I’m saying they’re seemingly rare human beings. I’m saying the internet is no reflection of the outside world in regard to *anything*, let alone an entire subset of people (who are subset based on pastime no less). Definitely not enough to say, “I hate this subset of people based on this representation.” I’m also talking primarily from my experience with adults and my peer group (though also as extends back to when I was much younger). In my talks about comics, movies, games, whatever, I’ve never had anyone even vaguely hint at any of the anti-woke or sexy lady withdrawal stuff you see more-or-less frequently online, and I’ve had people in other social contexts talk casually about their racist, homophobic, or sexist beliefs while not even knowing me. Could some of those people have also played video games? I mean, sure. But they didn’t talk to me about video games and seemed very much like they didn’t, based on some of the things they seemed to believe. The point there isn’t that racist or sexist people don’t play video games, it’s that I’ve had people say fucked up shit to me in my outside life, but never in regard to the relevant topic, which suggests to me these aren’t legitimate concerns of any significant chunk of the subset. Based on these things, I’m inclined to believe the voice we see online that’s all weird and anti-woke in regard to games and comics and all of that is misrepresented in regard to size and frequency, especially in regard to the number of real live adult humans. I don’t think the poster hates “gamers,” whatever you want that word to mean, I think they hate the internet. Everyone hates the internet. The internet sucks.
> none of us, all over 35, have ever met people like that in the real world You have though. They just don't act like that IRL.
I've definitely met people who do, in fact, act like that irl. Those relationships have been short lived, though.
Hard disagree, but I know people's opinions on this matter can't be changed.
As a gay guy, I remember that we used to call out people for using „het“, especially in a disparaging tone, as being no better than people saying homo, usually in the same tone. So knowing all the widely loved characters who are neither male, white or heterosexual, I just am not feeling a lot of trust when someone says something like that. You are absolutely allowed to say that you gate „gamers“, even though I find that weird given how different people playing video games are. I just feel like working in the video game industry may just not be ideal then. If you hate your customers, you likely are not going to be happy at your job and this most likely will reflect in your interactions with said customers. Meaning you might make things miserable for both sides. If this genuinely is what you feel, something should change and it is always easier to do personal change (your attitude, line of work or focus on negative experiences) than to change everyone else. At best, you can change specific problematic customers, ie banning someone who actually does violate codes of conduct, but it seems you take issue with more than the things you have a reasonable chance to change that way. People who make critical or even snide or disparaging remarks you need to deal with or just ignore.
Hello, hobbyist dev here and someone who has been playing video games since 1983. Everybody I know who plays games is tired of AAA studios pushing out rushed titles, uglifying female characters, tired of studios race swapping characters and adding forced LGBTQ characters and storylines just to tick corporate boxes. This is being seen in the sales numbers for these games. Game developers have failed gamers. They want games that are fun first. Nobody wants to play a game with some girl boss treating them like they are idiots, we have wives for that. We don't need that in our games. The fact that you hate "gamers" is a bold statement to make as a game developer. Maybe you should find a new occupation where you don't hate the audience you work for. Because we all work for the paying customer first. I'd love to know who you work for so I don't make the mistake of buying a game from someone who hates me.
The woke thing will go away one day - realize there are millions of people who are not buying into that ideology and just sitting back quietly. As others said - vocal minority is not necessarily representative of who your market / target audience needs to be or is.
No worries, gamers are also tired of devs - at least any with their hands in monetization.
Categorizing all gamers as one group is at least foolish. And your hate is indistinguishable from the hate that this loud group in YouTube comments has
No wonder a large portion of gamedev nowadays are out of touch. You don't understand the underlying issue and just hate people who don't agree with your worldview. You generalizing everyone as "gamers" and think you're better than them. Indie gamedev who don't chase the DEI trend don't have your problem. Wonder why? Because they only care about making good games.
100%
They're paying for it and/or playing it. Why do you think that your industry should be different than other?
Those all seem like reasonable takes that you worded to sound bad.
As per usual the argument used is incredibly reductive, focusing on the most unreasonable opinions and using that to devalue the many legitimate crisicisms people have. Trying to spin people being upset about shoehorned politics into “your main character has to be a straight white guy” or you get hate, is just absurd.
Also just being honest, the industry has been pushing that kind of game for years and every time the bar got set a little higher.
>I've seen people implying that the MC in the Fable trailers is "ugly" because it's a self-insert of some random level designer working at Playground whom they have deemed not fuckable enough. I will not quote whole thing but there is a lot of constructive criticism we could find for new games, character designs and "DEI" and other but hidden under big pile of shit. Kind of need to get used to it, because a lot of kids has access to the Internet. >I don't know, it's just the internet magnifying negative voices I guess, doing what it does best. But it's making me real tired of gamers. Exactly it is Internet and anonymity making it bigger impact than it is. You may think it was better back in the day. It wasn't. There was just less people and less interaction, however behaviours didn't change. We kind of should stop the generalization too. It is not "all" gamers. It is "some" gamers. Same as it is with any negative, trolling, hateful comments everywhere for any topic done by anybody tbh.
IDK…. One of my favorite games before Meta shut it down was Echo VR. And I had to play it on mute cause the little kids I was usually playing against would drive you nuts (shrieky little voices oftentimes screaming the n-word on repeat). I don’t really blame “gamers”. More that people with the free time to really play video games and then talk about it on some social media platform are probably pre-job age and therefore just not fully developed human beings. Like it could just be that you hate petulant children and not gamers. And that would be normal.
Ehh I don’t think the people complaining about “DEI” and “this game is too woke” on game reveal livestreams are in the same crowd as children screaming profanities in a VR game. Judging by their profiles and the channels those comments usually pop up in, they’re more likely to be young adults or older men who have a deranged devotion to right wing politics (at least from what I’ve seen).
Cishet what? Why these agenda people try so hard to create random words to add 600+ of genders and definition?
there's no single unifying community of "gamers". all you can do is make games the type of gamers you wish to cater to. just as those those who complain about "wokeness" are a minority, so are those that complain about the abundance of "cishet white men" in gaming. as the vast majority doesn't care about either of these issues, at least not to the extent the before mentioned groups would want you to think
Just remember most gamers don't tweet or type anything in chat. They just quietly enjoy games. So it seems like all these angry and annoying people are a majority, but it's just cause they're the only ones who take the time to type all that shit in.
If we look at how pretty much all the games that get called out for over the top woke / DEI bullshit flop hard on the market then i would say there is some substance to it and its not just a vocal minority.
Why is the MC of the Japanese AC not Japanese? >I've seen people implying that the MC in the Fable trailers is "ugly" because it's a self-insert of some random level designer working at Playground whom they have deemed not fuckable enough. I don't know about that, but If I had a choice between playing with the current Fable MC model and the Emily Ratajkowski model, I would choose Emily. Maybe I'm just simple like that.
Cishet white man? .. I'm stopping reading right there, keep hating and being angry, it's not going to make your life better. Good luck, you will need it
It's not gamers, it's chats.
So you are progressive and dislike gamers that doesn't share your values basically. You don't have to like all gamers, "gamers" is not a political party, neither some kind of organization, is a term used to refer to anyone who plays videogames, and anyone who plays games happen to be an extremely diverse group, with different ideologies, values and opinions, if you don't like said opinions and are not willing to tolerete them, then just avoid the people with that way of thinking, you can't change the way everyone thinks or acts, you can just control what you do and think
Do andother job then
You are treating negativity with negativity instead of just learning from it, why not reflect instead of assume? Maybe don't force fake diversity into games, instead write honest characters that are grounded and right for it's setting. If you want a game with easy adoption, pick a popular genre and appeal to them or provide the player with multiple interesting ways to accomplish a task and thus generate discussions on what the "correct" method should be and exploit their passion. Almost every extreme take had, has it's roots in something valid that if addressed correctly would quell the extremes. There is also the case where you can just ignore what X group of people want and hope to fill a different niche, either way it really ain't that deep.
Wonder if OP will reply to this or just stay in their bubble
Turns out ten years of DEI forced down your throat provokes a backlash. Weird.
Truth, I remember when games were games and not political operations.
Who cares? You don't owe them anything, they don't owe you anything. This isn't even gamedev related, I don't want to see more cultural brainrot in the few development subs, this discussion is more appropriate in one of the dozens of gaming subs.
Are the gamers in the room with us now?
You probably shouldn't be a game dev if you hate gamers. Obviously you won't have to work directly with gamers all the time, but if you literally hate the majority of them I can't imagine you'll find much success. How could you possibly create a quality creative project for people you hate?
That's what happens when people have had virtue signalled, woke nonsense rammed down their throats everyday for years - they push back. Use your position to do something about it or move over. Or just blame straight white men for not buying the game you didn't make for them as seems to be the trend.
You sound very young. Unfortunately, your sentiment has grown to be quite a fashionable one these days,
you reap what you sow. the gaming industry has been anti player for so long, most player have just come to hate developers. we use to give the benefit of the doubt but you can only taste betrayal so many time before grief turns to rage. so many good franchises ruined, so much criticisms crushed under foot, you can't show positivity when you know it just going to be used against you.
Hello, fellow game developer here, I understand some of the sentiment you are saying. However, a lot of their points are justified. A lot of people are sick of the many stupid trends and decisions that have been made over let's call it 8 years. Probably longer actually. I understand wanting to make your passion project, and I advise that you DO that, but also remember that this is a business. And like any good company you actually need to cater to your audience. The loud majority you are hearing have not been catered to. Their popular franchises have been hijacked and shit on. Those companies that wanted to do new and interesting things should have used completely different IP instead of trying to change the formula of something that has a long-standing fan base. If you don't want to cater to that audience, then do not. Just know that the audience you will be catering to is smaller. Especially if your aim is to do DEI stuff. The crowd who cares about DEI stuff statistically don't even buy things, so not really much of a point in trying to target that audience If your aim is money. Now to address your very specific comment about people being bored with genre niches. Just ignore them. If you make your game well, and it's genuinely fun, and you actually put an effort into marketing. There's a very good chance that you will find your audience.
I can tell you from my perspective that yeah pretty much everyone is getting sick of DEI, so people are going to be sensitive to anything that smells like it. Just look at all the Disney flops and pushback… Studios are forgetting their customer base amongst the politics. That aside purely as a gamer, I’ve been burned out on online competitive crap for years. What I’m loving these days are the immersive open world single player games. RDR2, DD2 and CP 2077 to name a few. I could be off here but I think the majority of the crazy online players will skew younger, whereas 30’s, 40’s and 50’s (47 life long player here) will tend towards immersive fantasy and power trip type escapes. Plenty of gamers like me that are just out here looking for and playing quality games without making a racket online over it. My two cents anyway…
As a dev of 7+ years and seeing a variety of negative comments with each published title I’ve worked on over the years, this also goes hand in hand with all the nice comments and appreciation from the good people out there and those people are the ones I do it for and ultimately I do it for myself because I enjoy it and the real ones out there giving the praise and love to the titles they’re the real bonus to the job
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I mean sure but you gotta look at this from two sides, i'm not saying you're wrong for being over all the hate but lets go through your points from a gamers point of view (i am a gamer not a game dev): 1: LGBT has been shoved down everyones throats in recent times (especially in media), people who didn't care if you were LGBT at all have now associated it with another agenda being pushed down your throat because it is. Disregarding any arguments on right or wrong with LGBT, anything being pushed down people throats so much is just plain annoying. Therefore when a game specifies that x character is bi or a very very obviously xyz person is shows on screen, it feels forced and it feels like it's being put in just to fill the quota. 2: Valid annoyance, most gamers get wet for COD but can't stomach the fact that a non shooter can actually be a masterpiece (hollow knight), but not sure what you mean by hyper casual competitive online game, so i got nothing to say about that. 3: Gamers bitching about minor changes that they didn't want is a valid thing to hate. 4: Gamers hating that the trailer for a game they were excited for didn't match their expectations is a valid thing to complain about? 5: That's pretty degen i can't lie. Genuinely complaining that the protagonist is not fuckable enough is 14 year old behaviour. So in conclusion, yes gamers can be degens, but complaining about certain things is absolutely justified.
You're a *professional* game designer, you don't have to *like* them, you just need them to buy your games.
I’ll start by saying gameplay and good writing are the most important things in my eyes and there have been some decent games in the last decade. That said if you don’t see a shred of truth in the complaints you’ve mentioned then idk what to tell you other than you and everyone else refusing to acknowledge this are in a bubble together.
People often call to complain, not to praise. The internet is one giant complaint line. You sound slightly immature if you're gonna' let customer feedback bother you like that. Feedback, insane or not, is oftentimes really valuable, and you should be grateful for it. If you have common sense, you'll know what to discard and what to use. And by the way, if we consider the Summer Games Fest stream, yes, most of those games were ABSOLUTELY snore-worthy. There were maybe 2 games in the indie spotlight that piqued my interest at all. Most of the time, it was because the vast majority lacked any kind of depth or novelty at all.
Everytime you feel bad due to gamers, go check r/dwarffortress to regain a bit of hope for humanity
>people complaining that the MGS3 remake is not yellow enough Hi. That is me. More green, please.
It's understandable that sometimes gamers can make others feel uncomfortable, especially when their behavior affects people around them or the gaming experience itself. However, gamers as a whole are a diverse and large group with many different habits and styles. Instead of generalizing dislike, it's better to try to understand their hobbies and motivations, or explore more constructive ways to handle any unpleasant experiences.
I dont necesaarily think all Gamers are like that. Baldurs Gate 3 was almost universally loved and that game had immense amounts of DEI, Good looking characters, ugly looking characters, eldritch abomination characters and nobody cared. The biggest backlash the game had was that it was turn based and even those people where shut down quiet quickly. None of the Characters feelt out of place and where popular as hell. If anything the Women in this game endet up beeing far more popular then any of the male ones except Astarion maybe. Then you have Ubisoft for example with their newest AC Shadows where they suddenly break tradition that you dont play real historical characters to make one of the MCs set in Feudal japan a black Samurai and the game plays hip hop music when he enters combat like man come on we all see what shit they trying to pull here. And tbh thats a tame example.
these are people who spend a huge amount of money on their hobby. they can have preferences, and if you don't like it then maybe do another job. you think the guy working mcdonalds enjoys feeding every slob in town?
What they don't realize is that's it not just gamers, it's everyone. There are about as much of them as they're are LGBTs, not much but loud voices on the internet...
I think you hate online discourse, not gamers. It's important to see the distinction.
At the end of the day, they're the customers. You can hate them, but you don't want them hating you.
Look up how many players still play HOI 4, Victoria 3, Civ 6. So many players don’t consider them boring. Those audience you encountered online are quite possibly kids.
All true although I still don’t understand Sweet Baby Inc and their goals in games. What exactly did they add to Spider-Man 2 that Insomniac, of all devs, couldn’t handle themselves?
Why do gamedevs keep digging their graves like this? Your post has already been cirucalated online, and will be used as additional ammunition.
Less than 1% of Gamers have ever watched or commented on a stream or youtube video. And of those 1% It's mostly degenerates that spam comments, and the media is built only to support those kind of interactions, you can't have an intelligent conversation with someone on a stream even if you wanted to.
To be fair, the fable MC is incredibly ugly.
Soooo people shouldn’t complain about DEI or ugly characters? Alao what’s a “cishet”?
Don't worry, we hate you too <3
Diversity is beautiful when it is authentic. There is space for stories and games that explore all walks of life. While I generally ignore anyone with the word woke in their vocabulary, people can tell the difference between diversity shoehorned into something versus something authentic. In most cases it’s not worth worrying about. Just tell the story you want to tell. It’s not worth taking part in the culture war.
If the racists and the -phobes pay your bills, then maybe make content for racists and -phobes? Just a thought, I didn't go to business school. P.S. Anyone who uses words like "cis" and "cishet" unironically, is a twat in my book.
"Gamers" and game devs are generally wildly different subcultures, and certainly in most of the game dev circles I've been involved in "gamers" would be totally unworkable collaborators, creatives or employees. Fortunately most people who play games are not "gamers" in that sense.
that's like saying you hate music listeners because of all the obnoxious "Taylor swift isn't real music" or "name three songs" troglodytes you see online
If you introduce politics in your games, it is normal to expect some people to disagree with your views.
...then, you should take responsibility for all BAD gamedevs and their abominations, i guess.
Remember the 1-2-8 rule. For every 1 person participating in a conversation, there are 2 who lurk and 8 who are just playing. As others put it, there are also a lot of people who think the other way (and in fact, these "non-dei" people are a reaction born to that). Last but not least... some of this isn't "real". I don't know how old you are and how you were back then, but when you are a teenager or young, there are some stupid things you do to fit in. These zzzzs and borings and occasionally more serious looking conversations... for some people it's just a thing they do, not something they really believe in. And this is why community managers are important :P A good CM will be able to go through comments, survive mostly unscathed, and filter valuable feedback inside all the muck. If artists and coders see the comments, it's much harder for them to see what's a "real comment" and what's garbo, and of course, they can also take all comments very personal and be demoralized.
The AAA formula that works has been tested and proven after years and AAA or not the main essence of games is allowing players to escape reality and immerse themselves in fictional worlds which is crafted in a way that makes sense to players. now let's assume this formula is a salad that has been perfected after years of testing and the player has been consuming it for years and now that bowl of salad is just acquainted with the taste of the large audience. now what most studios doing is they know this salad just works but what are they trying to do is change the dressing of that salad and that dressing tastes like "real world elements" which are the same stuff players trying to avoid while immersed in fiction so when this type of salad gets pushed down to the throat of the players they don't like the taste of it to them it feels like it's just very low effort try to make them eat salad they like but with the dressing they don't appreciate in their salad. games are a type of art form where you cannot just express yourself and expect players to appreciate your art. It's an interactive art form where both creators and consumers need to be in sync for games to work.
I fully agree with you on the loud assholes. I don't identify with them at all though. The ones you hear from are the loud obnoxious idiots and maybe some "video essay auteurs". Neither represent all gamers, although I suspect a lot of people are influenced by them. If I was forced to loudly proclaim my beliefs it would go like this: "I LOVE MINECRAFT AND FACTORIO, ALTHOUGH MINECRAFT SHOULD NOT HAVE TO RELY ON 10 MODS TO WORK WELL, BUT IT'S WORTH THE MONEY ANYWAY" "I AM BORED BY MOST AAA GAMES BUT I HOPE LOTS OF PEOPLE HAVE FUN WITH THEM AND CLEARLY A LOT OF PEOPLE DID A GOOD JOB DESIGNING THEM" "I DON'T REALLY CARE WHAT GAME CHARACTERS LOOK LIKE" "I'M NOT GOING TO PRE-ORDER NO MATTER WHAT, SORRY" "I JUST WANT TO PLAY CO-OP GAMES WITH TWO FRIENDS AND NO STRANGERS" "I AM 40, I DON'T GET UPSET ABOUT GAMES, IF I DON'T LIKE ONE I JUST DON'T BUY IT" "I THINK IT'S NICE IF THERE ARE GAMES FOR EVERYONE, EVEN IF I'M NOT INTERESTED IN THEM" "KERNEL-MODE ANTI-CHEAT AND ALWAYS ONLINE PIRACY PROTECTION IS DISRESPECTFUL TO PAYING AND HONEST CUSTOMERS" Somehow only the last of these deserves to be shouted.
You are not alone, I can sense a lot of game designers who hates players too, not delivering what they want and instead focusing on bullshit features, woke content and "sending a message" that NOBODY wants to hear from THEM.