[HN Gopher] "The joy of sharing has been driven from me"
___________________________________________________________________
"The joy of sharing has been driven from me"
Author : omnibrain
Score : 154 points
Date : 2022-07-01 12:43 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (grumpygamer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (grumpygamer.com)
| prvc wrote:
| I think a lot of the comments in this (HN) thread are falsely
| assuming that he is reacting to the tone of the comments, rather
| than the fact that they don't seem to like what he has shared.
| Having read only a small sample of the linked comments, they seem
| to be overall civil but negative, which is probably even worse
| news for an approval-hungry creator than a rude response. There
| is a ready-made narrative about the badness of user-posted
| internet commentary that a subset of internet commentators love
| to post about, but in this case it doesn't seem to fit. This is
| said as someone who has absolutely no investment in the trailer's
| particular art-style or whatever their issue is.
|
| In any communication, regardless of the medium of transmission, a
| positive reaction on the part of the recipient of the message is
| not guaranteed.
| soneca wrote:
| > _" falsely assuming that he is reacting to the tone of the
| comments"_
|
| I think you are wrong. The assumption that he is reacting to
| the tone is correct. He explicitly said that he is closing
| comments due to personal attacks.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| No, what you saw were the comments _after_ he moderated out the
| comments telling him to kill himself, that he and is colleagues
| are useless, etc.
|
| He left behind the critical comments that were otherwise
| polite.
| user68858788 wrote:
| I can relate. I was a game developer just breaking in when the
| whole gamergate nonsense happened. People were not only shitting
| on "political" games, but also doxxing people and harassing
| developers outside their offices. The experience caused several
| friends to leave the industry, myself included.
| adamius wrote:
| I've recently done some art projects. The comments/feedback can
| be really bad. Really soul-destroying.
|
| The trick is to weight them correctly. Multiply positive by 5.
| Then re-evaluate. It helps. Negative people find water disgusting
| and yet water is a necessity for life. Its therefore very
| important to keep perspective.
| adamrezich wrote:
| I like Ron Gilbert. I don't like all of the games he's worked on
| but I like most of them. I think it's great that he's making this
| new game and he's doing it how he wants to. I will likely check
| it out when it's released and there's a good chance that I'll
| enjoy it.
|
| all of that said, I have a hard time understanding this
| situation. when you've been making games for decades and you've
| watched the Internet grow from nothing in that time, how can you
| possibly release a trailer for your upcoming game showing an art
| style that you don't have to hire a focus testing company to tell
| you that the Internet will knee-jerk react negatively to...
| without knowing that there would be The Usual, Expected Amount of
| "toxic" backlash? how could you not see this coming, and why
| would you then go on to take it personally?
|
| I fully understand the human angle where like, if I released a
| trailer for a game I was working on tomorrow, and for whatever
| reason the Internet Hate Machine started churning against me, I
| would have a very hard time handling it, because I have never
| been in a situation like that before, and the human mind is ill-
| equipped to deal with the onslaught of criticism, both fair and
| over-the-top, that is just part and parcel of putting things on
| the Internet these days. in the past ~15 years of the indie game
| scene there have been countless examples of this exact scenario
| playing out time and time again, and I have complete and total
| empathy for anyone in that situation--it has to be hard.
|
| but this is a guy who's made both games that are considered
| classics, as well as games that have been critically panned. why
| is he taking the perfectly predictable response to the art style
| shown in this trailer so personally?
|
| the only conclusion I can reach--and it's a mighty cynical one--
| is that this must be part of the planned PR cycle for the game.
| the game was announced earlier this year, as being planned to be
| released later this year, meaning that at the time of that
| announcement, the art style was almost certainly already settled
| upon... yet the decision was made to withhold from revealing the
| art style at that point in time. now, awhile later, we get a
| trailer that shows and demonstrates the art style. again, the
| Internet's reaction writ large was wholly predictable. now Ron
| Gilbert says this wholly predictable reaction makes him sad and
| makes him not want to share any more of the game until release,
| and various "journalists" and commentators in the space get to
| write up think-pieces about the event heralding this act--not
| sharing any more of your game until it's released--as one of
| moral bravery in the face of the innately toxic and reprehensibly
| evil Internet Comment Section saying mean things about the latest
| game from a respected and celebrated creator of some of the most
| cherished classics in the history of computer gaming. Entitled
| Toxic Gamers get shamed for being Toxic and Entitled and Gamers,
| as though we haven't learned anything over the past 20 years
| about how anonymous comment sections inherently work in the
| everyone-has-an-Internet-connected-smartphone-in-their-pocket-at-
| all-times contemporary society we now live in. blogs get
| something juicy to write about. everyone wins!
|
| is there any reason for me to not believe that some version of
| the above is what happened here? or am I completely off-base here
| and perhaps Ron Gilbert is just mentally stuck in the 90s, where
| your publisher sends promotional prerelease screenshots to a
| gaming magazine and you don't have to directly see any criticism,
| as someone else at the company reads all the (e- and snail) mail
| for you? or something else?
|
| tl;dr I can't understand getting mad at the Internet for being
| the Internet in 2022, it will never get better, if anything it
| will only get worse--this is the price we collectively had to pay
| when we decided everyone should be online at all times.
| generalk wrote:
| > tl;dr I can't understand getting mad at the Internet for
| being the Internet > in 2022, it will never get better,
| if anything it will only get worse [...]
|
| If I may provide an alternate tl;dr to your comment: "People
| are being absolute rude, disrespectful assholes; which is
| absolutely fine. Ron Gilbert asked for this abuse by making
| things. The real issue is that he disabled comments on his own
| blog, where people should be firmly allowed and encouraged to
| shit on his work."
| djur wrote:
| There would have been some degree of angry backlash to any art
| style that wasn't a meticulous recreation of MI 1 and 2 (a
| decision that would have also been criticized, but probably
| much more politely). I don't know why it's supposedly
| predictable that this particular art style would receive this
| degree of hostility.
| Osmose wrote:
| Just because bullying is common doesn't mean people should get
| used to it
| adamrezich wrote:
| what alternative course of action do you suggest instead? I
| don't understand why you think people should continue to be
| surprised by wholly predictable reactions contingent upon
| inherently flawed human behavior.
|
| hopefully your solution isn't simple moral posturing that
| Things Should Be Better, because that might feel good to say
| but as a solution it's pretty obviously untenable.
|
| regardless: either Ron Gilbert is, somehow--even after
| DeathSpank(!)--hopelessly naive with regards to the state of
| anonymous shit-flinging on the Internet in 2022, or all of
| this moralizing and othering of Toxic Entitled Gamers (which
| we've definitely never seen deployed before!) is part of the
| PR plan for this game, to make people feel sympathy/empathy
| for a celebrated, legendary game designer being forced to
| read mean words on the Internet about something he made, as
| though this is some great moral travesty of our times and not
| just the baseline level of Internet interaction one should
| expect by now. again: why is any of this a huge surprise to
| anyone involved? why is Ron Gilbert taking any of this
| personally instead of just taking the tack of "lol well this
| is what I wanted to make so fuck off if you don't like it"?
|
| either way, sad state of affairs, especially given that I'm
| looking forward to the game's release regardless. hopefully
| the lesson everyone learns from this is that people act like
| fuckwads on the Internet and there really isn't anything you
| can do about it aside from refraining from looking at it...
| which is a lesson I thought we all learned a long time ago.
| frazbin wrote:
| presumably the last time he made a game people weren't such
| huge dicks about it... no big deal but modern gamers cause
| a chilling effect in the industry by behaving this way,
| inevitably. Creative professionals /don't/ have to get used
| to being punching bags.. they're exactly the type to take
| their toys and go home. That's what happens when you do
| something for love (and take a pay cut to do it).
|
| The hateful gamers will just have to continue to enjoy
| loveless games made by companies who know that a 100mm
| budget is table stakes to protect them from their
| customers. The passionate makers will find something else
| to love; that's their power.
| adamrezich wrote:
| the current top comment in this comments section is also
| decrying the Entitled, Toxic Gamers that are the cause of
| all that is Bad and Wrong in the world of video games
| today--have you ever noticed how convenient of a
| recurring boogeyman this is?
|
| "gamers are the _worst_ , they suck and are terrible. no,
| not _you_ , of course--you're not a _gamer_ , you're a
| Cultured Video Game Enjoyer, just like me, the writer of
| this Kotaku article. you and I are different from these
| vile and horrible "gamers", who aren't being misogynist
| or racist _today_ but you just know any day now they 'll
| be back to doing that too. how we hate them! now anyway,
| the latest vile act that these _abject villains_ have
| done is make Ron Gilbert sad by writing mean words about
| an unreleased video game based upon trailer footage, on
| the Internet. imagine! being mean to Ron Gilbert,
| celebrated adventure game designer! the _nerve_ of these
| gamers. how we hate them! now, Cultured Video Game
| Enjoyer, what do _you_ think about the art style of
| Return to Monkey Island? do you love it? answer
| carefully, because the only people who _don 't_ love it
| are those people we _hate_ , those untermenschen
| 'gamers'! now answer: how great is Return to Monkey
| Island's art style?"
|
| don't you find the rise of this kind of rhetoric over the
| past 15 years or so, and all of the moralizing it
| entails, to be at the very least curious? "othering" a
| broad, diverse population of people by strawmanning them
| as though they were a political party or something,
| generalizing based upon anonymous Internet comments, an
| eternal beast of a boogeyman who is always lurking in the
| shadows just out of sight, only to emerge in the public
| consciousness now and again as the driving force of moral
| outrage that you should definitely feel very strongly
| about, because as we all know there is no greater evil in
| the world than typing mean words into an Internet-
| connected text field and clicking "Submit", right? and it
| always seems to happen whenever somebody wants their
| personal and/or game's profile to be raised, whenever it
| sure would be nice for all involved if more sympathetic
| Cultured Video Game Enjoyers would point more of their
| eyeballs at the person and/or product being promoted, on
| grounds of moralizing against the uncultured gamer swine,
| and above all, proving that you're not one of _them_.
|
| idk for me after 15 years of this shit it's pretty old by
| now and that kind of appeal-to-emotion persuasion doesn't
| faze me in the slightest anymore. some people said some
| mean words on the Internet to a guy who's going to
| release a video game later this year, and it made the guy
| sad. that's a bummer, but I just can't bring myself to
| get worked up in the way the Video Game Journalism
| Industry wants me to--I'm kind of done being emotionally
| manipulated by everyone in that sphere. I don't need to
| "identify as" either a "gamer" or a Cultured Video Game
| Enjoyer to enjoy video games, so it's not hard to reject
| the attempted pseudo-political cultural bifurcation here
| by rejecting the whole dichotomy and saying "lol video
| games amirite"--and I recommend others do the same!
| Osmose wrote:
| I dunno why you think demanding that people can't feel
| hurt on the internet is any less overbearing than
| condemning people who are mean on the internet.
| adamrezich wrote:
| I'm not sure where I issued such a demand, but, it should
| be obvious that it is easier to learn to deal with the
| existence of negative Internet shitposting than it is to
| try to morally posture it into nonexistence, despite the
| latter _feeling_ good.
| Osmose wrote:
| You're confusing disgust with surprise. One can predict
| abuse and also not enjoy it and decide to close the
| comments down after you get too much of it.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| So, your argument is "The art is terrible and he must have
| known it was terrible and possibly made it terrible
| intentionally for some sort of complex culture-war publicity
| reason because the only other possibility is that he's actually
| offended by people telling him he's a terrible person and and
| idiot and a moron and only capable of producing absolute
| garbage because no person today would be offended by that
| because I guess it happens a lot because internet"?
|
| Honestly, I'm trying to say something about this argument that
| falls within the site's guidelines for discussion and I can't
| really figure out a way to.
| adamrezich wrote:
| the first four words of your attempted paraphrase of my post,
| or anything like them, do not exist in my post in any form.
| while reading my post you hallucinated that I was "one of
| them" and disapproved of the game's art style.
|
| to clarify: I don't have any strong opinions about the art
| style of Return to Monkey Island, and while I have some
| thoughts about it, that entire line of discussion is
| uninteresting to me. I see no reason for the art style to
| have been chosen other than that those involved in making the
| game think it's a good fit for the game they're making. and
| it probably is! so please, if you're going to continue to
| engage with me on this topic, update your mental model of me
| and the position I'm taking on this, because you seem to have
| made some faulty assumptions, unsubstantiated by what I've
| posted here.
|
| however, it should be obvious to anyone that the art style is
| both a departure from the original games, and their later
| sequels, and that it's such a stylistic departure that
| backlash should be fully expected. if Ron Gilbert really,
| truly did not expect backlash on the reveal of the art style,
| then either he is ridiculously naive compared to how I would
| expect him to be, given his career and previous works... or
| the reveal and subsequent response, in which we all meant to
| feel warm and fuzzy and sympathetic to a legendary game
| designer who had anonymous fuckwads write mean things about
| him and his game on the Internet, was expected, and planned
| as part of making a broader audience care about a point-and-
| click adventure game being released in 2022, at a time where
| great lengths must be taken to get anyone to care about any
| game you make at all, as there's way too many options for not
| just games to play but places to give one's attention in
| general.
|
| what do you think the net effects of this entire saga are
| going to be? do you think more people know and/or care about
| the release of this upcoming game, a game which is of a genre
| that is broadly (back) in decline (after a brief resurgence a
| decade or so ago), as a result of this debacle?
|
| and almost more importantly: what was it about my post that
| made you think I disliked the art style of Return to Monkey
| Island? because it wasn't the words that said as much,
| because those words don't exist--yet something made you think
| _I_ think the art style is bad! it might be useful to analyze
| what led you to this incorrect assumption.
| bena wrote:
| So what I did is look up all the Monkey Island games. There
| are essentially 7. The Secret of, LeChuck's Revenge, The
| Curse of, Escape from, Tales of, and Special Editions of
| The Secret of and LeChuck's Revenge.
|
| And I went look up screenshots of every game.
|
| Consistency does not exist. The Secret of and LeChuck's
| Revenge are pretty similar, The Curse of looks very
| Dragon's Lair-esque/Don Bluthy, Escape from looks kind of
| ass to be honest. It's very "early 3D" and did not age
| well. Tales of is also 3D and is ok-ish. The remakes are
| also 3D, but also different from both Escape and Tales of.
|
| And the character design of Guywood changes from the first
| two, to the third, to the fourth to the sidestory, to the
| Special Editions.
|
| So any argument based on "consistency" is a red herring for
| something else. Consistency has not been a hallmark of this
| series, graphics-wise. This series has more departures than
| LAX.
| adamrezich wrote:
| I agree with everything you've written here 100%, and
| this is why I actually think the art style they've chosen
| for this new game is interesting in a tentatively good
| way, despite me having basically zero grounds upon which
| to judge art in general. they eschewed the sort of
| overwrought cartoon whimsy of the later games and Special
| Editions, and found an art style that allows much of the
| same level of expression you'd get from pixel art, while
| not being pixel art, if that makes sense. it's certainly
| a bold choice, but it kind of _had_ to be, right?
|
| this is why I never said anything about "consistency" and
| why I am empathetic to the plight of having to figure out
| how a Monkey Island game in 2022 should look, because as
| you discovered it somewhat surprisingly (for someone
| unfamiliar with the series) doesn't "draw itself" like
| one would expect for a revival of a retro franchise.
|
| all of this reasoning is exactly why I don't understand
| why Internet backlash to the art style reveal was so
| allegedly unforeseen--it was a real "damned if you make
| it look like any of the old games, damned if you make it
| look completely different"-type situation.
| bena wrote:
| I can't recall any real backlash about any of the other
| games though.
|
| That's the issue. Just about every game looks different,
| but not until this one do people "care".
|
| It literally has no real basis to base its look off of.
|
| > however, it should be obvious to anyone that the art
| style is both a departure from the original games, and
| their later sequels, and that it's such a stylistic
| departure that backlash should be fully expected.
|
| This here seems to be you talking about consistency.
| Saying that it doesn't match the older games. Well, which
| older game should it match? If anything, it not matching
| any of the older games would be more stylistically
| appropriate than matching any of the older games.
| adamrezich wrote:
| I never played the old Monkey Island games in their day
| because for some reason my dad had pretty much the rest
| of the SCUMM catalog except for Monkey Island and LOOM.
| but if I understand correctly, the transition to 3D
| wasn't as criticized because everyone was trying to
| figure out how to make games look good in 3D at that
| point, plus Ron Gilbert had left LucasArts at that point
| in time, so those games weren't as appreciated as the
| first two. the Remastered version of the first game was
| certainly met with mixed opinions though.
|
| > Well, which older game should it match?
|
| I already explained that I agree with you that this is
| the exact problem they faced when coming up with a look
| for the game. if they had picked any of the different
| styles, there would have been fans and detractors both.
| arguably, if they wanted to minimize backlash at the
| expense of everything else (such as broad marketability),
| they would have painstakingly recreated the art style of
| the first two games, with its weird disconnect between
| the cartoonish character sprites and full-screen
| realistic-looking closeup shots intact. so they did the
| almost certainly right thing and figured out a new style.
| but just because they chose the correct course of action
| doesn't mean that it wasn't going to frustrate just about
| everyone who looks at it and says to themselves, "well
| Monkey Island looks like many different things to be but
| it doesn't look like _that_. " as a comparative example,
| see the reaction to the art style of the remaster of The
| Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. I haven't played it
| but I think it looks great--much like the Return to
| Monkey Island art style, it found a way to split the
| difference in making a new graphical style that still
| retains some of the "vagueness" of the old, hardware-
| limited style, while looking unique and good. as you can
| imagine, even though the Zelda franchise has had its fair
| share of totally different art styles over the years,
| there were many people who felt like _this_ particular
| style doesn 't jive with their franchise preconceptions.
| (I'm kind of at a loss for why I'm fully explaining all
| of this... this all seems pretty self-evident, for self-
| evident reasons.)
| bena wrote:
| It really feels like you're defending the backlash
| though. As if it was a foregone conclusion.
|
| But why? They've done this exact thing N times before,
| this is just the N+1 iteration of it.
|
| You also keep positing alternatives they could have done
| and claiming that those alternatives would have been
| better. But it's all based off of your conjecture. You
| claim it's self-evident, but it's only self-evident in
| the way that is evident to yourself.
|
| The backlash seems out of proportion to what was done.
| adamrezich wrote:
| > They've done this exact thing N times before, this is
| just the N+1 iteration of it.
|
| I think what you might be missing is that "they" has been
| a different group of people each time since the original
| two games--this is the first Ron Gilbert Monkey Island
| game since LeChuck's Revenge. I believe Gilbert has also
| said that he's disregarding everything in Monkey Island
| "lore" that he wasn't around for the writing of. because
| of all of this, the franchise has a general identity
| problem, including a visual identity problem. most people
| who are excited to play Return to Monkey Island are not
| coming from a place of "well most of the rest of the
| games looked different from one another, let's see
| something new!" I think most people expected the
| franchise to either maintain its new "Remastered" look,
| or look closer to the original two games. personally I'm
| glad they chose neither!
|
| the backlash only seems disproportionate due to reporting
| on it. "New Game In Franchise Looks Different From Old
| Games In Franchise, Many Anonymous Internet Users Vocally
| Upset About This, Like Everything Else, As Per Usual"
| doesn't really have the same emotional galvanization
| effect, see?
| atwood22 wrote:
| I don't understand the outrage at this art style. Granted, I've
| never played any of the Monkey Island games, and have no
| emotional attachment to the content. To me, the art style seems
| very similar to a Cartoon Network cartoon, and that may have
| broad appeal to kids today. Like I kind of understand why people
| are upset: this thing you loved 32 years ago is being vandalized
| in your eyes. However, you're really old now, your prefrontal
| cortex should be fully developed, so get over it.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's even an exclusively nostalgia thing. Over
| the past few years I've seen a lot of complaining around art
| style changes. Notably the Civ V -> Civ VI art style change
| pissed a lot of people off. Personally I loved the game, but a
| lot of series veterans didn't even bother to try it.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| In the other thread about this, someone brought up the
| colloquially named "Zelda Effect". It is most evident when
| reviewing Wind Waker, which used cartoony cell-shaded
| graphics: contemporary comments featured quite a lot of
| vitriol over that decision, but the game is now fondly
| remembered as one of the best entrants in the series.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Fun fact: even series creator Shigeru Miyamoto wasn't
| thrilled with that art style at first.[0]
|
| Makes me wonder if Twilight Princess was more _his_ push
| than the widely-assumed theory that its direction was "for
| the fans" still disappointed from Spaceworld 2000.
|
| [0] https://kotaku.com/the-legend-of-zelda-wind-waker-
| graphics-s...
| bombcar wrote:
| Deep down almost everyone is "conservative" - they want
| what they had yesterday again today, so any change to art
| style, etc, is already on a back-foot.
|
| But in the end, the good things stand out. The reason the
| CD-i Zelda games are not remembered fondly is not really
| because of the art style, that's just an easy way to rip on
| them.
| mikkergp wrote:
| The game developer is basically taking all the hate that
| people are really directing at a society that doesn't
| value the same things they do anymore. I thought SNES
| Zelda and Final Fantasy were the best, but I didn't
| threaten the developers when they moved to 3d.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's also a side-effect of being involved in the
| community as a creator; if you were pissed at the 3D
| Zelda what were you going to do, fly to Japan and track
| down Shigeru Miyamoto? Send him a nasty letter?
|
| But here we have someone who posted something on his own
| site, and not only allowed comments, but cleary _was
| reading them_ , and people just attacked him.
|
| It's sad.
| rideontime wrote:
| Fun, if barely relevant, fact: Miyamoto himself wanted to
| change the art style during development, according to
| recently-translated interviews.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwUBIjbYYNg
| troon-lover wrote:
| stuckinhell wrote:
| I don't think that's exactly true. Nintendo did give people
| what they wanted with Twilight Princess. Both of those
| games had around 9.5 - 9.6 ratings, and the realistic
| Twilight Princess was the best selling Zelda until Breath
| of the Wild came out.
|
| I think a very loud minority likes Wind Waker, but sales
| show something a bit different.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| That analysis discounts that the GameCube[0], on which WW
| was released exclusively until the Wii U[1] HD remake,
| had vastly lower user count than the incredibly popular
| Wii[2], which had a Twilight Princess release
| simultaneously with the GCN.
|
| [0] 21.4M units sold
|
| [1] Even lower, only 13.5M units
|
| [2] 101.6M units
| stuckinhell wrote:
| http://www.gamedesigngazette.com/2018/01/the-legend-of-
| zelda...
|
| year platform title sales
|
| 2002 GC Wind Waker 4,430,000
|
| 2013 Wii U The Wind Waker HD 2,310,000
|
| 2006 Wii/GC Twilight Princess 8,850,000
|
| 2016 Wii U Twilight Princess HD 1,130,000
|
| Twilight princess is still more popular if you look at
| sales.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I don't see how this contradicts what I'm saying: it sold
| more because it had a (significantly) larger user base to
| sell to in the first place.
|
| If Twilight Princess is so much more popular, why did its
| HD remake sell less than half of Wind Waker's?
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Because most people who wanted to play it, already played
| it.
| djur wrote:
| Your list shows Wind Waker selling twice as many units
| when released on the same platform as Twilight Princess.
| There are confounding factors here (the Wind Waker re-
| release may have had a larger "missed it the first time"
| audience, and there were probably fewer active Wii U
| users in 2016 than 2013) but it's the closest thing to an
| apples to apples comparison here.
| toast0 wrote:
| Another big confounder is that the WiiU won't play
| gamecube games, but it will play Wii games, so someone
| who wanted to play Wind Waker and has a WiiU needs to buy
| the WiiU version, but someone with a WiiU and wants to
| play Twilight Princess can buy the Wii version or the
| WiiU version.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| People old enough to have played old Civs but whose brain
| hasn't developed sufficiently to have switched to Europa
| Universalis 4 deserve to be pissed.
| the_only_law wrote:
| If I only I could convince my friends to play EU4.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| I loved the art direction, but can't stand the
| micromanagement. Every time I look at it, I want to play it
| again, but I just don't like the city districts thing. It's
| too hard to keep my happiness up.
| acheron wrote:
| I don't think that's true about Civ 6. A lot of people who
| only ever played Civ 5 might have been "pissed" and didn't
| bother to try it, because they didn't realize that the Civ
| games change every time, but any actual "series veteran" was
| fine with it.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'm one of those series veterans who was really put off by
| Civ VI's design choices. I tried to get into it, and just
| couldn't. I've heard criticism that the aesthetics should
| not matter and that getting hung up on such a thing was
| immature. However, I just could not get past the dissonance
| of the cartoony style and how busy the UI was. Put simply,
| I found the game to be ugly.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Yah that last sentence was a bit of hyperbole and poor word
| choice. What I meant is that many people who had got into
| Civ 4 and Civ 5, etc. we're critical of the graphics.
|
| It wasn't as much about change as it was what exactly
| changed. There seems to be a trend in many games where
| certain design aspects suck as choosing brighter colors, or
| a more cartoons style will bring people comparing your game
| to a mobile game (also happened to a lesser extent with CK3
| and certain total war games). While technically Civ6 runs
| on mobile, it's very much an outlier as far as mobile games
| go, I wish more mobile ames we're that good.
| kroltan wrote:
| Obligatory mention of the FMV "advisors" of Civ 2,
| including a roman "cool dude" with sunglasses.
|
| https://youtu.be/FlTIk80uBPg?t=269
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| > I don't understand the outrage at this art style.
|
| Oh, that's easy. It's reminiscent of free Flash games popular a
| couple decades ago. Vector graphics are somewhat less common in
| games these days, so my first impression was that the art style
| looked a bit cheap and dated.
| lhorie wrote:
| Personally, as a consumer who could care less about who
| produced which game, the original Secret of Monkey Island -
| with all its pixel art glory - was a relatively hard game, like
| many of the games of the era, and was comparatively less
| enjoyable to me as a 80s/90s kid than the later Curse of Monkey
| Island, which had a more modern art style and much more
| interesting mechanics (IMHO) than just aimlessly clicking
| everywhere until you eventually found out the only way to move
| forward was to precisely time giving the bad guy a wedgie or
| whatever. I've also played other games with various degrees of
| pixelatedness, with later ones like Sam & Max and Indiana Jones
| being more enjoyable to me than older ones like the original
| Maniac Mansion, so I generally associate art style
| modernization in this particular genre as a good thing.
|
| But ironically, I feel the opposite way about the Pokemon
| franchise, which has gone through a similar progression, with a
| change in art style towards a more slick art style along with a
| barrage of new game mechanics that I personally didn't really
| care so much for.
|
| I think that ultimately people just want to consume more
| content that is similar to what they are already used to. It's
| why, I also think, bands w/ distinctly recognizable style like
| the Red Hot Chili Peppers did so well. The vitriol does seem
| completely unnecessary, though, I agree.
| pyb wrote:
| Yeah, naively I would expect people whoever played the original
| games to be quite grown up by now. Are they really the ones
| leaving those comments?
| rasz wrote:
| Its ok if you are into vagina slits or pink penis noses on all
| characters.
| sph wrote:
| That says more about you than the art style.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| I could give two shits about the art style.
|
| I just can't stand the worry that he's going to grimdark the
| storyline. It is important to me that guybrush and elaine and the
| gang don't go that way.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I don't imagine it's that kind of game (the series thus far
| hasn't been), but at the same time I like the idea that we're
| seeing a mature Guybrush reflecting on his adventures and
| mistakes in life.
|
| At this point I don't really mind what direction they take at
| the end of the day. I love the characters, and just want to see
| where they end up.
|
| I do hope we get another game where they play with Claymation
| style animation, though.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| the crux of my worry is this: the ending of MI2 compared to
| the ending of a non-gilbert MI3, and I _love_ MI3.
| mromanuk wrote:
| Monkey Island was cutting edge technology when I first played it
| as a child in the early 1990s, I fell in love with it. Why would
| anyone expect that Ron would create a pixel-art, retro-style
| game? Ron articulated this line of reasoning. He is the creator
| and has every right to select the style that he desires.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > Gamers are the most entitled consumer group I've ever seen.
| It's astounding. Someone wants to create something, and there's
| just so much hate and negativity on something that people didn't
| even pay for.
|
| I sometimes end up on Steam and the like when I search for "some-
| game pass level-I-find-difficult", or "some-game Linux". Almost
| every single thread I've seen there starts with someone asking a
| fairly reasonable question ("I'm having trouble with X, any
| tips?", "Are the developers planning to release this game on
| Linux? Thanks!") and quickly devolving in to a complete shitshow
| ("you're a lazy fake gamer if you can't pass X, it's so easy!",
| "lol Linux only for autistic nerds").
|
| To say I'm not a fan of the "gamer community" is an
| understatement. I'm sure the majority of people who play games
| are nice folks, but the online spaces are dominates by obnoxious
| loudmouths more than any other community I've seen.
|
| Now, I have to admit I'm also not wildly impressed by the art
| style of the new MI game, but you know, it's Ron's game; I can
| take it or leave it... (and since I'm fairly sure the writing
| will be as good as the earlier games I don't even mind all that
| much, as long as it doesn't have the horrendous controls from the
| 4th and 5th games I'll be happy, furthermore, I'd rather people
| try something new instead of merely regurgitating what was done
| 30 years ago, even if I'm personally not a huge fan of it).
| bob1029 wrote:
| I feel even in gaming, the customer is always right at the end of
| the day. Unless we are talking about making games just for the
| sake of it & then throwing them away, but I suspect not.
|
| That said, most of the time it is better to not interact with the
| customer until you are certain it is the right time. Transparency
| seems like more of a liability than anything here.
|
| I strongly prefer the stealth mode development pattern, assuming
| you do have a clear & consistent vision relative to your market &
| customers. A lot of human feedback is bullshit, so avoid it until
| you actually need it. Most people don't know what they like until
| they are 20 hours deep into it. Don't give them time to build up
| ridiculous expectations relative to your product.
|
| Think about the way EA games launched Apex Legends. I would
| prefer if every game studio went down that path.
| ArrayBoundCheck wrote:
| If you don't own a copy are you a customer?
| ativzzz wrote:
| With free to play being a huge gaming business model, not
| only do you not own games because they are more of a SaaS
| product, but most people don't even pay to be a "customer"
|
| I haven't "owned" a game in like 10 years since I stopped
| buying CDs/physical media. All my games are digital, and I
| don't think you can really "own" software.
| kabdib wrote:
| > I feel even in gaming, the customer is always right at the
| end of the day.
|
| There are customers who are most definitely not right. The kind
| that cheat in online games, lie about it, dox you when you
| catch them. The kind of customer that tries to break into your
| systems or DDOS you. The kind that try to steal from you and
| your partners, or that harass other players, or that post
| pornography to your forums. The kind that make bots or
| thousands of fake accounts. The kind that build phishing sites
| and steal other customers' credentials, empty out their wallets
| and sell all of their assets.
|
| It's a small proportion of customers that do this, but that's
| still a large enough number that it's a big deal. (Kindly don't
| respond, "Well, all you have to do is put technical measures in
| place to prevent all of this." You need to have been in the
| trenches dealing with them before you can have a valid opinion
| on mitigations).
|
| The customer is not _always_ right.
| mikkergp wrote:
| I can't find it now but I think a game developer wrote a
| while back what a game would be like if they listened to all
| customer feedback and it was a nightmare, it's like the homer
| designing a car episode of the Simpsons. I have to admit even
| sometimes my gut reaction to or a game or ideas would
| ultimately make the game too bloated / less fun.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > Then you have not dealt with real customers.
|
| This is a very bold assumption. Do you want to try some
| nuance here?
| kabdib wrote:
| Sure. I'll edit that down a bit.
|
| I have a fair amount of experience dealing with the type of
| customer who is _not_ great, and who would be great to get
| rid of. A net positive for everyone, if it were possible.
|
| Most customers are great. Some are not. Some are
| essentially (or demonstrably) criminals. At scale, it's a
| huge problem and very difficult to solve. The platitude
| "the customer is always right" is a fine principle until
| you need to deal with the real world of fraud, criminal
| activity and harassment.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| A lot of creatives have a hard time understanding the product
| side of art. Games are far more products like movies than they
| are "art".
|
| There have been a bunch of recent examples lately that showcases
| the minds of masses. Spiderman No Way Home did supremely well by
| giving the masses what they wanted, and not straying too far from
| the marvel formula.
|
| Sonic the Hedgehog Movie had a awful original art direction. The
| fans complained and the director reversed course, and now its a
| beloved and highly rated movie.
|
| Top Gun 2 is another great example. The tone, direction, spirit
| of the original movie is captured supremely well and is on track
| for a billion dollars.
|
| Pixar's Lightyear is a disappointment at the box office. Honestly
| who wanted a "realistic" version of Buzz from Toy Story. The
| tone, spirit, and art direction are too different.
|
| I think Ron made a horrible directorial mistake, and while he
| shouldn't be attacked for it. He does deserve criticism, and
| people should be allowed to voice their dislike for a product and
| its direction.
|
| As people on other sites have mentioned, this whole project has
| the feeling of the George Lucas Star Wars Prequels. George Lucas
| needed some honest feedback, and collaboration with other people
| like Kasdan. Ron Gilbert should have gotten some opinions from
| the original Monkey Island artists/Lucas Arts Crew.
| regentbowerbird wrote:
| > Games are far more products like movies than they are "art"
|
| Says whom? You demonstrate your points by showing that
| blockbusters make money, which says nothing about whether they
| are art. They're entirely different dimensions of the same
| work, and hard to compare. Obviously the accounting department
| will have a different point of view than the creative director.
|
| You're also arguing that people making new films on an existing
| franchise should stick to giving the fans what they want. But
| who's to say the fans even know what they want? They might not
| care, they might be mistaken, they might misremember things.
| For example, people clamoring for World of Warcraft Classic or
| a back-to-the-roots Sonic game back in the day weren't really
| hoping for a product per se, but rather to go back to a time
| when the product was more culturally relevant (and they were
| younger).
|
| A new direction can also capture a new audience, which might
| make fans negligible. For instance the Star Wars prequel are
| still divisive but a large, younger portion of the fandom likes
| them very much.
|
| And what fans are we talking about anyway? You give Spider-man
| as an example. But there have been thousand of pieces of
| Spider-man media, with wildly different art styles and tones.
| Which one is "what the fans want"? Disney went with the Marvel
| formula precisely because it's a lowest-common denominator
| style of film, accessible to non-fans.
|
| And finally another obvious problem with your thesis is that
| nothing new can be made if it is required to give to the masses
| what they want for sure. Almost by definition, it is unknown
| whether any new concept, style, tone, or property are what
| people want. At the same time it is known that the public at
| least somewhat values originality, so companies take risks and
| release films such as Pirates of the Caribbean or games like
| Assassin's Creed.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I don't think anyone is arguing that the art direction can't be
| criticized[0], just that Ron doesn't deserve abuse for it.
| Unfortunately "Gamers" includes a group of extremely entitled
| and vocal internet asshats who frequently do things like hurl
| death threats at developers for missing deadlines. Now they
| have chosen to harass a legend who shaped the very genre
| because he has offended their aesthetic sensibilities. It's
| ridiculous and no one should have to put up with that crap.
|
| [0] honestly I'm also a bit put off by it, but that might just
| be because it is unfamiliar, which isn't the same thing as bad.
| Besides, since I consider graphics to be one of the least
| important things in games I don't think it will affect my
| enjoyment that much.
| mikkergp wrote:
| > people should be allowed to voice their dislike for a product
| and its direction.
|
| Why? By "allowed to voice their disklike", I assume you mean
| outside of the privacy of their own home.
| rvieira wrote:
| I played the original ones and I would have preferred a pixel art
| closer to the original.
|
| That being said, I subscribe what Ron and many people here said.
| If you don't like it, don't buy it. There's no need for all
| vitriol. I will buy it the same, since for me Monkey Island was
| always about much more than the graphics.
|
| On top of everything, this is the actual _creator_ of all the
| games and stories' vision. It's not like it's some knock-off copy
| or money-grabbing reboot. If this is how he imagined the new
| Monkey Island we should at least be happy there's another one!
| izacus wrote:
| Pixel art like which of the originals? Monkey Island 3 and 4
| had nothing remotely resembling pixel art and were still
| beautiful.
| rob74 wrote:
| Like Ron Gilbert wrote in one of his previous blog posts,
| Monkey Island 1 and 2 were (what is today called) pixel art
| because pixel art was "state of the art" at that time. He
| already (co-)created a retro pixel art game with Thimbleweed
| Park, no need to do it again...
| rvieira wrote:
| I was talking about "Secret" and "LeChuck's Revenge". When
| "Curse" came out I was "too cool" for computer games. Now I'm
| back at being "lame" :)
| detritus wrote:
| Entirely off-topic, but this resonates so much for me - I
| think I went entirely off computer games for about three
| years, peaking around the age of 18. I left the world of
| the Amiga and then later got a PC for Uni and slipped into
| an entirely different gaming world, running at 5x the
| clockspeed. On school holidays I'd come back to an ever-
| failing disk collection, to the point I only had a
| shareware game called Galaxy Wars (I think?) and an install
| of SimAnt (on a 20Mb HD, lol), by which point it was clear
| that the Amiga was truly dead in the water!
|
| If there's one thing I'm looking forward to with this new
| MI, it's the updated theme tune, which sounds glorious. It
| WILL be my ringtone again!
| lentil_soup wrote:
| They were quite pretty but Ron Gilbert wasn't involved in MI3
| and 4. That's why this is a bit like a branch off MI2
| kemayo wrote:
| For Return in particular it does make sense to compare it to
| 1 and 2, since Return seems to be picking the series up where
| Gilbert left it and ignoring what others did since then.
|
| (For what it's worth, I remember Curse causing some
| controversy when it came out, because of that shift to the
| toon style from the original pixel aesthetic.)
| WorldMaker wrote:
| All indications are that while the game picks up threads
| from MI2 and _starts_ at the end of MI2, the bulk of the
| game may happen after Curse and even Tales. Ron has said
| multiple times that "it's all canon" and about the only
| things that he's acknowledged are kind of ret-conned around
| are some things that occurred in Escape, which even Tales
| partly ignored.
|
| We don't have much details yet on how exactly it fits into
| the canon as the game isn't out yet, but Ron has kept
| pointing out that Return _isn 't_ "MI3a" like he originally
| grumped an idea about, but a post-Tales Monkey Island game
| in just about all senses.
|
| Given Murray's involvement in the trailers to date, I think
| comparing the art style to Curse is more accurate,
| personally, and I think there's a loving conversation
| there. I like what I've seen of the art style so far. (But
| also I like Double Fine's "house style" and this clearly
| has DNA ties to that, too.)
| ArrayBoundCheck wrote:
| > I would have preferred a pixel art
|
| Nothing wrong with a preference but online everyone bikesheds
| this. I heard endless complaints about Wind Waker cel shaded
| graphics and that was one of peoples most favorite thing about
| the game.
|
| Sometimes I wonder how a site can disable or discourage
| bikeshedding in their comment section. It's probably impossible
| or needs so little traffic a moderator can handle it (1K
| comment per second is impossible)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It's not just gamers. The Internet has spawned a culture of "no
| consequences for letting your Id come out to play."
|
| If I walk up to Big Bad John, and call him a rude name, he will
| knock my teeth out.
|
| That's called "immediate negative feedback." Consequence
| immediately follows action.
|
| On the Internet (although this kind of thing predates the
| Internet. The Internet just commoditized it), this negative
| feedback loop is removed. The response is just more bad words,
| and a good troll learns to actually _savor_ this type of response
| (I know of what I speak. I was once ... _not so well-behaved_ ...
| on the Internet -even pre-WWW).
|
| Positive feedback is treated as "weak," or "syrupy" (to be fair,
| a lot of it is like _Cute Overload_ [0]), and folks who try to
| remain positive are usually relentlessly attacked. I know of
| this, because I try to remain positive, and not "go there," when
| confronted by negativity. I assume I come across as "Snotty"[1].
|
| Better than the alternative; believe you me...
|
| When I hear people defending extreme hate jockeys, they always
| say "[S]He's just saying what everyone is thinking."
|
| There's a _reason_ that we don 't say everything we think.
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/cuteoverload?lang=en
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP_gV2cWntg (James Hong's
| greatest role).
| [deleted]
| pessimizer wrote:
| > If I walk up to Big Bad John, and call him a rude name, he
| will knock my teeth out.
|
| Big Bad John is a strawman, because if Big Bad John was abusing
| his children or beating his wife, I wouldn't confront him
| either. I'd call the police. It doesn't reflect at all the
| legitimacy or illegitimacy of the criticism.
|
| Also, we should probably get over that pretense that anonymity
| ends brutal criticism. Plenty of people are happy to sign
| pretty brutal criticism, or even to make a brand out of it.
|
| The thing that it's easy to do is to attack "haters" or
| "cynics" because they don't really exist. They're what happens
| when people define other people's motivations by the effect on
| them personally. Somebody hates me? They're a "hater." Somebody
| says that something I think will work will definitely not work?
| They're a "cynic" that doesn't believe anything can improve and
| hate people who have retained the ability to dream.
|
| The same people leaving comments on this game encouraging the
| designers to kill themselves will agree completely with this
| reasoning, because it has very little content.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Big Bad John is a strawman, because if Big Bad John was
| abusing his children or beating his wife, I wouldn 't
| confront him either. I'd call the police. It doesn't reflect
| at all the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the criticism. Also,
| we should probably get over that pretense that anonymity ends
| brutal criticism. Plenty of people are happy to sign pretty
| brutal criticism, or even to make a brand out of it. The
| thing that it's easy to do is to attack "haters" or "cynics"
| because they don't really exist. They're what happens when
| people define other people's motivations by the effect on
| them personally. Somebody hates me? They're a "hater."
| Somebody says that something I think will work will
| definitely not work? They're a "cynic" that doesn't believe
| anything can improve and hate people who have retained the
| ability to dream. The same people leaving comments on this
| game encouraging the designers to kill themselves will agree
| completely with this reasoning, because it has very little
| content._
|
| So ... besides telling me what's _wrong_ with what I said, I
| don 't see much positive stuff, there, so I assume that what
| I said is completely worthless, since I was basically saying
| "I've tried negative, so now, I try positive." I didn't even
| phrase it in a way that tells others to do it (I've learned
| to avoid "you" a lot).
|
| That's OK. I'll keep doing it, anyway. I'm stupid, that way.
|
| BTW: I know a _whole bunch_ of folks, IRL, that have ... let
| 's say ... _a checkered past_ ... Probably not ones _I 'd_
| want to walk up and insult, but hey, if that's what you want
| to do, for kicks, knock yourself out. Nah ... scratch that.
| It will likely be done for you (but maybe not. Their
| "checkers" are in the past. That's kind of the point of it
| all) ...
|
| It's been a _great_ help, in managing my mouth (and Lord
| knows, I need all the help I can get, in that department).
|
| If you are US-based, have a great long weekend. Dogs hate
| this weekend.
| cptnapalm wrote:
| A Robert E. Howard quote I like: Civilized men are more
| discourteous than savages because they know they can be
| impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
| bitwize wrote:
| I don't like the art style either, but I see that as a "me"
| thing.
|
| Ron is one of the few people left developing the kinds of games
| _he_ would like to play. For that reason I 'm glad he's pressing
| on with it, with the art style he wants to see.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| A great burden has been lifted.
| shaggie76 wrote:
| I've been a professional game developer for 22 years and have
| definitely seen the amount of toxicity towards developers
| increase sharply in the last decade. Interestingly, though, some
| have suggested that this is not a bad thing, per-se.
|
| I believe it was a recent GDC talk where a Bungie dev who said
| something like "hate is only 2 degrees off from love." I think
| what he meant was, and I've heard this echoed from other
| developers, is that the fans are _so_ emotionally invested and
| want you to succeed and fulfill their fantasies in the game that
| when you fail or things aren 't quite right their love turns to
| hate in a blink of an eye. The theory is that you just have to
| listen to them and deal with their feedback no matter how rude it
| is and you can steer those 2 degrees back to love.
|
| I think there's something to that, but also I think a huge factor
| is the Free To Play model and how it's encouraged massive time-
| sinks into games which can create cognitive dissonance when the
| player has finally exhausted their interest. If a player has
| invested 3000 hours of their life, which I suspect in many cases
| matters more than putting in $50 or $100, being bored might make
| them feel guilty for their behaviour which quickly turns to anger
| and rage at the developer for letting them down and failing to
| continue to entertain them. This cycle only gets worse the longer
| they play because it's increasingly difficult for one game to
| have enough to offer after such a long time and so they get more
| bored but simultaneously more bitter that they've wasted so much
| time on it.
|
| Finally, burnout-rage is particularly bad for content creators
| which are serving a fan-base that's interested in a particular
| game. They might not even like the game that much but their add-
| revenue depends on an audience that wants to see content about
| it. I've seen numerous content creators go super-nova at the end
| when they finally break down and explode in bile (which, of
| course, includes performative outrage which is good for getting
| clicks too).
|
| The joy of sharing has been driven from me too.
| xwkd wrote:
| Hatred is a badge of honor for an artist. You've created
| something that stirs the passions. Would you prefer indifference?
|
| If you care so much about the opinions expressed by your
| audience, then maybe take a step back and look at the collective
| sentiment. This is an opportunity for growth and reflection, not
| to cry in some corner like a child who's taken his ball and gone
| home. You're a professional, Ron. What would a professional do
| with this feedback?
| superb-owl wrote:
| The vitriol in this article is really hard to read. Watching a
| creator get attacked liked that is sad. I want to say something
| snarky like "that's what you get for having anonymous unmoderated
| comments" but honestly I just wish we could not be assholes.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Guess what happens if 99.9% of people are not assholes.
| nineplay wrote:
| > whatever you do dont make it a leftist multiculti gender bs
|
| I see this as exhibit #1 "why we need diversity". Let us hope to
| see a day when it will be so common for a game to have characters
| in any variety of races, cultures, and genders that no one would
| call it leftist bs.
| ycombinete wrote:
| This reminds me of what happened to Phil Fish, who made Fez.
| Horrible.
| victorclf wrote:
| Seems he just found out how most people in the Internet don't
| produce anything worthwhile and yet feel entitled to bash
| everyone's else hard work.
| chomp wrote:
| Gamers are the most entitled consumer group I've ever seen. It's
| astounding. Someone wants to create something, and there's just
| so much hate and negativity on something that people didn't even
| pay for.
|
| I've seen it on HN also. Someone creates a thing, and then people
| pour out of the woodwork to lump horrible criticism. No one is
| asking for blind praise for what they create, but surely there's
| a middle ground between blind praise and mob bullying?
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Very true, 'gamers' are a strange bunch, not the average person
| that plays a few games but those that fully identify with that
| label.
|
| Huge amount of tribalism too, over which platform they
| 'support', they believe just because they use a particular
| service then they can expect all sorts of demands on it, rather
| than just casually playing whatever game they want on whatever
| platform they like.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's more than gamers as you notice, it's the whole 'self-
| reinforcing internet cycle' - if the first reaction is X, that
| will be amplified tremendously as everyone piles on to agree
| with X.
|
| This goes for both for and against, but against is usually
| easier. Famous examples include Dropbox (here), iPod
| (Slashdot), etc.
| manmal wrote:
| The Dropbox thread was not super negative, I just looked at
| it again.
|
| If your product is useful, there will be positive feedback.
| Haters gonna hate, that's always been the case.
| munificent wrote:
| This is one of the main reasons I was happy to leave the game
| industry after eight years of doing it.
|
| Working incredibly hard to build a product served to a group of
| people that are often hurtful emotionally stunted man-children
| is just a deeply demoralizing experience.
|
| Obviously, many gamers aren't like that. But a fucking whole
| lot of them are, and they are extremely vocal, and it doesn't
| take many of them to suck the joy out of the job.
|
| Imagine a bar where every time you walked in the door a half
| dozen dudes invariably turned around on their barstools and
| told you your clothes look like shit, your face is disgusting,
| you hair style is stupid, you smell like trash and, you should
| just fucking kill yourself now. How often would you want to go
| there?
|
| Unfortunately, I think games themselves often encourage this
| mentality. Most games are about making the player feel
| empowered inside a virtual universe that exists purely for
| their own exploitation and satisfaction. The whole point of
| playing games is to get an escape from the consequences of our
| actions.
|
| People that are strongly drawn to that or spend too much time
| in that mindset are basically training themselves for a toxic
| mindset when it comes to interacting with actual humans.
|
| I think a lot about this talk by Max Kreminski:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvlZinAvpwg
|
| In there, if I remember right, he refers to many games as
| "entitlement simulators", which is a profound truth.
| jpe90 wrote:
| I'm glad you're in a better industry now, and I'm extremely
| grateful that you wrote up your blog posts and books while
| dealing with that. They've been instrumental to my journey in
| programming.
| munificent wrote:
| Thanks, I'm glad I'm not in games now too, though I'm not
| bitter about the time I spent doing it. There are some
| downsides like infantile gamers and crunch, but a lot of
| upsides too. Making software designed purely to entertain
| and bring joy to people can be really gratifying. Getting
| to work with interdisciplinary teams with artists,
| designers, and audio people is a rare but very rewarding
| experience.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| "entitlement simulators" what? I'm sorry but how are
| Fortnite, Call of Duty, Elden Ring, Minecraft, etc
| entitlement simulators? That's really scraping the bottom of
| the barrel for a narrative there. Lol at "speedrunning" being
| an indicator of colonialism impulse. It's as if the author of
| that talk is looking at the world through entitlement tinted
| glasses, heavily steeped in anti-colonialism and
| postmodernism and cannot see anything but.
|
| Any time you run any kind of business, whether it's retail or
| video game production, your most vocal feedback will be
| negative. People are 10x more likely to complain about a bad
| experience than rave about a good experience. Social media
| just makes it easier to amplify the negative feedback, since
| it's far more likely to go viral. Add to that the fact that
| people can get clout and even earn their own following from
| doing entertaining takedowns of bad games and you get an
| adversarial attention economy that people pick up on. You
| really have to develop a thick skin and roll with the
| punches.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Completely agree with you. No idea why you're being
| downvoted.
| barrysteve wrote:
| He refers to open world games that don't push back against
| the player, as feeding a colonialist desire to conquer and
| complete. He posits that the player never learns that he
| can't have it all and thus learns to be entitled.
|
| Not sure if entitled is the right word as a lot were power
| fantasies that focused on rising stats and increasing combat
| abilities, rather than strictly speaking titles. The pursuit
| of more flowing rewards naturally drags the player into a
| position which looks like entitlement.
|
| Morrowind did it better than the later open world games, you
| had to level up a lot to access dangerous areas that could
| kill you. The dumbing down and excessive ease in games had
| been commented on since the original prince of persia.
|
| The games community acts like a bucket of crabs, pulling down
| anything above it and ripping it apart to feed. The greed for
| more digital nurturance is exactly why the industry is
| profitable and getting the drug just right is an art. But the
| greed is also what drives the crabby trash talk.
| xg15 wrote:
| Just wanting to note that a lot of the hate is coming from
| gamers who complain about games being "too easy", "too
| dumbed down" or "too casual".
|
| Chalking this up to modern games not having enough grinding
| honestly feels like exactly that kind of crab mentality
| itself.
| barrysteve wrote:
| >Chalking this up to modern games not having enough
| grinding honestly feels like exactly that kind of crab
| mentality itself.
|
| Hope my post didn't come across that way. Morrowind's
| storyline and side-quests didn't feel grindy and learning
| how to break the system and level up quicker was part of
| the fun back then, before internet guides were a normal
| way to break the meta.
|
| Skill has gotten really 'unpleasant', there's a lot of
| first person shooters that have features that require a
| lot of unnecessary discernment. Recoil that doesn't act
| the way it should, wikis full of extra item knowledge
| needed, dual monitor just for maps, hyper-precise timing
| and firing. A whole raft of "unfixed bugs" left in the
| game that you have to know. It's not so fun to be
| skillful at a game.
|
| Getting through Prince of Persia in one go without
| resetting feels heroic. Killing some random guy in an fps
| because he didn't understand the recoil mechanics and
| getting a bunch of loot is just abusive.
|
| I can understand people wanting skill and difficulty that
| feels good and willfully accomplished against the odds.
| 3qz wrote:
| > Imagine a bar where every time you walked in the door a
| half dozen dudes invariably turned around on their barstools
| and told you your clothes look like shit, your face is
| disgusting, you hair style is stupid
|
| It's real and it's every gay bar
| belfalas wrote:
| _> Imagine a bar where every time you walked in the door a
| half dozen dudes invariably turned around on their barstools
| and told you your clothes look like shit, your face is
| disgusting, you hair style is stupid, you smell like trash
| and, you should just fucking kill yourself now. How often
| would you want to go there?_
|
| Replace the word 'bar' with 'school' and this sounds like a
| write-up of my much of my pre-university experience.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Indeed, my life began the morning after I graduated high
| school. The only people from then whom I'm _not_ in touch
| with but would like to be, have unsearchable common names
| and don 't sign up for those class reunion websites.
|
| (I know, I know, I could find them with more effort. But
| really, why bother?)
| rurp wrote:
| I did not enjoy high school. Others have had it worse,
| but it was mostly something I had to endure.
|
| A teacher in my senior year said something about how some
| students have the time of their life in high school,
| while others turn the page after graduating and never
| look back. Despite being an obvious thought, it kind of
| blew my mind at the time. The idea that I could choose to
| have a completely different life as soon as the school
| year finished filled me with all sorts of positive
| thoughts. Unsurprisingly I loved college and the newfound
| freedom I had to make more decisions about my life.
|
| I guess the takeaway I have is that high school sucks
| more than it needs to for many students, and reminding
| kids struggling through it that things can get much
| better afterwards can be emotionally helpful.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| You were lucky. I wish someone had said that to me.
| corrral wrote:
| I'm convinced that junior high and high school, at least in
| the US, amount to mass child abuse. Like, structurally,
| that's just _what they are_ , almost unavoidably without
| totally changing how they work.
|
| Even decent school experiences are, by the standards of the
| adult world, crazy-bad.
|
| How many people have anxiety-nightmares for a decade or
| more after graduating high school? How many unavoidable
| experiences in life so consistently generate that kind of
| thing? How many develop sleep disorders in school, that
| follow them for life? Depression? They're really, really
| bad.
|
| I had a _quite good_ school experience and that ~6-year
| span is still, as I approach 40, far and away the worst
| part of my life. It 's not even close. Nothing else half
| that bad has lasted even one year, let alone six.
| jjav wrote:
| > I'm convinced that junior high and high school, at
| least in the US, amount to mass child abuse. Like,
| structurally, that's just what they are, almost
| unavoidably without totally changing how they work.
|
| > Even decent school experiences are, by the standards of
| the adult world, crazy-bad.
|
| Why is that? What is different about US schools?
|
| I (nor my spouse) have any experience with US mid & high
| school but I hear things like this so I worry, having a
| young child now in the US, still many years away from
| high school.
|
| In contrast, I can't think of anything bad about my (non-
| US) high school days. As a math geek I certainly wasn't
| in any hip group, but everyone was nice and it was a good
| experience. Now 30+ years later we're all still in touch
| and have reunions and meet whenever paths cross and
| remember those days fondly.
| corrral wrote:
| - ~8 hours in school per day, often in buildings with
| minimal natural lighting. During the Winter, this may
| mean almost no sunlight all day (no recess, like in
| elementary school). Wanna make people depressed and give
| them SAD that'll stick with them long after they're
| adults? Just do this to them for a few years.
|
| - Intense workload. We consider it bad when a job takes
| more than 8 hours a day from you. Schools routinely take
| 10 or more (math classes were the main culprit, at least
| in my case). Hope you don't have _any_ other plans... oh
| look, many kids do, so now they 're in _actual hell_.
|
| - To add to the above: super-strict and rapid turnaround
| expectations on work. You _cannot_ put something off
| until tomorrow because you 're feeling really bad today--
| it was only assigned today, sure, but it's due tomorrow.
| Some stuff had longer timelines, but many things were the
| due-within-24-hours sort (again, largely math's fault, at
| least in my case)
|
| - Bizarre mind games where people tell you insane stuff
| like "enjoy this, these are the best years of your life"
| and "you think this is bad, just wait until you're in the
| real world! This is just trying to get you ready for the
| expectations of adult life!" Like, I've not _only_ worked
| cushy high-paid white-collar jobs, and I 've never worked
| in an environment remotely as bad as school grades 7-12,
| nor with those kinds of strict expectations, nor with
| such inhumane treatment. When a workplace is consistently
| _close to_ as bad as school, it 's news (Amazon
| warehouses).
|
| - Jail-like conditions. Need to stretch? Need a quick
| stroll for your legs? Need to take a piss? Beg the boss
| and hope they're in a good mood. Granted, some workplaces
| are like this too (again: Amazon warehouses), but most of
| those at least give you a couple 15-minute breaks in
| addition to your lunch (passing periods don't count,
| they're typically only 5 minutes and you'll spend most of
| that grabbing your stuff and getting from A to B)
|
| - Sitting in classes all day is about as bad and
| mentally/physically exhausting as sitting in meetings all
| day, for similar reasons. Ask most people how they feel
| after a full day of meetings. Expand that to a whole
| week. Expand that whole week to 6 damn years. Yikes.
|
| All of that is _purely_ about the schools themselves,
| setting aside their _strong_ tendency to foster awful,
| abusive, bullying dynamics that students _cannot escape_
| , both among students _and staff_. Or problems with
| school start times and teen sleep patterns (shit, as an
| _adult_ I 've rarely needed to wake up at 6:50 for
| anything, and if I did and I hated it I'd at least have
| _some_ realistic hope of finding a way to change that
| pretty quickly)
|
| I think all that makes it survivable (and I mean that
| literally) are the Summers and multiple long holiday
| breaks. When school's in session, it is _brutal_ like few
| other involuntary (or de facto involuntary) activities
| are.
|
| [EDIT] OH! And crazy-high expectations of self-
| organization and perfectionism. Here in the "real world",
| honest mistakes are taken in stride and my schedule and
| work-tracking are much simpler, plus I have a ton of
| support on those things. Even college tends to be far
| more lenient on those things than high school.
|
| Again, I had a pretty damn good school experience, as
| those go, and my school wasn't one of those high-pressure
| ones you hear about in SV or wherever, and it was _still_
| terrible in these ways.
| jjav wrote:
| Interesting response. Most of the above points sound to
| me like saying school was bad because there were classes
| and one had to study and do projects. I mean, sure, kids
| would rather play all day but there's nothing bad about
| having classes and having to study.
|
| My school days were shorter at 6 hours, although if one
| wanted to do any of the extracurricular clubs you'd end
| up hanging out at school 1-3 hours afterwards. Most kids
| did, but it was optional.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Covid has made this even worse, as they are not poorly
| ventilated disease pits.
|
| I've met homeschooled kids. They are fine. A cousin was
| Waldorf schooled from K through 12. He's turned out
| great.
|
| And what you describe is the better schools.
|
| The bad schools are even worse. And the really really bad
| schools are even worse. People who live near them and can
| manage either move, or scrape the money to send the kids
| to Catholic or private schools.
| gverrilla wrote:
| Children and catholics are a VERY dangerous combination.
| Please protect the infants.
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44209971
| jdlshore wrote:
| It's not just US schools. I have a distant relation in
| Norway who suffers severe bullying in her school. In
| contrast to the Portland schools my kids go to, teachers
| take a hands-off approach to bullying, believing that
| it's the kids' responsibility to resolve it themselves.
| akulbe wrote:
| Portland schools _suck_. The elementary school down the
| road from us was doing some crazy s*t a few years ago,
| bunch of neighbors pulled their kids out.
| 0x20cowboy wrote:
| Gangs and guns.
|
| I was beat to the ground several times a month all of
| high school - often by 3 or 4 people. I took care of my
| friend after having been stabbed at a party. 2 of my
| friends were killed before I graduated. I've been shot at
| and had guns pulled on me "for fun".
|
| The education was terrible as well, but I don't blame the
| teachers or staff. They were doing the best they could.
| corrral wrote:
| Outright _bad_ schools in the US are _incredibly_ bad. I
| had no idea how bad until my spouse substitute-taught at
| a couple of them, a few years back. Like, fear-for-your-
| life-every-day bad. Like, there 's a 100% chance that at
| least one kid you're in class with will be in prison for
| killing a classmate before you graduate. That kind of
| bad. That's a whole other matter from completely ordinary
| US schools being a very bad experience, and far more
| grave. Those places are straight-up misery machines.
| Shameful monuments to our moral inadequacy.
|
| I think the difference as far as how the problems might
| be addressed, is that ordinary schools are bad in ways
| that are basically _on purpose_ , while the worst US
| schools are bad largely due to _catastrophic society-wide
| failures_ that aren 't really the school's fault, and
| hardly within their ability to even _begin to_ fix.
| nineteen999 wrote:
| > Why is that? What is different about US schools?
|
| Might be tangential to your point and that of the parent
| poster, but the threat of gun violence in US schools for
| a start.
| zac23or wrote:
| > Gamers are the most entitled consumer group I've ever seen
|
| True, but Some open source communities are good candidates for
| "most entitled consumers".
|
| > I've seen it on HN also I will ever remember the launch of
| Dropbox here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
| jjulius wrote:
| The positive-to-negative comment ratio in that thread is
| overwhelmingly in favor of positive. A couple of the top-
| voted posts are more critical, sure, but once you scroll past
| those it's full of support and inquisitiveness.
|
| Edit: Even the person who posted the top-ranked comment, with
| the more negative tone, ended their follow-up response with,
| "All of your feedback was well-thought-out and appreciated; I
| only hope that I was able to give you a sneak preview of some
| of the potential criticisms you may receive. Best of luck to
| you!".
| zac23or wrote:
| > A couple of the top-voted posts are more critical
|
| A lot of people have the same critical opinion, only they
| didn't comment.
| jjulius wrote:
| If we're going to assume that people agree with the post,
| then we should also be assuming that people agreed with
| OP's general tone, which really doesn't read as negative
| criticism so much as constructive criticism. Again, OP's
| second post was basically, "Appreciate your response to
| my feedback, best of luck!". Heck, if we're looking at
| "people who agree based on upvotes alone" then "This is
| genius, because so many people have this problem," is the
| second highest-voted comment.
|
| There's constructive criticism (the Dropbox thread) and
| unconstructive criticism (the Monkey Island thread).
| zac23or wrote:
| The tone here is controlled by the mods.
|
| I don't see "hey, your job is super easy" as constructive
| criticism. I see this as an inability to judge your own
| knowledge and the efforts of others.
|
| But, yes, the tone is super polite.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| What does dropbox have to do with "open source communities"
| zac23or wrote:
| Some open source communities are worse than gamers in some
| cases.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| Dropbox has nothing to do with open source communities,
| nor is HN an open source community.
| 0des wrote:
| How long until they realize they left all this
| proprietary software open to the public
| https://github.com/dropbox
| legitster wrote:
| I'm not sure I believe this. There is an entire industry that
| revolves around video essays of how George Lucas personally
| ruined childhoods. The difference is that George Lucas lives
| behind a wall between creator and audience.
|
| The difference with video games is that developers themselves
| build parasocial communities for their games. Playtesting and
| marketing are so interlinked.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > I've seen it on HN also. Someone creates a thing, and then
| people pour out of the woodwork to lump horrible criticism.
|
| I said this a while ago as well[1], but there's a strong bias
| towards people who are unhappy with $something (for any value
| of $something). If you think everything is just great then you
| don't actually all that much to say beyond "hey, looks great!"
| Sometimes you can expand that to a paragraph of two about what
| you like, but overall it's hard to write a substantive comment.
| But if you're not happy with something then it's much easier to
| write a paragraph or two about what you're unhappy with.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31454200
| proc0 wrote:
| The problem is that the game industry is constantly doing bait
| and switch, at least for the last decade. They promise a great
| product, and then the product is mediocre at best and full of
| shameless monetization.
|
| Non-gamers may not understand the difference between a pay-to-
| win mobile game, and a story-driven RPG action PC game. They're
| both called "games", but they're in fact different products
| with different experience. Many of the game companies that made
| a name with "proper" games are now using the same franchises to
| create low budget cash grabs.
|
| I think gamers are just asking for companies to stop destroying
| existing franchises in the name of making more money, and often
| in the name of some ideology. If we say, well that is their
| right, it's their IP, then gamers also have a right to express
| their feelings on the matter.
| moolcool wrote:
| > The problem is that the game industry is constantly doing
| bait and switch, at least for the last decade
|
| I don't understand this complaint. Just don't preorder games,
| and don't buy games before reviews drop.
| proc0 wrote:
| I'm not complaining, but rather explaining why there is so
| much controversy with every other title.
|
| People have expectations when companies announce a sequel
| to something they have already invested in before. That's
| where the most bait and switch takes place. Companies use
| the nostalgia as marketing and then blame their core
| audience, that has contributed to growth of the franchise
| since the beginning, when it doesn't do as well.
|
| I don't think I've seen a new IP get this criticism. It's
| usually previously established IPs, and sometimes they're
| old IP's from decades ago being resurrected because of
| their initial success, yet they change it up as if that
| initial success never mattered.
| extrememacaroni wrote:
| Hackernews comments are basically a concrete instance of "the
| dogs bark but the caravan moves on".
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Counterpoint: I used to feel the same way about the
| entitlement. Then I stopped and thought about how many "hours
| worked" the average game costs for a person on minimum wage.
| While the minimum wage has risen dramatically in my area, to at
| least $12/hr, with games costing upwards of $80 now, that's
| still almost 2 full days, after taxes. It's easy to forget when
| people on this board are probably all making at least low 6
| figures. It doesn't forgive being a wanker about it, but it
| does help explain the angst over wanting every purchase to be a
| 10/10 game.
| michaelgrafl wrote:
| Being disappointed and being rude are two different things.
| munificent wrote:
| I don't think economics have anything measurable to do with
| this.
|
| I've seen entitled rants from gamers yelling at the developer
| _while also publicly admitting that they pirated the game._
|
| People pay money for clothes and food too and you don't see
| them posting thirty-minute screeds on YouTube about how they
| don't like the pattern of this shirt they just got.
| burkaman wrote:
| Nobody has purchased this game, it isn't out yet. These are
| reactions to a freely released trailer.
| manmal wrote:
| Even more so for teenagers. They might save up for a whole
| month to be able to afford an AAA game.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| That same economic analysis plays unfavorably the other
| direction: games right now are among the cheapest
| $/entertainment-hour value of any "modern" entertainment
| industry right now. Even if you only got 60 hours out of that
| $80 game, which is still the "entitled minimum" in many
| gamers' minds, that still $1.33 per entertainment-hour. You
| aren't going to find that at the movie theaters or on Blu-
| Ray. Maybe you can find better deals in streaming: if you
| only pay the $20/month for Netflix and maybe get 20-30
| entertainment-hours per month you can beat that. If on the
| other hand you like so many others are paying for more than
| one streaming service you probably aren't anywhere near that
| in your spend on entertainment-hours.
|
| That $80 videogame can still feed (entertainment to) a family
| of four for months.
| manmal wrote:
| Many games for $80 only provide 6-10h of genuine
| entertainment. Playing them through multiple times often
| gets old quickly.
| m463 wrote:
| I think the cost correlates pretty well with the effort of
| producing the game.
|
| I offer as a comparison the wireless providers with 60%
| corporate profits that _everyone_ pays - with a job or
| without one.
|
| (although I do dislike the psychological manipulation and
| personal-info gathering games that grown)
| tomcam wrote:
| Compelling argument. Still, let me attempt a counter-
| counterpoint: $80 games tend to give 40+ hours of play, or
| $2/hour and the chance to play again. A movie in the theater
| is upwards of $20 and yields maybe 2 hours of entertainment,
| or $10/hour, and no ownership.
|
| Plus in both cases you can wait a while for reviews to come
| in.
| setr wrote:
| Movies aren't the right comparison; they're efficient.
|
| Video games operate more like TV -- with lots of filler
| that you don't want but can put up with, and can't really
| skip because there's probably something notable
| interspersed (intentionally, to make it unskippable).
|
| Honestly I've found that I can extract the vast majority of
| value from most single player games in a few hours (core
| mechanics and their interrelationships, anything
| interesting from the setting/world building/themes,
| aesthetic design, etc); some games can keep on trucking...
| but most of them are far longer than they are valuable.
| bena wrote:
| Think about how many hours worked the average game takes to
| make.
| BrainVirus wrote:
| _> Gamers are the most entitled consumer group I've ever seen._
|
| Replace "gamers" with "book readers" and it should become
| obvious why this is not an insightful comment, but rather an
| expression of some kind of existential angst mixed with
| outdated stereotypes. Gamers ceased being a distinct consumer
| group when the medium of games went mainstream and ceased to
| heave anything resembling a coherent subculture.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| "People who consume games" and "Gamers" are not necessarily
| the same group though? Just as the two groups of "people who
| have read a book" and "people who consider themselves A
| Reader of Books" both exist. The fact that there is a broader
| category doesn't make the narrower one useless.
|
| From my personal experiences absolutely there is a group of
| people you could reasonably call "Gamers" and performing
| dramatic consumer entitlement is definitely part of their
| culture!
| BrainVirus wrote:
| _> "People who consume games" and "Gamers" are not
| necessarily the same group though?_
|
| How do you know if someone posting a random nasty comment
| on the internet is a "Gamer"? How do you know if someone
| posting a nice comment is not?
|
| You're projecting identity on people and then project
| attributes onto that identity. Most likely you're
| unconsciously selecting who to project the identity onto
| based on the same attributes. This creates a feedback loop.
| This is literally how stereotypes are constructed and
| reinforced.
| jayd16 wrote:
| It would be better to talk about the posting itself. Game
| post culture seems angrier than book review culture even
| if the community overlaps. I think this is what is meant
| when people talk about "gamers".
| lattalayta wrote:
| I feel the same way. I think critiques and criticisms have
| their place, but the internet does seem full of people ready to
| complain. The quote from the critic in Ratatouille always comes
| to mind
|
| _In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very
| little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work
| and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative
| criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter
| truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of
| things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful
| than our criticism designating it so..._
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Because unmoderated internet comment sections on non-gaming
| topics are such wholesome and positive places?
| BrainVirus wrote:
| At least someone here gets it. Except the emphasis on
| moderation. YouTube comments are triple-moderated (by
| algorithms, by channel owners and by Alphabet contractors)
| and still are a cesspool. Think about that.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I added "unmoderated" because comment sections that are
| entirely pre-moderated by a human who cares aren't that bad
| (it's just way too much work to do so for any site that is
| at all well known).
| [deleted]
| oops555 wrote:
| obiefernandez wrote:
| Apparently you haven't dealt with NFT "investors"
| vasco wrote:
| Most hours gamed are by kids, of course they're gonna be nasty,
| have you ever seen an unsupervised kid without threat of
| physical violence for being shitty to other kids?
|
| The fact that people care about an insult or attack in a
| comment section of a random site they read about a game is what
| surprises me. What lives some people must live for this to be
| something that even registers as an annoyance.
| dgb23 wrote:
| I don't think most of these types of comments come from kids.
| "Entitled gamer culture" seems to be similar to any kind of
| culture around fandom, escapism, entertainment and sports.
| Some people just love to obsess about things and take their
| opinions super seriously, especially if they don't know what
| they are talking about.
| novok wrote:
| I actually do think the reason why gamers tend to be
| nastier as a group comes from them having a large group of
| children and teenagers. The vast majority of a group are
| lurkers, so you only need a small percentage of vocal jerks
| to make it worse. I bet most of the jerks and trolls in the
| gaming world probably skew younger vs. total gamer
| population.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Its a big mix of tech-literacy, lack of empathy in anonymous
| posts compared to in person interactions, and the main
| demographic being in peak pubescent angst.
|
| Recently I feel like there's a large performative element to it
| as well. Like virtue signaling but without the virtue. I guess
| its just one incarnation of in crowd bullying. Hipsterism and
| the like, but this current incarnation has a lot more anger to
| it.
| tehjoker wrote:
| It's kind of strange. I rarely play games except a few best
| sellers maybe once or twice a year when I binge them (eg
| Horizon or Resident Evil). Because I see them so infrequently
| perhaps, whenever I play a new game I am astonished at the
| level of detail and amount of beautiful and well thought out
| content and feel lucky to be given such a large gift so
| cheaply (amortizing the hardware costs of course...).
|
| People that play more frequently I think have higher
| expectations because they are so tapped in they know what's
| new and what's old but it takes so much effort to create a
| novel experience that game designers have created a kind of
| red queen race for themselves.
|
| This isn't too say there aren't pointed critiques that can be
| made of the industry that mainly relate to profit seeking
| behavior (gambling, excessive grinding, lack of variety, etc)
| but it would be good if gamers could back off the intensity
| to these more important areas.
| sph wrote:
| The Monkey Island audience is not made of teenagers. Plenty
| of commenters on that site are fully grown 30, 40 or 50 year
| old entitled adults. It's so easy to blame teens when many
| people are jerkwads and get even worse as they age.
|
| Have you ever seen older people on the Internet? Those that
| are too old to be "digital native" and to have learned proper
| internet etiquette? They can be as psychopathic as any angry
| 13yo redditor.
| jayd16 wrote:
| I was speaking more generally as to what could have formed
| such a culture and why games might be different than
| others.
| shaky-carrousel wrote:
| That is what was going through my mind while reading it.
| Entitled brats. They are a bunch of entitled brats.
| RajT88 wrote:
| You can imagine a bunch of nasty teenagers posting stuff like
| that, but fun fact: Most MI fans are likely to be over 30.
| (Many over 40)
| michaelgrafl wrote:
| Well, they're gamers. Not that anything's wrong with playing
| video games, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're on average
| less mature than the general population.
|
| I think I'll play through the first two parts with my children
| and if they're interesed I'll get this one as well.
| dgb23 wrote:
| You see the same kind of stuff from book/movie/sports fans.
| headelf wrote:
| The website is literally called 'grumpy gamer' so I'm not sure
| what the expectation was here
| WorldMaker wrote:
| To be fair, some of this is indeed "crankiness returned"
| given how much of the vitriol seems almost directly based on
| Ron's older "If I..." written on a grumpy day post. Though I
| still wouldn't wish a 100x or 1000x return on grumpiness to
| anyone, and that seems to be the case here.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Verifying that we are talking to real, authentic humans is going
| to be crucial for the future of the internet. Maybe not "real
| name" policy but let's answer the question, "How do I know I am
| having a conversation that is as authentic as meeting someone on
| the sidewalk?".
| floren wrote:
| The behavior of the commenters is pretty abhorrent. It feels
| awful to make something you're excited about, put it out there,
| and get shit on by the people you _thought_ you were making it
| for!
|
| Now, there _is_ something about the animation style that made me
| think "oh, this feels kind of cheap". Something in the loose-
| limbed and kind of weightless movement of the characters. I had
| to think about it for a while, then I realized it felt like the
| character animations in the "Fallout Shelter" mobile game
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhOM8dGuHgM) and I guess the
| association with a microtransaction-based mobile game made me
| think "cheap".
|
| But I'm an adult, so I don't go and tell the creator he should
| kill himself just because my brain made this weird connection.
| Criticism is valid and important, but I think too many people
| watched those stupid AVGN videos in their formative years and got
| a warped view of what criticism should look like.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| It's funny because for all the focus on the graphics, for me, the
| most exciting thing was to hear the old comedy style again.
|
| Guybrush mannishly claiming his veins are flowing with stale
| grog? Yeah right, who are ya tryna kid, kid. No wonder Murray was
| cackling.
| MBCook wrote:
| GamerGate was just a preview.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Oh wow. Let's hope the old saying "there is no bad publicity"
| turns out true and at the very least, all this outrage will make
| everyone aware that there's a new Monkey Island.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| In the distant past (when the other monkey games came out) if you
| loved something you could put out effort to say something nice
| about it. But if you didn't like it, you wouldn't bother.
|
| Now the threshold for complaining about or trash talking
| something is nearly zero, so here we have everyone on equal
| speech/public platform footing and we hear everything. It's sad,
| but also reality.
|
| He would have quit after the first game (1990?) if the internet
| was as widely accessible and used back then.
| zac23or wrote:
| In my experience, people in general have little ability to judge
| anything. I went through some peer reviews and in one case some
| workers did not understand some terms on the questionnaire (such
| as "proactive"). Anyway, the most popular people get ten for
| being proactive. The internet only make this worse, because in
| the Internet everyone is "anonymous".
|
| I ignore 99% of judgments, I only start listening if there is a
| "because" in the judgment: "It's not good, because"... of course,
| the "because" needs to make sense.
| draw_down wrote:
| WBrentWilliams wrote:
| Going meta (note the lack of capitalization and insert your own
| joke here) I would say that the stress of running comments on
| your own blog, in any form, costs more most of the time as
| compared to sending the comments to places like HN, Reddit, and
| the like. I can see where size of concern means that you engage
| and host comments on your own site. However, it also seems to be
| that running a comment space in service of sharing something made
| and/or selling a product is the equivalent of painting a wall a
| nice, pristine white in a highly visible and accessible place and
| then getting mad at that same wall getting tagged with graffiti.
|
| In other words, I am sorry that the Ron Glibert got burned, and I
| sympathize, but it seems to me that YouTube (where the video is
| hosted) runs a perfectly serviceable comments site that you can
| turn on and off. No need to run your own (unless you want to).
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| Something I've increasingly felt is that nobody should feel like
| they're under any obligation to read comments on what they do or
| replies to what they say. In the days before the internet the
| options for direct feedback to an author or creator were limited
| and often the author or creator could or would just ignore them.
| It was considered a good idea! Now people have things like forums
| for their games or comments on their articles and for some reason
| I don't understand feel compelled to engage with them. They
| shouldn't. It's okay to just make what you want to make or write
| what you want to write and ignore any and all response to it. If
| your works are valuable and enjoyed then great, if not so be it.
| But subjecting yourself to the most obsessive and neurotic
| segment of your audience is just a recipe for misery. There's
| little to no benefit to it. You don't owe anything to anyone.
| wiceo wrote:
| I agree. People who have a gripe or criticism are more inclined
| to comment than a person who enjoys the product. It reminds me
| of the old saying "assholes always advertise." It's best to
| ignore or take those comments with a grain of salt. However,
| that's often easier said than done.
| frazbin wrote:
| The art style feels like an homage to Grim Fandango, one of my
| favorite adventure games. I don't understand the hate at all.
| rasz wrote:
| The only thing in common with Grim Fandango is universal lack
| of human noses on all the characters.
| [deleted]
| causality0 wrote:
| Is it just me or does the art style in the earlier trailer look
| almost nothing like the style in this one? I can't say I like the
| change. The old one was kind of cool with transparency and
| lighting effects and this looks very flat.
| mattiperakyla wrote:
| gamers are psychos
| l30n4da5 wrote:
| I like to think it is more just a very vocal minority that are
| psychos.
| icu wrote:
| I think you got to discount points of view from the perspective
| of how valuable their perspective is to your goal. The problem
| with social media and open forums is that it's not obvious and
| takes time to figure out who's who.
|
| Having said that, it seems a little childish to me that Ron just
| shut down the haters. I think that there might be a bit of his
| ego attached to the outcome versus the process. I can only
| speculate that perhaps he wanted recognition and adulation for
| this bold choice and was hurt when feedback didn't match
| expectations.
|
| Sure people might be rude about it, but it seems that there is
| clearly a market for the retro pixelated aesthetic, so why not
| give people what they want if his goal is to satisfy the fan base
| and continue the story? I have no doubt the story, set,
| characters and jokes will be great. I guess the comment asking
| for Ron to do a Sonic might have been too on the nose for him.
|
| I think that any creator has to reconcile that if they create for
| others, their art becomes something more than just theirs, like a
| sort of reflexive co-creation.
|
| Seems to me the best artists understand this while not letting it
| stifle their creativity.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > it seems a little childish to me that Ron just shut down the
| haters.
|
| Maybe, but there are too many comments for a flat page like
| that to be useful anyway (other than the first 50 or so
| comments.) Nothing of value was lost.
| karaterobot wrote:
| The healthiest thing for a creative person to do is ignore
| reviews, and not pay attention to comments about your work.
| Mentally, and emotionally, and creatively, I mean. Your job is to
| make things that other people can appreciate, or not, but you
| don't need to listen to them if you don't want to. Active
| community engagement is a fairly recent phenomenon, and it's a
| marketing technique, not an artistic one. I'm sure it works for
| some people, but don't feel like _you_ need to do it if it causes
| you pain, and not, by any means, if it makes it harder to do your
| job.
|
| It may feel necessary in 2022 to engage with fans and build a
| personal brand, but go ahead and audit the creators you really
| respect, and how many of them do this. Some do, I'm sure, but
| some don't.
| kemayo wrote:
| I think Gilbert got hit hard by this because he's been running
| this personal blog since 2004, and suddenly getting a _flood_
| of shitty comments can 't be fun.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Yeah, up until Return's announcement, it was a very quiet old
| school blog with a tiny readership (raises hand), one of very
| few left. It survived a long time without getting faced with
| modern internet communities and Reddit/HN hugs of death.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| I feel bad for him, but really the problem is he's made a
| directorial mistake and it looks like the only point it's gonna
| click is when the sales numbers hit.
|
| Will he realize his mistaken then or will he continue to blame
| the customer?
| norwalkbear wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Top Gun 2 is great example of understanding the audience. it
| was a love letter to the fans.
|
| Gilbert made it all about himself with no awareness of what
| other people thought. That's his biggest mistake. He keeps
| saying he making the game HE wants to make. He really doesn't
| care about the fans, and they noticed. I strongly suspect it
| will only get uglier between the deep monkey island fans who
| kept the brand alive and Gilbert.
|
| If Ron wants to make art, then make art. But Monkey Island was
| never art for the sake of art. A far more successful revival
| that pleased the fans was Broken Sword 5.
| poszlem wrote:
| I could not agree more. A lot of game producers get this
| arrogant approach of: "Making games would be such awesome job
| if it wasn't for those pesky gamers".
|
| The question here is: "Is this a really innovative graphical
| design that will get praised by future generations but is
| misunderstood now" or "Is this just a bad decision that the
| creator is unwilling to own". I tend to think it's the latter.
| Ultimately the sales will tell.
|
| Obviously I'm not defending the minority of insane comments
| made my mentally unwell people, but it does feel to me that the
| rage-quit was prompted more by the general negative sentiment
| people expressed about the looks of the game rather than by the
| personal attacks.
|
| We have seen the same thing happen to Star Wars where the
| legitimate criticism was painted as toxicity of the fandom.
|
| To quote another HN comment I saved recently:
|
| > "Ultimately, the reason some people get upset when a series
| changes isn't because the new game is new, but because the old
| games get their future cut off. Getting a sequel you don't want
| closes the door more definitively than creating a new IP.
| Nobody wants to see the corpse of something they love puppeted
| around when it could just be laid to rest."
| sleepybrett wrote:
| > "Ultimately, the reason some people get upset when a series
| changes isn't because the new game is new, but because the
| old games get their future cut off. Getting a sequel you
| don't want closes the door more definitively than creating a
| new IP. Nobody wants to see the corpse of something they love
| puppeted around when it could just be laid to rest."
|
| Except in this case, my understanding is that this isn't even
| true. This game is an alternate sequel to MI2 (which is
| widely beloved), throwing out the story from MI3 (and maybe
| Tales? Many fans did not like the story direction of MI3.
| Perhaps because Ron didn't work on it.. I didn't mind it). So
| I guess in that case, for the really opinionated MI1&2 fans,
| this is another bite at the apple.
| generalk wrote:
| > The question here is: "Is this a really innovative
| graphical design that > will get praised by future
| generations but is misunderstood now" or "Is this >
| just a bad decision that the creator is unwilling to own". I
| tend to think > it's the latter. Ultimately the sales
| will tell.
|
| The question here is not "should people like a thing," it's
| "why are people such assholes?" To quote Ron Gilbert's linked
| post: > Play it or don't play it but don't
| ruin it for everyone else.
|
| It sure seems like this is a fantastic example of the Greater
| Internet Fuckwad Theory [0]: nobody would speak so awfully to
| Ron Gilbert if they were leaning over his shoulder watching
| the trailer.
|
| [0]: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-
| blackboa...
| eduction wrote:
| > Ultimately the sales will tell.
|
| If you believe games are at all art, then they cannot
| ultimately be judged either by commercial or critical
| success, or even by whether they please their creator. There
| is something utterly subjective and nondeterminant in the
| evaluation of art.
|
| Obviously, as humans we tend to evaluate the "success" of art
| on its long term impact. Commercial and critical failures in
| the short term can and have become treasured as masterpieces
| in the long term, and bestselling beloved work can turn out
| to be forgotten quickly.
| dylan-m wrote:
| > We have seen the same thing happen to Star Wars where the
| legitimate criticism was painted as toxicity of the fandom.
|
| Hold on a minute here. Yes, the racist assholes got more
| attention than they deserved. But Rise of the Skywalker was
| thrown together by a bunch of marketing executives looking
| through all that "legitimate criticism", making a big
| checklist, and feeding it into their lifeless movie factory
| to create a giant wish fulfillment fantasy for all those
| "real fans" who were upset someone would dare to shake up
| their stale, predictable franchise. It was a terrible movie.
| Lessons: Disney is a cancer, but also people on the internet,
| as plentiful as they are, have no idea what they want.
| bena wrote:
| This is one area where I think Nintendo and Apple really
| excel at.
|
| They hardly, if ever, cave to user "wants", because they
| understand that often, the user has no fucking clue what
| they actually want.
|
| It's why they manage to succeed despite initial opinions
| being so against them. It's because often the proof of the
| pudding is in the eating. Looking at a thing can only tell
| you so much, it's only when you are able to actually
| experience the thing will you be able to judge whether it
| is good or not.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I'm sorry, but getting upset about a sequel you didn't want
| is an immature and entitled attitude. This is a sequel from
| the original creator, not some corporate cash-in, what else
| do you want? Ron Gilbert is not a mind reader, he can't
| deliver on 1000 contradictory fan expectations. This is the
| game they wanted to make, that's their right, if you don't
| like it just move along.
| generalk wrote:
| "continue to blame the customer?" He's never said that folks
| were wrong, or blamed anyone for anything. Seems to me like he
| just wanted folks to not be shitty.
|
| Take, for example, this comment by someone calling themselves
| _Proud Retro Fascist_: > Nice attempt at
| silencing critics. The game will fail because it is >
| objectively hideous and you will only have yourself to blame.
| > > Inthe end all you will have achieved is killing off
| Monkey Island once more. > This time permanently.
| > > All you had to do was make a game with an art style
| that appeals to > everyone, whatever it might be.
| Instead, you opted for the most repugnant, > revolting
| and hideous TRASH art style that anybody has ever bared witness
| to > in a video game. You must be out of your mind.
| > > All said, try hiring good artists next time... if
| there is a next time, that > is. > > RIP
| MONKEY ISLAND
|
| I wouldn't blame anyone for being upset after receiving this
| kind of vile commentary "Objectively hideous;" "repugnant,
| revolting and hideous TRASH art style." There's nothing
| constructive or even reasonable there, it's purely nastiness
| for nastiness' sake.
|
| Stay strong, Ron Gilbert, don't let the assholes get you down.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Holding up the complaints of someone called "_Proud Retro
| Fascist_" shouldn't invalidate legitimate criticism just
| because a broke clock it right twice a day...
| 4cao wrote:
| > Take, for example, this comment by someone calling
| themselves _Proud Retro Fascist_ : [...]
|
| For what it's worth, the person called themselves like this
| in jest: apparently in an earlier comment, someone referred
| to people skeptical of the new design as "retro fascists."
| Not sure if that was supposed to be sarcastic as well, since
| the comment has been deleted.
| Tarsul wrote:
| Yeah, that's a very harsh comment. Nonetheless, there is
| something to be learnt here:
|
| If anything, the comments of the fans show that this artstyle
| alienates many of the fans. So, if for example the artstyle
| would've been showed at the very start of the development,
| then the developers could've listened to the fans and changed
| it. But everyone's in a tough spot now because development is
| nearly finished (game is planned for this year) and it would
| be too late to change course.
|
| As such, Ron Gilbert can only do one thing: Buckle up,
| release the game and let it be played by those who are not
| alienated by the artstyle. Maybe it will charm new fans even
| more; maybe not. Who knows. However, it certainly is an
| artstyle that is not "universal". E.g. AAA developers usually
| refine their main character so much that he appeals more or
| less universally, they want someone who is liked by everyone.
| They don't want a main character that is only liked by 50% of
| the target audience. BUT! This comes with the caveat that
| these games might be overoptimized for the mainstream and
| thus being somehow boring. That's why I love what the artists
| and Ron Gilbert did, even though I am torn on the style
| myself.
|
| Btw. I myself was even more alienated by the artstyle of
| Broken Age (so much that I never played it) and that was a
| game where I even invested money in. However, I never
| could've thrown words at Tim Schafer. And neither on Ron
| Gilbert, for that matter.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| The lead artist of Return to Monkey Island worked for
| Double Fine previously, so it shouldn't be a surprise that
| if you didn't like art style that Double Fine made a "house
| style" you likely wouldn't be interested in what an alumni
| of that art style is trying to innovate at a follow up
| studio.
|
| > If anything, the comments of the fans show that this
| artstyle alienates many of the fans.
|
| Vocal fans are a sampling bias. Don't forget that volume in
| terms of loudness of complaint does not equal volume in
| terms of number of complainers. It may not be that "many"
| fans in number just because they have been that
| loud/obnoxious.
| djur wrote:
| > All you had to do was make a game with an art style that
| appeals to everyone, whatever it might be
|
| It beggars belief that someone could write this sincerely and
| not realize how absurd it is. "All you had to do was make
| something perfect."
| 4cao wrote:
| I understood it differently, to mean: "All you had to do
| was make a game with an art style that does not get in the
| way [of enjoying the game], whatever it might be."
|
| I think this interpretation makes sense, since the original
| game is primarily story-driven.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Could you summarize what you feel the mistake is? Normally I'd
| RTFA but in this case it's a lot of arguing in threads and I'm
| missing context.
| kemayo wrote:
| Some people don't like the art style chosen for the new game,
| which is pretty stylized. Some of them are being extremely
| (vocally) shitty about it.
| soneca wrote:
| No, that's not the problem. Not the problem that's relevant to
| this discussion anyway. The problem is that people are either
| relentlessly telling him that they didn't like the art or
| hatefully attacking him for choosing that art style. Hateful is
| what made him decide to close comments and not share stuff
| anymore. But relentless, even if polite, criticism also takes a
| toll.
|
| And art style quality is subjective. I, for one, don't think he
| made a mistake. If it does hurt sales, it is an objective
| evidence that it was a mistake _commercially_ speaking. Which
| is just one dimension. He might still be happy with his
| decision.
|
| Regardless of sales effect though, I think people feel entitled
| to be heard by him. They are not happy only with voting with
| their wallets, or just telling friends that they didn't like
| the art style, that are making a point of going to him pointing
| fingers that he messed up. That's not fine in my view even if
| they do not use hateful words, which a minority does. But the
| majority is still pointing fingers at him.
|
| For me Ron is doing the right thing in managing all this. Stop
| sharing stuff, close comments, go back working on it silence.
| If, because of that, the game is a commercial failure, so be
| it. It is his risk to take. People are acting outraged no
| because Ron is screaming rude things back to them, because he
| is not. People are outraged that he just won't change the art
| style at this point. That he is not pulling a Sonic on this.
| And I think the behavior of those people demanding change is
| just silly. And dangerous when potentialzed by the scale of the
| internet.
|
| So good for Ron going back to silence. It will be better for
| him and the team. And, I think, better for the game as well.
| bogantech wrote:
| Disagreeing with the art direction is one thing but people are
| going beyond constructive criticism by being toxic and throwing
| personal attacks.
| aliswe wrote:
| Not to pry, but do you have any examples of this?
| oneepic wrote:
| Ron mentioned he deleted some personal attack comments, so
| some of the closest examples are gone.
| kemayo wrote:
| The comments on the linked article feature a number of
| examples of this, despite already having had the worse
| stuff moderated-out. For instance:
|
| > You are an abhorrent and miserable human being, Ron
| Gilbert. You should be ashamed of yourself. One can only
| hope that you retire from the industry and never return.
|
| Which, you know, _not cool_.
| alophawen wrote:
| In the article being discussed, Ron writes:
|
| > I'm shutting down comments. People are just being mean
| and I'm having to delete personal attack comments.
|
| These comments is what you are requesting.
|
| Browse them using wayback machine:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://grumpygamer.com/rtmi_
| t...
| bombcar wrote:
| Go read the HN comments, and then imagine what a cesspool
| like Youtube or Reddit would do if HN itself was that
| "down" on it.
|
| Personally I think it's a better art style than Tumbleweed,
| but I had issues with that game's story.
| blktiger wrote:
| Some references can be found here:
| https://kotaku.com/return-monkey-island-ron-gilbert-art-
| styl...
| olivermarks wrote:
| Good for Ron. He created the game, not the lookey loo's
| branon wrote:
| People don't like the art style. There's even precedent for this
| in gaming, remember what happened to Mass Effect: Andromeda? Or
| in broader media, there was a redesign of Sonic the Hedgehog for
| the movie.
|
| Monkey Island is a very old game with lots of fans which was
| previously renowned for highly detailed art. People don't enjoy
| the corporate memphis skewed proportions of this new style,
| simple as.
|
| Personal attacks are always wrong.
| david422 wrote:
| There are a few things I've learned - or not learned - from
| releasing software. 1. People like to VENT. Some
| people are going to post nasty stuff even though they would
| normally act different in person. 2. Can you turn the nasty
| things into something positive? People vent because they are
| annoyed, or angry, or confused about something. Can that be
| fixed? Can that be improved? There may be a legitimate issue that
| could be improved even though they are not expressing themselves
| positively. 3. People vent because they care. They are
| invested enough in your software that they would like to see
| change. 4. For every person venting, there are probably
| 10x that are happy but just aren't commenting. Sometimes it seems
| that everybody is just unhappy, but really it's just the vocal
| minority. 5. Some people just need to be ignored.
| sph wrote:
| 6. We are not made for the Internet. It's going to be the
| downfall of civilization.
|
| Our social structures and social instincts are made for small
| groups of people in a tribe, distrusting outsiders. The
| Internet can be great for humanity, but we're 200 years away
| from learning how to use it correctly.
| vessenes wrote:
| I don't get the hate- I like the style of the new graphics, and I
| think they are a sensitive updating of what's good about monkey
| island's original graphical vibe.
|
| I guess I am the target nostalgia demographic though; 70s
| latchkey kid. I fully intend to play this with my kids and enjoy
| the shit out of it.
| ohCh6zos wrote:
| To me it looks very similar to Alegria corporate art which kind
| of turns me off, but he should do what he wants and I have no
| reason to think I should give him my feedback.
| kemayo wrote:
| I've seen people making that comparison, and it feels off to
| me. The defining element of that "corporate" art style is
| that it's really flat -- abstract figures with minimal
| details and bold colors.
|
| By contrast, Return seems to have a lot of detail -- it's
| just expressed through a blocky, almost papercraft aesthetic.
| The level of specificity and caricature it's showing is
| honestly pretty opposed to the general goals of the
| "corporate" style.
|
| (None of this is to say there's anything wrong with not
| _liking_ Return 's art style, of course. Taste is subjective,
| etc etc. I just feel it's a poor comparison.)
| plankers wrote:
| I think the game looks fun :) I hope it gets a linux release,
| unlike every other Monkey Island game.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| The Windows version should run just fine under Steam Proton.
| zack7linux wrote:
| All the special editions weren't even updated for Windows 11
| WDDM 3.0, one nvidia driver update broke them even on
| windows. Not sure if they even run nowadays on latest windows
| versions. They also removed the ios/android versions from the
| app stores before the special edition releases. Your only
| option is ScummVM and that doesn't support the special
| editions. All of them are rated as broken on wine appdb. I
| would not expect this to get Linux support, its Disney and
| its obvious by now that Ron doesn't care about his fans so
| there is that.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| The average internet commenter is careless and dumb. I've
| definitely made comments which I've later regretted, after
| realizing that the author would actually end up reading them.
| Often times comments are based on gut reactions which are given
| after barely taking any time to consider the art. Having a bad
| day and didn't enjoy the media quite that much, so you're a bit
| too mean and careless in your comments. It's easy to forget that
| there are real humans behind each creation.
|
| As creators, it's probably healthiest to avoid comments entirely
| and have someone filter the feedback for you. It only takes a few
| inconsiderate assholes to make the creator feel terrible.
|
| I recently experienced a lite version of this, where I posted
| what I considered to be constructive feedback on how to make a
| game community better. Immediately I was insulted, criticized,
| and downvoted. After the initial few comments I realized there
| would be no intelligent responses and I just stopped reading.
| Despite my intellectual awareness of this, having some kind of
| emotional reaction to the severely negative comments was
| unavoidable. It also means that going forward I'm less likely to
| engage with the community through that medium.
|
| The game for which I have the largest number of criticisms and
| complaints is also my favorite. When you spend multiple thousands
| of hours playing a game, you'll acutely feel each minor bug,
| issue, and problem. The list of compliments and praises is just
| as long, as it's the most fun and entertaining game I've ever
| played.
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