Cities: Skylines 2 developers have noticed 'a growing tendency of toxicity in our community'
(www.techradar.com)
from AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to games@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 2024 01:51
https://programming.dev/post/8881756
from AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to games@lemmy.world on 21 Jan 2024 01:51
https://programming.dev/post/8881756
- Developers of Cities: Skylines 2 have noticed a growing toxicity in their community, which is affecting engagement and creativity.
- The CEO of Colossal Order expressed concern about the negative impact of toxicity on the team and the community.
- The developers still encourage helpful criticism from the community but ask for it to be constructive and kind.
Archive link: archive.ph/mVaIY
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I’m surprised they didn’t see this coming. A lot of people had high expectations because of the impact the first game had and if it wasn’t better in every way there was bound to be some negative feedback.
They’re not complaining about negative feedback, are they? They’re complaining about the internet hate machine, which we should be mature enough here to admit is a bunch of juvenile, masturbatory bullshit from people that want to feel good about themselves without doing anything to actually earn that, and so just shit mercilessly in every way on anything they don’t like, because bullying others is a quick and easy way to feel strong for a brief time.
That’s more than mere negative criticism.
Very well said. It’s for this reason that I never admit openly that I am a gamer. It’s an embarrassing term.
I mean, if you’re a teen it’s probably fine.
Isn’t that just a more extreme version of negative feedback?
The post the article is talking about does mention toxicity in the community and hints at it being directed at the devs but how much of that is people debating and talking about gripes they have with the game versus crude personal attacks?
All I was saying is this game received a lot of attention and hype so I felt like this was kind of an inevitably. They were never going to please everyone.
No, things becoming more extreme versions of themselves frequently alters their overall effects. To exaggerate to make my point clear, isn’t mass murder just an extreme form of target shooting?
Trying to identify something without taking its real effects into account is rather silly.
I get it but I feel like a vast majority of the criticism they are getting doesn’t fall under the extreme category or into bullying.
Some people might be making Gmanlives-style quips in the Steam reviews that might make themselves feel good but I think a majority of it’s just general disappointment and people expressing it.
Yeah I think that goes with people voicing their disappointment. It’s like with Fallout 76 a lot of the community was split on it. Even now defending it can lead to dog piling.
People are debating in the community. It might not make for a super fun place to be that’s kind of just the reality of it for now.
Fallout 76 was also an unbelievable shitshow, and had very, very few honest defenders. Does it have to go full gamergate for you think its a problematic situation or something? Try to remember there’s a distinction between reasoned debate, like what you and I are doing right now, and trolling. Which I’m sure we could both switch to if we felt like it.
Criticism, for it to be useful, does have certain delivery requirements. The critic, in order to not be shit, has a certain responsibility to their criticism.
Now, gamers are a tough bunch. If a community is losing community, I think we can make some inferences about whats going on, and it’s probably not a bunch of well-reasoned and nuanced debate.
I don’t think the bar is that high or that a majority of the negative discussion falls under bullying. It’s a lot of people disappointed in a game and voicing their frustration.
Saying a game sucks and has no redeeming qualities and encouraging them to get a refund when they ask for any kind of tech support for it on Reddit is kind of unoriginal and lazy but I don’t think that classifies as bullying.
For example this is from Reddit about someone liking the game. You get good responses like this
But you do get some less constructive comments like
And
Even sorting by controversial on Reddit it’s really not that bad. It sounds like there are some posts being removed but a majority of it is people voicing their frustration with modding support taking so long to implement and the game feeling like it’s lacking in some department.
I feel like were going in circles here. I already acknowledged that there are going to be people that take it to the extreme and that’s wrong but it’s a very percentage of people.
I disagree. You see communities around games slow down all the time when new games, updates, and DLC steal the spotlight. A lot of the time you just need to wait for things to shift in a different direction. In the meantime people are going to sporadically talk about how they feel about the game and debate updates that come out.
Ah, I didn’t realize you were mainly going off the subreddit, that makes more sense now. Reddit in general tends to have a milder tone compared to most internet spaces, in my experience. I imagine they’re talking about the Paradox Interactive official forums, which can have a more hardcore tone overall, pretty often I’d say. I actually tend to avoid them for that reason, despite being a pdx fan in general.
Even then can you think of some examples from their forum? Going to it myself is feeding my error messages likely due to my VPN or browser configuration
I’d really rather not dig through looking for the trolling to copy/paste. I’m not a cities skylines 2 player, so I don’t really have a horse in this race, except hating toxic internet bullshit in general.
There was no way the game was going to be better in every way, the previous game was being worked on for the better part of a decade.
Yeah I think expectations are too high, where people expected a perfect game like cities skylines forgetting that when it launched it was also a very rocky start.
Gamers in general are just very entitled, and very unforgiving
Didn’t the sequel have some pretty large problems on launch?
Nah man, that’s just entitlement. Wanting your $50 game to work well when you buy it is peak entitlement, you should be happy your game is running at 10fps with your 4080 RTX.
It wasn’t polished yes, graphics were not great and people were justified being disappointed and returning it if they felt like it was game breaking
But the vitriol is what I mean, the pure hate, the threats to developers, the anger thrown at them. That is what I’m referring to. If some graphical issues make you so mad that you need to literally threaten people then I think you shouldn’t game anymore. That’s where I say entitled and anger issues.
There’s always going to be a small group of people who take things too far once a game gets popular enough. I don’t think it’s right but I’d say it’s to be expected
I think people expected a CS2 with at least some of the cS1 dlc as standard (at least parks) instead we got a base game and then told there wouldn’t be a mod loader and we couldn’t use the steam library. That’s effectively nuked the ability for the community to “fix” the game.
They may have expected typical gamers to be more respectful than they are.
Huge mistake.
When they released CS1 it was in a similar state.
The difference is that nobody was paying attention to CS1 until after a couple patches were released and the game picked up momentum as it was improved and more fleshed out.
Must get rid of toxic in community
I mean yeah, they haven’t released it on Mac yet. Boo!
At the very least, they could’ve made it available on the Xbox. It yes, very disappointing.
well yeah, they are trying to sell a game that looks straight up unfinished, like it was a masterpiece.
entitled much? did they expect praise?
The statement still asks for criticism but asks for it to be polite.
You can say something is bad without sounding like an asshole.
Exactly.
People don’t tend to be polite when they buy a dodgy product of any kind, why would video games be different?
There’s no reason to treat the developers like shit though.
Gamers don’t need to act like entitled bitches about everything. Especially when they continue to play the game. Provide feedback, leave a review, and move on. There’s no excuse for rudeness.
Can you tell me a single industry where you treat customers like shit and not get abuse in return?
People are acting like angry reviews are somehow unwarranted when customers are being sold defective products.
What about a single other industry where people make 8 hour long essays shitting on one specific person and get hundreds of thousands of views?
You’re not familiar with the car and motorcycle industries are you?
People spend years tearing into companies over vehicles, spending hundreds or thousands of hours meticulously detailing every engineering problem, real or imagined, and shitting on anyone who disagrees.
The only difference is that car and motorcycle companies generally shield their employees from criticism to a much greater degree.
You don’t usually see the engineers names in a credit screen in your car. Those engineers aren’t generally seen shit posting on twitter about how entitled the customers are because that would get them sacked.
Is there a word for an argument that tries to justify their side by saying "it happens in this other place, so it should be okay here, too", because that's what that sounds like to me.
You can be constructive without being a dick, full stop. No justification from it happening elsewhere will actually justify that. Being a dick is not justifiable. Feeling upset and angry absolutely is, and you can express that, again, without being a dick.
Show me people being dicks about it, I’ve looked and haven’t seen it.
I’ll tell you a dick move I have seen though… Ive seen a developer lie about features and deliver a broken mess for full price.
I'm talking generally, I have no real knowledge or horse in this specific race. If people aren't actually being toxic here, then that's awesome and they should keep it up.
Yes, I think if a developer does that and everyone involved in delivering that marketing and the developers knew from the outset they would have to deliver those features, but wouldn't be able to, and they didn't stop the people giving the public that information if they are even able to do that, then the specific people involved in those decisions would be dicks, even then, sinking to their level is not a good look.
This is also why people should wait for release and reviews. No one forced you at gunpoint to pay for a gane that didn't deliver on its marketing. This happens so much in this industry you should almost expect it and be wary, and the main way to get that message across to the dev is to not buy it until it's satisfactory. That's what they deserve for their transgression and what will hit them where it hurts deservedly, no money.
So because it’s “industry practice” to screw over consumers it’s somehow on consumers?
I suppose we can apply the same logic to scams, victims know about scams and fall for them anyway so it’s their own fault when their life savings get stolen.
No point in blaming the scammers. Everyone knows how it works.
I wouldn't say consumers deserve that burden, but we have it because there's no governmental regulation of moral marketing practices. If we can legally move towards that somehow, then hell yeah, but I'll be honest that I'm too lazy and/or legally inept to do that myself.
I'm not saying it should be the customer's problem, but as humans that are great at learning pattern recognition it can help us avoid misery and wasting our money, and I wouldn't also say that people should do that willy nilly just because ideally you'd be able to trust marketing. You can't. It's just the only way to cope with this messed up system in its current state.
So… blame the system? The devs are the antagonists in this system and the only ones with the power to stop pushing out broken garbage and marketing based on lies.
Blaming the victims won’t change the system.
There will always be people unfamiliar with the pitfalls of the system. Always fresh victims to part from their money.
So I blame the company because the company is the system. I blame the scammers because they are the system.
Oh and regulations don’t even slow down scammers of any kind. They already know they’re breaking the rules, breaking laws is just the next logical step.
A step companies are all too willing to take because the punishments cost less than they’ll profit.
I do not blame people for being fooled… because there’s always a scam good enough to fool even me. And I’m smart.
Well, you're correct on where the fault rests as long as the lies were willingly made, but in the scenario we're originally talking about the ultimate result you're ending up with is... Being an asshole. So, in this total fucked system of manipulation and marketing lies the justice you're pushing for is being an asshole on a forum. I don't really think that solves anything or justifies itself.
Don't think that I'm arguing that the company should get a free pass for any of this or that the company isn't at fault/isn't the system, the root of what I'm saying is that toxicity isn't really warranted when it's about buying a videogame that wasn't made well and didn't meet marketing expectations, and if you want to avoid being in a situation where you got burned buying a product that didn't meet your expectations, you can establish expectations closer to reality by doing smart research that is absolutely everywhere and easily obtained for free post-release. Being an asshole to a developer as a whole targets people that fundementally aren't at fault, which is what allows companies to pull the whole "people don't feel safe" card when public relations toxicity gets out of hand. A small part of that can be true, and doesn't help our case.
Some people will fall for it, yes, and awareness helps reach people that aren't going out of their way to research what they're buying, but you can raise awareness and make a scene about this stuff in a mature fashion. I'm in no way saying we shouldn't make a stink about situations like this, it's how you do it.
See I still disagree; Im Australian and we measure a lot of things (social, political) by what we call the pub test.
If you can’t convince people in a pub that something is a good idea then it doesn’t pass the political pub test.
The social pub test is similar, it’s where if doing something in a pub would cause another patron to throw you a beating it fails the pub test.
If you rip someone off for $60 to $120 in a pub and they realise they will punch your head in.
Mean comments are an entirely reasonable if somewhat juvenile response to being lied to and ripped off.
Devs acting like victims because people said mean things after they lied to and ripped those people off is ridiculous.
They should grow a thicker skin or get out of the game of scamming people.
While I don't think that being an asshole about something is a reasonable response, I find it a very understandable response, especially about subjects like this. Regardless of how "turn the other cheek" I happen to be personally, the issues surrounding video game marketing are pretty large, and this sort of cycle of selling a product that doesn't match its marketed features and level of polish happens far more than it should.
The only thing I feel bad about when it comes to agreeing with your outlook is that there totally are developers who technically work for the parent company receiving toxicity, but had nothing to do with deciding how polished the game could be at release, what top level features the game could receive, or how the game could be marketed, but still end up receiving toxicity for the state of the game because they still are the devs, and if you go down the path of "getting out of the game" when it comes to those people, they may not have ever known it would end up that way when they took the job, or they may need that job to survive.
That grey area is the one part that gives me pause, and it's the reason I think companies at large pull that card, because you can never prove that the public isn't hurting innocents, and even though you could look at a case like this, establish that you can't see any toxicity or death threats in forums, and decide that the company is lying about toxicity existing at all, they may have deleted those posts, continuing to muddy the waters.
It's just a fucked up situation all round and there's no black and white answer to it, for me. I think being a manager at my job has hard taught me that sinking to someone's level when it comes to emotional response is absolutely never a good idea, and that's bled out to other areas of my life, but I can understand your outlook and agree to disagree on how we'd react to this situation individually.
No, didn’t know about that.
I don’t think another industry having the same problem makes this one more palatable though.
You kinda have to think that though. You tried to argue that no other industry has the same problem, therefore this is unforgivable. So by following your own logic, it seems like because others do it as well it means it’s not unforgivable, it’s just the standard response. Very much a normal reaction to being fed shit by yet another corpo that expects you to compliment the taste.
Professional sports leagues are another example. Put a shit product on the field, you’re going to get shit back from the fans. Every now and then a young star player comes up (especially in American football) that received adulation for years at the college level and suddenly gets faced with jeers. They react like Colossal Order does here and–eventually–learn that they are picking a fight against collective emotional response that they are never going to win.
CO is learning that lesson now. While they can and should take actions against those that cross the line (death threats, etc.), there’s not much in the way of effective corrective action here. It’s all on them. They can a) put out a better product, b) hire community managers with thicker skin that can better assuage their fans, or c) withdraw from community interaction. Most that can’t handle it pick the third option.
Shouldn’t expect toxicity.
What? You’re not hurting only the devs here (though, it still wouldn’t be okay to hurt the devs in the first place).
Let’s be honest here. Cities Skylines 2 community is so toxic it’s actually a burden even for players. The Steam forums and most online places dedicated to the game are full of entitled people who, instead of going for another game, spend their days shitting on it. Even going as far as jumping over people actually enjoying the game. That’s what toxicity means. And you can find any excuse you want, it’s not a sane behaviour.
Toxicity in our cities, in our Cities (Skylines 2 community)
You, what do you own the world? How do you own disorder, disorder?
*how do you own colossal order, colossal order
Listen the game isn’t perfect and did have a rough launch, but they’re actively working on fixing and improving it. I’ve had 8+ hour straight binges of gameplay on it and enjoy it plenty. Is it completely what I hoped for? Not exactly, and the game could use more optimization but I still very much enjoy it, personally. It’s more enjoyable to me so far than the first game, especially with the new tools and features they’ve added.
Toxicity is so dumb with g*mers, just refund and leave an honest review then move on with your lives people, geez.
I didn't even think it was all that rough of a launch
No console launch, no mod management, and optimization issues.
Two out of three weren’t expected. Maybe all three.
That said, I like CS2 more than the original. I miss the added functions I got from some of the DLC (industries, airports), but I’m sure they won’t pass up the opportunity to do it all over again and make money doing so. That is, provided there is a large enough community to buy DLCs.
People love/loved CS. Whole TY channels grew up for just that one game. Those channels are branching out more now and that causes me concern.
I don’t blame the devs. I wish they’d waited to launch, but I can also understand the companies need money to function.
We’re in a critical time and I know the devs put a lot of heart into the game. If I was their leader, I’d be sympathetic too. Doesn’t mean I’m seeing toxicity - just not the reception the devs may have expected after all that hype.
That’s what they are doing… The marketing team cannot handle their game being returned so they call the community toxic. Career suicide imo
I simply can’t believe that they released the game in this unfinished state. Early access or a public beta would be understandable, but you just don’t release a half-finished product promising to deliver the remaining stuff later.
The Minecraft way where you continually provide upgrades for your game can obviously work, but in that case, the game is cheaper and the upgrades are free. If they were going that route, CS2 should have been a free upgrade of CS1 with all the features of the previous product and nobody would’ve complained.
If you buy another full product, you expect another full product.
This is the very definition of gas lighting.
Customers: “This is not what I paid for”
Colossal Order: “You’re so toxic”
Players: “your game doesn’t work. It’s riddled with bugs. It has serious performance issues and doesn’t run on most hardware. It lacks modding support as well as basic features that were present in the previous game”
Devs: <img alt="" src="https://media.tenor.com/JhWMeMwSkDAAAAAM/the-boys-toxic.gif">
If there’s one thing to take from this, it’s that the toxicity just needs to be directed at those actually responsible. Not the devs, but at corporate forcing the game to release early.
This is the very definition of gas lighting.
Devs: “Geezus folks, stop it with the harassment.”
Lemmy: “This isn’t harassment, you’re just making it all up!”
You’re the one misrepresenting the comment you’re replying to in an effort to make it seem like they’re gaslighting.
It’s like gaslight inception going on here.
INB4 you claim I’m gaslighting you.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/7d1114f7-ad56-4ec7-bac8-0cce61db3497.jpeg">
jkjk I know it’s coming and I love Cities Skylines 2 even in the state it’s in, but people are understandably impatient and upset at waiting for promised features to arrive.
Have they even given a timeframe for when mods will release because I haven’t seen them say anything about it since launch, I’m assuming because another team is developing it.
Per CO’s January 15th word of the week:
closed beta in a few weeks, full release probably sometime thereafter.
Simulation speed grinds to a halt as soon as you slapdown a few high density buildings. You basically have to but endless low density sprawl or your city will grind to a halt. I think the Media team of colossal order deserve the toxicity they are receiving.
Whatever complaint you got about the game, saying that anyone « deserves toxicity » is not the clever take you think it is.
I scammed hundreds of thousands of people how dare they post mean comments on my works social media.
If you were scammed, go to court. If you need to grasp on any excuse to leash out a shitty online behaviour, fix your life.
If they are hurt by comments on the internet then they shouldn’t be a social media manager.
So because their job means interacting with the community that means they customers are allowed to go ham and be total assholes? That's like saying that just because you work retail you shouldn't be upset by customers being dicks.
It'll absolutely happen anyway due to the nature of humans, and having a thick skin will help you cope with working a job like that, but that doesn't mean the customers should be acting that way and that we should just normalize and enable that behavior just because that's the way it is. It just perpetuates the problem.
If you’re working retail and your job is to deal with customers I highly doubt your boss will let you withdraw communication with your customers because some of them were verbally mean.
I mean, you're right, that's just life™, but that's still fundementally fucked up. For profit companies have to do that because they want everyone's dollar, and if that means you're a better fit for a job because you can deal with people being awful, then... It's a shame we've ended up in that position, societally.
Retail usually calls the cops and bans customers who threaten or scream at employees, which is the real world version of withdrawing communication.
I get your fee fees are hurt because a video game was not perfect, but people flinging shit like caged monkeys get shut down in most jobs. Its not excusable just because muh vidya gaem
CO can ban them from posting on their forums if they take it to far.
The comments are tame as fuck compared to most community/developer interactions.
… You think this primarily happens on their forums? Do they even have forums?
Do you know what email is?
You can block emails as well. You can moderate your steam forums and youtube comment section and Twitter replies. I can’t think of a single place where CO is interacting with the community that they can’t block/ban users who are mean.
Youre intentionally missing the point so hard Im starting to think youre one of the losers sending them death threats
What’s your point then? Of course they have forums Steam and paradox forums and reddit are the main places to interact with Colossal order. CO has never said they are getting death threats so I don’t know where you get that from.
It seems that you’re getting misinformed by game journalist blogspam. CO is mad that the mood on their forums is sour and they are getting called out for releasing an undercooked buggy game for full price after months of misleading marketing. Everytime they post an update the comments are filled with sour posts complaining about real issues that have still not been fixed 3 months later.
If you get 10,000 death threats from 10,000 individual accounts, blocking or banning them does fuckall. You still recieved 10,000 death threats. And… Ive fuckin seen the twitter posts dude, I dont need CO to tell me about them. They likely arent mentioning them to prevent the risk of increasing their volume.
But, again, you are talking like a kiwifarm reject, so Im sure youre one of the people sending this “fanmail”
If you can’t behave in a respectful manner, you shouldn’t interact with someone else.
See? I can do this too.
I don’t agree with that at all. There’s plenty of people I don’t respect and I will not treat respectfully yet I shouldn’t be barred from interacting with these people. Especially if they are a public figure with the power to influence change.
The president of the United States repealed row v wade. Should everyone opposed to that refrain from toxicity. I think they are well within their right to kick up a stink, be angry and make their voices heard.
Oh, you don’t agree with me? Really? My heart is broken.
I have so many high density buildings in my city and no appreciable FPS or slowdown issues.
How does your computer compare to recommended specs?
I’ve got 160k people. Playing on 1080p with a 2070s and a ryzen 5600x
Simulation speed is prioritized and graphics is turned down to medium but the game runs at about 0.8 to 1x speed.
Thanks for your honest thoughts on it and your experience. Even though CO media team doesn’t deserve toxicity imo, (I think Paradox management deserves it more), a lot is genuine feedback about people’s poor experiences with the game.
I pushed through a 100k pop play through at 10fps 720p by the end before I upgraded my PC. That would be unacceptable for most but I had fun.
I had fun as well and got to 160k. I tried to reduce population as much as I could but my city was way to developed.
For me there is no replay value until more is added. The cities are really plain and a lot of the default assets look like crap. I know it will be fixed in the future but CO has this attitude that we should be greatful for the shit that was released and are happy to keep us waiting months for basic fixes and features.
This is happening everywhere in gaming, people could be critical without being complete assholes, it’s getting out of hand.
No, most companies take positive action, not whine about toxic community
Public gaming is toxic by default. We’re not talking one person playing with their friend group, we’re talking gaming in the wild. Yeah, there’s gonna be exceptions, but the vast majority is mockery, lashing out, trolling, superiority and the like. I’ve disabled in game chats and voice for more than a decade because I’m sick of the BS.
So it’s not “happening” as a change, this is its normal state.
It does keep getting worse though, Starfield’s started a fire that keeps raging on 4 months later.
A game being called “literally unplayable” has been around since devs allowed early/beta access. Starfield is just the latest victim. No Man’s Sky is easily one of the worst, but they over-promised and far, far under-delivered.
Maybe if devs stopped talking their games up, making promises they don’t keep, showing gameplay that never makes it into the release version and then releasing buggy, broken junk they might stop receiving so much justifiable backlash.
I don’t assume making games is easy. However, devs constantly bowing to financial pressures in order to build hype, release unfinished games, and cut features is the real problem.
Developers don’t choose how their games are marketed, that’s also the publishers.
I use devs to generically describe the company that produces the game, markets it, and sells it. You are correct.
Ah, that’s fine then, I misunderstood.
On one hand people can be jerks, on the other hand there definetaly is a trend of releasing broken games with a ‘patch it later’ mentality.
Its kind of hard to take a side because people being assholes isn’t the solution but remaining civil is just going to encourage the behaviour and we’ll get even more broken releases.
That’s true but, at the end of the day, it’s developers who have no control over how a game is released getting shat on and harrassed instead of the publishers actually responsible for it.
Then don’t buy games on release. There’s no rush. I’ve been pretty satisfied just buying games I want on sale and have still built up quite the backlog mainly getting titles at 75%+ off. No Man’s sky and subnautica were both just awesome games for me because the period where they were unfinished and disappointing was long past by the time I tried them.
And in my experience, toxicity doesn’t really encourage improving something so much as it encourages stopping to care how the toxic person feels about anything at all. Sometimes that caring even goes negative and the target of the toxicity can take pleasure in how much grief they’ve caused the person spewing out the vitriol.
Toxicity is for burning bridges, not encouraging better behaviour.
People who have studied game theory will know that a corporation’s bad behavior needs to be met with bad behavior, or they will simply keep taking advantage of consumers. Low level employees are innocent, but executives are willingly making bad decisions with the sole interest of lining their pockets.
Edit Lol I guess instead of learning basic game theory you can just downvote and continue your ignorance. Surely that won’t make the problem worse.
Video game studios are not respecting players. It fuels hate speech. Most social media are also optimized for hateful speech because it increases engagement.
What I don’t understand is the trolls who hate on stuff forever. Like cyberpunk 2077 for example still has haters who miss absolutely no occasion to shit on the game.
Upper management is always full of the slimiest people out there, I just don’t think that justifies the hate towards devs who just want to make a game and already have to put up with said upper management.
That’s basic relationship stuff : game studios broke player trust. It’s up to them to win it back.
Now different people react differently to the break of trust. Some do react poorly to it. But I won’t blame people, and I won’t sympathise with studios I don’t already trust.
Again, studios are just a bunch of people passionate to make cool games except for cases like The Day Before.
And sometimes they’re also assholes that disrespect players. Sometimes they’re too leniant and think a buggy mess is a game worth releasing. That’s disrespect. Being small is not an excuse to release an alpha version.
What you say actually mixes two quite distinct things, I feel:
I disagree with this, and quite harshly so. Independent of what companies do, and some of the releases very much fit the “not respecting” part, that’s not in any way, shape or form an excuse to be abuse to some poor support or outreach rep who has to read your shit. They’re just doing their job, they haven’t even gotten to the playing-a-video-game-in-my-leisure-time part of the day yet.
That is however quite true, and leads to an extreme echo chamber enforcing and reinforcing negative and abuse comments. It gets clicks, which is ad impressions, so it gets lifted to the top.
I’m not saying the behaviour of the game studios justify people hate. I’m saying it fuels it.
The relationship between a game company and a player base is not a equal one. And I’m not saying all game studios are responsible, but you only need enough of them to behave poorly for people to grow defiance for all of them.
And in this, it’s up to the developers to win back players trust, not to players to forgive game dev blindly.
Such a toxic community! I popped over to reddit and saw posts like this
old.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines2/…/kitiiqn/
On steam checking new reviews shows people are unhappy and refunding but there’s hardly any vitriol there either. Moderators are quick but not that quick.
Over on the official forums we see complaints, disappointment and frustration but little in the way of outright hatred.
I’ve yet to run across anything that crosses a line in terms of content I would moderate, however that doesn’t mean moderators didn’t nuke such comments before I could see them.
This looks like the expected reaction to a game being broken on release. The devs are simply shifting blame to the community.
I wonder how much of the negative feedback is The Sims style issues where a lot of content is either going to be patched in later or come in as DLC but in the meantime something just feels like it’s missing.
A slightly separate issue than just bugs but then again didn’t some traffic issues in the original game get fixed that way?
Thank you for the legwork!
This is a good time to introduce survivorship bias. You are looking at what is still there. Not what has been removed, burried or was done via dms/non public comms.
Or maybe you are right and they are just making up the toxicity remarks.
Im well aware of survivorship bias and even addressed it in my comment.
It isn’t the first time devs have shifted blame for their failures to their customers.
Seems more like the managers are shifting blame to both the devs and the community. The people who planned out the development timeline and didn’t provide an adequate amount of time for QA and bugfixes before release are the ones ultimately responsible.
So now they’re telling the paying customers to “stop being toxic to our devs” instead of taking responsibility for their decisions.
“We released a garbage unfinished game that didn’t run properly and wasn’t that good, but it’s the players fault.”
@AnActOfCreation @games Gamers have always been toxic but I think it's gotten worse since 2020
The comments in here are really disappointing and a reflection of where this community has gone in general.
Excusing toxic gamer communities, accusing the developer of things for pointing it out? All because the game not in a good state is toxic in itself and really not what this community should be.
This place gets worse every week.
I’ve played CS2 for weeks. Days of hours. Have completely enjoyed it.
It’s not finished and they’re honest about that. Also, comparisons to CS in it’s finished state (easy to do unconsciously) overlook just how many DLCs it took to get to full maturity.
I enjoy the game and have no regrets for buying. I don’t feel deceived since I could have asked for as refund.
I think some of this is a specific kind of FOMO. Fear of missing out (on what could have been). I’m hoping they do enough to fix the parenthetical.
Edit to add: my computer has great specs for late 2020. It’s not top of the line, but it has everything I thought it would need, CPU, RAM, GPU. That may impact my experience.
The game was unplayable on my 5 year old laptop. But it’s not really a gaming rig anyhow…
Regarding specs:
Even youtube creators supposedly had trouble (at times) running it at a consistent framerate.
Not that I had it when I bought it…It ran fine at 1440p ultra wide and (afaik) medium/high settings.
Agree.
One of the main videos I know.
Edit: fixed link.
Counter strike 2
Toxic devs get a toxic community. Why should I express sympathy for them experiencing consequences?
Yes, this is the kind of comment I am talking about when I am talking about how this community had gone downhill massively. Thank you for the example.
It is not hard to say that the game isn’t in a good state, but that is no excuse for toxicity. Unless you yourself are a part of the problem.
Is a publisher who’s failed to live up to the promise of a good game entitled to a good community? The fact they have any at all is a blessing.
Just to clarify: if you make a bad product, people are allowed to abuse you?
Your company? 100%. Absolutely. I implore people to abuse all companies, even.
Thats not what I said. But I suppose you knew that.
Sorry but I did specify publishers and companies multiple times. I’ve never once even alluded to personal harassment as I obviously don’t believe in that. I however do think that this game deserves the toxicity it sees and the company deserves to be harassed for not delivering on their promise of a worthwhile product for which many people paid nearly $70 (CAD).
So erm… who is this “company” that reads the comments on the forum, again?
As in, what’s their account name? Should be easy enough to direct the harassment at them instead of a dev or a social engagement rep or a support rep then, after all.
Sorry, but being toxic about a company is distinct from harassing the individual CM. You’re gonna need to try a different line of reasoning because this is a pretty foolish one.
This video was released 3 days before the game released. In response to Colossal Order (game creator) being transparent about issues they were seeing.
The video I linked is a known and well regarded YouTube contributor with a significant following. He, himself, was transparent in his testing and results also.
All of this was out there before the game was released and refunds were available.
How were the devs behaving toxic? I mean, should be easy enough to provide quotes, right?
Remember when they launched the game in a shit state and charged full price for it, then failed to communicate? Actions speak louder than words, and those are some pretty toxic actions.
That’s not toxic, though. I get that those actions are annoying and really poor, but they’re not… toxic. As in, they aren’t done with the intention of poisoning the relationship, in fact quite the opposite, they’re meant to exploit it to take money out of it. Hence “exploitative” might be a much better term to use.
But importantly, being exploited is no reason to be toxic to workers who don’t make the decisions in return. Especially not in a situation where there are ample ways to go about just undoing the damage done to you, namely refunding the game then putting the company on ignore on whatever stores you frequent.
I repeat, for the last time, I’ve never advocated for toxicity or harassment to workers. Only to the companies they represent. Please, if you’re going to argue with me, argue based on what I say, not what you decide I mean.
Argue based on what you said, and not some invented/imaginary version of what you said?
This is the internet, sir. Such factual discourse is greatly frowned upon! /s
Are these not your words? I get that you aren’t advocating toxicity to workers, but you are defending it.
Devs clearly refers to the company that develops the game. Try again.
The fact that you’re harping on this point is because you know I don’t agree with personal harassment. You are aware that I don’t agree with people being abusive about specific people who work for the company. You’re making bad faith arguments to try to prove “You were saying this”, which I was not, and if I was, is clearly not what I intended. Move on.
You were repeatedly stating things not supported by facts or events. And how I read your dev statement was completely reasonable.
I think that’s where many people got that impression.
I’m not really the person who needs to know when to quit.
Failure to communicate.
They’ve had regular updates to their blog since before and well after the release. It’s a recent blog post that led to people hoping the toxicity could chill a little.
So far I’m seeing implications but haven’t been able to find facts to support. Where are you seeing dishonesty or shadiness?
It’s becoming Reddit. Which is what we wanted last year? I know what you mean though. There is a difference between now and then with our community. Probably related to user count?
Sorry, I’m having trouble understanding what kind of commentary you were expecting.
Leading up to release as soon as the first reviews pointed out bad performance (see thread), many on Lemmy were bashing CO/Paradox for putting out a beta-stage product as if it was fully released, and Lemmings and people at large were never real fans of being unpaid QA testers for game companies.
Mind you, I love this game, and there’s a lot in there that I can tell CO devs put their heart and soul in. But I see a comment or a post every now and then saying “Lemmy is becoming so toxic, like Reddit” [1] [2] [3] [4] and I’m trying to figure out what exactly has changed, if you can help me out here.
I’m expecting this community not to say that a company deserves a toxic community and that being toxic is a totally normal and expected thing.
A few months ago, even , this was a place where people would talk about the game news and not revel in your average Gamer toxicity.
Now it’s just, I guess, reddit, but worse because the toxic voices are louder in a smaller echo chamber. The people who don’t ascribe to this kind of thing leave. The toxic people are all that is left.
I understand your point, and agree that you have received negative replies that prove this community accepts a level of toxicity that may not have been there before. (To me it feels like the same level, but perhaps I’ve just ignored it or become numb to it)
I encourage people to engage in these topics with a level head but there will be exceptions at times.
eev.ee/blog/2016/07/22/on-a-technicality/
Reading the second half of this comments reminded me of this long read I was introduced to over in Beehaw.org (the evaporative cooling section). Left unchecked, only the jerks will be left and the nice people give up and leave. If a slower, nicer place for discussion is what you’re looking for, Beehaw was where I found that vibe the most.
Yeah I noticed that, too. All of Lemmy in fact. It feels like engagement is up, but only in select echo chambers of being angry about something.
None of that excuses being toxic around the game though.
At most, it excuses just refunding it. And then never interacting with it or the community around it ever again.
I absolutely agree. There’s a line between constructive criticism/feedback and toxicity, some cases are obvious but others I don’t know where exactly to draw it. Those that aren’t interested in the game after being let down may be best advised to refund and move on with their life.
Unfortunately, I don’t know where to strike a good balance to avoid both an "echo chamber where any dissent is extinguished’, and a ‘cesspool of toxic jerks talking ironically’.
Eh, for game-released-in-a-disappointing state there’s always two points for me:
It’s okay to hold a company responsible for the sale of a poor product. You don’t have to give them a free pass and just go away.
You can let them know what they did wrong, and if they’re smart, they won’t do the same wrong thing again, the next time they sell their next product.
And any human being on the planet, when they are not listened to, will become upset and rude. The point is for any company to strive for the win-win, and listen to their customers, and not just try to sell them the next bad product and repeat the same bad cycle.
For sure. I might have weasel-worded my comment with “may be best advised” as it’s not all cases.
Toxicity is unhealthy, but I am optimistic it will become less so once CO and Paradox follow through on their promises. The two big ones being 1. actually being able to play the game on consoles and modest hardware and 2. mods
For some reason people seem to experience the most rage, vocalization frustration, etc. when it comes to having their entertainment fucked with (whether pricing, content itself, etc). Companies can cause global recession or market crashes, be responsible for child labor resulting in death and dismemberment, or engage in flat out fraud, but those companies will never bring out the toxicity, death threats, entitlement, and communal anger like a video game or film/tv company that impacts the entertainment of the masses. When people used to think of the most evil company in America back in the early 2010’s, EA was more hated than Bank of America, Wells Fargo, or AIG. That never made sense to me.
You should never fuck around with the plebs and their ‘bread and circuses’, especially if your government is not doing well.
People are pissed off at inflation, the general cost of everything (including AAA games), laws and punishments not being applied evenly/fairly, etc., these days.
I think the latter part of your comment is a bit hyperbolic (especially part of your comment that I edited out when quoting it in my response).
The defunct Consumerist used to run a poll. forbes.com/…/ea-voted-worst-company-in-america-ag… . It was always strange how EA beat out the companies that I think do more harm to society for several years. For some reason it’s entertainment companies that draw a lot of vocal ire from consumers, despite financial institutions, pharma, telecoms, oil, factory farms, etc. doing more explicit and literal harm.
Just repeating myself at this point, but to answer (again) your question…
Your comment was vague. I know there’s these days, but I was talking about a theme I have been seeing since around 2010. In the past 23 years we’ve had differing levels of inflation and what not, but entertainment seems to still draw communal vocal ire in ways that seem disproportional to more impactful issues caused by corporations.
what question did i ask?
It’s not, if you understand the concept/story of “bread and circuses”.
Both responses has a link to the wiki for it, that you can read up on, if you want further info on it.
I bolded it in both of my responses. It’s an implied, and not explicit, question.
Toxic” is different to everyone though. That’s why these comment sections always go in circles. To some people saying “paradox are crooks and they have no respect for us and they’re ripping us off by using us as beta testers,” is toxic to some. And to others it is seen as constructive criticism. So when someone says “this community is toxic”. I don’t really know what they’re saying. “Toxic” has just become a lazy buzz word that makes discussing this kind of thing pointless.
For me it’s the over representation of self described communists that take over every thread to poetically or unpoetically just keep saying capitalism=bad and then do shit like justify bad behavior because capitalism=bad or pretend to care about making sure employees get paid while advocating for piracy of everything being justified.
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I have no problem discussing political opinions. I hate how every thread gets co opted by un critical hot takes for the circle jerk of up votes. It’s frustrating that any post about digital media has the top comments all saying “Yarrrr, time to sail the high sees.” Or anytime there’s any news about a corporation, the top comment seems to be “fuck capitalism and those greedy greedy share holders.” Those kinds of comments aren’t critical, aren’t contributing to any meaningful conversation. On reddit I think it succeeded when you had communities of enthusiasts having conversations about the thing they are enthusiastic about. Lemmy seems to have a lot more people enthusiastic about a political position just try to spread that on any and all communities.
The comments in here are really disappointing and a reflection of what this community has become, corporate bootlickers.
Excusing companies scamming customers because gamers dared to point out the scam? All because the companies quarterly profits weren’t up enough, is a really toxic state and not what this community should be.
lol.
There was no scam. They were upfront about the issues before release.
Stating facts is not bootlicking. It’s just being a mature, fair adult about things.
Can you link any prerelease announcements that include the bugs and performance issues?
This vid covers an assortment of the issues, where things stood, and reaction to the news.
Respected YouTuber does the research. .
That was days before the release and in response to an announcement weeks prior.
Its the internet though. I don’t know of a place on the internet where there’s no toxicity.
Slowly becoming the reddit replacement we don’t deserve.
Have they considered the likelihood of the increased toxicity being due to their business model and product performance?
No?
I didn’t think so.
That is entirely not an excuse to be an arsehole to someone you don’t even know and for all you do could be your own sibling. The point exactly, btw.
It’s how toxic people “justify” their own toxicity so they don’t have to realize they’re the asshole.
Pretending like there’s not a causal relationship just because people are inherently assholes is dishonest.
Every community has assholes and the amount of negative behaviour can be directly correlated to a products issues.
Yes, assholes are even bigger assholes when they’re angry about something. I think we all agree on that.
Never your fault. Is it?
One could argue that they were the ass hole first by releasing an unfinished game. Just playing devils advocate here though.
Of course, but that’s not on a personal insults level, after all. It’s on a professional, “product unfit for purpose”, level. As part of a commercial transaction, a goods purchase.
Hence your course of action would be:
But just like when your power drill doesn’t work, calling the helpline then verbally abusing the call center person gets you nowhere, and just ruins someone else’s day who had no say in the product disappointing you. And you didn’t really improve your own situation either, you feel briefly improved by being able to vent but you are still sitting on having spent X money for an unfit product. At least get that money back, that’s some genuinely action being taken.
Toxicity is inexcusable.
Greed is inexcusable.
Toxicity is a consequence.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Just because someone chooses to be greedy doesn’t make it right for someone else to be toxic.
Depends on what the greed is applied to. For a video game it’s whatever but for medicine I completely disagree.
Honestly, if one person or entity chooses to act shifty, then it should be okay to be shitty back. Please, let’s have consequences. Let’s not “let it slide” in the name of decorum or politeness. What motivation would people have to act less shitty in the future if everyone just turns the cheek and deals with it? Lol
I don’t agree. Being better rather than the same is what makes the difference.
Nope. Try again.
Are we defending/justifying toxicity now?
It’s a video game, you really don’t have to play it. Just don’t buy it if you don’t like the devs so much.
I didn’t. I never played the game. I wanted to play the first one but then saw how many DLCs it has. I don’t like this way of developing software, in bits and pieces, so I didn’t want to support it. This changes nothing about the rest of the discussion though.
I’m with you, that studio brought the Sims sales model into the new era. The only people who actually play all their content are either wealthy losers or pirates. Nothing is more unwelcoming than a small closed off community.
“Wealthy, losers, or pirates”… so everyone?
No im not wealthy or a pirate…
Wait a sec
Even if you assume I implied a comma there, it would still be incorrect given the “Either … Or …” format.
I’m proud to say the whole family were big on Sims 2-4 and we pirated every single version and all expansion packs as children. It was a gateway drug to more pirating in the future. Those are the real, open, and welcoming community.
Haha. I gave up on the first Sims because no one was putting up expansion packs to pirate and I sure as fuck wasn’t going to pay for them, so I got bored and quit and never came back to that game series.
Also I think there are a couple of copies of the first 2 sims floating around where you get robbed daily and the mailman hates you as an antipiracy measure.
Don’t dox me, you have no right!
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At this point, I’m mad they’re about to launch the DLC for every damn feature. Everyone should avoid being toxic, but Paradox/Colossal Order aren’t blameless here. They shipped the game half-finished, and are gonna screw you out of your money. Just go back to the first Skylines.
Don’t be mad, just wait to buy it till they offer a nice package deal (do we have a patient gamers community here?). If enough users do that, they hopefully change their business model.
Overall I also think that paid add-ons are quite okay, if they actually add new stuff and if the base game is a finished product in itself. Ensures that developers continue to take care of the game without subscriptions and leads to games that one can play for a decade (like CK2). But yeah, Paradox overdoes this.
My understanding is that there are performance problems too though. But I haven’t kept up with it too closely.
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You, what do you own the world? How do you own disorder? Disorder!