Sure, and again if this is a daily occurrence or it’s happening in order to troll and drown out the CMs as they’re talking I agree that it’s at least toxic and should stop if for no other reason than it’s annoying sh*tposting, but if it happens and then the people doing it get muted/timed out/banned that sounds to me like what should happen is happening. You can’t really preempt this kind of behavior without fundamentally changing how anonymity works on the internet, and I’m not particularly interested in joining the subreddit or the discord to play hall monitor and tell people to be nicer.
Maybe I’ve been on the internet too long but honestly I don’t think your example is that big a deal. Like I said I broadly agree with you, i just thought that specific example was kind of a goofy choice.
I think you have been on the internet too long, my guy.
This could also be explained by the fact that more people have steadily gotten into both gaming and the internet, creating a larger pool of toxic people who were always around, just not on the computer until the last couple decades. The way that social media incentivizes negative interaction and bad faith interpretation is definitely making people more distrustful of each other, though, which isn’t helping anything. In fact I think the internet in its current form is, in general, a bad place to socialize, but these aren’t problems exclusive to gaming and probably won’t be solved from within gaming.
On the other hand, toxic behavior does seem to be getting called out and taken seriously more often, which is good.
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Those two explanations are not mutually exclusive. I think gaming captures a larger percentage of toxic people compared to other interests/hobbies/whatever while the experience of gaming itself leads to toxic interactions which leads to normalization/acceptance of toxic behavior. Solving the internet scale polarization/toxicity problem is hard, solving issues specific to norms around interactions in a gaming community is less hard. Other communities have figured out how to reduce/minimize toxicity and there are lessons to be learned there.
I am still of the stance that the devs are not to blame, someone higher up is making the decisions that see players unhappy with game releases. (things such as releasing a very unfinished product to cash in NOW)
I said something similar to the same effect in other posts on this forum recently… people like to blame “devs” instead of blaming a company or even better… the decision makers/higher ups.
All the people sitting here blaming developers do not help their case, they basically demotivate people who are working to fix the game instead of just trying to help them by submitting bug reports etc.
That all said, lets be honest on the other consumer side, this game released in poor shape and someone is to blame (not the devs) and this is far from the only game to have done this. The whole industry needs to take a look at these decision makers/people pushing unhealthy lifestyles for the developers to get a game out on X day so that they can earn big $ and leave the developers to eat all the hate.
As much as we blame the players (and they are not innocent at all) if games released in better shape due to decisions made by said higher ups in the company, there would be a lot less toxicity aimed at the devs and everyone else.
Lots of good points. And I agree on that gaming communities behavior are quite appalling in many cases.
We have started to see pushback against this sort of behavior when it comes to real life. Customer service tended to get the exact same treatment as we see here but lately people have started to call out bad behavior.
In the end there are humans communicating with each other. This there are human feelings involved and reactions. Hiding behind “nah it’s fair game against a company” is just wrong because it’s not solely against a company.
Spamming any word any person have said on multiple platforms will make an impact on that person. It’s nothing short of bullying behavior.
You can’t talk in a bad way towards a person and then say “it’s not you it’s the company” that person will most likely feel bad and worse if that keeps going.
I know from personal experience that lots of developers and designers and what not just don’t interact with communities for that reason. Having hundreds of people making fun of you and what you do won’t make anyone feel good. I don’t think anyone can disagree with this. Sure there are a bunch that say “it’s the internet i don’t care what anyone say about me” cool, fair game, that’s not how most huamsn work though.
I assume some will take this as a defending fatshark post but it’s not. But I certainly don’t think that the wrongdoings of one party excuses the wrongdoings of another. In the end I believe you should behave in the manner you want to be as a person and I don’t think most want to be a bully, but in the end a lot of people becomes that when wronged.
Even the most harmless joke or tease becomes a problem when enough people do it to you.
I hope this pushbacks comes soon because I think that benefit is for gamers as well.
That’s my 2cents at least.
I just want people to behave nice towards other people and focus on the problems instead.
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What does “toxic” mean to you?
Can you elaborate on this? What mechanisms are you thinking of here?
Except when it is. Remember when people attacked Apple because it came out that they used factories that had to put nets outside their windows to stop their workers killing themselves? Would you say the same thing in response to that scenario? Ultimately someone (probably a bunch of someones) made the decision to use those factories. Should the company not be attacked so those people don’t get hurt feelings?
That incident obviously isn’t comparable to the DT situation. What I’m saying is that ultimately everything a company does comes back to one or more humans and rejecting the idea that people should be able to attack a company on the grounds that it might hurt someone’s feelings effectively rejects the idea that we’re allowed to push back. In my opinion, that’s a very dangerous perspective to hold.
Hell, even the “don’t make it personal” stance goes out the window if an individual does something bad enough.
Yes, you are correct. Context matters. Absolutely.
This is not what I’m saying though. There is a huge difference in presenting critique in a fair and harsh manner and actively bully and meme about out of context phrases. If you don’t like a company lying to you, you can say that. You don’t have to resort to mocking and bullying because in the end that mocking and bullying WILL go towards the wrong person. Most cases they are, just like when people attack the customer support representatives, which people start to push back on.
So what’s the difference here, really?
The problem I have though is that you refer to things as “attack” where I don’t think anyone should attack anyone. Unless for defensive purposes(apple example). There is a difference in saying “You are lying to us and it starts to get tiresome and it will lead to us leaving” and attacking someone.
If you notice my post is talking quite a lot about bullying behavior. Critiquing in of itself is not bullying. Spamming that critique over and over for 6 months and having hundreds or thousands or more then it becomes bullying. And I don’t abide by this idea of “They deserve it”. I’m against what I consider bad behavior for the principle of it being bad behavior that shouldn’t be condoned or normalized not because I don’t think who receives it doesn’t deserve it. Who decides whos worth it? And to repeat myself even if people don’t INTEND to be harmful, which I assume a lot of people do when they joke about next week for example it isn’t necessarily because the scope is different from you saying it towards the one receiving it.
Maybe it’s because I’ve experienced bullying where said bullies thought it was harmless fun that I have a bigger problem with this behavior that is very similar if not the same as bullying.
You can see this HUGE problem in todays social media. Where people start bullying innocent people over basically nothing just because they perceive they deserve it.
I’m against it because the idea of “They deserve it” is a harmful path to go down, especially when it’s being misused constantly. In essence that term is used more to abolish responsibility of their own behavior than being a “good reason”.
I don’t say you can’t be angry. But there is a big difference in being angry and starting to behave badly yourself.
Not sure I used the phrase don’t make it personal. But making something personal can be addressing what an individual did wrong. It doesn’t necessitate you to start behaving badly towards said person.
Maybe I just don’t get why people resort to bad behavior themselves. Personally I receive a lot more benefit from customer support in all aspects when I’ve been respectful but still clear that I think they’ve wronged me. If I don’t I just don’t interact with that company anymore if I deem it’s gone too far, I don’t see the need in starting to become a worse person myself.
Antisocial behavior that makes things worse for players or devs.
Ideal world, the community agrees that this type of posting is a problem and that it should be moderated and not something we all tolerate. I think there is a reluctance of gaming companies to be more proactive about it due to financial concerns, with broad community support the devs can make the case to the c-suite or whomever. Basically empower the moderators to do something about it without the specter of community backlash.
Harrassment from customers is a major issue?!!
Have you ever worked in a Pub?
How about, stop releasing terrible products then you don’t get yelled at?
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It’s really hard to put the boundary on what constitutes toxic because even the innocous but repetitive questions are becoming a problem after a bit - and I started actively following the DT forum only at some point after the .21 hotfix.
Having said that, I don’t think it’s just toxicity. It’s probably also what you described later, i.e. that there is limited information that the CMs can share and they simply cannot satisfy everyone - so it’s not only strain for the CMs to reply 100 times providing the same information that they already repeated, but also dealing with all kinds of variations of the same questions and fishing for extra details. And I believe the worst part here is that majority of people asking such questions are not doing it to provoke, but simply that they believe the questions are simple enough not to require any restraint (despite the fact that once something is said, it will be always quoted, repeated or misinterpreted by at least one person).
(I would never want to be a CM or in the customer support because I believe I would go crazy so kudos to anyone with that amount of patience, reasonableness and restraint.)
Internet has broken down many social restraints for a number of reasons. Without going in depth on this topic, let’s just say that if a lot of people who posted on Internet behaved in the same way IRL, they would be more socially outcast, but Internet is rewarding them and even providing an echo chamber that moves them further into extremes and allows them to connect. The awareness of “you are not alone” is a double-edged sword.
That’s, on the other hand, such a broad definition of harassment open to any number of arguments that would create any number of non-fallacies that would appear to be the strawman.
For instance, this. On one side, it is unfair because for the reasons mentioned above, the CMs always put a caveat in ther statements, i.e. they avoid promising, but on the other the repeated postponement is bound to grate at least some of the people.
Now, based on the screenshot and my knowledge of the context, I find this funny, but OK, it’s certainly not meant as harassment. OTOH, if the screenshot is representing hundreds of such messages, maybe repeated over a prolonged period of time, especially if at least one person kept it as the sole reply (as opposed to an argued reply with a jab at the end), I would change my mind and go for toxic or harrassment. Again, having more context would certainly help me decide whether I would consider it as such.
In theory I do agree with everything you’ve said there. What you’re talking about is epitomised in “cancel culture”.
You didn’t, I did earlier on. It’s the basic premise of my stance on the issue.
Because sometimes behaving badly feels great. Especially if we can justify it to ourselves and we have others that are behaving badly with us. For better or worse, it’s part of being human.
Thanks. I think you’d have a tough time getting a diverse community (and pretty much all game communities are diverse now) to come to a consensus on what “antisocial behaviour” means. If you ask the people spamming “next week” memes, I bet they’d tell you their behaviour is quite the opposite of antisocial.
As for “that makes things worse for players”, that again is relative. You’ve alluded to this (unintentionally, I suspect) with your comment that there’s a financial incentive to not be proactive, as it implies that the community is split on what sorts of behaviour are positive or negative. So where is the line drawn and who do you trust to draw it?
To me, toxicity is behaviour that is detrimental to the health of the community and the game. The behaviours that fall into that description are dependent on the community, which means the more diverse the community, the harder these behaviours are to define and police.
So in a sense I do agree with you. Which is ironic because I have a strong suspicion that our views on what constitutes “toxic” don’t entirely align.
I think toxicity between players and toxicity between players and devs are separate issues. Devs (particularly management) are responsible for protecting their staff from harmful player behaviour through clear statements on what is acceptable and what isn’t and empowering their staff to respond appropriately.
That’s a good point.
The poll was done by “high-skill” (higher-paid) workers.
The definition i.e. the scope of what is “harassment”, may be different for them.
We keep forgetting what level of BS, people who work in pubs, fast-food restaurants, customer care, technical support, nurses, people who just hand out boarding passes at the airport etc. deal with every day.
This ties in with my general sense that since gaming companies started converting “players into payers” i.e “gamers into customers”, the nature of complaints about games shifted from “why cannot I be a space marine in this game?” to “why is this feature not working as advertised in the product I purchased from your company?”.
What gaming companies are experiencing is simply “unsatisfied customers” in an over-saturated industry that’s well into the “race to the bottom” stage.
In this climate, only Bobby Koticks of the wold are satisfied, and the rest (devs and players) are left to be angry with each other for dumb reasons beyond anyone’s control.
Of course, real, personal harassment happens all the time. For example, towards CMs. There is ABSOLUTELY no excuse for that.
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Online harassment has been abused as an argument for years now. When in all honesty it’s 99% just a scapegoat to divert attention from legit criticism.
Funny enough it’s always the most horrible devs and companies that seem to be ‘victims’ of online harassment, incidentally just when sht hits the fan on their trash games.
So fark Fatshark and increase the harassment for all I care. The more pressure they have in the public discourse the more it hurts their bottom line, the likelier a potential change is.
Same as the bs survey. It’s just a tool to divert criticism away from public platforms like reddit and twitter in order to obfuscate the bad press. No one will ever read or give a fark about it. The current wizards of the coast OGL debacle is a nice example of this.
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This is the main reason I have a hard time seeing your point of view. I understand the sentiment of what you’re trying to express, but it’s not simply a matter of the game not meeting the customers’ expectations, but every single thing that has been done after it became clear that it didn’t meet those expectations and every aspect ignored since then.
-
Is the community escalating this by negative reinforcement?
– Yes, certainly. -
Is the company part of that escalation?
– Yes, and more so than the community.
I was about to write a longer paragraph explaining my reasoning but I’ll refrain from it. What it boils down to is that
- you (as a company) shouldn’t advertise one thing and deliver another
- should communicate with your customers if there is unnecessary friction and/or misunderstandings
- ignoring the problems doesn’t make them go away, but in this case it will rather allow for more people to make the same realization and share those feelings (increasing negative reinforcement, increasing pressure on the company)
In my line of work, if I receive a complaint from a dissatisfied or angry customer then my first priority is always to understand where the frustration or anger is stemming from. If I can figure that out I can then work on resolving the issue. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter if the issues arose because I’ve been unclear, if the customer hasn’t paid attention or if it’s because by language barriers. My focus is not to determine who’s to blame but tor resolve the issue so that I don’t have to waste time and energy on it, and so that the customer feels empowered (with knowledge) and understands the process moving forward. What’s so good about that approach is that my customers will refer me or the company to their friends and that they will happily come back to me if they need something else - instead of telling people to stay clear of the company, asking for refunds and never coming back again.
As mentioned it’s not rocket science, it’s just that this company sucks at communication, fails to deliver what they promise and then again fail to address that they under delivered. They have a very engaged community but can’t help but re-creating this situation (it’s not their first rodeo either).
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This is a side conversation I’ve tried to avoid but I am feeling gaslit by many of those with “negative criticism”. Once DT was announced it became my most anticipated game. I followed every single bit of media released and consumed it all. There was no mismatch between what was advertised and what was delivered, with the exception of a fully functioning crafting system but it disclosed before the game was fully released so consumers had the information and some paid cosmetics. I remain very confused about some of the complaints people are bringing forth as they seem to be based on wild imagination or conspiracy theories. FS has addressed a number of these points and players not getting what they want or having their demands meet is NOT a failure to communicate. Asking for fundamental systems to be scrapped and rebuilt or added to the game from scratch is acceptable criticism but people need to deal when they’re told “thank you for opinion but no” or “we’re looking into it”.
I don’t think the communication surrounding the DT release was poor, I think people were just unhappy with the answers and have since decided bullying members of the company is an effective strategy. So they stopped communicating because without something substantial to offer the community they are just inviting more abuse. I think it’s entirely possible to voice your displeasure and do so without being overly demanding or engaging in harassment.
Even accepting the premise that Darktide is the worst game of all time, something that keeps me grounded is that it is a $40 luxury entertainment item with so many available substitutes. Sure your time and money (and disk space) has value but if your unhappiness reaches the point where your engaging in harassment towards devs/community members, the issue is NOT with the company making the game.
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I would generally agree with you, apart from some of the aspects of the communication that I read, but I obviously haven’t read nearly as much as you did and I also due to a number reasons couldn’t nor wanted to be in the beta - but I may have interpreted the words that I did read in the way that I liked.
I’d just like to hear what course FS is going to take in order to see whether there is any point in waiting for improvements that would make this product appealing enough for me. If FS disagrees with various criticisms, that’s their right. And if the game fails or succeeds, it’s on them. I’m still holding on to it here because they might decide that some of my issues with the game are the ones that should be addressed.
And, indeed, some of the frustration comes from my perception of the elements that made VTs good for me and how I don’t see many of them here. But hey, we can all like the same game for different reasons. OTOH, I would like to know reasoning behind certain decisions. Which is, again, FS’s right to keep private.
If you seriously think Fatshark is going to be able to release crafting, console versions, a new class every quarter, PLUS new cosmetics, I have a bridge to sell you.
And that’s just SOME of the stuff they promised. Crafting was supposed to be implemented in December and we’ve barely even gotten any hotfixes.
We must’ve seen either different promotional material or promotional material for a different game. I’ll send you that reminder if I remember.
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