WTF Is Wrong With The Gaming Community?

Oh yeah, and as for the Larian thing. For some reason, the RPGCodex fetishizes the Divinity series. Given their personalities, and average ages, and how they've reacted when I was very mildly critical of the game mechanics on their forum I can easily understand where any hostile elements might originate from on the developer's own boards. I mean I made it very clear repeatedly I wasn't being that harsh, but their reactions were so absurd they made themselves prime troll bait at Sven's expense.

Celerity vents spleen, for 200 Damage.

Ripper said:

Celerity vents spleen, for 1,337 Damage.

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Fixed.

Celerity said:

Oh yeah, and as for the Larian thing. For some reason, the RPGCodex fetishizes the Divinity series. Given their personalities, and average ages, and how they've reacted when I was very mildly critical of the game mechanics on their forum I can easily understand where any hostile elements might originate from on the developer's own boards. I mean I made it very clear repeatedly I wasn't being that harsh, but their reactions were so absurd they made themselves prime troll bait at Sven's expense.

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Holy cow by the way with your first post in this thread. I guess I should breathe a sigh of relief to have not had to have gone through putting some crazy forum poster in prison.

Glad to hear that it's not all in my head over at the Larian forums. I don't know if the little animals who accosted me there were from the codex but if they were then I guess it was par for the course.

It's really too bad too because Larian's games are great but I can see a lot of people putting their finger into the mousetrap without even realizing it and walking away with a bad taste in their mouth after experiencing that place. And that's hugely undeserving for Larian.

TheMadGamer said:

I was stunned. I'm pretty sure I've watched every video put out by Sven and I have read the vast majority of his blogs. He has sort of become my 'Wily Wonka' of gaming. He is full of positive energy, embraces free exchange of ideas, promotes strong team environments, and possesses a great deal of transparency with both his successes and failures. I never would have expected such a miserable opposite-world at Larian's forums. But lesson learned, I won't go there anymore.

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Sven is really full of energy and excitement with a spark in his eyes. Charismatic even. A true geek, in a most positive meaning of the word.

Oh well, it is a huge contrast, two different worlds...but Sven and his team can't really choose the type of people they come to visit their forums.
So, they are not to blame.
And there is a lot of different people out there, which is a good thing, I think so.
And then, I guess if you feel uncomfortable there, the best thing is to leave it be. At least for a little while...until Divinity OS 2 comes out.

Just a quick intermission here for educational purposes, guys: The Larian head honcho's name is Swen Vincke, not Sven.

By the way, I could definitely see the Codexers causing shit over there after they effectively made Avellone (who is like Jesus Christ Superstar to the average Codexer) join Larian. That probably inflated their egos and attitudes tenfold. They most likely view Swen as their bitch and themselves as the secret real CEOs of Larian .

TheMadGamer said:

Holy cow by the way with your first post in this thread. I guess I should breathe a sigh of relief to have not had to have gone through putting some crazy forum poster in prison.

Glad to hear that it's not all in my head over at the Larian forums. I don't know if the little animals who accosted me there were from the codex but if they were then I guess it was par for the course.

It's really too bad too because Larian's games are great but I can see a lot of people putting their finger into the mousetrap without even realizing it and walking away with a bad taste in their mouth after experiencing that place. And that's hugely undeserving for Larian.

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See if searching for the same name on the Codex reveals anything. And before anyone says it, I do have an account there myself but they're not very fond of me because I call them on their nonsense same as I would for anyone else and one of the things they do when someone makes their safe space unconfortable is "Watchwitzing" - that is, making their website very slow and unresponsive for only you, and frequently redirecting pages on... the RPGWatch, which is how I found this board in the first place. There's a few people there that actually discuss RPGs, for the most part it's just a trolling ground run by pretentious children.

As for the prison thing, they're very lucky the court could not conclusively prove his motivation, as that would have been enough that I could have taken that entire corrupt company out and made the world a better place.

As for Divinity, I was not impressed at all. It came off as a shallow, one dimensional exercise in One True Wayism/guess what the proverbial DM was thinking, and the punishment for guessing wrong is literal **** off explosions for 35,000 damage, or what is effectively being mind controlled by the game so you do what the game wants anyways. It was also full of hilarious game breaking bugs such as enemies getting infinite turns and auto killing you (and themselves, if you set them on fire first), and the combat was just spamming elemental gimmicks because they vastly outdamaged your actual attacks.

However there's a world of difference between my not liking a game, a game having atrocious mechanics, and there being something objectively wrong with a company. I have no grudges against Larian or the Divinity community, it's just a game that failed my screening test and that I passed on. They can do whatever they like, I just don't want any part of it.

The Codex will be cynical about games, but they are usually more mature than the posters on the average gaming forum full of conceited teens, and at the end of the day these are just opinions. I really doubt they would go so far as to harass someone else for having the "wrong gaming opinion". Kids on an official gaming forum or some other immature community maybe, but not them.

Oh absolutely! I mean it has been well established over the years that RPGCodex is essentially synonymous with this heavily fortified bastion of maturity on the Internet as their welcome message illustrates more than clearly…

It's a giant frat-house, except they all live in the basement.

It's not about the rules that are in place, it's about the mindset and the age average of the posters. You will often find a lot of harassment on many subreddits for instance where the age average hovers around 20.

There is a major difference between heated criticism of public personalities, and actual harassment of ordinary people who are just partaking in a community and stating their own opinions.

Humanity has risen! said:

The Codex will be cynical about games, but they are usually more mature than the posters on the average gaming forum full of conceited teens, and at the end of the day these are just opinions. I really doubt they would go so far as to harass someone else for having the "wrong gaming opinion". Kids on an official gaming forum or some other immature community maybe, but not them.

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I'm not sure who this is directed at. The Codex has directed a lot of stupidity my way, and some comparatively mild stalking but they have done none of the more severe things I've mentioned and most of those happened before I had any idea they existed. They do go full retard very quickly if you're at all critical about select games though, with them being triggered hard by anything Divinity related or the first 2 Fallout games. Ironic, considering their blind hatred of almost everything else. No one ever taught them being a strict critic means having coherent standards things can potentially meet and earn your approval. I just call them on their nonsense and view them as troll bait, they're not even in the same league as the vileness that is the Derpest Dungeon community (even considering their admin released personal information of someone who donated money, and the worst threads that are in a private forum).

I like reading codex threads on different games as they go in-depth into what they like and dislike. Sure a lot of posters post rubbish but you soon recognise the quality posters from the people who like being contrarian to be cool. They are not afraid of voicing there opinions and calling people out on there bs either. Its refreshing honestly. They know how to poke fun at each other without it escalating into drama.

As for the maturity level of some of the people there; well its an open forum which is loosely moderated. What would you expect to happen really? The core codex community is solid. I have learned to filter out the shit-stirrers from the real contributors when I read the threads there.

TheMadGamer said:

Aside from a few responses, the replies were just bizarre hate filled diatribes having nothing to do really with what I wrote. I get it, there are trolls… that's not lost on me… but there's something else going on.

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Maybe this scientific study will help you : https://www.academia.edu/6016545/Trolls_just_want_to_have_fun

And - the WORST thing is that this is currently an GLOBAL phenomenon (at least it seems to me) in ALL of the "western hemisphere" ! Because Germany has that as well ...

It's more than gaming - it's everywhere, and it's been happening for longer than the internet has been a thing.

If you go back to the 50's in the USA, the people were vastly more pleasant. They would go to great lengths to avoid offending people (even as they were, say, telling you that you had to eat in the kitchen because your skin was the wrong color). I think they were pleasant to the point of it actually being a problem. People would be so pleasant that you could be harming them without realizing it because they will cover that fact up.

Now the pendulum has swung the other way. Not only do people let you know that you've hurt them, they actually seek those things out and magnify them to an insane degree. Sure, a game can make you rage-quit but come on. Death threats!? For a fool computer game!? We've gone from people being scared to death of being angry to people who desperately want to be angry!

P.S. Sheesh, and in the middle of this I get a call from a "security agency" that's trying to sell me a security system. I, like practically everybody else in the nation, am on the do-not-call list so there's basically 0 chance this "security agency" is on the up & up so I get angry... while writing a post about how everyone is getting way too angry way too often. Note that that is not hypocrisy, that is actually irony. TOTALLY different thing!! <ahem>

Zloth said:

P.S. Sheesh, and in the middle of this I get a call from a "security agency" that's trying to sell me a security system. I, like practically everybody else in the nation, am on the do-not-call list so there's basically 0 chance this "security agency" is on the up & up so I get angry… while writing a post about how everyone is getting way too angry way too often. Note that that is not hypocrisy, that is actually irony. TOTALLY different thing!! <ahem>

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I think being angry is fine - it is how the anger is being expressed that is often the problem.

Ha! Speaking of…

Pointing at my new signature may at first seem to be off topic, but the lovely video isn't.
Really, you won't regret watching it!

Silver said:

I like reading codex threads on different games as they go in-depth into what they like and dislike. Sure a lot of posters post rubbish but you soon recognise the quality posters from the people who like being contrarian to be cool. They are not afraid of voicing there opinions and calling people out on there bs either. Its refreshing honestly. They know how to poke fun at each other without it escalating into drama.

As for the maturity level of some of the people there; well its an open forum which is loosely moderated. What would you expect to happen really? The core codex community is solid. I have learned to filter out the shit-stirrers from the real contributors when I read the threads there.

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I have no idea where most of those people are. I've seen a few of them, but for the most part it's "We're pretentious and love only epic, unrealistic, monocled RPGs!" *spends over 9,000 hours on Skyrim* "Skyrim SUCKS!" Which is what made me call them out on their bullshit, and they don't like it when you do that.

That's the part where they think they're clever and try reversing it, except I realized Derpest Dungeon was nothing like what was advertised near instantly and only put non trivial amounts of time in it, much less the memetic 1,337 hours after redesigning the game personally so it was actually what it said it was.

Anyways, I'd say it's actually both. I've seen a significant part of this whole fake politeness thing where someone hates you for months but hides it and puts on a song and dance. I've also seen a significant amount of this sort of grossly disproportinate response. I'd say they're related. Instead of venting your grievienances like normal people, they become contained and naturally escalate. When you see death threats over a video game, and other such remarks such as the 60+ review comments I removed in a single day before corrupt developers censored my release day review of Derpest Dungeon, that's the result of hostility repressed by this political correctness taking the only out they have. It's better than them going on a shooting spree I guess, but some of them are so obviously unhinged I would not put real world violence (directed at me or someone unrelated) past them in the slightest.

Zloth said:

P.S. Sheesh, and in the middle of this I get a call from a "security agency" that's trying to sell me a security system. … while writing a post about how everyone is getting way too angry way too often. Note that that is not hypocrisy, that is actually irony. TOTALLY different thing!! <ahem>

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Well getting a sales call is not really the same situation. That's an unsolicited intrusion into your home. I've been noticing an uptick in sales calls where I live and also sales calls on my mobile phone which is really irritating since I pay for incoming and outgoing calls. I'll have to look into it, but something tells me marketers have found some kind of loophole to the federal do not call regulations.

There's a significant number of people running fake businesses over the phone. Say I wanna rob your house. I pretend I'm selling some sort of security for your home, I come in and install something that looks convincing while casing the place, you think you're safe because you fell for my scam. I take your money for the fake device, then take some more when I break in.

That sort of scam is really common. Obviously they're not gonna respect the law of a do not call list when they're already breaking the more severe laws against fraud and breaking and entering...

TheMadGamer said:

I've been noticing an uptick in sales calls where I live and also sales calls on my mobile phone

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Same here, especially since I started doing real estate. The board of realtors I joined evidently gave my info to certain companies that solicit real estate related products and services. It's very annoying.