- 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: https://archive.ph/mVaIY
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.
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. https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/04/09/ea-voted-worst-company-in-america-again/?sh=2dc357397aeb . 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://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.