I’m a casual Half Life enjoyer. Spent some time on the subreddit and man is it off the wall.
Tunic has an interesting fandom. That writing system has inspired a lot of cool stuff. The subreddit is censored six ways from Sunday because of how spoiler-sensitive the game is, but I have to wonder what random passers-by must think.
The Undertale fandom has permanently put me off trying the game. It’s not really my kind of game anyway, but I enjoy the soundtrack.
Minecraft has to have had the biggest demographic shift in its player base I’ve ever seen. I bought the game when it was in beta. Most fans were adults who were able to give a random Swede 20 bucks via PayPal. After the game’s release, and especially after the console ports and eventual MS buyout, the average age got younger and younger. I miss the old Minecraft forums.
You must log in or # to comment.
Nicest: Slay the spire. I still miss interacting with the slay the spire sub, they’re very wholesome and managed the influx of new players well.
Weirdest: Rimworld. Everything is always about making a perfect cannibalism machine to maximize human leather hats and warcrimes. In a wholesome way.
Meanest: LoL. While it has become much better I can imagine there’s still pointless hostility happening there.
I think the fighting game community tends to be one of the nicest (some game specific communities can be toxic tho). It’s usually very inclusive and generally friendly to newer players.
Undertale’s fandom makes 10x more sense when you realize it started off with the same people from the Homestuck fandom (Toby fox used to do Homestuck stuff before Undertale).
Deep Rock Galactic has a great fandom since everything about the game is about cooperating with others. Risk of Rain’s fandom is also pretty chill.
Every fandom that gets popular enough will eventually become kinda toxic and have gatekeepers and people who take the game way too seriously. I wouldn’t put too much stock into fanbases unless it’s a multiplayer only game.
Gatekeeping is necessary for many things, though. Otherwise the thing will be changed into something its not and the thing you loved will become something different that you don’t love. Taken from you by other people coming in demanding the game be changed to fit their tastes instead of enjoying the game as the developers and artists originally created it to be.
For example, Survival Horror as a genre has been all but erased by the “Action Shooter with Horror elements and Over The Shoulder Camera” genre every big name is copy-pasting nowadays. The only Survival Horror games coming out now are the very occasional indie game.
Gatekeeping isnt inherently toxic. Yes, some people can be overly obnoxious about it, but usually that is an indicator that their favorites have been victimized before, and they dont want to lose another one. Becoming mainstream almost always destroys niche stuff, and most of the time it is better to remain niche than erase your identity to “appeal to a wider audience.” Lots of examples of that ending badly.
The Outer Wilds hint community is very nearly an extension of the game. They’re very good about providing hints based on what you already know without giving things away, so you still feel good about figuring it out.
Nicest: TES. I’ve met some of the nicest people and some of my best friends in the TES community, especially back in my ESO days when I ran a large guild.
Meanest / Most toxic: Planetside 2. I considered Destiny 2 for this but Planetside 2’s community takes the cake. It’s an old game by this point and the only people left playing it are the seasoned, cranky vets that have been playing for thousands of hours and hate everything and have zero patience for anyone who dares try to learn the game. Death threats, harassment, stalking, TKing, etc is all a frequent occurrence. There used to be entire outfits (guilds/clans) of players that were dedicated to playing as dirty as possible or otherwise being huge assholes.
Warframe has all three. Late-game players will gladly carry new players through some of the early farms and often foist upon them a crapton of important items that are difficult to get in the early game (we remember and nobody should have to go through the early game alone).
There are some who call the game woke trash and trying to boycot it because the latest female warframe has a larger body type and they can’t goon to it, or because of a relationship between two male characters that is hinted at being romantic, or because there are two nonbinary characters (both of whom are far better executed than most in media)… and some who sent the developers death threats for making a particular farm easier for new players.
Huh. I guess I never really understood the game then, because I never saw any power differences between new and late game. Like, I could tell I wasn’t effective at the higher levels, but I couldn’t even figure out how to get there. Then a family member came to stay for a week, got addicted and played my account and suddenly everything was bonkers.
Plus, like most games of its type, coming in at the end of (how many now? I know I’ve seen like 15+ events) lore missions makes it awkward. Kind of like if I tried to go and play world of warcraft after leaving during the blood crusade.
For getting powerful, it’s mostly about mods. One important part about modding is realizing there are diminishing returns for adding the same thing. +100% ability strength doubles it. Adding +100% more only increases it by 50% (it’s still adding the same amount, but the total, with the amount added, is increasing less). Different gear will want different stats increased, but you almost never want to go all in into one thing.
For the story stuff, it doesn’t matter. Your game only has your progress. For the most part, the world state that you see is the same as your progress, not the progress of the game. You can take your time and you won’t miss anything. It isn’t like other MMOs where the world progresses without you.
Linux?
Weird, nice, or mean?
My experience with the desktop Linux crowd has been pretty crappy honestly. Lemmy is a perfect microcosm of that. Guys I just want my computer to get out of the way and let me do what I need to do. I don’t want to have to sacrifice a goat to the fickle Bluetooth gods just to get my headphones to pair.
But My experience with Linux on the server side has been amazing, both as an admin and interacting with other admins. The platform is so wonderfully versatile, and the RTFM crowd has mellowed out considerably.
I can’t say the same for Windows server. I took MCSA courses in college and the books were horribly written. I was one and a half courses deep before I knew what a “forest” was in context (a bunch of domains), and I only learned that from asking my supervisor at work. The textbooks had been using the term left and right without defining it the entire time. When I went online to ask for guidence or clarification, all I’d get was “You should really know this already.” No, I shouldn’t I’m paying for these classes precisely because I don’t know and I want to learn. MS advertises the MCSA as the foot in the door for windows server admins, which means they shouldn’t assume you’ve been a sysadmin for five years already.
They also don’t play to the strengths of the GUI, namely discoverability and less cognitive burden. A GUI should make administration easier by making it easy to find out what you can do and how you can do it, and not require you to remember how to do it. But the courses had you memorizing which buttons to click in which order. It was so stupid. And for what? What runs on Windows server? Just other stuff made by Microsoft? And it costs how much? No thanks.
Hmmm, well I’ve had good experiences getting help from the Linux community but I strongly get the impression they are not willing to accept a lot of criticism of the operating system.
I played Undertale and was kind of underwhelmed. The fandom would have you thinking it was the greatest game ever made
IDK, I was stupidly obsessed with Final Fantasy VII as a kid, to the point that I wanted to do a school project on it (I didn’t follow through thankfully). After playing other JRPGs I now know the story is by no means unique or groundbreaking, even if the game as a whole is well-executed.
I could see a naive young’un thinking Undertale is super unique but re-evaluating it later. Other “quirky” RPGs have come before (specifically the Mother series), so if you’ve played Earthbound first Undertale may not be so unique. I haven’t played Undertale, but I’ve read and watched plenty of content about it, enough to know what the game is doing.
Yeah, I think my mistake was not realize the praise was coming from a much younger demographic. I was really surprised by how little gameplay there is.
The No Man’s Sky people are generally super chill and welcoming! It’s really nice.
It’s kinda funny, you see the occasional person come in and go “okay but wouldn’t it be BETTER if it were combat focused??” (you know, like almost every other game out there). Everyone politely tells them nah, let us have our weird little chill game in peace please, and then they leave. But as long as you’re not trying to turn the game into yet another FPS, or going around griefing people, you’re cool!
– Frost
I’m just still unwilling to retry the game after the bs state it was in at release. I was a lot younger and less informed back then though, so was it a publisher pushing release too early type deal or did the devs just shit the bed? (or neither)
From what we hear, sounds like it was a publisher pushing release too early thing, stacked with the lead dev not really being good at PR and going like “oh it’d be cool to have this, and this, and this…” and then everyone just ran with it and assumed he meant “it will have this”. It was apparently a huge shitstorm at launch.
Then the devs actually buckled down and added all that stuff in. We came in much later, after that was already underway.
And then they just KEPT ADDING SHIT. There’s so much stuff in the game now, it’s ridiculous.
– Frost
I try to stay away from most fandoms. Any group of people given sufficient time tends to turn sour. I’ll say as someone not affiliated with the Undertale fandom, it’s a really great story with good combat mechanics and very basic RPG elements. Just my 2 cents.
Yeah, I agree, and it’s a bummer that the fandom for that game keeps people from experiencing it. It really is a great adventure to discover for yourself
When I played (before I kicked the addiction), Warframe had the nicest community ever. Everyone was always happy to help out
Man, I remember when the star map was just a path with dots on it and there was a total of 5 frames. Excal, Loki, and Mag were the starting frames.
I remember them adding the star map and people hating it cause it made figuring out how to navigate to new planets confusing as fuck before they added in the being able to walk around your Orbiter and the updated mission tracking menus.
But the community existed and we all helped each other figure it out and progress with each other. Guilds and friendship grew naturally with people who were at the same point of progression you were. Without that community helping figure things out the game wouldn’t have been able to get past those growing pains and become the absolute behemoth it is today.
It’s really weird. I played in those early days (there’s a handful of badges available for the game, so most people don’t have one, but I get to be special because there’s an alpha or beta badge), and I really enjoyed it. We had one tileset, and that was enough. Now, I’ll occasionally get the urge to play it again, and there’s so much more, but I’m so much less interested in it. Everything feels less impactful. It’s just too easy now, and there’s no reason to keep going. Back then you needed to progress to survive.
The community is still as nice as ever though. I’m glad that hasn’t changed. Not many games grow as much as they have and keep that. Studios should really try to examine what they did and try to replicate it. It’s something beyond game design. It must be partially how they communicate (weekly streams, and just very up front about their plans), and also how important that is to them. It’s so important that the community lead was made the game director. What other studio has done that?
