This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
As an old, I don't really play video games. But it's weird to me that the video game industry is so woke considering that the user base is so anti-woke. Why aren't there anti-woke game publishers?
Proposed answer: Political selection of devs.
Video games companies need developers who are competent, willing to work for low wages, and willing to tolerate long working hours. This is a tough sell. Competent devs in the US can easily earn 200-500k with cushy working conditions. Why get paid less than half as much and be subjected to semiannual death marches?
As a result of this rotten bargain, the men who choose this field will tend to be young, not have families, and be fixated on video games. Frankly, this is going to select for autists. To the extent that autism and MtF trans are correlated, I would expect that video game developers are trans at a rate at least far above the norm. This might explain a lot of the soy-type politics espoused by major game studios.
There's clearly a market opportunity for non-woke game publishers. But could they get devs? Conservative men tend to work in the field that pays them the best, allowing them to support their family. They aren't out there making children's toys.
Does this explanation make sense? Or is this just a $20 bill sitting on the sidewalk?
I'm not convinced that the SWEs they hire in the video game industry actually are all that woke, that's at least not my experience with swedish video game developers. They're not anti-woke but they aren't really woke either.
The people that are woke and who are able to insert woke inte video games are the writers, artists and designers (and game journalists but that's outside of the developers), and i believe its that pipeline thats really rotten if any. What percentage of writers with a "relevant degree" are even non-woke? Anti-woke?
Furthermore even if you're non-woke, if the only acceptable culture in your industry is woke what are you going to do? You'll at the very least put in performative nods towards wokeness like "body type a/b" and inserting a girlboss here and there.
Devs overestimate the importance of Devs and a lot of non devs do as well.
To launch a game you have to pitch to investors and get millions in funding. Your game has to appeal to the funders and be something that they believe they will make money on. The biggest challenge is post launch . There are a bunch of games launched every day. The market is saturated to an insane degree. In order to break through you need to have influencers, journalists and other people pushing your game. The youtube algorithm promotes woke gamers.
Another underrated aspect is that in cut throat industries people will try to outmanoeuvre each other. If knocking out the opponent by discovering a transphobic tweet gets you ahead people will do it. The gaming industry is dirty.
You're right, and it's such a shame, and it's because marketing has grown bigger than the product being marketed. So for every dollar spend on making something of value, 9 dollars are spend trying to convince others that it have value. This tendency generalizes to most of society, which is why most things have become so fake.
There are reasons for this. A friend of mine is a VERY successful indie developer and publisher, and his business thinking is as follows:
The vast majority of people buy very few games every year. Even most ‘gamers’ might play five to ten.
So if you’re in the top ten in your market, whatever it is, you’ll rake in money. If not, you’ll make almost nothing.
Therefore, it’s worth spending whatever you have to on marketing, celebrity cameos, etc. Anything to shift you from 11th on the list to 9th.
I see, this feedback loop is to blame again. Viral content gets more viral, and less viral content disappears. This is because popularity is made out to be a metric of quality. All modern algorithms generally work like this, but it's a huge mistake. Merely changing the way the rating works from "Most plays" to "Best ratio of postive and negative reviews" should balance it better.
I actually want to make a game of my own. Guess I'll have to jump into a moral and social dilemma. Thanks for the answer by the way!
Ratio of positive/negative reviews is easily gamed and also selects for very niche things that has a loyal fanbase, rather than something with a wider appeal. I'd go as far as to say that positive/negative ratio on its own is worse than a pure view metric.
What you want is some kind of Bayesian weighting.
I don't see how it's easily gamed, but it does select for niche things. If these niche things are high quality to those that it appears to, isn't that fine? If less than 20% enjoy jazz, the better conclusion is "Of people who like Jazz, this one album is really good", rather than "Only 19% of all people like this album". Everything with a wider appeal has less depth, there's a sort of trade-off. I'd go as far as saying that everything good is niche. There's more people towards the middle of every standard distribution, but the best things (which are still popular enough to survive) are a few standard deviations to the right. And, if you allow those outside the niche to change what's inside of it, through the power of numbers, they will just destroy it or turn it into what they already like (which is plentiful everywhere). Hence why communities (like this one!) protect themselves with gatekeeping and rules and try to stay under the radar of outside political pressure.
I think the reason that votes aren't visible for a while on here is exactly to avoid starting a feedback loop (this one is the social one where people are influenced by other peoples votes). I also think that comments are sorted by "new" by default rather than by "best" (but I could be wrong), and that the "controversial" rating exists because the alternative is that the first decent comment to be made on a thread ends up being #1 simply because it started its exponential growth earlier.
Would your proposed weighting account for these things? (I don't know much about bayesian weighting)
You game it by controlling who gets access/early access to the game.
You can also review bomb other new games released close to your own release.
Given the quantity of games released this sort of score manipulation effectively turns that particular metric into a view of what has been released very recently, what is sufficiently niche to not attract non-fans and non-shills and what has most ratio manipulation behind it.
More options
Context Copy link
The main gaming that happens is review bombing. Even a few negative reviews can push your game out of the profitable peak and into the dead tail, so there’s lots of opportunities for bad actors to threaten devs into submission.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link