- 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
I’m surprised they didn’t see this coming. A lot of people had high expectations because of the impact the first game had and if it wasn’t better in every way there was bound to be some negative feedback.
They’re not complaining about negative feedback, are they? They’re complaining about the internet hate machine, which we should be mature enough here to admit is a bunch of juvenile, masturbatory bullshit from people that want to feel good about themselves without doing anything to actually earn that, and so just shit mercilessly in every way on anything they don’t like, because bullying others is a quick and easy way to feel strong for a brief time.
That’s more than mere negative criticism.
Isn’t that just a more extreme version of negative feedback?
The post the article is talking about does mention toxicity in the community and hints at it being directed at the devs but how much of that is people debating and talking about gripes they have with the game versus crude personal attacks?
All I was saying is this game received a lot of attention and hype so I felt like this was kind of an inevitably. They were never going to please everyone.
No, things becoming more extreme versions of themselves frequently alters their overall effects. To exaggerate to make my point clear, isn’t mass murder just an extreme form of target shooting?
Trying to identify something without taking its real effects into account is rather silly.
I get it but I feel like a vast majority of the criticism they are getting doesn’t fall under the extreme category or into bullying.
Some people might be making Gmanlives-style quips in the Steam reviews that might make themselves feel good but I think a majority of it’s just general disappointment and people expressing it.
Yeah I think that goes with people voicing their disappointment. It’s like with Fallout 76 a lot of the community was split on it. Even now defending it can lead to dog piling.
People are debating in the community. It might not make for a super fun place to be that’s kind of just the reality of it for now.
Fallout 76 was also an unbelievable shitshow, and had very, very few honest defenders. Does it have to go full gamergate for you think its a problematic situation or something? Try to remember there’s a distinction between reasoned debate, like what you and I are doing right now, and trolling. Which I’m sure we could both switch to if we felt like it.
Criticism, for it to be useful, does have certain delivery requirements. The critic, in order to not be shit, has a certain responsibility to their criticism.
Now, gamers are a tough bunch. If a community is losing community, I think we can make some inferences about whats going on, and it’s probably not a bunch of well-reasoned and nuanced debate.
I don’t think the bar is that high or that a majority of the negative discussion falls under bullying. It’s a lot of people disappointed in a game and voicing their frustration.
Saying a game sucks and has no redeeming qualities and encouraging them to get a refund when they ask for any kind of tech support for it on Reddit is kind of unoriginal and lazy but I don’t think that classifies as bullying.
For example this is from Reddit about someone liking the game. You get good responses like this
But you do get some less constructive comments like
And
Even sorting by controversial on Reddit it’s really not that bad. It sounds like there are some posts being removed but a majority of it is people voicing their frustration with modding support taking so long to implement and the game feeling like it’s lacking in some department.
I feel like were going in circles here. I already acknowledged that there are going to be people that take it to the extreme and that’s wrong but it’s a very percentage of people.
I disagree. You see communities around games slow down all the time when new games, updates, and DLC steal the spotlight. A lot of the time you just need to wait for things to shift in a different direction. In the meantime people are going to sporadically talk about how they feel about the game and debate updates that come out.
Very well said. It’s for this reason that I never admit openly that I am a gamer. It’s an embarrassing term.
I mean, if you’re a teen it’s probably fine.
There was no way the game was going to be better in every way, the previous game was being worked on for the better part of a decade.
Yeah I think expectations are too high, where people expected a perfect game like cities skylines forgetting that when it launched it was also a very rocky start.
Gamers in general are just very entitled, and very unforgiving
Didn’t the sequel have some pretty large problems on launch?
Nah man, that’s just entitlement. Wanting your $50 game to work well when you buy it is peak entitlement, you should be happy your game is running at 10fps with your 4080 RTX.
It wasn’t polished yes, graphics were not great and people were justified being disappointed and returning it if they felt like it was game breaking
But the vitriol is what I mean, the pure hate, the threats to developers, the anger thrown at them. That is what I’m referring to. If some graphical issues make you so mad that you need to literally threaten people then I think you shouldn’t game anymore. That’s where I say entitled and anger issues.
There’s always going to be a small group of people who take things too far once a game gets popular enough. I don’t think it’s right but I’d say it’s to be expected
I think people expected a CS2 with at least some of the cS1 dlc as standard (at least parks) instead we got a base game and then told there wouldn’t be a mod loader and we couldn’t use the steam library. That’s effectively nuked the ability for the community to “fix” the game.
They may have expected typical gamers to be more respectful than they are.
Huge mistake.
When they released CS1 it was in a similar state.
The difference is that nobody was paying attention to CS1 until after a couple patches were released and the game picked up momentum as it was improved and more fleshed out.