Enabled by social media, gamers have been sharing their experiences at a larger scale than ever. For example, Animal Crossing fans have been showing all sorts of creativity with their gorgeous islands and discussing turnip pricing amongst each other. With the rise of websites like Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook, gaming companies can readily share news, patch notes, updates, and sometimes avoid addressing the community altogether.
As fans show their creative, epic, and funny gaming moments across various social media platforms, others use it to make their disappointment heard. Negative hashtags, ‘colorful’ complaints, harassment, and pushback on PR and devs because what they expected was not realized or presented. This can lead to a sense of entitlement, bringing vocal minorities together in masse.
A prime example is the recent Xbox Series X console presentation. This presentation was met with a lot of hate due to the lack of the expected, promised, gameplay content for the upcoming console and its highly anticipated titles such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. The fans flooded as many platforms as possible, loudly voicing their dislikes for the presentation as a whole.
While Microsoft said they were going to offer gameplay and in-game footage in the presentation, a lot of fans complained about the prerecorded, rendered promotions. They also made it clear that Ubisoft did not show the widely spread ‘gameplay’ of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, but instead some theatrical cutscenes to the tune of dramatic music for an added effect.
These angry gamers pushed back at Devs and PR representatives due to their ‘shady’ marketing practices in this presentation. The creative director for Valhalla, Ashraf Ismail, had to apologize for the lack of content in the trailer. Microsoft had to acknowledge the situation due to the number of dislikes on their video of the event.
Harassment is unacceptable. Hounding, hating on people that you claim to respect because you’re in disagreement is a childish way to get attention. As social media teams, devs, and PR people turn around to accept blame and apologize, they’re enabling this behavior.
Enabling this behavior perpetuates more toxicity towards other people. If gamers can get away by harassing people until they apologize, they can continue to take action against other people/companies that upset them. This becomes a different subset of ‘cancel culture’, creating a toxic bandwagon in a community that has been rising away from its ’niche audience.’
The communication that social media provides is important. Being able to address issues with patches, when servers go down, and important game-breaking glitches quickly is an important tool. Transparency is valuable but it should be requested with respect, by conversations and not by attacking, or in the following case doxxing, the people involved in your favorite game.
It is okay to be upset if you didn’t like something. It’s okay to be angry if something didn’t meet your expectations. It is not okay to take it out on other human beings that are working hard to meet deadlines, get things done, or that make these games for the world to enjoy.
Transparency is important, gaming publishers should engage it as much as possible. If there is a situation such as miscommunication, they should address it quickly. Gamers throwing tantrums by strong-arming the publishers, social media teams, community managers, and other employees, are spreading toxicity. Companies should not engage in that toxicity and should instead move forward, only apologizing when necessary and not when the angry mob rises on Twitter over nothing.
Source: DMG on Twitter
