itch.io

I have been doing a few things that could fit that description in the past weeks: Write reports when users were breaking the community rules, report to give moderators the heads-up when somebody needs help or accidentally posted their thread in the wrong topic… And then I found my own voice and branched out: Give new developers the heads-up when they forgot to include a screenshot or wrote a novel instead of a short pitch in their game’s release announcement, called people out when they where taking the sips, suggested to users that they could find the answer to their question by scrolling down through the comments (in less time than it would take them to write a refund request)… And the more blatantly rotten their attitude, the less I sugarcoated my response - that’s a freedom I take with this since I have no ambitions in becoming a community moderator or anything like that. Let’s just say that some people did not take that as well as others. The only thing about it that I regret would be presuming their innocence for as long as I did. I wouldn’t say they make up as much as even 5% of the itch.io user base, but they are… I struggle to put it into words, due to the language barrier, but I think “nasty” might be a fitting term to describe them. Judging from your posts, I think if you are interested in helping out you might find it rewarding work. However… My advice would be that you maybe don’t make any even vaguely critical statements if you chose to involve yourself. Or do so with another user account. If I had any works of mine published on this account I’m pretty sure they would be sitting on a 1.something rating by now… Risk your livelihood in battles that are more important than these. ;)

That being said: Dark Dimension has been a member of this community since 2014 and seem to have been avoiding the fate I just described. On the other hand they have the composure of a Tibetan monk and always offer a very tempered response, even when dealing with users who have clearly lost it.

As always: Other points of view are available.

(Again: Just what I’ve experienced myself.) I know barely enough about music to claim that there are people who happen to listen to music, like music, or are into music. I think of these three groups only the last one is likely to leave more of a comment than “I like your tunes.” or know about the finer point of how the music industry works internally (like how money from songs played on the radio gets distributed). To ad a quote from Hunter S. Thompson for color commentary:

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.

Similar things are true with video games. But there is more that can go wrong when playing a game since the interaction is more complex. The game might not run well on any given system. It might have bugs or balancing issues. A player might not have liked the ending. A player might have accessibility issues due to being color blind, not having the reflexes for it, etc.

But it takes them more than 3 to 5 minutes on average to discover that they have these issues and then the sunken cost fallacy kicks in - so they either want all of their money back (because they suspect they are entitled to) or have that game fixed ASAP. And they know that complaining will (sometimes) get stuff fixed, so they become rather vocal about it - I guess.

At least that’s my attempt at explaining what’s going on there.

…Still doesn’t explain why some gamers download house.ogg onto their mp3 player and expect country.mp3 to play… ;)

P.S.: I’m also very much aware that others would probably also describe me as nasty, for pointing out when they acted stupid or broke the rules. They are not entirely wrong, but I feel like giving them an emotional jog is better for everyone than just to leave them be.