I just sort of ignore the toxic part of the community and feed the positive parts. that might be a cis white male privilege that I can do that, but I don’t really know what else there is to do. you can’t argue those people down so I just try to be the change I want to see in the community.
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This might be reaching, but the Fallout 4 debate between Jeff and Austin a couple years back was, I feel, representative of what their overarching interests are and (by extension) the kinds of communities they foster.
The short version (I wouldn’t recommend listening to it since it genuinely gets really heated and awkward) is, Jeff was arguing from a consumer POV where the technical issues in FO4 represented a huge failing that eclipsed most other points of discussion surrounding the game, whereas Austin’s argument was one of taking the technical issues as a given and largely irrelevant to the greater discussion of structure and narrative within FO4.
Most comments from the clip via YouTube or the GB site itself are heavily in favor of Jeff’s side, making technical competency their main prerogative in judging a game. And in my opinion, a community that largely prioritizes the technical/consumer side of game discourse over conversations about artistic merit or general craft is almost always going to be one that roots itself in harmful base assumptions about culture and society.
That isn’t to say “Jeff has opinion [x], therefore audience will have opinion [y]”, just that the priorities of the older members of Giant Bomb’s team in terms of games critique tend to draw an audience with some overlap into very bad sociopolitical views, and outside of social media, the team often doesn’t do a good enough job of weeding those people out.
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I’m in a Facebook group for a popular not gaming podcast, and when politics is the topic of conversation, there are quite a few people who have shitty opinions who show up. Even when hosts come in and make a point, sometimes people will try to argue directly with them. It can really suck. The reason I’m still in the group is the huge amount of people who show up to say to assholes, “no, you’re wrong, this opinion sucks.” I think if you’re in a situation where you know you’re not hugely outnumbered in the community, and you’re emotionally up for it, standing up to shitheads is something that can keep a community not super toxic.
This is something that unfortunately won’t ever really apply to GB, because I can’t see a giant bomb personality showing up in a forum or something to offer their personal opinion on a political issue. But in other communities, even without some persona to come from on high, if you think you have the will and the numbers, speaking your mind can keep a community kinda healthy. But of course, a person doesn’t have some obligation to do this. Don’t want to sound like you have to.
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It’s been a while since I listened to that debate, but I do think that Jeff had some very valid criticisms on the design of Fallout 4 that was separate from his technical issues. Stuff like the repetitive quest design, the large settlement component that many people (myself included) felt was pointless, and the reduced importance of role playing when compared to previous Fallouts. Does GB come from an old school product oriented way of looking at games? Absolutely, but I do think the criticisms against Fallout 4 go way beyond “does it do XYZ”.
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I think this is incredibly insightful. I don’t know if it’s true, per se, but it does bring up an important topic of conversation regarding the difference between “consumer reporting” and “criticism”. Even though that debate is one of gaming culture’s biggest dead horses, I don’t think I’ve heard people making the connection between the video game reviews’ objectivity/subjectivity and the assumptions of culture and society that are also tied to that. At least, if there is literature related to this topic, I’d love to read it.
A few things:
I feel like drawing a link between being focused on tech/mechanics in terms of games and having bad sociopolitical views a bit reductive, especially when GB has been a personality based site for close to a decade, and was in a way distancing themselves from what the more traditional games media they were part of used to be.
I think you’re slightly misrepresenting the Fallout 4 debate, because the debate itself was centered around the mechanics of the game and wether or not it was one of the most disappointing games of the year. Austin and Brad’s argument wasn’t that the bugs were irrelevant but that they were to be expected considering Bethesda’s general output over the years. Jeff and Vinny’s argument actually centered around the fact that the technical failures had an adverse effect of the structure and narrative.
I guess what I’m getting at is that I don’t think your example is representative of the difference in audience you’re talking about.
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The excerpt I get stuck on a lot is Jeff’s “if Fallout 4 was a car, it would be killing people”, which feels like a distillation of looking at games as consumer products rather than as media to engage with and critique. Not that technical failings are a lesser or frivolous aspect of a work to critique, but it’s one that gaming communities routinely bias towards, while disregarding any exploration of games’ cultural significance as fodder for ivory tower eggheads.
Jeff is absolutely not that kind of person, but regardless, GB as a communal entity still attracts its fair share of them.
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I can see your point but that analogy was introduced into the conversation by Austin, not Jeff. To be clear, I don’t think your overall point is necessarily without merit, but I think that basing it on that debate, or GB in general is a bad example of it, especially considering GB’s place in the grand scheme of games media.
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agreed. i’ll note that, since the GB’s handling of the GG disaster, the staff seems much more willing to confront these issues, though admittedly, not as a focus. of particular note is Brad, who has been the most cavalier, seemingly unshackled since whatever previously unspoken, or perhaps “expected” terms of conduct were lifted. honestly, i wouldn’t want the socio-political stuff to ever be a focus because, at the end of the day, i feel like they provide a solid product that is only marred by the toxic part of their community that gets unreasonably spotlighted. shout out to the gb community that does all of the art, the highlight videos, and sends the mailbag stuff.
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I don’t engage with the GB community because of how shitty they treat every new member of the staff. Honestly I’m fine with them not digging into deep political discussions on a regular basis and just rest easy knowing that they’re all very liberal people who would rather spend a couple of hours chatting about emulators and how terrible Super Mario Sunshine is (it’s great actually). This is much more noticeable on their respective twitters than in their content, but they are very much on the far left. On social media Alex has spoken about being a DSA member, Brad’s semi-regular extreme anger at current events/policies, Dan’s hatred of the Trump administration etc. To answer the original question: as hard as it is, just ditch the community. You’re not doing yourself any favors by staying and absorbing all that garbage other people are spewing. Don’t let a troubled community keep you from enjoying something.
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Not really a big community but two of my best friends are constantly talking to one another over Whats app. Over the last year, I’ve found one of my friends has become one of these right wing Brietbart type personalities I laugh about on twitter. I was best man at his wedding last year, so we’re pretty close. He lives down South in the UK, whilst I’m based up in the Midlands.
We only really talk about general stuff, as well as movies and video games. He hasn’t really engaged with games since university some 7-8 years ago (lots of Rock Band, Gears 2 and Left 4 Dead 2). He’s a big Star Wars fan but lately he has started becoming a bit of a dripfeed for every small story that comes out of production. Every so often he messages us with these massive rants against what he sees as the feminisation of Star Wars and how white males are being slowly pushed out as being the focus of these movies. This extends to all other superhero movies as well, don’t get me started on what he thought about Wonder Woman. His world seems to exist within these big franchise films, there is such a sense of entitlement there which I think extends to his whole being in general.
He is vehemently against what he calls SJW tublrina’s. I’m not even sure if people still use Tumblr!
He doesn’t even play games, but on the announcement of Farcry 5 he forwarded over the news item along with aggro along the lines of ‘yet again the white man is being seen as the enemy’. I always rise up to it and argue against him, ‘you’re saying as a student of history you don’t think white people may have somethings to answer for’?. It gets really heated and awkward. My other friend tries to be a bit more diplomatic about things and explain it with economics and the changing of the times - Star Wars is trying to appeal to as many people as it can, which is why it is distancing itself from the white male hero with these diverse ensemble casts who appeal to more people. Disney want to make more money by enlarging the audience beyond the core Star Wars fans.
I can’t help but laugh at it all sometimes. From what he tells us, he’s an active participant in certain toy forums - transformers stuff I guess… but like really hard transformers for adult man children… They seem to have similar thoughts to things as he does, which I think is where he gets it from. A fucking toy website for adults. He shows no signs of abaiting with his right wing rants, I usually respond to him by respectfully telling him that I think he is wrong. At the end of the day, his opinions just come from a place that feels so small and petty. On one hand, I want to understand his thinking better, just to understand how this toxic thinking materialises, but I’m getting so tired of it all and honestly the only thing it is really doing is adding further distance between us.
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Well, the end of this post turned out to unfortunately be extremely prophetically timed. How do you deal with a community that sees you as inherently toxic - at best to be tolerated only when severely self-constrained, always looked at for perceived deviance? What does it mean to build an inclusive community when rules effectively mirror major diagnostic criteria? How can a safer space still be maintained without creating an infrastructure that effectively requires constant neurotypical behaviour from all participants? I had a couple of thoughts expanding that but broke it out into a blog post as it’s more topic-adjacent to this thread:
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As cold as it may sound, I think it is reasonable and healthy to reevaluate BFFs every once in a while to make sure there are contemporary mutual attractions felt between you and your friends. I have found myself getting into horrible situations by making excuses for old friends just because I thought loyalty was a virtue. That said, it can be hard to make new friends.
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I know what I’m about to say sounds crazy but hear me out.
The Giant Bomb subreddit has a vastly better community than the legit forums. Reddit has a well earned bad reputation but the moderator /u/Idratherbelurking runs a tight ship. By no small coincidence this person also runs the waypoint and teamgfbradio subreddit.
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I am kcin, and I, too, am a GB forum expat.
The GB West team makes a conscious effort to not discuss current events, and should they bleed into games (as they so often do these days), there is generally a great deal of tense build-up around broaching the subject, if it even gets broached at all. (The way they spoke about PewDiePie’s n-word incident was a step in the right direction, but it also felt like one of the very first steps.) It’s my opinion that the distinct wall between ‘games’ and ‘current events’ needs to be dismantled. It makes discussing current events within the scope of this culture feel abnormal, which it shouldn’t, because the two subjects will forever be entangled from here on in. There is no escape from current events.
It’s plain as fucking day that so many in the games community expect games themselves to be an escape from current events, hence the dismissive catchphrases of games culture: it’s just a game, games should be FUN, keep politics out of games, etc. Lots of those people come to Giant Bomb in search of that refuge as an indirect result of their unwritten rule to try not to linger on those subjects. The staff is partly responsible for attracting people who seek that, and for the way the community bristles at the idea of discussing these topics.
In the end, the GB West crew needs to talk about current events when they bleed into games more readily than they do, and give an opinion on them while they’re at it. Whether or not I agree with their opinions (though, judging from their Twitters, I will), it will at least normalize these discussions - and hopefully make centrists feel like idiots.
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I love GB and have been a member since it launched, but the actual community has always felt off-putting and toxic to me so I’ve mostly ignored it. I still remember how poorly Patrick and Alex were treated back in the day. Shit was vile at times. I was actually thinking of posting there again since GAF is gone, but now I won’t bother.
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I still love GB but i’ve never quite liked their forums or “community”
Also anyone saying shit like “Ryan Davis would be ashamed” etc, I just don’t even with that. Ryan was a great guy leave him out of anything
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I was actually tweeting about this the other day, the difference between official content and the video comments seems so staggering to me, a lot of folks come across as just so callous and mean and I don’t really understand how these same people are into the same GB content as I am.
I never really engaged with the community over there (bar a few posts now and then if the mood struck me) but I think the straw that broke the camel’s back was the Mordor Orcs thing coming up again - the actual discussion doesn’t even matter. It was just the dismissive nature and like, abject refusal to entertain an idea if only for the sake of exploring a diff. viewpoint on things. It just bums me out, man.
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I have no idea and I have been pondering a way to fix some toxicity issues regarding anime for years now. I grew up watching stuff like Yu Yu Hakusho and DBZ and I still enjoy gushing over these shows with people to this day. But the amount of individuals in the community who invested too much of their identity in it, make it incredibly hard to talk about the medium. Like criticizing how some shows handle their female characters gets some really unsavory types in the community out in full force. I can not for the life of me figure out a good and impactful long term and short term answer. For the short term I’m drawing complete blanks. And for long term what I’ve been doing these last few years is supporting more people of color and female anime fans on social media and such to help get more voices in on the discussion to help alleviate the toxicity. But still that hasn’t really bridged any gaps and the community feels more toxic than ever sometimes.
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I think when it comes to these communities does the community at large think the toxic aspects of the community are something to be looked down on or something to uphold. If the community at large sees the toxicity as a positive then its a community I will avoid and disengage with.
I think actively speaking out against those groups helps as well if it is something the community should get rid of.
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