So maybe some of you have seen the recent ROM hack come out, by the developer of Pokémon Emerald Seaglass, called Pokémon Lazarus. This one has a far larger scale to everything, it’s quite clear that it is a massive undertaking for a sole dev, and most of the community is loving it.
Well, some aren’t behaving well. There’s been some petty, disgusting feedback from a (as ever) vocal minority. Those who are homophobic, bigots, who are mocking design decisions and the sound (which Nemo, the dev, has created from scratch), some who hate seeing a pride flag.
Anyway, Nemo has decided after this bullshit to step back from the public and stop interacting. We’ve seen this again and again with developers. And it’s getting SO damned exhausting:
With that said, I’ll be taking a step back from the community for a bit. I’ll post bug-fixing and new feature patches to the Development Discord server, but I don’t plan on posting anywhere else for a while. If I go on to develop a new project (which I do have planned!), it will likely be in secret until close to release, if I choose to release it at all. With everything going on in my life (Master’s program, work, real world commitments, etc etc), I guess I’m just not prepared to also handle the bad side of attention on the internet.
The game is a an amazing romHack, and well done. And if the flags bother you that much…well you’re an emotional child.
if the flags bother you that much…well you’re an emotional child.
Nah, children don’t cry when they see rainbows.
Damn all the negative bullshit is a real shame. I shared the info about this ROM hack with extra veracity in my circles in response to that, and now 3 new people who love being represented by those cool flags are happily trying it out. I’ll try myself later in the week, it looks really cool. Thanks for sharing it here.
Thanks for bringing attention to this cool game. Would never have heard of it otherwise. And the reasons for the criticisms ended up convincing me to try the game, since it sounds like the dev is really cool.
Lol so I downloaded this and I LOVE it. I’m only on the second gym and I have been doing nothing except grabbing pokemon. Everything seems so well thought out and its beautiful.
There may be some plot elements that people are mad about, but really it just seems to me that people are mad because there is a rainbow flag and a trans flag in some homes. Its just really bland chud rage.
Sounds like Nemo needs to spend some time watching Matt Colville’s video on Community
Everyone should watch it, really… even if it is an hour…
I’d come to enjoy several creators who simply could not tolerate the negative attention of bigots. People’s desire to compel conformity, against the very nature of their subjects, creates a society that is not only deleterious to them and their subject, but mentally taxing to the rest of us. Literally not a single soul directly involved in this comes out ahead. It’s just a game designed to promote infighting and tertiary power grabs.
And that’s why I love lemmy. The general absence of []-phobes is fantastic. It’s the only reason I can tolerate the general inability to read sarcasm here.
Well, thank you very much, because of that last sentence I’ve parsed your message three times wondering if some of it was sarcasm.
No, I was entirely sincere. Not that it would matter, as people would likely take me at face value
Agreed on all fronts there!
I’ve been spending a fairly sizable amount of time lately with the Android emulation scene, and the amount of times the public goes nuclear over the tiniest inconsequential things is…just unbelievable. From the []-phobes to death threats. I wish that people would learn some social skills.
The dev of Lazarus didn’t have this kind of reaction to Seaglass, so I think we could say that this trend of being a disgusting bigot is one which is being ‘allowed’ more recently than it once was in social media.
so I think we could say that this trend of being a disgusting bigot is one which is being ‘allowed’ more recently than it once was in social media.
I always try to bring this up because honestly, if we go pretty far back in internet terms, we can see that this has actually been brewing for over a decade.
In 2013, EA won the Consumerist poll for “Worst Company in America.” While mostly people pointed to arguably rational reasons for these votes (DRM, microtransactions, badly made and released games), the COO of EA had some other thoughts as to why they got hammered so hard as the worst company:
In the past year, we have received thousands of emails and postcards protesting against EA for allowing players to create LGBT characters in our games. This week, we’re seeing posts on conservative web sites urging people to protest our LGBT policy by voting EA the Worst Company in America. That last one is particularly telling. If that’s what makes us the worst company, bring it on. Because we’re not caving on that.
When this happened in 2013, most of us thought this was absolute bunkum and just EA doing damage control. Now, I’m genuinely not so sure anymore. I think perhaps some suit at EA had noticed something happening, some change in the waters that had not yet become “mainstream” but was bubbling beneath the surface, slowly growing. People made fun of this response from EA, because we thought at the time “this is the modern era, those are just backwards fools stuck in the past that are complaining about LGBT inclusion, if they even exist at all, I bet EA is making it up to cover for how shitty they are.” But… were they?? At the time it was roundly dismissed because popular culture widely accepted LGBTQ inclusion, but now we’re on a backswing and people feel emboldened to be disgusting bigots and be loud and proud about being a exclusive asshat who hates people different than themselves. Has it just been brewing under the surface for over a decade?
Damn, I hate how often I look at a situation like that and just think… what a waste. Some morons came in and ruined the message most of us were trying to send to EA by making them the “Worst Company in America”. Now these gross bigots get a “win”, and EA gets to sidestep all the legitimate anti-consumer issues most people were railing against. What a waste. And it feels like that’s everything these days, someone gross is always “on your side” looking to claim your victories for their own narratives.
I still have my doubts that was the majority of the issue, at least the first time they “won” that award in 2012. That poll happened 1 month after Mass Effect 3’s release, when emotions were still raw over people’s disappointment with the game’s ending. That’s not to defend those who were voting for EA over, say, Nestle or any number of other awful companies. But most of what I saw was immature lashing out to punish anyone perceived as responsible for the writing. I remember people cheering they’d managed to harass EA’s tech support Twitter account into closing, like they’d made some great moral victory. It was all pretty gross, just for different reasons than EA claimed.
I’m not saying it was a majority issue, I’m saying the beginnings of the social turn against LGBTQ openness and inclusion has been brewing under the surface for a long time and this is potentially evidence of it.
Lemmy appears to have a lot of autistic users on it, which explains the struggles to understand sarcasm. But autistic people tend to be open-minded and we’re often targeted by the same bigots that you’re lamenting about. So while the sarcasm thing is an issue, it’s also a sign of an open-minded user base.
Dang Ive been wrestling with the realization that I might be neurodivergent in some way, I’m on Lemmy but I do understand sarcasm. This hasn’t helped at all
Understanding the concept of sarcasm and recognizing it amidst a conversation are very different things.
Also: autism isn’t the only type of neurodivergence and failure to recognize sarcasm isn’t a trait that 100% of autistic people share.
We actually fairly recently had a severe mental event, and since then, frequently read sarcasm as serious on the first pass and sometimes for some time after.
It fucking sucks from this side, too. We just go charging at someone and then have to be like, oh, uh, sorry, guess I was socially stupid!
We can at least take some solace in knowing we all hate the situation together?
I’m out of the loop, did I miss some drama?
I certainly don’t blame anyone. Fervent protection of disadvantaged groups is fine by me, even from people looking to do the same. Lol
Sounds like most of the issue here is Twitter? Get the fuck off of Twitter. Why would anyone ever care what anyone on Twitter thinks about ANYTHING?
Get off Twitter. You can just leave. Do it now!
Looks like the dev’s Ko-Fi is the official source for the download: https://ko-fi.com/nemo622
No offense, but I’m way more interested in this Crystal styled Emerald romhack itself than whatever drama is happening around it.
Although I am sad to hear that yet another creator has been badgered out of enjoying their work. That sucks.
Imagine sending someone hatemail because they like rocky road while your favorite is salted caramel. Who cares whats in their bowl? Why care? Eat your own fucking ice cream, losers.
Imagine releasing a passion project, and then going on hatemail.com to check for constructive feedback.
Not saying that the developer is at fault here. But NOT going to twitter.com is the first step towards a happier life.
Not just that, but this is free home-made ice cream.
hahahahhah I like this one! SO true!
This looks really cool! Definitely gonna check this project out.
All the homophobes and racists can fuck off and die. ❤️🏳️🌈😎👍
It is one of those modern Pokemon hacks that are just ludicrously hard, or is it casually enjoyable?
You can make it as easy or as hard as you want!
It comes with documentations for the game and the mechanics. One of those has some cheats you can put in to play your way. Their previous romhack Emerald Seaglass was the same way.
Highly recommend both!
People are always going to suck. By conceding and backing away from the project or limelight, the idiots or bots or trolls or whatever they are have “won”. This emboldens things like that. You can see this type of behavior on the Steam forums too. Sometimes you just have to ignore these weird facets of the internet.
The discord blew up when it released. I’d be so much more excited about that than whatever that garbage is on the other side.
I understand Nemo, but I wish they would’ve been able to stand tall and accept the praise from the larger side of the internet.
people really need to stop giving shitty twitter trolls the time of day. they now get to cheerfully read an article that mentions their behavior.
should have just cut that part out and focus on how kickass this romhack is. don’t even give them a second of time in anyone’s mind. let them rot in their little cesspools.
while we have a kickass time playing a cool pokemon hack =D
My article can be pretty easily broken down into:
- What ROM hacks are
- Pokémon ROM hacks in particular
- Lazarus
- The dev’s own response to shitty behavior
I don’t think I focused on Twitter’s behavior. I didn’t share any screenshots of tweets, nor did I quote any. There’s not much I can see I wrote here that can be glorified by the losers.
Should I…not write about how shitty the situation is for the developer (and so many others in this space) because a handful of idiots might think they’re being mentioned? I’m struggling to find what I should cut out of my article there!
I meant no disrespect. only meant these people aren’t worth it. I know you didn’t focus on it.
just makes me sad that the dev mentioned it.
Ooh I’ll have to check it out
Fantastic game. I’ve been playing. Its fun.
