Second Wind is the journalist team formerly from The Escapist with a few additions. They cut themselves loose from their contracts to make gaming news and analysis videos independently. This video looks at the outrage cycle that’s evolved around video game releases since the 2010’s
Youtube link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcAXba_Uwmc
Following gaming news has become increasingly exhausting in the last decade. GamerGate has never truly ended, its shadow’s been pervasive of the entire discourse on videogames for years. Every AAA game is an excuse to rant about the (perceived) political agenda of its writers or the art team or whatever.
I disagree with the final take of the video, though. While moderation and companies taking a stance is certainly necessary, the main problem is that the social media algorithm feeds on this kind of discourse and amplifies it because it increases engagement. There can never be enough moderation to silence these trolls because you cannot moderate all platforms and all places, and the trolls outnumber the developers (and with AI on the rise, the numbers are even more stacked in favour of online trolls).
There will be no solution to this problem for as long as social media is run the way it is at the moment.
True that. And I think I agree with you, I remember the thing that really cemented developers taking fat L’s for a bad product was the catharsis generated by videos like The Internet Historian’s takedowns on F76 and No Man’s Sky. It was addictive, people loved seeing bad practices getting punished in a narrative and I think a lot of us are still chasing that high as a way of handling economic disenfranchisement that that we can’t otherwise do anything about.
Which is a deadly feature of social media.