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Community can make or break online games especially. If I am suffering constant abuse while playing it's just not very fun.

author=Shinan
Community can make or break online games especially. If I am suffering constant abuse while playing it's just not very fun.

Most of the hated games I think Porkate's referring to aren't even community-based, so the only way you're suffering constant abuse is if you're voluntarily wading into the fandom. Which is a foolish action in general.

"Waaahhhh people like something I don't like! Waaaahhhh!"

It's sad how often "I don't like thing" is expressed as "thing is bad".

Yeah, but saying "this is (objectively) bad" and "I don't like this" are completely different things.

Those are things people conflate a lot, in every aspect of life (not just games). And speaking of reading comprehension, if you're not clear in your sentence, don't be surprised when people don't interpret it the way you intended. If you simply say, "this is terrible" there's no context there to imply that it's merely not your thing.

If Ebert said "I don't like this movie" - is he saying that it's a badly-made movie, or that he just doesn't personally like it? You can interpret that statement either way; it's a badly-written and incomplete thought! Not only is it totally uncritical, it's super vague... which is probably why he didn't actually write like that.


Anywho, on-topic, it's nuts how much people will backlash on things because they're popular. Tumblr does often form aggressive fanbases really quickly, but again, that doesn't necessarily mean anything about the game itself.

I don't dislike things because they're popular on Tumblr. I dislike them because of the bizarre cult-like devotion where my feed is crammed full of messages like "if you don't like (X), you should kill yourself." That's a pretty good way to ensure I never have any interest in playing X. For some reason, that exclusively happens on Tumblr.

Also this seems to happen disproportionately with really mediocre games, like Sated said.

If you're being defensive about people being put off from a game because of its fans, that's probably because you're inside the echo chamber and have never been subjected to the bizarre, hyper-aggressive toxic atmosphere surrounding it.

Honestly, of the 'tumblr' games I've played, most of them have had big, gaping issues that circle-jerk has allowed to float on through. Horror games with no horror or non-sensical death routes, bad spelling or writing in general, unintuitive gameplay and various other issues.

I don't look down on Tumblr as a community because I rather like the site and think it's a great place for finding cool art and fandoms - that's not a bad thing. It's really about who you follow, after all.

But most of the games that come here from the site are ones that are made to follow a trend and 'get famous' instead of making a game they want to make - they subscribe to the idea that pretty is best and it makes for hollow games for the most part.

There are some great games that have come from Tumblr, though (I gotta say that some of the games that people think are from Tumblr aren't, though - Witch's House, Ib and the like were created by Japanese users and only translated to English and shown off on the site, they weren't created by the users of the site, so giving credit for them to Tumblr is wrong) - Stray Cat Crossing and Blank Dreams are both great little gems that came from the community, and Aria has promise too.

It's just that a lot of the time the games created on Tumblr aren't treated critically on those communities (which is both a good and bad thing - it's great that those communities are so excited about games that they're willing to overlook the bad things in them and just love them as they are, but it doesn't help the developers to learn how to get better and grow their skills if no-one is telling them the much-needed critique they need to hear about what does and doesn't work - add in that drama happens every time someone tries to critique a game and they get called mean and nasty because they tried to give feedback that wasn't glowing... yes, I've seen it happen a lot, which is why I distance myself from that community).

When the games come here the creators expect only pats on the head and praise, and when they get neither, they get upset and cry foul because god forbid their game isn't seen as perfect. Throw in the fandom the game already has due to being on a platform like Tumblr first and you have people jumping in to defend and acting as though any negative mention about the game is horrible and just people being nasty.




...yeah, I can see why people don't like Tumblr games all that much when so much baggage is part of them...

To be honest, part of the reason I never wanted to play Undertale was the fandom - they spoil things for those who haven't yet played, demanding that you play a particular way first. The fans on this site are okay, but other fans are just... :/

I think a game should stand on it's own without the fandom having bearing on it, but sometimes a fandom is just so horrible it gives people a negative reaction to a game anyway. Doesn't help that people don't like hearing bad things about the games they like - Undertale, for example, has a LOT of issues. It's got a lot of good stuff in it but there's a lot of things it does wrong too - which you wouldn't know if you heard the fandom talk about it since they constantly espouse it as the most amazing thing. ^.^;

A fandom can totally ruin a game.

Eh, I hate (as in, harshly criticise) all games before I get to play them, regardless of who made them or whatever. Apparently this also includes my own :(

Well, I usually finish playing the game in question before I find its fanbase anyway, so yeah. The fact that the ones I play tend to be unpopular or just generally unknown helps as well.

I agree with OP though. But I suppose that's part of the system now. We'll just have to suck it up and climb the mountain of toxic shit to get the pile of treasure on top.