A mountain out of a molehill is a very dangerous argument to use. As that implies this specific incident is not indicative of a larger problem. Can you say for certain that this is an isolated incident? If you can’t then you can’t make that claim. I have seen this sort of downfall happen. It is a slow insidious killer.
In regards to the AI discussion as I posted above it doesn’t really matter what the dev “wants” in this scenario. People should be free to criticize aspects of a game without being shutdown because it hurts the devs feelings. A dev shouldn’t be trying to guilt trip his audience to not criticize his games. And again from what I have see the criticism was all done with respect. The exception to this was your comment to another user which was very charged. I don’t take issue with that personally, my problem comes from you trying to shame another user for posting about their honest opinion. I find that kind of mindset to be a dangerous thing. The kind of ideology that has made the internet into the disaster it is today. So I wish to discourage that where possible. The reason the other comment was hard on you was likely due to that fact.
I also believe that you did not understand the point of the Steam allegory. It is an example to show that in both cases it would be ridiculous for a publisher to be able to dictate what can and can’t be criticized about their games.
My apologies then, I guess I misunderstood the inciting incident and didn’t realize it was another person who was insulting people. I genuinely apologize for the false accusation. I should have gotten my information straight and that is completely my bad. As for the steam point, I do think it’s valid still, as it’s still just not a comparable situation. You simply can’t in good faith compare multi billion dollar corporations to this niche fetish website that would give any boomer that came across it a heart attack. And yeah the game jam thing is sort of different but still involved so I see it as being relevant.
yeah i posted something that was kinda telling people in a thread for an older and outdated mod/game to try a newer mod/game and it was removed a few days later…
Again I would disagree and say it’s the perfect place to discuss such things. You can get right to the heart of the issue when you have an example right before your eyes, instead of the vague general discussion that tends to get throw around. I feel that as long as the discussion is tying back to the specific use of AI in this game, then discussion of it is fair play regardless of the length of said discussion. If it was discussing the use of AI in a completely different game, then yes I feel that would be off-topic. But again from what I have seen I don’t believe that to be the case.
That’s also what I inferred from your unity example. As long as the discussion is pertaining to the ethics of using unity as it relates to the game in question, then I think everything is all good. I think this is where we’re having our disconnect.
You view what happened as AI ethical discussion unrelated to the game.
I view what happened as AI ethical discussion related to the game.
Again I still believe that my comment was on topic. It seems we’re just viewing this as two separate incidents. I would still urge caution with using this culling approach in the future as I believe it to be very poor for the health of the forums.
It’s actually not an isolated incident. Like I said, this moderation style has been maintaining the culture on the site for the last couple of years, and the very occasional byproduct is that some people will make a post about how they think they should be able to shit on devs more. Agree or disagree, the forums have taken a relatively pro-developer stance in order to encourage people to put themselves out there.
Some might argue that this kind of thing leads to echo chambers and stops real criticism, but I can’t help but disagree. Constructive criticism is always left up on threads when it’s presented in a respectful, well-intentioned manner and is warranted. However, criticism becomes unwarranted when the same points have been repeated over and over, and the back and forth has devolved into being entirely unproductive. It may be your personal belief that letting people go on and on about something ad nauseam is indicative of a healthy discussion, but the mods clearly have a different opinion on that subject.
Like I said, Weight Gaming has been run on this exact administrative philosophy for a while, and I for one believe it has worked. Obviously it’s not perfect, but I think the positive air that exists here is refreshing when compared to other platforms that almost always foster toxicity.
Alright… I deeply disagree with the morality of this statement. Clearly we see things very differently, though, so I’ll leave it at that.
Their “opinion” was that the dev had only added AI generated images to their game to make money. Considering this comment came from someone who is a well known developer in the community, I honestly found it despicable that they would minimize another dev’s efforts like that. Maybe you and I are similar in the fact that when we see something we disagree with, we feel that something needs to be said, but I really felt like I couldn’t sit idly by when I saw their reply.
I understood the point that you were making, and I’m saying that the comparison just doesn’t make sense. IMO, holding indie devs and billion dollar companies to the same standard really isn’t realistic. Comparing “massive publisher demands their critics be silenced” and “fetish game dev respectfully asks for people to stop bringing up the exact same topic over and over” is also wild to me. If you really think those situations are comparable, though, we can agree to disagree.
You referred to the lack of the old mods update as “a lost cause” and indicated the mod was not receiving updates, which is talking disparagingly about the lack of updates within a thread, which is against our rules. That is why your comment would have been removed not because you said to go play another mod just fyi.
My exact fear is that this site’s culture is already “compromised” for lack of a better word. This type of decay can be hard to detect until it’s too late. The reason I believe I haven’t really had to deal with this until now is because most devs here are pretty upstanding people. Most of them don’t hide behind the tacky excuse of “if you don’t stop criticizing me I’m taking my ball and going home.” That is a very flimsy shield to use and is unbecoming of a member of this forum. If the mods are willing to kowtow to one person who can’t handle criticism who’s to say that it hasn’t happened before or will happen again. As long as it is related to the game and not external factors or ad hominem, then all criticism should be valid. If the same point has been repeated over and over then this indicates that it’s an issue that the dev should address. If one person posts a critique and then another person posts the same critique the second guys opinion isn’t less valid than the first just because he came second. Everyone should have an equal chance to speak their mind as it can bring unique perspectives to familiar issues. The objective here isn’t to “shit on devs” it’s for every person to have a chance to share their perspective. No one persons experience should be minimized just because it’s something the dev has heard before. That’s unfair to the players.
No one dev gets to dictate what criticism they can and can’t receive. If Toby Fox suddenly decided that he was tired of everyone complaining that Alphys is a bad character and told people to stop posting about it or else he would stop making Deltarune that would be seen as ridiculous and frankly quite childish. I’m sure he’s heard the same complaint thousands of times but that’s par for the course with game dev. You can’t control your audience, and attempting to emotionally manipulate people to do so is in incredibly poor taste. So yes, it doesn’t really matter what they want. They cannot force reality to conform to their whims.
Regarding your comment, the other users opinion was perfectly valid. I don’t believe that comment was made to minimize the devs efforts, they were expressing their own opinion on an aspect of the game. Nowhere did he directly insult the dev or attack him as a person, he only criticized an aspect of his game design. AI is already a hot button issue so emotions are always gonna run a little high whenever it’s brought up but everything was kept pretty respectful in this instance. Regarding the money thing, it’s a valid conclusion to make given the devs previous statements. Again I don’t believe the users intent was to shit on the dev. I think he was trying to say “look what you can do without relying on AI” but that is merely my interpretation. Regardless it was his honest opinion and with absolutely defend his right to freely speak his mind.
It absolutely is realistic to expect people to have integrity. In fact this goes more so for solo devs as opposed to big corporations. But my main point is that neither Steam nor WG should be giving into the demands of people (solo devs or corpos) to censor their critics on the grounds that they don’t like the things they’re criticizing.
But again this never happened. Why are you still acting like this was ever the case. You had an assumption and misunderstanding based on your post being removed. But you’re still talking as if you’re original decline of the forums and bending over backwards for a dev had any validity to their claim.
I was not responding to you in the post you have responded to. Two separate conversations here. Our issue is that you and I see things differently in regards to what is considered “on-topic”. Me and the other guy are talking about the ethics of criticism. Two very different things, though you’re more than welcome to hop in on this one as well.
To say that you’re fear is that this has already happened and that if the mods are willing implies that these were ever even valid points to make. Which originally was based on the idea that your opinion was being censored. Now that the issue has been cleared up, to talk as if this is still a thing is misleading in my opinion. There’s no basis to say that either of these things would or could happen. And why they were being brought up as fears originally was misunderstood on your part. You’re welcome to express opinions but I think it’s dangerous to talk in misleading hypotheticals that no longer have a basis to their accusations.
In your reply in the thread we are discussing you stated:
This clearly implies to me the the devs demands had at least some effect on your decision making so forgive me if I’m not taking you at complete face value.
That said I really do believe that our problem comes down to our differing views. If you feel that I have wrongly represented you then I do apologize and will attempt to avoid doing so in the future. Most of the points I’m referring to there are based off of my original comment and explaining why I wrote it how I did. I will attempt to be more clear in future posts.
That’s not true unfortunately it’s just an assumption on your part. I can get how you might make such an assumption but the dev was gone and off the site by then probably(if their threat is true.)
One of my points was if someone says they’re gone and not coming back why are we trying to argue with that person about AI being in their game any further. And the fact that the dev indicated they were done talking about the manner. Which is one reason the dev was asking for it to stop, literally influenced no one to stop. Staff did not step in immediately and prevent anything further, posters got to say their two cents after the fact, which quite a few did.
The fact of the matter is the dev said that almost two days ago at this point the discussion was not halted until a few hours ago. The idea that anyone bent the knee to the dev in favor of being unfair to our members should be obvious that it didn’t happen.
Perhaps I will express my personal opinion in defense of the actions of the moderators using your example: if there is something like “a lot of blood” in the game and such tag exist on main post where game has been shared this means that the creator of the game warned everyone about the presence of a strange fetish that not all people like. For example I personally like “Vore” fetish and making a game which contain “Vore” as basic mechanic. When I made a post about my game I added “Vore” tag and wrote about all fetishes in description, but a lot of people don’t like “Vore” and keep coming to write comments about how my game could be better if there was no “Vore” fetish in it. I consider all these comments to be a deliberate cluttering of the project’s discussion with the dubious goal of personal gain (hoping that the developer will get rid of the part of his game that the commentator doesn’t like) and I think moderators have all rights do delete such comments. The main difference between WeightGaming forum and Steam is that in steam people can write their comments in specific section when on WeightGaming people write comments under main post. As a developer, I wouldn’t want to read dozens of useless comments about someone being unhappy with the presence of a fetish in my game that I warned everyone about. That is not because I am angry, but because I don’t like to waste time for nothing. I didn’t read comments about AI discussion which has been removed by moderators, but I found main game post and I see “AI” tag there which mean developer told everyone that his game will use AI. I guess that even mean AI will be the main part of the game which is impossible to replace for developer. So if people are discussing that part of the game was made with AI has bad quality and could be improved I think it is fine and useful information for developer, but if people are discussing whether they like the idea of using AI in the game at all I think this is completely useless and could be removed by moderators. If there was a different section on site where people can write reviews like in Steam I don’t think deleting reviews would be necessary, but when you have only one post with wall of comments under it and developer/users forced to read all of them it is better to remove useless comments.
I will concede that you seem to have allowed for discussion to continue for a time after the threat was made which I think is very big of you. But that only makes it more confusing to me why you would then turn around and delete discussion that was doing no harm. Even if the dev is no longer around to respond to the criticism it is still valid criticism all the same. Is their experience and opinion invalidated simply because the dev can no longer respond? That seems backwards to me. That critique can still be seen by other users and devs, making it useful. I simply fail to see the point of wasting valuable criticism in such a manner. And again I still think it was very much on topic.
Because it’s a thread about a project not a discussion on if AI is ethical to be included in games.
Edit: shutting down the discussion immediately would be censorship and not okay. Shutting down when it serves no further purpose other to derail an already derailed topic I don’t see it as an issue.
Please feel free to make a topic about AI if you would like. I’m sure people would join in with you.
Maybe this something that we can host and mediate as a round-table discussion, without it resorting to long and unwieldy diatribes which become less conducive for making points.
It’s something that we could look to hosting post-jam. What do you guys think?
I thank you for sharing your view. I’m about to come across as very mean and I don’t want you to take what I’m about to say personally. But in my view it doesn’t really matter what you want to see or not. All criticism should be treated equally. Every user should feel perfectly fine to share their opinion on any aspect of a game no matter how stupid it may seem to you.
To give a hypothetical scenario; Dipshit420 could comment “wowee i really liked this, this, and this about your game! i also think you could improve x section by adding y to it! oh and also i really don’t like the icky vore could you remove that for me?”
And your response can be something along the lines of “Thank you Dipshit! I’m really glad you enjoyed those parts. Thanks for the feedback, I can definitely look into adding y to x! Unfortunately vore is going to remain a very big part of this game as indicated in the tags! Thanks for playing!”
Obviously you don’t have cave in to every morons demands that you alter a game for their preferences, but the morons should also be given an equal chance to speak no matter how annoying. I also believe that discussing the use of tools in games is a valid topic. If a dev is deadset on using AI their response can be “I’m going to continue using AI” and then ignore any further posts talking about it. What they can’t do is whine that they’re going to leave the forums if people don’t stop talking about it. If AI or vore is a prominent part of a game, then it’s going to be discussed in the thread for both the good and the bad. That’s just kind of the way discussion forums work. I don’t think it’s a big ask to quickly scan through comments and pick out which ones are worth taking seriously. This isn’t twitter where you’re being spammed with thousands of posts per minute. This is a fairly slow discussion forum, so I believe every one should have an equal chance to be heard.
I totally agree with your point about discussing game mechanics like you wrote in hypothetical scenario, but I totally disagree with your point about discussion of using or not using a tool in the game. Discussion about what game engine you like/dislike or what game development tool you like/dislike is an offtop. This have nothing to do with project itself. If someone made game on Unity and a bunch of people came to write in comment that they like Unreal Engine more then Unity it is completely useless information for Developer and users who came to this project topic to discuss project itself. You can create a general discussion post about game development tools or AI tool in particular then it wouldn’t be an offtopic.
But the posts were (at least from what I saw) specifically relating to the thread. I know my post specifically wasn’t some wacky non-sequitur about that gosh dang AI. It was responding to several other points in the thread (trying to defend another user that was being unfairly shamed). And the discussion can be viewed as relating to that game in particular.
To give further context I think creating an entire separate thread about a specific aspect of a game is a bad idea that could seriously snowball. You end up with:
“Funkin Flarty-Official game thread”-509 replies
“Is the use of AI in Funkin Flarty ethical?”-28 replies
“Which flart would you Funkin???”-13 replies
“Funkin Flarty is the biggest piece of shit I have ever played”-5 replies, thread locked
“Need help on stage 3 in Funkin Flarty”-0 replies
It just needlessly divides up discussion when it can all be centralized in one place. You’re going to get more interaction and feedback by posting in the thread where everyone already is. Especially if the discussion is about how AI relates to that game in particular.
