Journal of Other Forum Analysis

[HaughtyFrank]

It's a video game lots of people poured their heart and work into, a game they want to use to say things, and to make voices heard.
And then the GaMeRs come and say WOKE TRANS GAY AGENDA DO NOT BUY and yes, that is indeed something you might want to call fascism. The whole reason is to shut down minorities and leftist voices. Gay voices. Trans voices. The fucking gamergate assholes have never, did never, and will never talk about "the videogame", they only weaponize anything they don't like surrounding said game.
No one of those assholes ever said "the game is bad" and reason why, they just can't stop complaining about gay characters, pronouns, black or dark skin, female characters without bikinis and more pronouns, only before directly posting images of minority developers, female developers or god help us, devs who use a pronoun in their bio, and go on from there.
Both Jiggles and Sunny are absolutely right.

Thank you!

Remember when they banned Cyberpunk because they didn't like the game's trans characters and endlessly attacked the developers?

[PogiJones]

It'll be interesting if we'll see consequences from this four years down the line. I don't think any of those movies or games failed solely because they're woke or whatever, (like look at Valves deadlock, lots of inclusivity and doing gangbusters) but it seems like when you put inclusivity/diversity front and center about your product it puts it's on its back foot, something it has to overcome with other good qualities. The modern audience who will buy your game in droves because that one character is gay black and trans doesn't seem to exist. 
Meanwhile the "chud" audience who will buy your game solely because of sexy characters etc. isn't gigantic either but seemingly still a lot more tangible

I've said it before, but each factor is an upward or downward pressure, and how the various pressures add to and subtract from each other determines the ultimate trajectory of the project. Just because rockets can overcome gravity doesn't mean gravity isn't a real downward force. The last couple years has shown that preachy/trendy identity politics in your game is a downward pressure, and the fact that Baldur's Gate 3 dramatically overcame that pressure doesn't mean the downward pressure isn't real. We have too many data points to ignore that the pressure is real, but it certainly is not the most dominant pressure, like some people would have you believe. It's just one of many pressures, but is still probably wise to not inject it into your game unless you're really, really confident that the rest of the game is so good that it will make completely insignificant the downward pressure of your message.

[BisMarckie]

stfu Pogi and post dick pics!

[Greatness Gone]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/concord-sales-ceasing-immediately-offering-refunds-to-all-customers-the-game-will-be-taken-offline-beginning-sept-6th-check-staff-post.970872/page-22

Might actually need to take an extended break from the site and social media for a bit for my mental health, the amount of toxic shit I keep seeing and reading is just rough. It's not even specific to this game at this point necessarily, I just think this might be the straw that breaks the camel's back for me.

I can't take reading "woke" anymore. I can't fucking handle people wishing for rank and file artists to lose their jobs because a video game character has purple hair. I can't handle seeing people whine about pronouns. I am literally becoming a worse person every time I have to read shit like that because my mind goes to dark, angry places that are just unhealthy to exist in for too long.

We don't talk about this poster really, but for context he's one of the most hostile and combative posters on the site and now needs to take a ~mental health break~ over a fucking videogame.   All of these people are severely fucked in the head. 

Probably posted already but I haven't had the chance to catch up yet.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

It'll be interesting if we'll see consequences from this four years down the line. I don't think any of those movies or games failed solely because they're woke or whatever, (like look at Valves deadlock, lots of inclusivity and doing gangbusters) but it seems like when you put inclusivity/diversity front and center about your product it puts it's on its back foot, something it has to overcome with other good qualities. The modern audience who will buy your game in droves because that one character is gay black and trans doesn't seem to exist. 
Meanwhile the "chud" audience who will buy your game solely because of sexy characters etc. isn't gigantic either but seemingly still a lot more tangible

I've said it before, but each factor is an upward or downward pressure, and how the various pressures cancel each other out determines the ultimate trajectory of the project. Just because rockets can overcome gravity doesn't mean gravity isn't a real downward force. The last couple years has shown that preachy/trendy identity politics in your game is a downward pressure, and the fact that Baldur's Gate 3 dramatically overcame that pressure doesn't mean the downward pressure isn't real. We have too many data points to ignore that the pressure is real, but it certainly is not the most dominant pressure, like some people would have you believe. It's just one of many pressures, but is still probably wise to not inject it into your game unless you're really, really confident that the rest of the game is so good that it will make completely insignificant the downward pressure of your message.

[nobody of note]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/sports-gambling-ot.971247/

Hi! Welcome to the Sports Betting OT!

LOCKED

B-Dubs

We were asked about one of these in the past and had said we were uncomfortable hosting such a thing and that has not changed.

They'd asked about this repeatedly in Constructive and not received a no, so I peeked in there and they are in the process of pointing out that they'd asked and never been told no:

RE: Sports betting

It's cool if an OT is not allowed but the lock message for the thread stated yall had said no to it. As far as I know, that didn't happen. We've asked multiple times in Constructive and never got a response. I'm only pointing this out because spyder obviously put a lot of time into the OT and if you guys had just responded to us and said no then it would've saved him a lot of time.

Me back in 2022, didn't get a response:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/constructive-community-discussion.270630/page-154#post-86125556

Spyder multiple times, didn't get a response:

March of this year:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/constructive-community-discussion.270630/page-262#post-120973968

Two weeks ago:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/constructive-community-discussion-2024.859116/page-12#post-126951645

If I'm missing the response to another user then my bad but spyder and I never got one. Would've saved the guy a lot of time with a simple no.

Respectfully, can I ask for more info on why my Sports Betting OT was closed, or why it was closed when I posted the following posts 3 separate times in this thread?

The lock message says "We were asked about one of these in the past and had said we were uncomfortable hosting such a thing and that has not changed."

As far as I know, only once was it asked and the post went unresponded to.

I posted way back in March in the old thread proposing the idea, and then twice more recently,

Apologies if this isn't the right place, but I wanted to take the temperature for creating a Sports Gambling or Sports Betting OT. Obviously this has become increasingly prevalent in the discussion around sports - there are at least 3 pretty active threads in the last week or so directly or tangentially about it. @Embiid

I anticipate this might be something not received well, given some of the responses in recent threads. I get that people might be sensitive to the accelerated encroachment of sports betting into their fandoms. At the same time, given how many active sports OTs we have, and what we know of the increasing rates of sports gambling, there are surely tons of users partaking in sports betting here on the forum as it's legal in 30 US states, with another 10 states considering legislation (according to Action Network), not to mention largely legalized and normalized in many countries where this forum has many users.

The goal and scope of the OT would be two-fold:
A place to discuss news and stories related to the topic (I understand some news would have individual threads, but I think it could focus discussion of certain stories)
An educational resource covering the following:
Odds and lines basics
Types of bets: Money lines, spreads, parlays, futures
Unit sizing
Value of tracking bets
Different Apps and books
Promotions, particularly sign up bonuses
What to watch out for: certain apps, Twitter/X cappers who follow suspicious patterns, parlays
Like I said above, taking the temperature here and I understand if this is something the mods would see as promotional or encouraging. I just see it creeping into certain threads and I would only expect that to continue.

Frankly, I get a little bit concerned at the off hand comments in sports OTs - things like people mentioning playing a lot of parlays (among the worst bets to make) or not understanding lines or odds.

I got a few posts of feedback (not from mods/admins) and incorporated those into the OT, with a focus on problem gambling and resources. I posted twice in this thread within the last two weeks letting staff know I was planning on posting the OT, and responding to a user who asked about the status, all positive feedback I thought.

I made the below post in the last Community thread in March, and it seemed to be well received with positive and helpful feedback, if not explicitly endorsed. Wanted to let you know that I'm planning on creating a Sports Betting OT, likely next week or the week after. Timing seems right with the Olympics ending and American and International Football starting up, along with baseball playoffs and hockey/basketball soon after.

Any thoughts or concerns, please let me know.

I'm posting a sports gambling OT this week, probably Tuesday. Not strictly football though, of course.

Hoped to post last week but life got in the way. Will still line up well with NFL launch, college football, and then the winter sports coming soon.

Given all this outreach and positive feedback in these threads, I would've appreciated someone letting me know if it wasn't cool. I think it would be a positive step for the forum - others may disagree but I spent time trying to create an OP within that framework.

It boggles my mind that you said you were in the process of creating a sports gambling OT, after bringing it up several times, and no one said "don't bother spending the time, we won't allow it". It's so disrespectful.

Is it possible B-Dubs is just openly sabotaging the forum now

[DocWager]

They might as well go off, and make a more center-left to center-right forum. The place is going to shit quick with all the lies, and manipulation.

[Besticus Maximus]

Gambling is illegal in some weird church ridden shitholes in america, so that's a yikes from us dog 

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/it%E2%80%99s-knucklepuck-time.970296/#post-128066469

Is this movie [Mighty Ducks 2] problematic in any way? Thinking of watching with my seven year old son.

[nobody of note]

B-Dubs responds with, basically, "You guys can't seriously expect us to read every post in the quarantine thread":

We literally told people a while back that we aren't ok hosting an OT on the topic. It's one thing to discuss it in the relevant threads, and that is totally allowed, but it's another to be hosting an entire thread dedicated to it. I apologize if we missed someone asking for one, but we're not going to see every single post in this or any other thread.

So basically how silly of members to not know they totally told some guy once no at some point in the past, and also how silly of them to think an ongoing discussion in the thread for staff feedback actively asking for staff feedback would ever actually be read or acknowledged by staff which is totally not going to turn into its own thing now.

B-Dubs on his subversive arc of trying to get users to realize they're the product, not the audience, by any means necessary.

[ComeAgain]

If anyone out there somehow still had doubts Era is hardcore Sony, those two Concord threads should put those doubts to rest once and for all, especially the OT. 

I’ve never seen a game that was critically panned like Concord was get THIS level of a defense force over there. Where was this energy for Redfall last year? Can probably go back and find some of the exact same posters that were dancing on that games grave suddenly melting down just because it says Sony when you boot the game up. 

This wasn’t some critical darling that gamers rejected this hard, it was a game with some of the worst reviews of the year.

[Taco Bell Tower]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/concord-ot-calling-all-freeguners-game-being-shut-down-sep-6th-check-threadmarks.957465/page-61#post-128117622

I have literally hundreds of posters here on my ignore list, and I've been -this close- to just giving up on this community in general, despite reading it for almost twenty years.

The discourse isn't going to improve, and there is frankly nothing the staff or moderation can do about it.

Hey SunnyD, I've been meaning to say thank you for your posts in this topic. It's been really validating to hear someone talk about this game the way it felt to me - as just the tightest, most purely enjoyable thing I'd felt in a long time. Agree that the discourse here has been a dumpster fire, but wanted you to know you were a real bright spot in helping me feel hyped about Concord, one of the best multiplayer games I've ever played.

Edits:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/concord-ot-calling-all-freeguners-game-being-shut-down-sep-6th-check-threadmarks.957465/page-61#post-128118918

I used to love Valve, but they are 100% part of the problem. And I won't hear otherwise.

I won't spend a single second of my life touching their new game.

I could write at length about this.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/concord-ot-calling-all-freeguners-game-being-shut-down-sep-6th-check-threadmarks.957465/page-62#post-128119791

No, Concord is brilliant.

It is just a culture of dullards. The Legion of Dumb.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/concord-ot-calling-all-freeguners-game-being-shut-down-sep-6th-check-threadmarks.957465/page-62#post-128120472

It is an excellent video game.

One of the very best ever made.

Because his pfp is based off this emote

[nachobro]

[malfoyking]

It's just a fucking game. It's not the end of the world. They take things waaaaay too seriously over there.

[ComeAgain]

SunnyD is either a fantastic troll or someone who worked on the game.

[DocWager]

He’s way too hyperbolic. What is his grift? Whatever it is, it is either working, or it will fall apart once people realize they need to stop pretending to be nice to him.

[Taco Bell Tower]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/concord-sales-ceasing-immediately-offering-refunds-to-all-customers-the-game-will-be-taken-offline-beginning-sept-6th-check-staff-post.970872/page-51#post-128123922

Staff post - don't be a chud

Official Staff Communication

This should go without saying but we'll say it anyway:

There is a discussion to be had about why Concord failed in the way it has, HOWEVER, that does not mean users are allowed to parrot right-wing talking points from the shittier parts of the internet.

We have already permanently banned someone for this and will ban others for engaging in the same rhetoric. There is a difference between good faith discussion and just parroting chud talking points.

All this said, if you have an issue with a post or believe it to be violating the rule above or any other of the site's rules please do not hesitate to report it with context to help us out.

B-Dubs asking Ree the impossible.

[killamajig]

Bdumbs treating them like bitches.  

They even say it. They say it's disrespectful but they keep going back for more. A bunch of spineless weak-willed little bitches. 

As long as there's people over there willing to lap up the mods piss we'll be here laughing at them. 

[HaughtyFrank]

B-Dubs responds with, basically, "You guys can't seriously expect us to read every post in the quarantine thread":

We literally told people a while back that we aren't ok hosting an OT on the topic. It's one thing to discuss it in the relevant threads, and that is totally allowed, but it's another to be hosting an entire thread dedicated to it. I apologize if we missed someone asking for one, but we're not going to see every single post in this or any other thread.

So basically how silly of members to not know they totally told some guy once no at some point in the past, and also how silly of them to think an ongoing discussion in the thread for staff feedback actively asking for staff feedback would ever actually be read or acknowledged by staff which is totally not going to turn into its own thing now.

B-Dubs on his subversive arc of trying to get users to realize they're the product, not the audience, by any means necessary.

So he still does the thing where he mentions a rule in some random ass thread and then gets mad that people don't know it

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

I hope SunnyD's mom locked away all the sharp objects in the house.

[Uncle]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/jake-paul-signs-hawk-tuah-girl-after-spotted-in-mma-sparing-session/ar-AA1pWfz0?ocid=BingNewsSerp

Jake Paul signs 'Hawk Tuah girl'

Time to bump the thread to cancel her again. When this was first posted, the op was positive. Then there was a rumor she was a Trump supporter. Reee "Oh my God I hate her" Then it was found out that wasn't true and she didn't like Trump. Reeee "Oh my God I love her" Well now she's with Jake Paul.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/have-ya%E2%80%99ll-seen-this-%E2%80%9Chawk-tuah%E2%80%9D-meme.909075/

listen even if someone says they don't like trump, something is seriously wrong with them and their vibe if you would totally believe that they like trump

really suspicious that someone would just go around like "oh ha ha I don't like trump" in spite of being the exact kind of person who would

keep both eyes open, friends

[killamajig]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/concord-sales-ceasing-immediately-offering-refunds-to-all-customers-the-game-will-be-taken-offline-beginning-sept-6th-check-staff-post.970872/page-51#post-128123922

Staff post - don't be a chud

Official Staff Communication

This should go without saying but we'll say it anyway:

There is a discussion to be had about why Concord failed in the way it has, HOWEVER, that does not mean users are allowed to parrot right-wing talking points from the shittier parts of the internet.

We have already permanently banned someone for this and will ban others for engaging in the same rhetoric. There is a difference between good faith discussion and just parroting chud talking points.

All this said, if you have an issue with a post or believe it to be violating the rule above or any other of the site's rules please do not hesitate to report it with context to help us out.

B-Dubs asking Ree the impossible.

Right-Wing talking points like, anything negative? Got it.

[Taco Bell Tower]

Now we know why Firewalk Studios is shutting the servers down
Elyian

Kinda wish I bought this day 1 instead of holding off on a sale now. This game was genuinely fun when I tried it in the beta, even with some of the issues I had, like the floaty movement and incredibly high TTK. Sucks extra hard cause watching Mila Jam(The actress for Bazz) talk about this game so passionately, and how proud she was to show representation as one of the first black trans woman headlining in a big AAA first party title like this, was super heartwarming to see. Really makes all this sting way more.

[Uncle]

B-Dubs responds with, basically, "You guys can't seriously expect us to read every post in the quarantine thread":

We literally told people a while back that we aren't ok hosting an OT on the topic. It's one thing to discuss it in the relevant threads, and that is totally allowed, but it's another to be hosting an entire thread dedicated to it. I apologize if we missed someone asking for one, but we're not going to see every single post in this or any other thread.

So basically how silly of members to not know they totally told some guy once no at some point in the past, and also how silly of them to think an ongoing discussion in the thread for staff feedback actively asking for staff feedback would ever actually be read or acknowledged by staff which is totally not going to turn into its own thing now.

B-Dubs on his subversive arc of trying to get users to realize they're the product, not the audience, by any means necessary.

We literally told people a while back that we aren't ok hosting an OT on the topic.

oh did you? link the post motherfucker, like the other people did, with evidence that they weren't responded to

[BisMarckie]

stfu Pogi and post dick pics!

post hog*

I thought not adhering to the same formula would prove to be more succesful.

[HaughtyFrank]

Now we know why Firewalk Studios is shutting the servers down
Elyian

Kinda wish I bought this day 1 instead of holding off on a sale now. This game was genuinely fun when I tried it in the beta, even with some of the issues I had, like the floaty movement and incredibly high TTK. Sucks extra hard cause watching Mila Jam(The actress for Bazz) talk about this game so passionately, and how proud she was to show representation as one of the first black trans woman headlining in a big AAA first party title like this, was super heartwarming to see. Really makes all this sting way more.

[BananaBlast]

"Don't use chud wing talking points" is just like the "Don't post sexist and misogynist blah blah blah" debacle for Stellar Blade, and that's their baloney reasoning to ban literally everyone that says anything that's not circlejerking the site's agendas too much.

[DocWager]

“Heartwarming” is currently the most abused phrase amongst the virtue signaling types.

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

It is an excellent video game.

One of the very best ever made.

alright bro must be a troll

[Taco Bell Tower]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/concord-sales-ceasing-immediately-offering-refunds-to-all-customers-the-game-will-be-taken-offline-beginning-sept-6th-check-staff-post.970872/page-8#post-128101023
ghostcrew, Ree admin

Bit much for the PlayStation blog to dance on the game's grave like this