Circle in the Dark: The Darkest Dungeon Community

[@DOSRetroGamer]

I am always astounded when I see reviews where someone needed a hundred hours to figure out they hate the game 🙂

[@adamblumenau6569]

I really admire Red Hook for sticking to their guns and creating the game they wanted to make in the face of such obsessive, entitled criticism, even 3 years later. I applaud them for making this kind of talk and I hope we have further GDC discussions about how to maintain a healthy (for the developers) relationship with fans. With such a deep integration of social media into the development process we need to be talking about and defining fan/creator boundaries.

[@bladechild2449]

Their relationship with fans was to ignore everyone who was with them in the beta in the beginning and to then ban them, lol

[@mikeyoung9810]

I remember playing everquest and Verant (the game devs) made a statement, "This is how our game is. If you don't like it then don't play it". I admired that attitude at the time (1997ish I think) as I believe games should be the way the creators wanted them to be. But having said that it's obvious that if no one plays the game it doesn't matter. The trouble is that in this age of social media a small percentage of people can control perceptions of the majority which forces the creators of games to start early on "listening" to them. This brings the "community managers" into the mix. For me, I'd rather have 100 unique games I didn't like for that chance at the one amazing experience I'll never forget. Instead of 100 WoW's or GTA V's that will only inspire 100 more of the same that will probably sell well but bore quickly.

[@beeeean]

Mike Young Echo chamber is scary as shit. People’s subjective opinion do matter to a certain extent. I believe having a good structure and management is what prevents a toxic community.

[@ossiehalvorson7702]

@@beeeean Unfortunately not. I've seen early access developers who had a good track record of listening to the community, were very transparent with communication, and still got shouted down by a toxic community because of minor issues they had with where the game was headed. At the end of the day developer vision overrules player input. If people don't like that, they shouldn't buy early access. They should wait until a game is fully released, with no major content or changes still to come, and only then decide if they want to buy it.

[@bladechild2449]

Funny. The OG community when the game first released in EA ended up getting banned because they called out your shit ideas and progression of the game heading into release.

[@ShrikeGFX]

Good talk, but I get the feeling of "How do we frame and engineer our community to accept bad design decisions" instead of accepting that mistakes were made and correcting them

[@Ace-sq8gw]

@lonely bathroom or because like the previous reply said design decisions are subjective and each person can have an opinion on it, I mean if you hate the game that's fine you can have your opinion on it but insulting everyone who agrees with the developer is kinda being an asshole on the whole situation, also if you hate the game so much then why did you open GDC talk about it? What are you trying to prove?

[@Azulicious]

Seems mostly manipulative, negative, and self-serving.

[@Lishtenbird]

If anything, this managerial speech dissuaded me from getting the game. I don't believe that anything naturally good can come out of orchestrated, unhuman relations.

[@stewanmaleno]

@@Lishtenbird Community management is a byproduct of current networks and media. The game is pretty good.

[@Gonzalo_105]

@@stewanmaleno nha, the games is pretty bad

[@Ace-sq8gw]

@@Lishtenbird you do understand that nearly all game developers even the indie developers have community managers and all of them do the same procedures. I mean if you don't want to buy the game because you don't like or not interested in it that's fine but if this is your reasoning then your logic is heavily flawed

[@drewa6891]

Agreed. Good example of how being arrogant and dismissive of your players ultimately leaves you with a worse product.

[@MissleLaunch]

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[@durendenmp812]

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[@EViLeleven]

@@durendenmp812 first second reply

[@superscatboy]

I'm also gay