An observation

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-14 23:24:50

I've been doing this for 15 years.

I've been interacting with "my community" pretty heavily and regularly for the last 9 or so years.

But something has definitely changed over time.

Back in 2014, with The Castle Doctrine, the was a large community of players that was deeply invested in the game, and on board with all kinds of experiments that I undertook in order to make the game better. The same was true with Cordial Minuet, for the most part.

On the surface, these communities looked and functioned pretty much just like this community. I'd post ideas for how to fix and improve the game, and we'd discuss them, and people would help me find holes in my ideas, and I'd implement the best ideas, and then people would play, and discuss how the changes affected the play. And The Castle Doctrine (as an example), just kept getting better and better and better as a result of this process.

Much the same way that OHOL just keeps getting better and better over time, as a result of this process. Plenty of bumps along the way, of course, but overall a way better and more interesting and complex and stable and performant game than it was a year ago.

(And of course, OHOL is a much better and more fascinating game than The Castle Doctrine, and a gargantuan technical achievement, by comparison).

So what's changed?

The tenor of the discussion. The rush to judgement. The amount of complaining. The amount of personal attacks. The amount of entitlement from the playerbase. The review bombing, etc.

And this is not just my experience. It's the common experience of every developer who interacts with a player community.

Here's a whole article written about it, albeit with much worse reactions than the ones I get (so I guess I should count myself as lucky):

https://medium.com/@morganjaffit/the-co … 9cc5cc8728

Well, to be fair, I have been doxed, and there were people around earlier who were really mad at me about certain changes and were hurling profanity at me. It's just not that common.

I'm more talking about the general tone of negativity---from players who apparently love the game, given how much they play it and talk about it. For example, calling the result of a week's worth of deep community discussion and 24+ hours of solid coding a gimmick.

As far as I can tell, I'm doing a way better job, as a developer, than I've ever done before. And I don't see tons of examples of developers who are doing much better jobs than me... who update their game as frequently and as deeply. Who are making games that are as practically-bug-free (really!) as OHOL (a list of 30 bugs, or 90 bugs, is really as short list, for a game of this complexity).

Obviously, if it bothered me too terribly, I'd have given up long ago. But I am interested in the general phenomenon, and where it's coming from, and why it has changed.

I feel like it might be a generational thing, because the players who played TCD back in the day have all aged out, and moved on to other things in their lives.

FeignedSanity · 2019-05-14 23:38:19

Yeah, the absolutely god awful amount of entitlement and ungratefulness definitely has a lot do with the times in general, I feel.

Also, I can't possibly read everything everyone from the community has to say, but I find most of the attacks and complaining comes from the same few people (one person in particular springs to mind). Might just be a case of the one/few awful smells overpowering the good.

spurofthemoment · 2019-05-14 23:41:12

I think it's just the internet in general...I can't speak for older generations of gamers since I didn't play back then. But I've noticed the same thing with Yandere Simulator (a totally different sort of game but the only other game whose development I've followed)...the most negative voices are the loudest and oftentimes people just don't seem to know (or care) how to say things nicely. People like to hide behind screens and voice their complaints in a way they'd never do in real life.

For example, on the whole sword debacle...online people will curse you up and down for it, but irl if you were to speak to them face to face, they'd probably say something like "Oh, yeah, well, I don't really like swords, I think they're a bad idea, and here's why..." and proceed to list them nicely. But online it's just profanity after profanity. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you can't communicate tone of voice or facial expressions via text and people feel the need to compensate? I don't know.

I also believe that people take out their frustration surrounding lack of control in their real lives on online devs because again...no fear of retaliation or humiliation. It's interesting how most people will avoid being flat out rude in real life when others are around for fear of that damning awkward silence, but since you can't feel that (or those judgemental looks) online, I guess there's no filter.

I also think there has been more and more of a shift lately where consumers believe they have a right to art produced in the exact way they want. Sometimes they have a point (see the new Sonic movie), but the bottom line is they still expect to have an extremely influential say on the final product when in the past, that wasn't the case. Is that a good thing or bad thing? I don't know. My personal response to that sort of thing is "why don't you go make your own game/write your own book/shoot your own film/etc?" but I guess that's not as fun.

Maybe it's just the optimist in me, but I do think many people who spread this kind of negativity honestly have something important to say and just don't know how to communicate it without being extremely negative. I don't know why that's the case, though.

Anyway, I hope my thoughts were helpful.

Last edited by spurofthemoment (2019-05-14 23:41:58)

Potjeh · 2019-05-14 23:42:41

We've been trained by game devs to act like that, by getting consistently ignored unless we raise hell. You're better than most, but even you sometimes ignore what literally everyone wants (like making pigs actually useful, or better storage). This isn't to say that you should let the community dictate your game design, but explaining why you don't like some frequently suggested thing would be much better than simply ignoring it.

lychee · 2019-05-14 23:46:07

Wow, that is absolutely unacceptable -- the doxing, everything.

Jason, you've done so much for OHOL and I want you to know that I really admire you for everything that you do.

I can tell how much that you care about OHOL, and I really hope that you continue to have the fire to pursue your vision. I think you've made something powerful, evocative, and really original -- and I respect your every right as the content creator to steer this game in the direction that you see it going best.

And I still have a lot of faith that you have a lot of great things in store.

The personal attacks, the name calling, the insults -- all of that shouldn't be happening. It's unacceptable.

All of us should be more mature than that.

And importantly, to the entire community, we should recognize that everyone here (except the griefers), Jason more than anyone, wants their best for this game.

Keep that in mind, please.

Last edited by lychee (2019-05-14 23:46:55)

Twisted · 2019-05-14 23:47:49

IMO the Internet overall has become much more negative, hostile, and toxic in the past few years, and the gaming side of it doubly so. Even as recently as ten-fifteen years ago the Internet was much more of a niche thing. Niche communities are generally nicer as people are invested in them due to passion. These days, probably because of the rise of social media, the Internet is a big part of many people's lives. Many are probably unhappy or stressed out with their jobs, and when they get home and see someone being happier than they are online it just grinds their gears. They're anonymous and they want to lash out, so they do. Over time being angry and rude becomes the norm, and they see online behaviour standards as completely unrelated to real life behaviour standards.

I saw this interview excerpt on Twitter a few weeks ago and I feel like it hit the nail on the head - https://youtu.be/XW_KhFq4LQo?t=1988 (timecode 33:09). I think you'd find it interesting.

futurebird · 2019-05-14 23:51:42

I'm probably (a lot) older than you. It's not generational.

I think it's something else. There are a lot of people who play this game who don't play a lot a other game and for me, at least, that's because very few games offer anything I find interesting. I'm not interested in competitive play, wars, or mayhem. I like collaborative game where you can build on the work of others and see your creativity and work helping other people. I like games with teaching and learning and caring. It's OK if there is a little war and mayhem mixed in but I'm personally not here for that.

When I saw this game I was like "AT LAST something GOOD that isn't boring" -- so you have a segment of the player base who are not generally well served by developers there isn't a lot of content for us out there, and we worried that somthing good will go the way of so many other games, another contest type game where the main goal is to pull one over on other people and then brag about it.

This is the only game I play right now. It's probably the 5th game I've ever liked.

I generally think you do a good job, but to me it'd be sad if something unique vanished. So, if I seem kind of harsh and over critical it's just because I don't want to watch something amazing become somthing typical.

And I sincerely think you could tap in to huge number of players by taking people who care about other kinds of gameplay seriously.

Also, I do think you earn some of the complaining. For example, if you have decided to add a sword to the game don't ask us what we think of it. Just say you are adding it.

The personal attacks (and doxing yikes) though have no real justification. Being attacked isn't pleasant or interesting.

futurebird · 2019-05-14 23:55:05

Oh and I've been on the internet since 1995, since before it was the internet. I don't think it's gotten worse. There are just more people talking.

And I will always be super suspicious of any claim that there are big generational differences in basic human interactions. People were complaining about "kids these days" in Roman times.

Some of the worst attacks I encountered were on usenet back in the 90s. For me the internet has gotten a lot better mostly because people recognize the importance of moderation of forums more often and in the 90s there was this bad idealistic notion that you didn't need to bother with it since it "prevent free speech" (it dosen't)

paulof · 2019-05-14 23:57:12

I understand you, i was pissed about people complaining and started to use the forum just to say this is one of the most amazing experiences i had in games in my whole life and i was feeling like i was the only one.

Kamor · 2019-05-15 00:06:22

You are changing the game completely. Read your own description of your site.

http://onehouronelife.com/

This is the reason i have bought the game. There is no hint about PVP. Now you have this totaly inbalanced one-hit pvp game. Knife and Bow griefers are inbalanced enough, but this new warsword sucks really. Dont't speak of zoom mod on pvp. Most players want to play this game peacefully. Look population of towns. Most are working and doing hard work to survive. Perhaps 10% want to destroy the work from other players? I hope its not more.

Make non pvp and pvp servers. This will handle a lot of your current problems.

Next problem is the difficulty of your game. It´s so hard to learn all the stuff here. You need wiki, let's plays and search in forum for newest stuff implementation.

Make easy and hard servers. (or more difficulties?)

Give new players a chance to learn this game. Make food consumption on easy server slower, give more resources (water, iron ...)

Finally let the player choose, if they want to start as boy, girl or eve. (boy is easiest/eve is hardest to play)

You have all the Jumppoints in your coding. Implement a user choice in login mask.

Classic Login (your current login)
Login as girl, boy, eve
Login same town, same family (not for cursed players)

This will massively reduce the /die situation and make the family trees more readable and makes more fun to all our "moms".

Tarr · 2019-05-15 00:08:34

Jason you're silly if you think I actually think you're an idiot. You make a game that I've bought three times at this point because I wanted to share the love I have of this game with other people. 90% of this update is spot on, great content that people might not all love but shakes the game up in a great way that we're not used to. The other 10% of this specific update just breeds a level of frustration that is hard to express in anything other than a rude tone. You specifically went out of your way to release the war sword in such a broken state that it makes it hard to not question whether you have marbles loose. I don't know if you played the game during butter knife weekend and I know you were on vacation when the arrow-note bug slipped though (and I am eternally grateful you would take time out of your vacation to fix the bug) but these two things made the game basically unplayable and incredibly unenjoyable.

Your true vision of this game is 100% different than mine, it's different than spoons by a mile, and even other players like futurebird probably has a different vision of this game than all of us. Are all your experimental updates bad? Not even remotely close. Are updates that radically shift the game bad? Not always. Regardless of how anyone and everyone felt at the time of the temperature overhaul that was a specific change that was good for the game in the long run. Making clothes matter opened up more options for individualism instead of everyone being naked, and bad players dressing themselves in the desert. Even the best players of this game are idiots and can't foresee that sometimes change is good.

Out of the last six updates you've put out the only one I can fundamentally say is a bad update is something like fences. People knew those weren't going to work out and weren't willing to give it a chance because it was going to lead to people just hoarding supplies for the sole purpose of just hoarding. Maybe down the road you're going to release an update that makes us look back and think how could we have ever gotten this cool and shiny thing without property fences and it'll be us looking like the fools not you Jason.

You came back swinging when you added the new food options and clothing options, you set the bar high for some really great possible updates like you always do when you nail a patch. It's when you release stuff like fences and the (broken) war sword people get upset, they get frustrated, they get disappointed.

I'm sorry for being a dick Jason, it's easy to take the low road and insult you rather than try to have an actual conversation on how to improve the game for everyone.

Dodge · 2019-05-15 00:19:42

This is a good question.

I have a pretty good idea on what can potentially cause this.

But to be honest no certainty.

It is a complex subject after all and also a sensitive one, which is partly the reason i usually refrain from talking about it in more details.

I guess this could be perhaps the place to have this discussion.

About generations these graphs may or may not be related.

P.S. If that sounds depressing keep in mind that everything can be an oppurtinity to learn, change and better yourself. And maybe eventually the one's close to you.

The_Anabaptist · 2019-05-15 00:42:15

I left the following on another thread just a couple hours ago. It seems that it is appropriate to leave it here too. I have submitted a negative review on your site. Considering that it has a 94% positive review rating, I'm not sure why you are complaining about a review bomb. I know nothing of your doxxing or other woes, lest somebody try and associate me with that. I recommend that you spend a period of time reflecting on your own choices.

-----

Yup. Just got to experience the new darker game for the first time as I haven't previous run into another non-speaking group since the update.

Born to an immigrant black mother? Although I think she claimed we were the indigenous people? Rest of the population was white and no relation (Su family) I grew up. I went out and gathered a big pile of firewood to show that I was helpful. Then I took an unused rabbit snare and filled a basket with rabbits. Returned to town and was unloading them in front of a group of people when an elder woman (Jesse Su) decided to war sword me. Nobody lifted a finger to try and medicate me or curse Jesse. I was just a dirty little girl to them all. I was young enough that I couldn't even curse Jesse if I had wanted to.

I no longer consider this a "fun" game. This game might as well be labeled a training tool to radicalize the youthful players into thinking hate is acceptable.

The_Anabaptist

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-15 00:53:37

Regarding property fences, are you experiencing a bunch of major problems with hoarding?

FeignedSanity · 2019-05-15 00:54:30

It's easy to forget that there's another human being on the other side of the screen. You don't have to interact with people face to face. You can have criticism, but people forget how to speak.

"The second you add some bullshit microtransactions to buy more lives is the second I stop playing this game permanently. Keep tossing stupid ideas like this out to the public and you're going to lose people very, very quickly my dude"

VS

"I feel that adding microtransactions to the game would cause me to stop playing for good. I also fear that you may lose people very quickly if you continue to publicly voice ideas like this."

They both say the same thing, but they say it differently.

I was going to use other examples, but I think this one sums it up well enough. The past few messages from Tarr were definitely ripe pickings though

I think it's probably just a product of the digital age. People have stopped talking with eachother, and instead talk to eachother. I don't want to name names (because I'm not looking for a fight) but one forum user in particular embodies this concept perfectly.

FeignedSanity · 2019-05-15 00:57:31

jasonrohrer wrote:

Regarding property fences, are you experiencing a bunch of major problems with hoarding?

Not personally. Sometimes, yes. But most of the time, people are more that willing to share. If not, then they're at least willing to trade. I had a nice interaction where I was trading baskets of clay for a gentleman's rope.

I have had a few people just expect me to give them ownership, then camp me (or shoot me from over the fence) because they felt entitled to it.

OminousBladeBlank · 2019-05-15 01:00:15

Jason, this game is cool.

paulof · 2019-05-15 01:00:54

jasonrohrer wrote:

Regarding property fences, are you experiencing a bunch of major problems with hoarding?

thats interesting, because the answer, at least for me, is no. I think people dont care much about fences today, which means in the future we probably wont have problems with wars, although i like wars, its just the hype in the beggining. actually i would like to see people using fences more and trade system, but if we are not seeing this much means the majority as one force chose to be a coletivism society

Last edited by paulof (2019-05-15 01:03:59)

Spoonwood · 2019-05-15 01:01:55

I'm not sure what the doxxing involved, and I'm not asking you to reveal it either since that might not be a good call, but I doubt I would find it morally acceptable. That said, much of what you write boils down to tone policing. You aren't entitled to any sort of words or speech patterns from people commenting Jason. We get to choose our words and how we use them. You are right that we aren't entitled to any sort of game changes from you even if they would be in your best interest, but at the same time you aren't entitled to certain forms of speech patterns from us. If someone thinks something a gimmick, and I didn't use that term, then they are allowed to say that, unless that honestly could get proven as a form of defamation instead of just harsh language. If someone wants to say that you think a little too highly of yourself and you're no Sid Meier or Tynan Sylvester or some other developer, that's their call, not yours.

I agree with what FutureBird has said about the internet. That's not denying your other community wasn't as you say Jason, but more about the internet in general.

I think that Kamor also has good ideas.

Tarr wrote:

Are updates that radically shift the game bad? Not always.

As I've said elsewhere I thought the update that changed how pumps and the water system and got rid of the tall/short object bug (since it was a bug then at least, even if now it's a feature) made for a good update. Turned out better than I expected also.

Greep · 2019-05-15 01:03:22

I think you're only noticing it just because OHOL has a bigger volume of players. If you've got 3x the players, you've got 3x the dumb insults hurled your way. Which is probably why in large games the devs don't really even interact with the players at all and just have some commmunity managers who don't influence the game design handle the trash talk. Crazies don't get quite so crazy when they know they're basically "talking to the hand"

That said, in other even bigger games like factorio or rimworld, where the developers do interact directly, they don't generate nearly as much flak (I've yet to see any at all in the factorio forums actually), it's quite sedate. Plenty of autism there Dodge, so not likely a relation

There's three things I think:

1) You basically have no forum moderation. The vitriol you get from players is also the vitriol other players are sending to each other.

2) The game is multiplayer-only (for most non-technical people): players are stuck with the decisions you make, and can't just go back to a previous build if they don't like it. For this reason multiplayer games in general get a lot of flak for just about anything. People suddenly noticing this trend of gamer's getting hysterical is probably just cause more games are multiplayer these days: I can assure you multiplayer game forums have always been cancer.

3) You really are changing this game to be something it wasn't advertised to be.

Last edited by Greep (2019-05-15 01:16:46)

Dodge · 2019-05-15 01:05:42

About this community specifically.

I think you dont express clearly enough why you want to make the game the way you want to make it.

Which is why there is so much opposition.

I mean seriously part of the community thinks you want to make "griefers" have big advantages over "non griefers" and even that you are a griefer yourself

Try to figure out why the community thinks your vision of the game would be an issue.

Is it because a mother could drop you on snake?

Ask us to try to figure it out.

Is it because of the too high risk of starvation?

Can be solved.

Murder too easy?

I'm sure some will be motivated on this one

Maybe it could be done in steps, nerf murders one week, then make starvation less a risk of death, etc, until the game is ready for it truly being the way it's meant to be.

We could work together as a community to make it the game you actually want it to be and the game the whole community and players want it to be.

Spoonwood · 2019-05-15 01:05:44

jasonrohrer wrote:

Regarding property fences, are you experiencing a bunch of major problems with hoarding?

I once needed a rope to make a charcoal pump and someone had the milkweed stashed and had to talk to them (the gate took a rope to make... there wasn't that much of a net on milkweed... easily more net if the milkweed got grown near the soil pits in the grassland or somewhere a bit away from town). Then I think I needed another rope to make a bucket I think. I just ended up dying early on purpose in that family, because I was just too frustrated with the not-so-productive milkweed hoarding.

I'm inclined to agree with Greep as to why you've noticed this Jason.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2019-05-15 01:06:24)

DaTrüf! · 2019-05-15 01:08:51

jasonrohrer wrote:

I've been doing this for 15 years.
I've been interacting with "my community" pretty heavily and regularly for the last 9 or so years.
But something has definitely changed over time.
Back in 2014, with The Castle Doctrine, the was a large community of players that was deeply invested in the game, and on board with all kinds of experiments that I undertook in order to make the game better. The same was true with Cordial Minuet, for the most part.
On the surface, these communities looked and functioned pretty much just like this community. I'd post ideas for how to fix and improve the game, and we'd discuss them, and people would help me find holes in my ideas, and I'd implement the best ideas, and then people would play, and discuss how the changes affected the play. And The Castle Doctrine (as an example), just kept getting better and better and better as a result of this process.
Much the same way that OHOL just keeps getting better and better over time, as a result of this process. Plenty of bumps along the way, of course, but overall a way better and more interesting and complex and stable and performant game than it was a year ago.
(And of course, OHOL is a much better and more fascinating game than The Castle Doctrine, and a gargantuan technical achievement, by comparison).
So what's changed?

The tenor of the discussion. The rush to judgement. The amount of complaining. The amount of personal attacks. The amount of entitlement from the playerbase. The review bombing, etc.
And this is not just my experience. It's the common experience of every developer who interacts with a player community.
Here's a whole article written about it, albeit with much worse reactions than the ones I get (so I guess I should count myself as lucky):
https://medium.com/@morganjaffit/the-co … 9cc5cc8728
Well, to be fair, I have been doxed, and there were people around earlier who were really mad at me about certain changes and were hurling profanity at me. It's just not that common.
I'm more talking about the general tone of negativity---from players who apparently love the game, given how much they play it and talk about it. For example, calling the result of a week's worth of deep community discussion and 24+ hours of solid coding a gimmick.
As far as I can tell, I'm doing a way better job, as a developer, than I've ever done before. And I don't see tons of examples of developers who are doing much better jobs than me... who update their game as frequently and as deeply. Who are making games that are as practically-bug-free (really!) as OHOL (a list of 30 bugs, or 90 bugs, is really as short list, for a game of this complexity).

Obviously, if it bothered me too terribly, I'd have given up long ago. But I am interested in the general phenomenon, and where it's coming from, and why it has changed.
I feel like it might be a generational thing, because the players who played TCD back in the day have all aged out, and moved on to other things in their lives.

keep it up Jason

......btw wipe my curse scores

DaTrüf! · 2019-05-15 01:10:24

jasonrohrer wrote:

Regarding property fences, are you experiencing a bunch of major problems with hoarding?

no

lychee · 2019-05-15 01:18:19

jasonrohrer wrote:

Regarding property fences, are you experiencing a bunch of major problems with hoarding?

Well, the second day I ever played OHOL (~2 weeks ago), a griefer lured me into their property fence, shut it, and the shot me with a bow. xD

A could write extensively on property fences, although I kind of disagree with Tarr's evaluation of them. My opinion about them is that they're just non-functional, mostly because there's no strong incentives to use them. That doesn't necessarily make it a "bad" update. Sometimes, things just don't work the way we want them to.

I personally haven't experienced many hoarding issues with property fences -- it's a very very fine line regarding hoarding vs. griefing (somebody farming milkweed and locking a hoe inside the property fence........), it's natural for many players to feel frustrated about them because a majority of us have had far more negative experiences with them than positive.

It's very common for people to jump to the conclusion: "It's a griefers tool!"

...that kind of thing.

One Hour One Life Forums

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