Being Toxic about games

For large social games such as Survivor where the primary mechanic is social interaction.
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Being Toxic about games

Post Post #0 (ISO) » Sat Apr 04, 2020 2:36 pm

Post by CreativeMod1 »

Hey everyone, so I wanted to get a thread going talking about the way I've seen mods are treated in games, and this is purely from my own perspective as a spectator or reading through games after they've finished, god knows what else goes on in private messages.
I see people get extremely salty when things don't go their way in a game and I personally feel like the way they react is just unfair and toxic towards the moderators.

I'm not going to talk about any specific instances of this happening and likewise I don't want comments in this thread of it happening, I want to make this thread for 4 things, 1) Education on what goes in to making a game, 2) How we as a community can do more for our mods and appreciate their hard work, 3) Understanding why people get salty and giving some general responses to that and 4) How we can put a stop to the negativity that's happening.

1) I feel like a lot of people don't quite know or understand just how much effort goes in to creating a game, I personally am about to run my first game, and there's so much to do in creating the game. Coming up with a set of challenges, writing and testing them, creating spreadsheets to record results, creating the board, setting permissions, creating all boards and confessionals, creating every single account, making avatars, challenge banners, various other graphics, Google forms, organised spreadsheets, idiot proofing rules, genius proofing rules, coming up with twists, checking that everything is fair, reading and rereading everything, find a listmod, find a reviewer, have the reviewer check everything and make changes where needed. And this is all before the game even starts and I'm sure there's lots I've missed.
I invite mods to add more to this section, really tell the players what it's like to mod a game.

2) From what I've seen and what I'm sure I'm about to experience, modding can be stressful, there are things that can go wrong in games and challenges, I think as a community we should do more to support mods, tell them things that you enjoy about the game. It's super easy to complain about something but for some reason it's super hard to give praise.
At an IRL werewolf group I play with, at the end of every game there's a round of applause for the mods, a little bit of praise goes a long way.

3) Most players get salty over game mechanics or mod decisions that don't go their way.
In terms of game mechanics, keep in mind that with all the mods, reviewers and listmods, there's a big team that signed off on every twist and each twist is well thought out, there will be players who gain from twists and players who lose from twists, just because you're part of the latter doesn't make it a bad or unfair twist.
As for mod decisions during the game, whilst creating Zelda I've noticed myself checking and rechecking everything over and over and like I said before, there's a team of people that check things over but yet we can't account for absolutely every possibility, there will be issues that happen in games which aren't planned for and so as such mods will need to come up with a solution to fix those issues, again these might not go the way you want them to but mods will always try to be as fair as possible and this won't just be a quick decision, it'll be discussed with other mods. Remember, you might not know the full details of why a decision has been made.

4) Whilst I hope that this post is enough to educate players into thinking twice before getting salty to the moderators, I think it's worth us having some more actionable systems in place to discourage players from getting salty, I would like to encourage us to use the listmods as a tool here and report players who have crossed the line from being frustrated to being toxic about the game.

Last couple of points, there are some games that are completely unique, they don't follow Survivor or Big Brother rules, they are made entirely by the mods, if you're signing up for one of these games then you must be open and understanding that it's a new format and that it hasn't been playtested.
Finally, I think it's important to note that there's nothing wrong with constructive criticism, or being frustrated about getting eliminated from a game, giving hate to the game and the mods or being toxic about it is not the way to go about this.

If you've gotten this far, thank you very much for reading, I know there was a lot but I'm sure you'll appreciate that it's quite important.
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Post Post #1 (ISO) » Sun Apr 05, 2020 4:48 am

Post by Awoo »

In post 0, CreativeMod1 wrote:genius proofing rules
:shifty:
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Post Post #2 (ISO) » Sun Apr 05, 2020 4:59 am

Post by CreativeMod1 »

Writing extra rules for those who try to outsmart the rules haha
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Post Post #3 (ISO) » Sun Apr 05, 2020 7:55 am

Post by panthaleon »

<3 u cm1
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Post Post #4 (ISO) » Sun Apr 05, 2020 8:34 am

Post by Awoo »

Mass panic debate :shifty: goes down as both my favourite challenge and a challenge I never expect to see run agian
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Post Post #5 (ISO) » Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:28 am

Post by Klick »

What a great challenge
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Post Post #6 (ISO) » Sun Apr 05, 2020 11:42 am

Post by SleepyKrew »

In post 0, CreativeMod1 wrote:I would like to encourage us to use the listmods as a tool here and report players who have crossed the line from being frustrated to being toxic about the game.
does this not currently happen?
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Post Post #7 (ISO) » Mon Apr 06, 2020 1:39 pm

Post by NotAJumbleOfNumbers »

In post 4, Awoo wrote:Mass panic debate :shifty: goes down as both my favourite challenge and a challenge I never expect to see run agian
what the actual hecc happened in the challenge
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Post Post #8 (ISO) » Mon Apr 06, 2020 11:14 pm

Post by Klick »

I think a lot of the tendency to be toxic towards mods (and players for that matter) stems from how emotionally invested people get in these games. It's important to keep yourself grounded and remember that you're playing a game for fun. The game is 2-3 months, which is a long time, but it isn't your life. If someone screws up or does something you don't like, it's really not a big enough deal to ruin people's days over.
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Post Post #9 (ISO) » Wed Apr 08, 2020 7:01 am

Post by Cephrir »

Yeah. All of this.

As a mod, it feels really, really bad to have people shit on your hard work. After experiencing that, I've made a concerted effort to make sure any disagreement about mod decisions, twists, etc. is polite and non-excessive. Players should recognize that while mods are not perfect, they are trying their best, and whatever thing you don't like, they probably were trying to create a fun experience for everyone.
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Post Post #10 (ISO) » Tue Jun 02, 2020 10:08 pm

Post by Klick »

I also think it's important to distinguish between toxicity and criticism. One is uncalled for, while the other should be considered for the betterment of LSGs as a whole.
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Post Post #11 (ISO) » Wed Jun 03, 2020 9:45 am

Post by pablito »

It's tough to be a player and a mod. In both circumstances you have to expose yourself to others. As a player it's not easy to let your emotions and feelings come to the surface even if you're playing under an alias. People judge others outside of games by our actions even if it is not a reflection of our general beliefs or personality. So to feel vulnerable enough to play and go for the win, players must trust that mods will create enough structure that trust can be felt by a player that their feelings of the game are justified and validated.

When players have criticism, it's tough but it may be just and toxic at the same time. And mods have created the environment and therefore it's a lot of responsibility and it's scary to be responsible for making something fun, intense, and worthwhile. And it makes a lot of new mods feel scared to try new things as a result. I've made mistakes as a mod and I've learned as a result. But I chose to not stop being a part of everything and continuing to contribute when I can. As a reviewer I try to bring constructive criticism and awareness to blindspots but a whole team of mods, reviewer, and listmod might not catch everything but it's better that there's a team instead of no checks and balances.

So in the end it's good to be critical, it's good to listen and listmods are here to ensure due process occurs and that there's an overall betterment toward the community. As long as that all happens, we're good.
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Post Post #12 (ISO) » Sat Jun 13, 2020 6:03 am

Post by kdowns »

I’m just gonna bump this for no particular reason.
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Post Post #13 (ISO) » Wed Jun 17, 2020 7:26 am

Post by animorpherv1 »

If this was a few years back, Id have plenty to say on this subject. But all I can say now I be nice to your mods, please. It gets incredibly disheartening when people get rude or mean to them.
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Post Post #14 (ISO) » Tue Jul 28, 2020 3:44 am

Post by xRECKONERx »

fuck LSGs tbh am i right
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