Argumentum ad populum is a waste of everyone's time.
I'm quoting this to point out, yet again, how a certain part of this community seems to think maturity is just finding fancy words that excuse their own lack of empathy, and even
interest in what other people are experiencing.
But here's the reality; something can be popular for multiple reasons. Chocolate is popular, because most people like it. That doesn't mean those who don't are in any way wrong. But arguing that you can't appeal to popularity as quality when talking about chocolate proves the fallability of just grabbing names from a list of fallacies and trying to argue without understanding the correct
application of fallacies.
People are pointing out that Odyssey is spectacularly disliked because the game is broken to all but the most self absorbed user, that the popular response is following, not setting the experience.
Regarding the popularity of YouTubers... It doesn't mean the criticism is
automatically right, no. But in some ways I envy those of you with the ignorance of reality that means you get to dismiss their importance. Because if you've never had a massive injustice committed against you,
you have no idea how important mass media attention is in seeking justice. Would George Flyod's killer have been brought to justice if the media hadn't chosen to focus on that story? Even with video evidence, killing by cop happens every week and often goes ignored. Protested against, but impotently because no one is listening until the story is too big to be ignored. The arrest of a journalist flying over Belarus? Belarus has been a nasty dictatorship for decades, but it's only when the media gamble of sending up a MiG to redirect the plane outraged the West that it became a story...
I have my own experience of this too; The Shroud of the Avatar community is riddled with scammers, pyramid scheme runners and outright sociopaths who get so outraged by criticism of the game (or at least, their ability to bring in new customers to then re-sell the items too for real money) that they made public and death threats towards my family, hacked my accounts, openly bragged about trying to get me SWATed (I live in the UK though, fortunately) ran fake profiles attempting to gaslight me, published comics obsessing about me... even went as far as writing to the devlopers themselves begging for help "harassing him until he goes insane", which the developers actually responded too positively, which lead to opening up an Arbitration Case, where it turned out the EULA itself which claimed coverage was a lie, and they just avoided turning up to the arbitration to avoid a judgement....
None of you seem to realise how hard doing the right thing is without media coverage. It would have taken thousands of dollars per hour to go any further and drag them into US Federal Court. I can tell you all about how there's no budget for police action, no real interest even unless it catches the media eye; 3 days before the fatal SWATing of an innocent bystander at Wichita, the lunatics stalking me were bragging about it happening to me. The lunatic who called in that fatal SWAT was himself out on parole for multiple previous ones. Only because it escalated to someone actually dying, and the media were all over it, did they
finally jail the Wichita killer.
Meanwhile, I've worked in the gaming industry too; for EA on Ultima Online. I talk about the experiences behind the curtain in comments all the time online. And none of you know much about that either, because until you can get articles out there, and enough social awareness to force people to address the issues...
And all because of what? People are now so narcissistic they think computer games are more important than respect for other people and what they're trying to tell you?
You're not good people because you don't like criticism of computer games; Quite the opposite, it's shallow, selfish and destructive even to the games themselves to fanboy so hard you think you have the right to try and shut down criticism by anything from inaccurate and simplistic application of fallacies you clearly don't understand, through attempting to discredit anyone who talks about the issue (as just another youtuber etc,
instead of educating yourself about what reach someone actually has) up to the extremes that I've personally witnessed, and unfortunately even further beyond.
When all you had to do was say "The negative experiences of others are more important right now, because I already have what I like, and their needs aren't addressed".
That's it. That's all it takes to actually be a better person.
Of course they're reaching out to the media, because you're happy with the status quo and refuse to listen.
Your feelings of disquiet that you can't just quietly enjoy a product aren't the important issue right now. You just think it is because you're putting your own enjoyment above anyone else. Hell I'm sure the developers at FDev themselves wish they could get the budget and time to polish their game. Not as much time as they might wish of course, because artists are
never happy, they always think they could do better. But it's pressure from shareholders who demand fiscal year releases, and gamers who refuse to accept their beloved has flaws and don't push for improvements that get in the way. Right now some management jack off is saying "But look, the Forum Dads are happy with the state of Odyssey, why should we go back and fix everything you've listed, that'll cost us so much money..."
The only really good things that exist are here because smart, moral, hard working people fought and struggled to turn bad things into good. They're not here because they listened to people who stuck their fingers in their ears and went "La la la, I'm not listening, here's a lot of passive aggressive screenshots proving how good Odyssey is, and thus how good I am for sitting here saying 'look what a great eye I must have for appreciating these procedurally generated hills'...." You know which game was also full of such navel-gazing narcissists, whittering on about how above the crowd they were for praising screenshots, but the devs ignored them and worked their balls off to earn the actual praise? No Man's Sky. The popular good will that game has now is because they went out and earned it.
And THAT is how you do "Argumentum ad populum" correctly.
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