Once upon a time, I was considering taking part in my first ever Kickstarter; two of the industry veterans who had created games that meant an enormous amount to me as a young man appeared on the website, and I really wanted to give at least one of them a chance. One was Richard Garriot/Lord British's "Shroud of the Avatar", and one was David Braben's "Elite: Dangerous". In the end, I backed just one, Shroud.
And I wish I hadn't.
Not only was the project badly mismanaged and an endless cash grab, but it taught me a very painful lesson about the horrifying effects of crowd sourcing with regards to the game community itself; You get a class of people who are so invested in the idea of being a backer that they come to think of themselves as best friends with the company, even to the point they actually feel they're part of it. They self-identify with the product to such a terrifying degree they become a form of toxic "Positivity", treating any criticism of the game as a direct attack upon themselves. They hyper-ventilate at the thought people might want the game to change, because they feel they've purchased ownership rights over the product, which allows them to demand the game as stay pandering to them and them alone.
Such shameful abdication of shared humanity, such a desperate need to find an security blanket via abandoning any sense of improvement even in a third party product, just so you can feel secure in your own little shell is unedifying, pathetically needy, and alienatingly destructive to the future success of the business itself.
Now I came to Elite: Dangerous not long after it launched. I don't post much on the forums because there's very little to talk about, unless you love constant ARGs. And so there are only a few people who I have on Ignore here, because I don't run into people around this community very often. But hollow husks of fanboys automatically go on the list, because life is too short to waste listening yet again to people attempting to bully, browbeat, shut down and abuse others just because they have an unhealthy fixation upon this Kickstarted game too.
And yet without fail, every time I open a post here with a blatantly insecure, obsessive level drama title, the first post is missing because it's one of a handful of people whose horrendous attitude I'd spotted months, if not years ago and blocked.
This community isn't "different"... it's just yet another crowd sourced game with the same problems of lunatics with an unhealthy fixation. There's a TINY cadre of utter obsessives who have spent years desperately trying to belittle anyone who thinks Elite is anything but perfect; who mistake their own literally insane view of the world as being normal, and are completely unable to deal with the fact very few others agree.
You could probably check your own ignore lists and find all of the same names are on it too. The question is... why? Do they really think if they drive everyone away, and quieten the cognitive dissonance in their own heads and hearts, the actual game will somehow make more money? Or is it really JUST about their own desperate insecurities? I think we all know the answer to that. What staggers the mind is that they apparently don't... or simply don't care what they look like to others, as long as they can somehow drive you all away and keep the products exactly as it is now, exactly as they want it, forever and ever and ever without any of that scary change stuff, or being asked to go out of their own comfort zone.
Well, ("horlicks, the tasty malt drink" - Ed.) to that. Anyone who plays any game has just as much right to ask it to be more, be better if they want it to be. Stop limiting the world with your small minds, you ghastly self selecting gatekeepers...
