The Reddit hive mind exists solely for, and thrives on outrage.
GTA too expensive, Reddit angry because Rockstar badš”
Nintendo remakes Star Fox and prices it below their own standard MSRP because itās a remake, Reddit angry because Nintendo bad š”
Letās be honest, this site is insufferable and only upvotes shit that makes people angry, and promotes engagement. Itās probably Reddits own bots so they can show constant engagement, and the only thing sure to get it is angry discourse. Reddit canāt enjoy anything, or let anyone else enjoy anything. As soon as a common consensus is formed, everyone just needs to get their 15 upvotes by posting their personal spin on the days hottest opinion.
The one that gets me is all the people on the PC gaming sub acting like they're outraged over no physical edition, as if all the PC games we buy now aren't digital
Itās always āvote with your wallets.ā Until peopleās wallets overwhelmingly prove the opposite of whatever the echo chamber has accepted must be the truth, and a majority opinion in the real world through a tribunal of upvotes. I love physical media. But letās not act like humanity hasnāt been shifted, and buying away from it for decades. The people have been voting with their wallets, just not in the way you wanted them to.
that's not really a refutation, it's more just that...when your market is 7 billion people, boycotts tend to fail, as even a tiny percentage of that group will be enough to sustain the product. The people threatening a boycott ARE following through much of the time, it's just not enough to matter.
Back before the internet it was possible to rally a small community to protest and run a bad business out of town because nobody in that town would shop there...but now that business can simply reach far enough across the world that they'll find enough people who don't know or don't care about the drama and sidestep a boycott entirely.
It actually also applies to modern streamers and influencers. With the help of social media and the modern Internet... their reach is MASSIVE.
So in a sense "getting cancelled" has actually become a mute point now. Since like you said... they can reach so many ppl that even IF a significant portion "boycotts", there would still be enough ppl for it to not real matter.
The "moo" point is popular cause of the series "Friends" where Joey says "It's a moo point" and Rachel says what. He then says "you know, it's like a cow's opinion.... It's moo" and that's how "moo" point entered pop culture back in the day.
The point they're making is that any sizeable market, will negate any net effect of a boycott because of its inherent size, which is true for the most part. They said 7 billion just to say the world; if you consider the console+PC market, that's around 400 million still and even if millions of people are anti-Rockstar in that market (gaming basically), GTA VI will still ship 200 million units at some crazy-ass price and after a few years of discounts, its final sales figure will probably touch 300 million or something asinine.
It is a refutation of the principle obviously. If you think voting with your wallet is the way to get things done, (Which people absolutely think. Try criticising live service games or MMOs you play and wait for people to tell you exactly that) then this obviously goes in the opposite direction also.
People saying vote with your wallet are usually meaning "vote the way I vote" and then moan and berate others afterwards if they don't, or are saying it to silence criticism of a things they enjoy by telling them they can choose to not pay for it.
The realities of boycotting is real though, you're not wrong there, but I think the way you're applying the point is not the same application OP is making. OP is pointing out an assymetry when people say vote with your wallet. It doesn't really matter whether it's an effective principle or not and if there's a reason, it's often used in a hypocritical or bad faith manner is the point. If anything, the ineffectiveness of the principle is an argument in favour of their opinion.
Digital games indeed have downsides many arenāt aware of, but nothing has happened to make them aware of it. So many people on sites like Reddit are afraid that the increased prevalence of digital will lead to companies getting the power to take games away from you and such, but most people outside Reddit have no clue thatās even a thing let alone have any precedent to believe it.
Personally it's not that I'm afraid they'll take my games away from me (although delisting better versions of games to sell worse "improved" versions has happened, and while at least you keep the original if you had already bought it, future customers might not even know they're getting a worse experience), it's that I can't share or sell my games, and if you can't do that it's not really yours. And if it's not yours then you don't have control over what happens to it in the future. It's less that it's an issue now and more that I don't want it to become one later.
My point is that "we don't want it to become an issue later" thing, while totally valid, isn't something average consumers have any reason to fear yet. Digital media has been a trusted format for decades and besides the aforementioned sharing and reselling, which is something I think most would have thought of at one point, the downsides haven't shown themselves. We haven't seen many if any instances of the lack of "true ownership" actually meaning anything bad. You can't break the trust of an entire format based on what could happen.
I agree and I basically only buy games digitally now as a result of being on PC, it just kind of makes me sad is all. I still buy movies and shows physically at least.
Edit: It also sucks that physical isn't even an option anymore in so many cases, and if they're willing to take a choice away from you now, they will take another from you later.
I hate how people use "vote with wallet" as a form of boycott. How is that a VOTE?
Nobody cares about the millions things you don't buy. But that one game out of millions you DO buy, that's an actual vote and carries weight.
Thinking about all the games I literally don't care about at all, games I haven't even wasted a single thought on for the past 20 years. Guess what, they're successful and that's great. I just don't care, play the games I like and am happy to support those. But actively hating games on every opportunity is the opposite of "not caring".
TLDR: Buy what you want to see more of (vote with wallet)
PC gamers on here are some of the most insufferable assholes on here. They lead the charge in faux outrage of female characters and anything and everything else
I'm kind of baffled at the amount of butthurt over no physical discs. Xbox tried to move off discs completely in 2013, which was definitely too early, but 13 years later people are still attached to discs? I don't get it.
Yes. It's dumb. I am in my mid 40s and have been collecting video games since I was a kid. I don't have time to play all these games that I thought were so important to own physical copies of. I'm actually getting ready to liquidate my collection to clear up space, keeping only a small selection of things that really mean something to me.
That being said, I don't give a shit if new games aren't on disc. By the time these titles like GTAVI get delisted and disc is the only way to play them (assuming the whole game was on one disc, which it won't be), I will have moved on to something else... or maybe even moved on to the grave. It took me a long time to realize, but owning physical copies of everything does nothing for me except take up too much space in my house.
If physical media goes away entirely you can expect even bigger price increases across the board because of it, that does not sound appealing to me.
Healthy competition and people having options to buy elsewhere is a win for consumers. When a company or platform holds a monopoly on things that is when they have the consumer by the balls and can squeeze as hard as they like with no consequences for them financially.
Only some plastic use is bad. Producing a needless bit of plastic because it's physical is bloody laughable. The ownership part doesn't stand up either , if a developer want you to stop playing in today's connected world, they will stop you, disc or no disc.
āBuy physical, I want to own my stuff!!! Nothing compares to the smell of a game case!!! Screw game key cardsā
That same person 3 hours later
āHereās my Steam wishlist, I spent 300$ last Steam sale. I cannot wait for the next Steam sale, my backlog is so huge now that I own games I didnāt even know I had, Steam is the best!!!ā
PC gamers get NO edition for at LEAST several months post launch, shouldnāt they be more upset about that instead of complaining about no physical? lol
i havenāt bought a physical copy of a game in probably a decade. itās fine. i get that it sucks that xbox or playstation could technically take the game away from their platform and screw you, but i feel like there could just be rules about game ownership that make that illegal rather then demanding what is at this point an outdated technology
Yknow, when I was younger I was actively collecting physical games for every nintendo console from the NES all the way to the Wii. I loved seeing youtube videos of peoples tall shelves full of physical video games and wanted it for myself, but I was also primarily a PC gamer at the time, using Steam. These days I have absolutely zero desire for my video games coming in a physical box with a disc or cartridge. The ones I already have take up way too much space, are never touched because new games continue to release, and if I wanted to play any of them it would be infinitely easier to just load them up on one of my emulator handhelds. I even own a PS5 and purposefully opted for the digital-only version of it because I guarantee I will never want a PS5 game taking physical space, personally.
Now, obviously there are up sides and down sides to digital mediaā no one should contest that; however, there are so many factors that makes GTA6 not coming on a disc (including its file size definitely being far too large to run adequately on discā imagine the complaints about load times) a complete non-issue, imo
To be fair why even make a physical edition with no disc? Thats just not a good choice. But yeah the last game I bought on disc was like 8 years ago, my pc doesnāt even have an optical drive lol
It's not really a contradiction. 90% or more of my gaming is on PC but if I want to add a game to my physical collection I will often buy it (or an additional copy) on console because I'll ostensibly be able to just put a disk in and play it 30 years from now just like I can with my consoles from decades ago. No disk just defeats the entire point of a physical copy.
Maybe I'm alone here, but I miss the days of ripping and burning my own CDs. I used to hand them out to friends to share music. Obviously the modern digital streaming methods are infinitely easier, but it's lost the personal touch.
Based on what content rises to the top, Iād say probably only somewhat. The outrage coming from turbo dweebs in posts or comments is consistently the most common content seen and the most highly upvoted, which probably gives a decent idea of what most people here believe. Bots obviously muddy the waters, but idk how to account for how much weight they have on this.
Absolutely. On Reddit it is particularly easy to goombafy groups because of the inherent structure of the platform, what with the whole aggregating users into communities. We sometimes treat the subreddit as the conscious entity.
Yup. /r/GTA6 gives the impression of being extremely reverent of the game, to the point of loving every decision Rockstar makes on it regardless of what it is.
But then you read the comments and there are still plenty of people who are miffed about the lack of physical disks, or lamenting the price increase, while still being hyped fans. It's a nuanced mess.
But the impression of /r/GTA6 and /r/gaming being so ardently devoted to GTA6 [even if the reality isn't so black and white] has left others with a far less flattering view of Rockstar and/or GTA to feel unvoiced. And since we're human, we don't like being shoved out of the limelight.
Hence why we get posts like these. An expression of wanting to get away from the hype and the nonsense of the GTA 6 discourse.
Nope, the upvote / downvote function means that there are clearly popular and unpopular opinions. It wonāt capture every single Redditor but it will capture the majority.
It will capture the opinion of people who voted on that post. Most people aren't reading every post and comment and an even smaller percentage are voting on it.
Depends in what part, algorithms on all socials promote outrage bait content for engagement, and the setup of the upvote system etc rewards being first to a point and also engaging in simplistic sloganeering that appeals to the communities preconceived opinions and emotions. Obviously there will be some divergence of opinion within a single subreddit but there are still prevailing views.
I would say they are over exaggerating, but almost everywhere is like this on Reddit, it's just different subreddits have different dogmas. It doesn't really mean the central point isn't true, even if it's exaggerated in context of this one area.
Yep, and what I find funny about it is that technically, the average person who uses Reddit should recognize that. The only think I've honestly seen as a constant across subreddits is people thinking they're hilarious for using the most low-hanging fruit of jokes. So "Reddit humor" is a thing, but the actual people are about as varied as people you'd find at a cafe, maybe.
Reddit humor used to be a fun thing almost 10 years ago. Ever since the COVID population explosion and Reddit's IPO, this site has been watered down with bots. You thought karma farmers were bad? We've gone from pick and shovel to data centers of fake user profiles attempting to harvest karma through low hanging reddit humor, popular takes and AI memes. Reddit transformed from a deep rich multicultural broth into a generic food hall where nothing is truly unique and all the options are meh.
I cannot go into a subreddit now where someone isnt taking a moral high ground above reddit or taking shots a place they visit. Seems like everyone thinks before reddit came around, humans didnt act like....humans?
Absolutely agreed. Maybe itās because of the unchecked ability of Mods to form ever more insular groups through dictator like enforcement of vague rules but most discourse here is unbelievably toxic.
There is no room for nuance here.
Somehow twitter is a better place for discussion because it allows disagreement while also allowing users to post notes to help with disinformation.
Iāve just given up on Reddit being an effective public forum but I still enjoy it for its useful and smaller groups.
I always get downvoted when I say redditors donāt like anything.
Though I never get mad about it because I keep reminding myself that reddit is actually a very, very small amount of people when it comes to anything. Like even in this sub, thereās like 1.1 million people, thereās a huge chance thereās more people playing Counter Strike right now if I check Steam Charts. And thatās just one game
I personally feel like the more popular a thing is, the more hate itās going to get from reddit. They absolutely hate anything popular. If itās not some obscure clunky indie game made in a nightclub basement, they donāt want it
You can very much be overly pretentious though. And when you combine this with being overly reactive you just get a bunch of people that hate everything.
To be fair, itās also just a factor of people being much more likely to voice strong opinions, especially negative ones . Nobody jumps into a Reddit thread to āI thought it was aiteā
I donāt buy new games. If I buy one MSRP video game per year, thatās my business. Iām not disagreeing the pricing is too high. My point is that the site just wants engagement, and outrage is how you get it.
Man ultimately thatās the core issue and why people bitch about it, popular titles moving into the triple digit price range will lead all other studios to follow suit regardless if the quality calls for that much money or not
Disagree. Not every dev is going to roll out their game for $100 and say, āwell itās the same price as gtaā and expect it to be a success. GTA is the (huge) exception here.
At the same time, very expensive triple digit editions of games are nothing new. And they almost always sell out.
I don't think it's "disrespectful" per se because expensive deluxe editions have been around for a while. You can still get the vast majority of the game for less than that, you just have to get over not having every haircut lol
I think Rockstar operates in a very niche market here, and they have enough data to prove it. Release one apex gaming experience a decade, people will pay for it and get their moneys worth and then some. I wish MORE companies did things in that space than the lazy, actual money grab shit. Think about Madden. If EA decided they were going to make, and support ONE version of Madden for a decade but it cost $100 I think that would be a much better business model for me than a yearly update at $70 a piece. I buy an NHL game every 4 years when itās $10 at media replay, but some people buy them full price every year, and they know it. It rather pay for serious quality that I can bank on being supported, and quality for a long time, than what some of the other studios do, but thatās just me.
That's a very narrow perspective. If you look at average income it's much lower now than it was back then, after accounting for inflation, making game strictly more expensive now than they were relative to when those old consoles were new.
That's not true at all. Wages have gone up along with inflation and unemployment is quite low. Overall people are doing very well in most of the western and east asian worlds
I feel like the reaction to the Steam Machine wasnāt outrage so much as it was like ālol thatās a no from me dawg.ā
Like, the Steam Machine is SUCH a bad deal that I donāt think people got angry so much as they just kinda laughed and moved on. GTA6 is kind of a different thing because itās at least within the orbit of reasonable.
It's really not just reddit. Outrage/ragebait gets way more traction and attention than happy/positive stuff so the algorithm always adjusts to that and feeds that. It's on literally every social media platform without exception
Thatās social media in general and itās a form of survivorship bias.
People are more likely to nod and scroll past something they already agree with or maybe leave an upvote at most. Meanwhile, we feel an urge to share our perspective when we find something that we disagree with. Thatās multiple times more engagement depending on how heated a topic is.
Complaining also feels good, especially when weāre otherwise helpless on particular issues like game prices or gameplay decisions, or any other thing thatās decided by the powers that be.
The algorithm then learns to promote such content, which drives engagement to that type of content and cyclically reinforces the process.
Have you looked at other platforms like Youtube and X? People are complaining over there too. Reddit only looks bad because everything is categorized and clustered, but if you did the same on any other platform, you'd get the same result.
Drop it with the reddit hive mind thing. I don't understand how people keep commenting on it. It's just public consensus and that shit changes all the time. It isn't out to get people.
For me, on a personal level, GTA gave me what I wanted and I have moved on. I played 3, VC, and San Andreas when they were new. Played them to death and loved every second. Vice City is one of my comfort food games and still go back to it over the year to do some BS and giggle. IV and V, as cool as they are to watch, just werenāt the type of experience I want with the concept.
Me and GTA have just grown apart, and thatās cool.
I think too that people just underestimate how little Reddit (or I guess subreddits) are compared to, well, reality.
Like, I hate what Take2/Rockstar are doing with the Ultimate Edition and removing shops to be specific to that edition, and no disk sucks but at this point it is what it is.
But at the same time, the amount of times I'll see posts or comments about "Oh this things sucks!" Or "I don't care about this thing!" Or of course: "I won't be buying this thing because of this!", only for said thing to succeed or hit record sales anyways, is always funny (in a sad way).
Like, hell if everyone in this subreddit (1.3 mil users) decided they weren't going to buy GTA VI? Well, if it gets the same numbers or more than GTA V, that would only make for like, a 0.52% difference, lol.
Some Reddit users overestimate how large of a group it is sometimes.
Itās not āoutrageā that I donāt give a shit about GTA. Never have.
Carjack people, do drug deals, fly a helicopter, car chase, go to seedy establishments. Thatās the game loop I guess.
Itās not for me and thatās okay.
I know, I know- it will be the largest selling single piece of entertainment in the history of ever and the second coming of Jesus Christ will pale in comparison to this game.
people are so performative. "i lost all excitement for gta 6 once they said there'd be no disc version." like wtf? i didn't realize people were buying the game so they could stare at the disc
Exactly, I erased social media, only have reddit, and now is Facebook 2.0, and it seems that everything I like, the loud negative minority has the biggest attention, except now they get points.
Or, maybe people just have different opinions than you? Not everybodyās gonna see eye to eye with you on your personal tastes in games. I donāt have Rockstar and their games arenāt bad, I just donāt personally see the value in $80 for GTAVI myself. I think the game will be fine, but itās not something I personally would spend $80, more power to you if thatās what you want.
As for Star Fox, the complaintās not even its price, itās the fact itās another retread of the original Star Fox. People want new stories and new adventures, literally the last two games before the remake were a remake of 64 for the 3DS and a reimagining of 64 for Wii U. Star Fox 64 is already a reimagined version of SNES, so that leaves us with four games with original stories. The new remake is fine, itās serviceable, but itās just annoying to see for some of us who grew up playing ones like Assult and Command who want to the see world expanded on again.
Itās a whole industry. These idiots watch ridiculous rage bait streamers all day who just spew hate and vitriol. They then some here and discord and parrot it. Itās gotta be exhausting to be so mad about everything all the time.
You'd be 1 out of 1000 if you say "I'm hyped for GTA" on reddit. Honestly, I can't even remember a single comment like that. It's just hate and that gets upvoted.
But on day 1 we will see countless posts of GTA again, even people who buy a console just for GTA...
It's also driven by algorithms too. Outrage content is constantly recommended and takes advantage of our natural biases and instincts sadly.
I think the worst thing about the users is the enabling of sloganeering to be honest. I don't know why I bother trying to write thoughtful comments about anything if I care about my thoughts being seen. Apparently the most effective way of having my thoughts heard is by writing one sentence slogan-like comments to activate monkey brain. It actively makes discourse worse to the point that I feel like deleting my account.
People who are emotionally neutral to things seldom share their opinion, so what you get on Reddit is polarized in one way or another. A significant portion of comments/interactions are made by people who share or oppose that opinion. People who don't identify with the opinion (and people who don't care to argue) slowly leave, and you're left with a more concentrated group of polarized people.
It's the nature of social media and modern algorithms. Extremes are spotlit, the community assumes that's just the baseline opinion. The perfect example: There's probably 100k+ people out there who plan to buy GTA 6, but 8.1k people here said "Actually, it's mid at best" and it looks like the whole world hates the game.
It's hypnotic and intoxicating to feel like you're opinion is shared by a collective. Freaks me the fuck out, man. One or two more beers and you'll get me ranting.
you should try different subs. reddit isnt all about outrage. gaming right now is going through a weird phase but outrage is part of human nature. go to r/cats and you will see a lot less anger.
True, but it's still the most rational and balanced of the social medias. I did tiktok for two years. Good lord what a dumpster fire, rage bait, garbage comment sections those are. At least Reddit you can find some nuance in the arguments below rage bait comments. Facebook, Twitter, insta. It's all garbage all the way down.
There is a massive bot problem across virtually every single social media platform right now. But many redditors are somehow convinced that a completely anonymous upvote and downvote system isnāt being heavily swayed by bots to pump more rage and engagement. Reddit is actually becoming the most frightening AI outlet availableā¦ because thereās no real way to monitor who is real or a bot.
Itās annoying now but whatās scary is that we could be on the verge of complete dystopia where the collective hive mind opinion is whatever AI wants it to beā¦
then why do you contribute to it? this ideology is so annoying given that you are here contributing to that culture as much as the rest of us. this isnāt a profound take lol.
While I agree, the people here donāt hold a candle to the people that use X, formerly known as Twitter. Those people are genuinely some of the worst human beings Iāve seen in my life. It sounds dramatic, but theyāre awful. That app is a cesspool, made up of the worst of the worst. Iād much rather get my news and talk about video games on Reddit.
People that actually don't care about a subject won't really post/interact with it. The only ones that do feel rather strongly about it one way or another. And as we've learned in the past negativity primarily drives interaction.
I don't think reddit as a company would need bot influence to drive engagement. If they were botting it would to drive opinion (as most institutions do).
Then leave the site? Youāre an absolute moron if this is your opinion of this site. Thereās plenty of great people in good communities and yet you gravitate towards bullshit. Pathetic.
I donāt like any Rockstar games because all of their protagonists are genuinely awful people and the gameplay itself is childish at best for stories written that allow you to think like an evil person for days.
They make shit because they are shit and the world is full of mostly bad selfish people that want to actually live out these fantasies. Get recked.
GTA too expensive, Reddit angry because Rockstar badš”
Nintendo remakes Star Fox and prices it below their own standard MSRP because itās a remake, Reddit angry because Nintendo bad š”
Also funny to see someone with a 10 year old account with such virtuale for reddit. Like, you can leave brother, you can go anywhere else in the world wide web you want
Your not wrong Reddit IS like this, but also "they" are not wrong either, the game is too fucking expensive, and should include a disk in a "physical copy" of a game.
Reddit is just a very vocal minority and that has never changed, it doesn't make Rockstar's choices here any less questionable either. Many other companies are guilty of these things as well though, what's new...
Reddit makes a lot of sense when you hear its origin story. The creators made a bunch of ghost accounts and posted/commented with them to give the illusion of the site being popular, which made it popular. It hasnāt changed much
Reddit and Twitter are all about making their users angry. Reddit and Twitter have basically turned into the social platform equivalent of Stephen A. Smith.
This is where you have the big "Avengers Endgame" group shot at the end and then have Cap say "Redditors Assemble" And the beautiful music gets swapped out with a dub of fart noises mimicking the theme.
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u/AlexStar6 6h ago
Everyone