No Man's Sky: culture or cult?

Well there is Games Workshop and ‘Space Dwarves’ or Squats as they were called for 40k.
There is a small rabid fanbase out there but really biker dwarfs was not that great an idea and game play they were not much different than the bog standard human army.
They tried various ideas over the years but nothing they really liked enough to go with it. So they are gone. Not wiped from the universe but just not a playable army anymore.
I have the feeling HL3 is languishing in a similar state. Whatevs, there are lots of other awesome games out there to play.

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Dwarf fortress and KSP. Done and done.

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It stands out more because gaming and the funny pitchers are supposed to be about … fun.

Entitled adult children take them way too seriously and think this seriousness should be taken seriously.

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I’d guess that instead of “not being able to do anything with”, people just didn’t buy the figurines and sourcebooks enough.

It’s a fantasy realm, they can do anything their imagination wants with the “rules”, fercryingoutloud.

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they were developed in 1st edition, supported in 2nd but never got a proper army book because they were having issues with ideas then just dropped for 3rd and have been gone ever since. They do exist in the starships game but they don’t need a too detailed background for them there.

at least to what I saw they didn’t sell any better or worse than other less popular armies.
ideas have been shown at their gamesday events but always preliminary stuff that never pans out to a workable concept. or at least a workable concept that is different from other armies.

really the original concept while totally 80s was kinda hokey to begin with. they have a lot of other gothic space fantasy stuff to work with anyway. short humans (that is their origin till we get a retcon) from settling on high gravity planets well may as well be humans and part of the human armies

ETA even the fans of the army to the best of my knowledge have not put up a big fuss over this. frustrated griping yes but no death threats or anything close.

To me, this sound more interesting than if they were all lush, and more akin to the delight of space travel. If they were all lush, there wouldn’t be the agonizing search, and reward would be hollow. I hope the game has the balls to build an ongoing fanbase among those with the patience for the delight of discovery.

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According to the media, far worse:

There was a very small number of fans with that kind of reaction. In fact, all of these blog posts seem to reference the same one or two tweets. Suggesting that things like sexism, threats, and degeneracy are gaming centric problems is ignorant. They’re societal problems, and gamers are members of society.

Do you think professional athletes don’t receive threats? Of course they do, but ESPN doesn’t report it as a problem with “Sports Culture”. There are people who need help in all walks of life.

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Sure, but not all of mental health is DMS-defined mental illness. “I’ll die if I don’t get _____ for christmas” in a 10 year old is a teachable moment. In an adult, it approaches pathological, at least to the extent that it is most certainly interrupting and affecting their normal functioning. Immaturity gets tossed around as if it’s a laughable condition, but emotional maturity and self-awareness are critical factors in a successful life, and critical to successful coexistence.

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The media is shit and you know it, but this isn’t hysteria based on falsehoods, this is actual quotes. Come on now, do you seriously think these are comparable?

Sports culture, especially college sports?

That’s diseased too, why are you arguing that one toxic culture means that another isn’t?

Gamera don’t need sloppy defenses like this.

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Actors receive threats, politicians receive threats, athletes receive threats. Anyone in the public light will likely receive threats from someone who doesn’t know how to deal. We have new types of celebrity: bloggers and indie devs. They receive threats too. It’s not right, but people in the spotlight are going to hear from folks who need help.

I’d be shocked if the writers at Boingboing have never received scary mail. It doesn’t mean blog culture is to blame.

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But…but they might run out of electronic bits! Or those amazing “digital exclusive extras!” You can’t just…like…copy a friggin’ PDF art book, man!

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At least that mental model is based on (hopefully substantial) first-hand knowledge… This is like falling in love with an actor - based on a character they play in a film, for which you’ve only seen the trailer.

That’s definitely part of it. But there’s still the issue that there’s fandoms where talking about raping and murdering the people who have upset you (by creating something related to something you like) is acceptable and commonplace. The difference between “I hope you die in a fire” and “I’m going to come to your house, rape you and burn your house down with you in it.” When the latter becomes frequent, there’s multiple things at play - multiple dynamics that have gone wrong here.

I like “germergoat” or “gamertaint,” myself.

Toxic cultures aren’t often described as mental health issues, but they certainly are. Too often when “mental health” gets invoked, it’s to dismiss an issue as the result of specific individuals with diagnosable mental illnesses, but yeah, that’s not the case.

Yeah, in this way it’s absolutely a mental health issue - not the in way that many people use it - e.g. “this threat was by someone who has a DMS-defined illness and was an aberration/not representative of the whole.” I just expect references to mental health issues to ultimately be a way of dismissing something as not representing how a large group behaves.

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You can see the beginnings of the butt hurt in this forum post from nearly two years ago:

Since then the only thing that has changed seems to be the level of anger. The game itself is still nowhere in sight.

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The more I see of this kind of thing, the more I become convinced that geeky obsessive character traits are a strong predictor of being an asshole.

Maybe. Though I’d just add that its easy to get hyped about a movie,game,tv show, etc. There’s nothing wrong about getting hyped about the concept of a thing, and No Man’s Sky is no exception. I for one feel jaded enough to realize that a great concept doesn’t always get a great execution and that its OK to be disappointed.

It looks to me like the divide here is similar to the one in star wars fandom. There are a lot of fans who realize that episodes I-II-III weren’t as good as they’d hoped but still invest themselves in something they don’t enjoy as much as they want to.

Yes, this is just my opinion and not a knock against people who are hyped about No Man’s Sky. Hell, I think its pretty irresponsible to hype games, movies, books, tv shows so much and not deliver.

I’ll agree that the ‘iTunes’ comparison is not apt to the situation at hand, but I don’t get what the confederate flag has to do with this. People who are outraged that a secessionist, traitor-flag still waves from some public grounds are far, far different from gamerbro who’s upset that Game X’s release will be delayed for another month. Not sure if I’m understanding your comparison there.

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Hell, the creator/fan communication boundary is only one of…nearly all of them that have seemingly broken down. I have a personal email account (actually, more than one) and a work email account. But the ease of access has often meant I needed to text my supervisor from my personal phone about work details because my Blackberry (should’ve been thrown down a well) was nowhere to be found. And of the dropbox-like services I use for personal reasons, all of them hold some small part of my work b/c I wanted to access this document while I was at home, or whatever.

Link that up with a ginormous dose of anonymity and an extra helping of privilege/entitlement and bad things are on the way.

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Not All Man’s Sky!

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Is that a dig on L4D2?!?

I"LL KILL YOU, YA BASTID!!!

but with the Katana or the combat shotgun, and mosdef not the pistols

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Yes, but it is interesting that its the same mechanics involved, so I think @GilbertWham’s point stands.