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AI Ouroboros, Reddit Edition
Last year, if you recall, there was a mod-led protest at Reddit over some ham-fisted changes from the admins. Specifically, the admins implemented significant costs/throttles on API calls such that no 3rd-party Reddit app would have been capable of surviving. Even back then it was known that the admins were snuffing out competition ahead of an eventual Reddit IPO.
Well, that time is nigh. If you want a piece of an 18-year old social media company that has never posted a profit – $18m revenue, -$90m net losses last year – you can (eventually) purchase $RDDT.
But that’s not the interesting thing. What’s interesting is that Google just purchased a license to harvest AI training material from Reddit, to the tune of $60 million/year. And who is Reddit’s 3rd-largest shareholder currently? Sam Altman, of OpenAI (aka ChatGPT) fame. It’s not immediately clear whether OpenAI has or even needs a similar license, but Altman owns twice as many shares as the current CEO of Reddit so it probably doesn’t matter. In any case, that’s two of the largest AI feeding off Reddit.
In many ways, leveraging Reddit was inevitable. It’s been an open secret for years that Google search results have been in decline, even before Google started plastering advertisements six layers deep. Who knew that when you allowed people to get certified in Search Engine Optimization, that eventually search results would turn to shit? Yeah, basically everyone. One of the few ways around that though was to seed your search with +Reddit, which returned Reddit posts on the topic at hand. Were these intrinsically better results? Actually… yes. A site with weaponized SEO wins when they get your click. But even though there are bots and karma whores and reposts and all manner of other nonsense on Reddit, fundamentally posts must receive upvotes to rise to the top, which is an added layer of complexity that SEO itself does not help. Real human input from people who otherwise have no monetary incentive to contribute is much more likely to float to the top and be noticed.
Of course, anyone who actually spends any amount of time on Reddit will understand the downsides of using it for AI training purposes. One of the most upvoted comments on the Reddit post about this:
starstarstar42 3237 points 1 day ago*
Good luck with that, because vinyl siding eats winter squid and obsequious ladyhawk construction twice; first on truck conditioners and then with presidential urology.
Edit: I people my found have
That’s all a bit of cheeky fun, which will undoubtedly be filtered away by the training program. Probably.
What may not be filtered away as easily are the many hundreds/thousands of posts made by bot accounts that already repost the same comment from other people in the same thread. I’m not sure how or why it works, but the reposted content sometimes becomes higher rated than the original; perhaps there is some algorithm to detect a trending comment, which then gets copied and boosted with upvotes from other bot accounts? In any case, karma farming in this automated way allows the account to be later sold to others who need such (disposable) accounts to post in more specialized sub-Reddits that otherwise require certain limits to post anything (e.g. account has to be 6+ months old and/or have 200+ karma, etc). Posts from these “mature” accounts as less obviously from bots.
While that may not seem like a big deal at first, the endgame is the same as with SEO: gaming the system. The current bots try to hijack human posts to farm karma. The future bots will be posting human-like responses generated by AI to farm karma. Hell, the reinforcement mechanism is already there, e.g. upvotes! Meanwhile, Google and OpenAI will be consuming Reddit content which itself will consist of more and more of their own AI output. The mythological Ouroboros was supposed to represent a cycle of death and rebirth, but the AI version is more akin to a dog eating its own shit.
I suppose sometime in the future its possible for the tech-bro handlers or perhaps the AI itself to recognize (via reinforcement) that they need to roll back one iteration due to consuming too much self-content. Perhaps long-buried AOL chatroom logs and similar backups would become the new low-background steel, worth its weight in gold Bitcoin.
Then again, it may soon be an open question of how much non-AI content even exists on the internet anymore, by volume. This article mentions experts expect 90% of the internet to be “synthetically generated” by 2026. As in, like, 2 years from now. Or maybe it’s already happened, aka Dead Internet.
[Fake Edit] So… I wrote almost exactly this same post a year ago. I guess the update is: it’s happening.
Reddit Protests, pt 2
Almost a month ago, there were a series of protests on Reddit concerning a pivot to essentially ban all 3rd-party apps via charging a ridiculous amount for API calls. These 3rd-party apps were not just better from a user-perspective, they also made moderation easier (or even possible for blind users). However, these apps did not run ads, so the revenue (if any) Reddit received was minimal. There can be a debate as to whether the Reddit admins were “justified” in basically shutting them all down, but I think in the aggregate it is/was clear that a better approach of A) charging less, and B) giving the apps more time to adjust to changes would have cooled things down.
So, what is the status of Reddit two weeks after the implementation? Simmering to boil.
The subreddit blackouts clearly did not effect much change in of themselves. However, the admin overreaction to the blackouts – mainly in the form of threats and disparagement of mods – has emboldened said mods into new forms of malicious compliance. Seriously though, the Reddit CEO went on NBC and said this:
If you’re a politician or a business owner, you are accountable to your constituents. So a politician needs to be elected, and a business owner can be fired by its shareholders. And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.
“Landed gentry.” It is difficult to imagine a bigger slap in the face from someone who gets paid for what he does (spez) despite producing zero content, to all the unpaid (!!) mods who spend donate dozens/hundreds of hours of their time to ensure that subreddits aren’t just filled with trolls, hate-speech, and/or porn. According to this article, Reddit mods are (very conservatively) doing work worth $3.4 million per year. But, sure, they are all easily replaceable via “democratic processes.” Like… how?
The new front in the guerrilla protests is making subreddits NSFW. The notion is that by changing the classification to NSFW, Reddit will no longer be able to monetize that subreddit due to advertisers not wanting their product ad displayed next to something graphic. I have heard a few different arguments that this doesn’t actually work, e.g. ads are still displayed, but the reaction from the admins clearly suggests otherwise.
The first step was made by the mods of /r/interestingasfuck who basically all-but-encouraged their users to submit porn. Which they did. While I don’t believe it was a default subreddit, it does have 11.2 million subscribers, so what ended up happening was a flood of literal porn started appearing on peoples’ homepages. The Reddit admins quickly removed all the mods from the subreddit and essentially archived the whole place; there has not been a single new post there in 18 days. Presumably new mods will be installed via “democratic processes” at some point, but who knows when.
Other major subreddits are taking less explicit, but still hilarious routes. /r/Pics is default sub with over 30 million subscribers, for example, and the mods changed the subreddit rules such that “All posts must feature John Oliver.” This was done in a democratic fashion, just like the admins doubtlessly wanted. The mods also changed the overall subreddit category to NSFW with the justification that what constitutes NSFW by the admins themselves applies to the subreddit (profanity, potentially “offensive content”). Unfortunately, the admins have threatened the mods with removal for changing the subreddit category against its historical norms. While the mods are debating their next moves, they have let everyone know that all /r/Pics users can now label any post as NSFW.
True to their name, the mods on /r/madlads took it a step further and basically gave every one of their 1.7 million subscribers mod privileges. Now everyone is landed gentry! /r/politicalhumor did it too with their 1.6 million subscribers, but it’s less funny.
The admin threats do appear to be resonating in some ironic circles. For example, /r/NonCredibleDefense flipped back to SFW despite the purpose of the subreddit being military memes that frequently display graphic blood/gore. /r/DnDMemes mods also blinked, despite demanding an Intimidation check from spez. There will still be goblin smut and related porn allowed there, but apparently all is well as long as the individual posts are labeled NSFW.
The fundamental issue is that mods are not (easily) replaceable, but neither are the communities. Back in the day, there was a lot of concern that when /r/FatPeopleHate or /r/the_donald got banned, there would be “contagion” insofar as the users would migrate and infiltrate other subs. This basically didn’t happen – deplatforming works.
A 2017 study published in the journal Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, examining “the causal effects of the ban on both participating users and affected communities,” found that “the ban served a number of useful purposes for Reddit” and that “Users participating in the banned subreddits either left the site or (for those who remained) dramatically reduced their hate speech usage. Communities that inherited the displaced activity of these users did not suffer from an increase in hate speech.”[12]
When you zoom into a micro level with just your own life, it makes sense. How you act with one set of friends is typically different than how you would act with a spouse, your extended family, work friends, etc. Everyone has masks for every occasion. So, I do not begrudge the mods who blinked in the face of potential subreddit annihilation, as there are often times nowhere else to go.
As with Phase 1 of the protests, we will have to see where things end up with Phase 2. Is it another flash in the pan, to be smothered by the wet towel of admin threats? Or will things continue to boil under the surface, with mods “laying flat” and/or “quiet quitting” and/or “acting their wage”? And what of the meat of Reddit, the user-submitted content? Will people get over it and move on to the next meme, or have things been permanently overcooked?
I myself have deigned to download the official Reddit app so as to continue consuming memes and information away from my PC. Amusingly the 3rd-party Reddit is Fun app still technically works, but I cannot log in, so all I see is the myriad of default subreddits and popular posts with no customization possible. Which means it is functionally useless to me. I have been following Wilhelm’s reviews of other social media sites with interest though, to see if any might possibly be an overall Reddit replacement despite not really being advertised as such. Discord sure as shit ain’t it, after all.
But as mentioned earlier, it’s likely that no replacement is possible. Both Reddit and Twitter are apparently not profitable as-is, so who in the world is going to try (and succeed) at making a replacement? I mean, other than the half-dozen venture capitalists doing exactly that. I have the various subreddits I enjoy but I am not married to them to the same degree that mods might be. If something is better, I will go there today. Unfortunately, it’s looking more like “you get what you get, and you won’t throw (much of) a fit.”
Reddit Blackout
In case you were unaware, there is a sort of Reddit protest currently underway. Essentially, ahead of an expected IPO, the Reddit admin team pulled a Twitter and changed their 3rd-party API policy from “free” to “a gazillion dollars.” It’s a gazillion because the price was intentionally set so high as to make it practically impossible for 3rd-party apps to function, even if they started charging a subscription fee. This suits the admins just fine, as either A) the apps die off and more people get funneled into the official (ad-supported) Reddit app, or B) they get paid lots of money.
The planned protest was on 6/12 and 6/13. On those days, the moderators of 7000-9000 subreddits turned those subreddits Private, essentially shutting them down. At first, it was difficult for me to tell something was amiss, as all the new threads in subreddits that didn’t protest continued to pile up in my feed. But when I went to look up commentary on the latest Hearthstone balance patch, I realized nothing was showing up. So I left it and went about my day.
The latest news though is that the protest is continuing for many, many subreddits. Perhaps indefinitely. The Reddit CEO did an Ask Me Anything session ahead of the protests and essentially told everyone to eat cake, which certainly did not help. It is anyone’s guess how this will end though, because while the Reddit admins are fully capable of booting the mods and unlocking the subreddits at will, somebody will still need to mod those spaces. For free, in their spare time, likely fighting a slew of ex-mod power users with a sudden influx of free time. Sort of highlighting the fact that Reddit itself doesn’t actually produce any content.
Do I have skin in the game? Sorta. I have used the Reddit is Fun app since before there was even an official Reddit app in the first place. But RiF is getting shut down on July 1st because of the API changes. And it is undeniable that the official app is a big step down in functionality (plus ads everywhere). The browser version will still work though, and I haven’t heard about Reddit Enhancement Suite getting shut down, so the experience won’t be too different at my desk.
The biggest loss though are some of the subreddits I have subscribed to. For example:
- /r/Hearthstone
- /r/CompetitiveHS
- /r/GuildWars2
There might be more, but I only noticed those because I had shortcuts for them – private subreddits no longer appear in my subscription list otherwise, so it’s hard to tell what else is missing. In any case, all three of those subreddits are going dark indefinitely until the API changes are rolled back.
To be honest, I have no idea how to “replace” those communities. Like if I wanted to read some commentary on Hearthstone, I would be stuck with Hearthpwn, the sorta weekly Vicious Syndicate reports, and… what? Official Blizzard forums? Discord? I looked forward to the VS reports being posted in /r/CompetitiveHS and then reading through hundreds of comments about other peoples’ experiences running those decks, changes they made for their pocket metas, and other minutia. Similarly, the GW2 official forums are in no way a possible analog of the content produced in the /r/GuildWars2 subreddit. It was precisely the variety and sort of auto-sorting (by upvotes/downvotes) of quality content that is the reason I have been using Reddit for the last 10 years.
Times change, but this is hitting me rather hard, even if Hearthstone/GW2 aren’t exactly my #1 interests currently.
Having said that, broadly speaking, I support the protest and blackout. Enshittification is apparently inevitable, but that does not mean we should go quiet into that good night. The prospects for success are low, but they aren’t zero, and doing nothing gets you nothing. Let’s just see what happens.
The Nature of Art
The following picture recently won 1st place at the Colorado State Fair:
Don’t know about you, but that looks extremely cool. I could totally see picking up a print of that on canvas and hanging it on my wall, if I were still in charge of decorating my house. Reminds me a bit of the splash screens for Guild Wars 2, which I have always enjoyed.
By the way, that picture was actually generated by an AI called Midjourney.
Obviously people are pissed. Part of that is based on the seeming subterfuge of someone submitting AI-generated artwork as their own. Part is based on the broader existential question that arises from computers beating humans at creative tasks (on top of Chess). Another part is probably because the dude who submitted the work sounds like a huge douchebag:
“How interesting is it to see how all these people on Twitter who are against AI generated art are the first ones to throw the human under the bus by discrediting the human element! Does this seem hypocritical to you guys?” […]
“I’m not stopping now” […] “This win has only emboldened my mission.”
It is true that there will probably just be an “AI-generated” category in the future and that will be that.
What fascinates me about the Reddit thread though, is how a lot of the comments are saying that the picture is “obviously” AI-generated, that it looks shitty, that it lacks meaning. For example:
It reminds me of an article I read about counterfeit art years ago. Most of the value of a piece of artwork is tied up into its history and continuity – a Monet is valuable because it came from Monet’s hand across the ages to your home. Which is understandable from a monetary perspective. But if you just like a Monet piece because of the way it makes you feel when looking at it, the authenticity does not matter. After all, most of us have probably only seen reproductions or JPEGs of his works anyway.
At a certain point though, I have to ask the deeper question… what is a “Monet” exactly?
Monet is rather famous, of course, and his style is distinctive. But aside from a few questions on my high school Art exam decades ago, I do not know anything about his life, his struggles, his aspirations. Did he die in poverty? Did he retire early in wealth? Obviously I can Google this shit at any time, but my point is this: I like The Water Lily Pond. The way it looks, the softness of the scene, the way it sort of pulls you into a season of growth you can practically smell. Who painted it and why couldn’t matter less to me, other than possibly wanting to know where I could find similar works of this quality.
This may just say more about me than it does art in general.
I have long held the position that I do not have favorite bands, I have favorite songs. I have favorite games, not studios or directors. I have favorite movies, not actors. Some of that is probably a defense mechanism – there are many an artist who turn out to be raging assholes, game companies that “betray” your “trust,” and so on. If part of the appeal of a given work is wrapped up in the creator(s), then a fall from grace and the resultant dissonance is a doubled injury. Kevin Spacey is not going to ruin my memories of American Beauty or The Usual Suspects, for example. I may have a jaundiced eye towards anything new, or perhaps towards House of Cards if I ever got around to watching that, as some things cannot be unlearned or fully compartmentalized (or should be).
So in a way, I for one welcome our new AI-art overlords.
Unlike the esteemed Snoo-4878, I do not presume that any given human artist actually adds emotion or intention into their art, or whether its presence enhances the experience at all. How would you even know they were “adding emotion?” I once won a poetry contest back in high school with something I whipped up in 30 minutes, submitted solely for extra credit in English class. Seriously, my main goal was that the first letter of each line spelled out “Humans, who are we?” Granted, I am an exceptionally gifted writer. Humble, too. But from that experience I kind of learned that the things that should matter… don’t. Second place was this brilliant emo chick who basically wrote poetry full-time. Her submission was clearly full of intention and personal emotion and it basically didn’t matter. Why would it? Art is largely about what the audience feels. And if those small-town librarians felt more emotions when hit by big words I chose because they sounded cool, that’s what matters.
Also, it’s low-key possible the emo chick annoyed the librarians on a daily basis, Vogon-style, and so they picked the first thing out of the pile that could conceivably have “won” instead of hers.
In any case, there are limits and reductionist absurdities to my pragmatism. I do not believe Candy Crush Saga is a better game than Xenogears, just because the former made billions of dollars and the latter did not. And if the value of something is solely based on how it makes you feel, then art should probably just be replaced by wires in our head (in the future) or microdoses of fentanyl (right now).
But I am also not going to pretend that typing “hubris of man monolith stars” and getting this:
…isn’t impressive as fuck. Not quite Monet, but it’s both disturbing and inspiring, simultaneously.
Which was precisely what I was going for when I made it.
Are Gamers the Biggest Karens?
Browsing Reddit when I came across this post:
The comments are full of masturbatory glee and gamer “trolling,” as if none of those posters play games themselves and/or have had complaints about them. Taken on face value though, the comic is probably correct. With an asterisk. Because the thing about the term Karen is one near and dear to my heart: entitlement.
Karen is used as a pejorative because regular people do not ask to speak with a manager over a perceived slight. It’s an over-the-top escalation that presumes the individual is someone whom the manager needs to hear from. But… if you ordered a medium-rare steak and the server brings out one that’s well-done, nobody bats an eye when you have them send it back or ask for a refund. That is a reasonable escalation – if the manager comes out of their own volition to apologize, then that’s fine.
Here’s the thing though with games: anyone you can talk to is basically “the manager.”
And the other thing? The managers, e.g. the developers, want you to talk to them. Developers have fostered this transactional relationship industry-wide and monetized it. “Games as a Service” is the new “RPG-elements”: everybody has it. Which makes sense, as games are uniquely positioned to be interactive and adaptable. Books, music, and movies are created and finished. For all the millions of voices crying out to George R.R. Martin to change something about Game of Thrones – or to just finish his goddamn books for Christ’s sake – no one presumes that it is possible to actually accomplish anything. Meanwhile, an errant forum post can get a developer to shift the entire competitive metagame. Or more likely, a forum post that rouses enough rabble.
Keeping silent and voting with just your wallet is pointless – you need to vote with other peoples’ wallets if you hope to get a word past the whales. And that typically means getting vocal, getting specific, and I guess appearing entitled to have opinions of the transactional relationship taking place. Do the developers have to listen? No. They don’t have to have a forum, do any communication or outreach, and just build games. Presumably they looked at the numbers and (begrudgingly?) realized that the playerbase could be leveraged to push more product. And now they have the tiger by the tail.
Are some gamers over the top? Yes, of course. That went without saying… until I just did. But I am always leery of the predilection in these circlejerks to land on the thought-terminating cliche of entitlement. At its most pernicious root, using entitlement as a pejorative fosters an authoritarian environment in which you are made to feel lucky that you got any service at all, much less the wrong service, even if you paid for it. Meekness is not a virtue.
…okay, maybe it is.
However! Developers are not gods, they are just people building a collaborative, commercial product/service to sell to you. It’s okay to send back tacos when you ordered meatloaf. It’s okay to leave a bad review when your steak is cooked wrong. It’s okay to express passion in a hobby that you spend literal years of your life playing. Maybe don’t send death threats; send cupcakes instead. Advocate for yourself and your desires, especially if no one is making games you like anymore. No one has to listen, of course, or agree that its a good idea or implement what are clearly brilliant changes that will improve the franchise for decades to come. That’s going to be a on the devs and their conscience.
How some of them sleep at night, I’ll never know.
Gaming News
As Reddit is largely my source of gaming news these days, periodically I find that several items relevant to my interests have been buried by random nonsense. In no particular order:
Oxygen Not Included’s DLC has entered Early Access
Called Spaced Out!, the DLC seems focused on creating and managing multiple mini-colonies rather than one. Considering how complex and fragile just one colony can be, Klei is either targeting hardcore vets of the original game or will be introducing methods to trivialize some of the fundamental problems players encounter (heat, water usage, leaning on and then running out of algae or coal, etc). Although I have logged 143 hours into the game – making it my 5th most-played game on Steam – I have never actually made it to the rocket launching endgame, so I would be fine with the latter.
ARK 2 has been announced, starring Vin Diesel
No, really, look at the (pointless) trailer. Cue up the Adam Jensen “I didn’t ask for this.” Supposedly there will be more details coming out over the next few days, but the underlying kick in the teeth is that Studio Wildcard is rather pointedly ending the development of its original game in favor of a star-studded sequel. This shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise, considering Wildcard is rather infamous for releasing a paid DLC while the original game was still in Early Access.
Having said that, if the end result is ARK on more stable game-code… maybe it’s worth the re-admission price. Clocking in at 147.5 hours, ARK is my 4th most-played game on Steam. And all that time was spent in single-player, almost entirely on the original map. The bones were good; it’s the flesh that needs work.
Slay the Spire is (still) coming to Android… Eventually!
Mentioned in passing at the top of the latest patch notes: “While we’re awaiting news from our publishing and porting teams for the Android mobile release, we’re bringing some more of the under-the-hood improvements to PC!” While an Android release of Slay the Spire is not news per se, I’m always happy to be reminded that it might eventually happen someday. After all, it’s been six months since it was released on iOS and I have resorted to a number of questionable phone games (like Hearthstone) to scratch that particular itch.
And just to continue the theme, Slay the Spire is #2 on my Steam list with 166.8 hours played.
Slow-Burn
There is a slow-burning dumpster fire in the Guild Wars 2 subreddit, and it seems to have been set by ArenaNet.
For those just coming onto the crime scene, the stage is set thus: GW2 appears to be in decline. Revenue is down. ArenaNet lost ~35% of its staff in February of this year. While there has been semi-regular Living Story updates, the last full expansion was released almost two full years ago. So when there was an announcement countdown livestream event on Twitch, the dedicated fans were hopeful. Maybe there would be a new expansion? Or new elite specs? Or some WvW/PvP love?
Nope.
It was not a complete nothingburger, but it was clearly not at all anything that a worried fan might take solace in. Living Stories are now “Living Sagas,” there are some new Masteries coming, and… 10m starter raids called Strikes? When you lose a third of your entire workforce six months ago and leave an awkward silence to the question of whether your company can even handle another expansion, people start using phrases like “maintenance mode.”
The Content Marketing Manager response over this holiday weekend has consisted of… throwing around lit garbage.
Hey friends, this industry can be a weird one to work in and this year has been an especially roller-coaster-y one for lots of companies. A couple of important things to remember: (1/5)
If you’re abusing your fellow human beings because you’re mad about your game, that’s not “passion”. You’ve lost perspective and crossed a line. It doesn’t matter why you think a game has wronged you–attacking devs or your fellow community members has no excuse. Ever. (2/5)
“Be professional” is not code for “I am allowed to heap every vile treatment I can think of onto your head, and you are required to thank me for it, ask for more, and always treat me with the utmost deference. If I even THINK you aren’t, there will be hell to pay”. (3/5)
If you have to resort to hyperbole, snark, fact omission, mild truth-stretching, creepy comparisons to Hitler, or metaphors about “It’s like if you paid the bill but they turned off your heat in winter” to explain your fury, perhaps the situation is not as dire as you say. (4/5)
Save the “But you have to understand” devs deserve abuse. I’ve been working in this industry for 10 years and playing in it since I was a little girl. I’ve been Mad At A Game. I never *once* exhibited the vile behavior I see daily. It can be done. (5/5)
This has been received by the GW2 Reddit community… poorly. Even though she later clarified that she totally wasn’t talking about reaction to the ArenaNet event – that rant was apparently just apropos of nothing – it became somewhat emblematic of developer communication these days. Specifically, react and pontificate on the toxicity of your game’s community instead of addressing the root causes of ire.
I mean, what does this Content Marketing Manager expect to occur as a result of her posts? Has there been a single successful chastisement in the history of the internet? Even if it worked the end result would still be Reddit threads filled with polite questions and criticism and radio silence from the company that absolutely wants you to continue giving them money but won’t give you a hint that it’s secretly cratering and can’t possibly swing an expansion anymore. Which, okay, business is going to business here – why tell players the $5 (character-specific!) bag slot they’re about to buy will never contain new items when you can say nothing and keep the money?
Nobody wants to upgrade to a 1st-class cabin on the Titanic. At least, not after it hits an iceberg. And make no mistake, Guild Wars 2 has hit an iceberg. Probably a few. The remaining crew yelling at the panicking passengers is the exact opposite of constructive. Something useful would be informing them that additional lifeboats (expansion) are being constructed as we speak. Here are some life jackets (elite specs). There’s a nice band playing over on Deck 7 (WvW stuff). You know, anything to make the transition a more pleasant experience when it is literally your job to do so.
We’ll have to see how ArenaNet management react when they swing back into the office today. This tweet-storm is not on the same level as the Jessica Price fiasco a year ago, but it’s in the same neighborhood of dumb. Why people keep insisting on driving that route, I have no idea.
The Price is Wrong
It’s been a few days since the drama, but I wanted to reserve a piece of internet real estate to talk about the Jessica Price fiasco. It’s fine if you don’t know who that is, or what the drama is about. All you really need to know is the following sequence of events:
- Jessica Price talks about the challenges with narrative storytelling in MMOs.
- Popular streamer and GW2 content creator, Deroir, suggests that solutions can be found doing things a different way.
- Jessica Price responds with the following:
Today in being a female game dev:
“Allow me–a person who does not work with you–explain to you how you do your job.”
like, the next rando asshat who attempts to explain the concept of branching dialogue to me–as if, you know, having worked in game narrative for a fucking DECADE, I have never heard of it–is getting instablocked. PSA.
Since we’ve got a lot of hurt manfeels today, lemme make something clear: this is my feed. I’m not on the clock here. I’m not your emotional courtesan just because I’m a dev. Don’t expect me to pretend to like you here.
The attempts of fans to exert ownership over our personal lives and times are something I am hardcore about stopping. You don’t own me, and I don’t owe you.
Within the day, she was fired.
The reason I wanted to lay this all out is because the reality-distortion fields are being engaged and the entire debacle is being framed as a new Feminism vs GamerGate front. And that’s incredibly dumb, and sad, and arguably dangerous. Jessica Price was fired because she was behaving as a noxious asshole in an official capacity. Full stop. We don’t even have to examine whether it was “mansplaining” to interact with Jessica’s social media post, because there isn’t a scenario in which her response is ever appropriate.
And instead of talking about that, we’re talking about this:
Price is worried about the precedent the firings set. “The message is very clear, especially to women at the company: if Reddit wants you fired, we’ll fire you,” she said. “Get out there and make sure the players have a good time. And make sure you smile while they hit you.”
That’s a Kotaku link, but the framing of the debate is also being set by Polygon (emphasis mine):
Jessica Price, who was fired by ArenaNet last week for arguing with fans of the company’s Guild Wars 2 MMO, said she feels betrayed by how the company “folded like a cheap card table” when confronted by toxic fandom. In an interview with Polygon, she talked about the meeting in which she was fired, and castigated ArenaNet managers for their “highly unprofessional” reaction to a social media controversy.
That kinda makes it sound like Price was heroically standing up to the school bully, and unfortunately got caught in the Zero Tolerance policy for fighting back.
Instead of, you know, reading literally this:
Really interesting thread to read! 👌 However, allow me to disagree *slightly*. I dont believe the issue lies in the MMORPG genre itself (as your wording seemingly suggest). I believe the issue lies in the contraints of the Living Story’s narrative design; (1 of 3)
When you want the outcome to be the same across the board for all players’ experiences, then yes, by design you are extremely limited in how you can contruct the personality of the PC. (2 of 3)
But, if instead players were given the option to meaningfully express *their* character through branching dialogue options (which also aren’t just on the checklist for an achievement that forces you through all dialogue options), (3 of 4 cause I count seemingly…)
then perhaps players would be more invested in the roleplaying aspect of that particular MMORPG. Nonetheless, I appreciate the insightful thread! (End)
And responding with:
Jessica Price:
thanks for trying to tell me what we do internally, my dude 9_9
Deroir:
You getting mad at my obvious attempt at creating dialogue and discussion with you, instead of just replying that I am wrong or otherwise correct me in my false assumptions, is really just disheartening for me. You do you though. I’m sorry if it offended. I’ll leave you to it.
Jessica Price:
Today in being a female game dev:
“Allow me–a person who does not work with you–explain to you how you do your job.”
And yet this is somehow Reddit’s fault, as if the notoriety of the thread detailing Price’s behavior was spontaneously generated (or artificially manufactured), and not the natural result of her shockingly aggressive behavior. Suppose there were bots involved, perhaps unleashed by GamerGaters who are somehow huge GW2 fans and capable of mobilizing within hours. The most they could do is increase the thread’s visibility, after which it seems easy to imagine becoming self-perpetuating.
I don’t like anything about this entire scenario – it feels like a permanent loss to chaos and entropy. This unforced error gives those in GamerGate a free win, when their general philosophy is abhorrent nonsense. And here I am, also defending corporations and their ownership over the social media profiles of their employees, even when “off the clock.” Like when Price writes “make sure you smile while they hit you,” I want to ask if she has ever worked a goddamn day in customer service or retail in her entire life. Yeah, that’s the job. I’ve worked at places for years in which hanging up on a customer was a fireable offense the first time you did so.
I don’t know what the takeaway on all this is. I am not a culture warrior, but I do believe in social justice. I’m a bleeding-heart liberal, but I can’t muster any sympathy for Price. Maybe I’m not as good as I imagine myself to be. But if that person has to read what was actually said and come to the “Reddit got me fired” conclusion? Then I don’t want to be that guy. Price deserved the boot.
Kojima Stranding
Know anything about Death Stranding? New Kojima game? It’s has some of the most trippy, existential horror-inducing trailers I’ve ever seen.
So, I’m browsing Reddit and I come across a GIF from the latest one, and decide to read the post before actually watching the new E3 video. And the comments… dear god, the comments…
What?
Can someone plz tell us what’s happening?
Japanese people are weird and tell weird stories
Source: I have played some videogames before
Wait, the babys head went downwards like a somersault, but then the butt shows up in traditional “mooning” orientation, how did he do that?
Watch it in slowmo, as his head disappears you can see him start to rotate.
Dude. I’m not watching this in slowmo. I don’t even want to see it at regular speed.
They’ve released plenty of trailers by now and gameplay, and I still have no idea what the fuck this game is about or what is it you’re really doing in the game.
Probably survival game with a bit of rpg elements. You are like a courier who delivers some stuff in that big box. Then you are recruited by that woman to probably get know know what is that stuff in the box. The game theme is about the damaged enviroments where the ‘timefall’ rain has some toxicated substance that causes living organism to age rapidly fast (notice the grass/flower when norman reedus walks under the rain) For now we know there are invisible creatures in the rain and if they eat/kill you, there is some lore-related mechanics that governs respawn system (create a crater area as in the trailer says). Some also speculates that the fetus that he carries is actually a clone of himself, and can turn into his adult self rapidly fast incase he/the player dies.
Ohh, so he carries a clone of himself so that when he gets accelerated there’s another one of him to take his place? That makes sense now.
I mean, I guess.
The phrasing I have heard is that Kojima’s goal is “to do for horror games, what Metal Gear Solid did for stealth games.” Based on his stated goals with the Metal Gear series and the E3 trailer for this game (which I did end up watching), that may be “run away from the monsters instead of shooting them.” That said, it’s 2018, and there have been many, many of those sort of games for years. Hell, I remember playing Clock Tower and running away from a dude with giant scissors back in 1996.
Or maybe the game is a big meta-commentary on the wastefulness and drudgery we generate from ordering everything on Amazon Prime. I once used the Prime Now feature to have someone deliver milk to my front door within 2 hours because I didn’t feel like putting on pants. Maybe we’re the invisible time monsters that leave craters everywhere! /thinking
Regardless, I’m all for these weird-ass games that push the envelope. Bring it on, Kojima!
In An Age 
“Normal People Don’t Care”
Dec 18
Posted by Azuriel
There is a minor, ongoing media kerfuffle with the internet-darling Larian Studios (makers of Baldur’s Gate 3, Original Sin 2, etc). It started with this Bloomberg article, wherein Jason Schreier writes:
There are possible charitable and a not-so-chartable takes on those words, and suffice it to say, many people chose the latter. Vincke responded with a “Holy fuck guys [chill out]” Twitter response, with clarifications and emphasis that they only use AI for reference material and other boring things, and not with actual content. Jason Schreier also chimed in with an original transcript of the interview, as a response to others suggesting that what Schreier wrote was itself misleading.
As a side note, this portion of the transcript was extra interesting to me:
I suppose I should take Vincke’s word on the matter, considering how he released a critically-acclaimed game that sold 20 million copies, and I have… not. But, dead? Larian Studios has over 500 employees at this point, so things are likely different at these larger scales. I’m just saying the folks that made, you know, Silksong or Megabonk are probably going to be fine without pushing AI into their processes.
Anyway, all of that is actually a preamble to what sent me to this keyboard in the first place. In the Reddit comments of the second Schreier piece, this exchange took place:
do not engage… do not engage… do not engage…
Guys, it’s hard out here in 2025. And I’m kinda all done. Tapped out. Because SexyJazzCat is correct.
Normal people don’t actually care. We know this because “normal” people voted the current administration back into office. Normal people don’t understand that measles can reset your immune system, erasing all your hard-fought natural immunities. Normal people don’t understand that every AI data center that springs up in your area is subsidized by increases to your own electric bill. Normal people don’t understand that tariffs are taxes that they end up paying for. Normal people don’t understand that even if they didn’t use ACA subsidies, their health insurance is going to wildly increase anyway because hospitals won’t be reimbursed for emergency care from newly uninsured people. Nevermind the, you know, general human misery this creates.
Normal people don’t actually care about AI. But they should. Or perhaps should have, past tense, because we’re far past the end of a very slippery slope and fully airborne. Normal people are just going to be confused as to why computers, phones, and/or videogame consoles are wildly more expensive in 2026 (e.g. RAM crisis). Or if AI successfully demonstrates real efficiency gains, surprised when they are out of a job. Or if AI crashes and burns, why they also still lost their job and their 401k cratered (e.g. 40% of S&P 500 value is in AI companies).
The only thing that I still wish for these days, is this: people have the kind of day they voted for.
Posted in Commentary
3 Comments
Tags: AI, Capitalist Dystopian Hellscape, Jason Schreier, Larian, Normal People, Reddit