David Gaider said on his Twitter that closing down the BioWare forums was overdue. I'll never spend a penny on anything he touches.
Sure would be nice to have a statement what exactly he meant by that.
Link for reference: https://twitter.com/...081704728371200
kag666, on 30 Jul 2016 - 06:44 AM, said: "We believe shutting down the best way for customers to give feedback and comprehensive bug reports is the best way to interact with customers."
SofaJockey - So sounds like something the Catalyst would have said...
Haha, true !
Too bad the mods already deleted my post. Oh well, maybe deep-6'ing this whole thing is the best choice after all.
Sure would be nice to have a statement what exactly he meant by that.
Link for reference: https://twitter.com/...081704728371200
Overdue. That was my reaction when he left BW. I hope he left writing in general. He's awful.
Sure would be nice to have a statement what exactly he meant by that.
He is just saying that he didn't care for the BSN after Off-Topic was closed and I kind of understand him. Still rude to the rest of the community.
There was a time when moderators were much stricter. Chris Priestly and Stanley Woo come time mind. But even they had a sense of humor. A great example of a thread that remained open for a while (probably because the mods couldn't stop laughing either) was:
Im sorry but Grunt has a poop vent.
Chris Priestly even made one of the best jokes in this thread.
It's not that I wish Chris and Stanley back, but it was at least an ordered form of chaos in those days. 
This is rather idiotic and that is putting it nicely.
Smart phones it is equally easy to be on a forum as it is any other social media. I don't think any person expect to get into a one on one topic with any developers. That doesn't happen with literally any other game in existence. They might comment on stuff but that is about as far as it goes.
Twitter has such a small character limit you can't even call it feed back.
Facebook can block anyone who says literally anything on the page. Insomniac Games muted me from posting on their page after the launch of Resistance 3 and I was criticizing it for it's flaws on it. They literally shut me up to prevent anyone from making the game look bad.
Youtube is troll fest and any feed back would be lost under the troll set up.
Not everyone is interested in Reddit.
So what is the real reason? Cost? How much does it actually cost you per month to keep forums running?
Well, I guess I'm feeling like a confused dog having its face shoved into a pile of waste on the carpet. Why am I being punished now and for what? Pulling the forum now for something that happened years ago sends a confusing message, and it hurts the wrong people. It wasn't even my turd.
I don't have a single warning point to my name.
You can have on of my two points. Got them from one of those random, anonymous Bot Mods that roam the forums these days, for using the word "shitstorm".
It's an established word, mods! It's even in the german dictonary! Not "rude" language.
Lol.
Sums it up. I guess it's basically Bioware admiting it's dead, at least in soul if not in body.
No wonder Bioware considered the forums "toxic" then.
Thanks to places like Tumblr, Twitter, etc, "toxic" is really just code for "filled with people that disagree with me".
I was about to post the same thing. heh
I'm not happy either. It really does suck and I'm going to miss the hell out of this place. I feel for you. Maybe try for a warning point before this place shuts down for good! Come to the dark side. I'm weirdly proud of my 2 points, lol.
I'll even miss some of the assholes I went round and round with on feminism.
Aww, we'll miss you too. 
In all seriousness, I agree with the last sentence. What's the point in joining a community where your ideas and opinions aren't challenged? People who spend all their time in an echo chamber are some of the biggest bigots there are once they leave it, because noone ever told them to rein in their more bizarre opinions. And then they post stuff on an open forum like twitter using the hashtag #killallmen, not realizing what a crap storm they'd stir up.
Overdue. That was my reaction when he left BW. I hope he left writing in general. He's awful.
He is just saying that he didn't care for the BSN after Off-Topic was closed and I kind of understand him. Still rude to the rest of the community.
I guess this sheds some light on it: https://twitter.com/...106719389593600
"actual moderation is almost impossible"
Usually there's a legally binding company policy for old employees - like Gaider - to prohibit them from badmouthing the company or its resources, e.g. the fanbase. Pretty bizarre.
I haven't been here frequently, but when I needed info, or had something to discuss about BW games, this was the place to go.
Twitter is ok to announce something, but not to have a conversation. Same with Facebook. Tumblr also has the problem that it's not linear threaded and you can't see all answers to a post. Only the reblogs of popular people keep living on. None of those places are good for a discussion. Even the tumblr thread for DAI mods I follow is hard to meneuver through if you're looking for something older.
Reddit seems like the only alternative, but it's like an amputated alternative to a real forum.
Also, deleting everything seems like taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut. There are great informative posts I kept getting back to, each time I started a new playthrough of the Mass Effect series for example. I don't see any good reason for deletion.
This is so sad and a testament of just how little the Bioware Team truly values it's fan base. It's pretentious and assuming that every fan can keep track of product news, releases and other information through the use of other venues as they described. I for one am very busy and do not participate in these forums to post, however, I do come here to keep track of news and other important information that may be relevant to the games or upcoming events, not to mention from time to time it's nice to be able to reach out to other fans for help with tech issues or other helps in game, etc.
In the past I have been members of other gaming boards and long after the final published products were released those boards are kept open and still up and running today. Because it's the fans' community not just a place for the game developers to pop in with updates. It's a shame they want to tear down this rather tight nit community and expect the fanbase to try to maintain contact and connection with each other and their products. In my opinion this is a death move, especially right before the release of Mass Effect Andromeda. True in any community you are going to have negative comments or feedback regarding the game or decisions made by the company, it's mainly venting and that is but a fraction of feedback that represents the entire fanbase community.
Honestly, this is not meant as a stab or a snarky comment, but I am a member over at CDPROJECKT RED forums and if you pop over there and read some of what's going on you'll see how important it is in keeping your fan community together! It really does show support for the fans and allows them a space to vent and make friends and keep up with all manner of going's on.
All I can say is good luck Bioware....you're gonna need it!
Not to us. Thanks to the media, the BSN is seen as a place filled with terrible people of bad attitudes/intentions that don't contribute anything outside of whining.
Apparently we're bad and we should feel bad. Again, David Gaider's tumblr read that it existed for him to talk to people who "wouldn't dare" come here.
Turns out when a major developer feels that way, people tend to follow that train of thought. Who'da thunk it?
So my 0 warning point ass has to pay for that reputation that I didn't contribute to.
Indeed. I was reading the comments on FB when PC Gamer posted an article about the BSN closing doors and a heck of a lot of people said it was for the best because this is a den of toxicity this and whining a**holes that.
Bunch of hypocrites, not even half of those ever set foot in here.
There was a time when moderators were much stricter. Chris Priestly and Stanley Woo come time mind. But even they had a sense of humor. A great example of a thread that remained open for a while (probably because the mods couldn't stop laughing either) was:
Im sorry but Grunt has a poop vent.
Chris Priestly even made one of the best jokes in this thread.
It's not that I wish Chris and Stanley back, but it was at least an ordered form of chaos in those days.
No.
No, we did not.
Priestly constantly neglected his moderating duties and he shut down major conversations like IT and the entire romance subforum because he didn't want to bother moderating the stuff that really needed it. A very large part of why BSN started circling the drain and got renowned for its toxicity is because of Priestly letting trolling and flaming run rampant. Yeah, they did occasionally "crack down", and by "crack down" I mean come down hard on a few random infractions as a token effort. That's not "ordered chaos" that's simply "chaos."
And Woo... don't get me started on Woo.
Indeed. I was reading the comments on FB when PC Gamer posted an article about the BSN closing doors and a heck of a lot of people said it was for the best because this is a den of toxicity this and whining a**holes that.
Bunch of hypocrites, not even half of those ever set foot in here.
I remember one dev tweeting about how 'toxic' the BSN was. I checked out his twitter feed. He was retweeting stuff people said like "White men blame rape victims for rape"
Yeah because blaming an entire gender and race for something isn't toxic. *cough*
Indeed. I was reading the comments on FB when PC Gamer posted an article about the BSN closing doors and a heck of a lot of people said it was for the best because this is a den of toxicity this and whining a**holes that.
Bunch of hypocrites, not even half of those ever set foot in here.
Just look at the DA reddit. The post with the highest vote under the announcement is basically "Ugh, make them go away. We don't want toxicity here."
How are we supposed to find a new "home" on any other of those 3rd party sites if we're already stigmatized? Quite a few of those fellas even admit that they haven't been here for years, but hey... everything is toxic here. They just know it.
This fragmentation and clique behaviour is just sad. Even sadder is the fact that quite a few of (ex)BioWare's people actually encourage that train of thought.
Sure would be nice to have a statement what exactly he meant by that.
Link for reference: https://twitter.com/...081704728371200
I think there is a very real burnout/distressing effect from toxicity from forums when you're a creator. Even as a person extremely critical of Bioware (especially later titles) and who considers that shutting down these forums is a sign of Bioware being Borged by EA and transformed into a soulless factory up until they don't bring enough money and are mothballed, I still find a large number of answers toward the dev to be unacceptable, childish and needlessly antagonistic.
I think Gaider, being rather snarky and direct, has endured a lot of, to be frank, downright abuse, and might have ended up feeling the forums were just a channel for toxic behaviour, and deserving to be closed.
I disagree with his conclusion (I find the idea of a game company not having forum ludicrous, it's basically cutting yourself from direct feedback, hence why I consider the closure a real sign of a deep change in management and a probable foretelling of death), but I certainly can understand from where he's from - to sum up : plenty of people posting on the forums are agressive and entitled dicks holding dev to ridiculously perfect standards of behaviour and then wondering why said dev lose desire to interact with them.
Just look at the DA reddit. The post with the highest vote under the announcement is basically "Ugh, make them go away. We don't want toxicity here."
How are we supposed to find a new "home" on any other of those 3rd party sites if we're already stigmatized? Quite a few of those fellas even admit that they haven't been here for years, but hey... everything is toxic here. They just know it.
This fragmentation and clique behaviour is just sad. Even sadder is the fact that quite a few of BioWare's people actually encourage that train of thought.
There's something tragic yet amusing in that at least one of the officially suggested alternatives for people to move on to is openly hostile towards this place and the people in it.
We are all scum. We are all worthless.
Just look at the DA reddit. The post with the highest vote under the announcement is basically "Ugh, make them go away. We don't want toxicity here."
How are we supposed to find a new "home" on any other of those 3rd party sites if we're already stigmatized? Quite a few of those fellas even admit that they haven't been here for years, but hey... everything is toxic here. They just know it.
This fragmentation and clique behaviour is just sad. Even sadder is the fact that quite a few of BioWare's people actually encourage that train of thought.
Retour en haut
