Regarding Mod Author Harassment

[ashtonlp101]

So I wasn't sure where exactly to post this, but this topic has been bothering me for quite some time. It's in regards to getting harassed by users over the years. So to preface this I should say I am 20 years old, and an aspiring game designer / writer. I've been making mods since I was 14 years old (2014) and to say my first few mods were bad would be an understatement. My first quest mod was For The Brotherhood, Alchestbreach reviewed in back in 2015 and it was pretty bad. I was 14 years old, not even in high school learning how to use the Gamebryo engine from Wiki pages and Seddon4494 tutorials on YouTube. I had no concept of narrative design and wanted to just make something I thought was cool. Well, when Alchestbreached reviewed it I got bullied more than I have ever been in my life. I don't blame Al at all, I love Al in fact, he actually reached out to me and said he was sorry for all the hate which shows what a great guy he is! But a community of grown adults bullied me so hard that I nearly deleted my account and never came back to the Nexus again. I still experienced this hate for a couple more years after that but instead of giving up I just kept improving my work and took criticism into account whether it was polite or not. Even though I am a pretty decent mod author now and am pretty knowledgeable about the engine and about designing mods, I think the community could've handled things a lot better because a lot of people on the Nexus are incredibly quick to judge someone who they don't even know. Like I said, I was 14 years old making mods for a video game I grew up playing and to have not one or two people, but dozens saying I was s#*! and calling me names was unacceptable from a human standpoint. It would've been one thing if I were selling a product but I wasn't, it was a free mod on the Nexus that people had the choice to download and play. I know I am not alone in this treatment either for many mod authors have taken down their accounts and never modded again because of people's treatment of them. So my purpose of this post is to say if you don't like a mod, criticize it constructively or just be on your way. No mod author makes these mods for unappreciative asshole who want to private message mod authors to harass them about how much they hate their mod. Or go on a tangent about how the mod was written by a 12 year old (14 in this case). Just to prove my point about harassment on the Nexus, I will provide a few comments with their names blurred out.

 

 

 

[HadToRegister]

The problem is, the most critical, dismissive, 'know-it-all' loudmouths are always the ones who can't make mods, and instead criticize everybody else's mods, because they know they're talentless, unimaginative, and unskilled, and because of that, since they can't raise themselves UP to be equal with people, they have to drag people DOWN to their level in order to feel equal.

[ashtonlp101]

Yes, many of these commenters and private messengers are the ones who never post or endorse mods I have noticed. They don't understand or appreciate how hard it is to make quality content. It literally takes me weeks to write, design, script and implement one quest in an entire questline. The amount of hours I put into one project is more than I put into my job or school.

[JimboUK]

It's very important to report this sort of thing so we can get these people out of our community, generally those who behave in this way have contributed nothing other than their own worthless opinions and we really don't need them here. These days I don't hesitate when it comes to blocking people, I look at it this way, modding is supposed be fun and I have no time for those who try to make it otherwise, they can bugger off and take thier negativity with them.

[ashtonlp101]

I completely agree, Jimbo. Modding is a hobby and can even be a gateway to a career passion as we've seen in Falskar and future projects as well. We all love what we do and it is a serious downer when we see these disrespectful comments on something we've spent hundreds of passionate hours creating.

[Radioactivelad]

I can't remember if it was Tyler Glaiel or Edmund Mcmillen, but one of them said something like "Your audience is an invaluable source of feedback, but they're terrible at providing it."

 

Something a lot of them don't understand, either out of ignorance or sheer lack of empathy, is that no one purposely sets out to make a "bad" thing. There's a story behind just about every "famous" failure in the game industry:

 

Titus, the developer of Superman 64 was heckled and outright sabotaged by Warner Bros.

 

Blood 2 was "F*cking RAW" due to the publisher rushing the product out. The developer, Monolith Productions was full aware of the game's problems and told GT Interactive as much, but GT wasn't interested in funding additional development.

 

Duke Nukem Forever went through so much s*** it's difficult to say exactly when everything started to fall apart. (But was probably mainly the result of poor management from director George Broussard).

 

Daikatana suffered from similar problems as DNF.

 

You were *literally a Child* when you made For The Brotherhood and (I guess?) never made anything like it before.

 

 

Now, could you say the developers of these projects were maybe overly-ambitious? Yes.

Are they entirely without fault? No.

Does knowing any of this context help make a bad product not be bad for the all-important Gamer? Not really; but neither does s***-talking the creator, and the world could use more empathy.

 

 

I'm glad you didn't let it stop you from sticking to the craft. I spent my teen years so preoccupied with whether the things I wanted to make, like music and stories, would be "good enough" that I ended up never trying. (I'm not one to worry about "wasted youth" but I can't help but wonder where I'd be today if I started embracing my desire to Create when I was 15 instead of when I was 25.)

 

The important thing is that *you made something.* Which quite frankly is a lot more than what most of the loudest and most venomous complainers can say.

Edited December 1, 2020 by Radioactivelad

[JimboUK]

I completely agree, Jimbo. Modding is a hobby and can even be a gateway to a career passion as we've seen in Falskar and future projects as well. We all love what we do and it is a serious downer when we see these disrespectful comments on something we've spent hundreds of passionate hours creating.

 

It's always a shame to see new modders being put off by these garbage tier users, new modders that might go on to great things, we'll never know what we've lost.