For discussion, memes, and everything Diablo.
Simple rules:
Please tag your posts with the game you're talking about: [D4], [D3], [D2], [D2R], etc.
I wouldn't lump this in with the whole "enshitification" issue.
This is the end result of gamers not placing any value on the content they consume. People want free content, regardless of quality, over anything else.
So, as you would expect, what you are seeing is free content, regardless of quality, being created en masse.
It really is though. Remember back when we just had gamefaqs guides? Or actual game wikis that weren't plastered with ads?
It's especially apparent in the japanese gamersphere. There used to be great (grassroots) wikis for basically every Japanese game, now they're all run by e.g. game8 and their clones.
Enshittification really does mean something quite specific and is not just a word meaning “things aren’t very good anymore.”
If you haven’t read Cory Doctorow’s essay that coined the term, definitely do. It’s a modern classic.
We used to make build guides for Diablo 2 for free and it worked well. I'd say this is more a sign of everyone trying to monetize everything.
I mean I would argue it's related, the reason behind it is $$$. Corporate interests have homogenized content and de-normalized diversity and community.
People who use to just post their excel sheets and research on some bb forum for free somewhere starting getting paid by icy veins or maxroll. Overtime they establish a monopoly on the content and can do whatever the hell they want.
Why make a platform that depends on the community and you get the ad views when you can adopt a business strategy that also gets you youtube and social media views while eliminating your competition.
And the youtube trend is just people trying to emulate the handful of people who managed to make it big off the twitch/youtube bag.
Social media has now existed for an entire generation and those users are very averse to creating accounts on new websites. They also aren't willing to put up with growing pains and lack of content. Alternatives are almost impossible to get off the ground now.
People who use to just post their excel sheets and research on some bb forum for free somewhere starting getting paid by icy veins or maxroll.
Maybe your expectation that people should do all that work to free is unrealistic and just a sign of your own entitlement issues?
Rofl, it's a hobby, you do it for fun, you shouldn't need to get paid. I also play tennis as a hobby and I love to talk to people about it without charging them money believe it or not. The fetishization with internet fame, views, and money is making gaming weird.
I mean back when I was more into gaming I would contribute. I didn't expect money, I just did it because I was fun. I feel like there's a big disconnect between the current generation and my generation that wrote 300 page guides on gamefaqs for the hell of it rofl.
Not when rent is as high as it is, unfortunately everything that takes a significant amount of time needs to be monetized these days. If it takes a significant amount of your time it had better be earning you money, otherwise the factories need their cogs.
There are multiple factors. Some people are trying to get something for nothing, ofc. Like you also said elsewhere here,
The difference is the decreasing availability of alternatives.
As someone who has tried to do this for a couple of games, I can say that people don't like to read. Charts, text, spreadsheets, data explorations, MediaWiki Template encoding conjoined with Cargo database querying providing a back-end support, even simplistic graphics... these are all huge no-nos when you try to say something to a bunch of teenagers that would prefer to simply make fun of you for being a nerd, who can actually write much less read - even for games whose central premise is math. No matter how much you dumb it down for them, it's too much to bother with - they just want tier lists and nothing else, and will complain LOUDLY if you dare to offer something deeper. Then again, that was Reddit, and maybe the Fediverse will be different somehow in that regard?
Also then there's ego to contend with. If you say something without the explicit blessing of The One True God (apparently meaning the kid who played this game before you ever heard of it), then it doesn't matter if what you say is right or wrong (like even if you agree with them word for word), the spin doctors will have their way with it and through selective screenshots of your exact words can somehow twist it into you you having said the exact opposite of what you explicitly said (it's easy if you try, just cut out the word "not" before the rest of the partial sentence and you get the idea! remember: nobody can/will read, so they'll all swallow it, hook, line, & sinker!:-). The art of Politics doesn't just apply IRL apparently - you can use the same basic principles for anything you want.
I've written guides for a couple games when I was unemployed during the pandemic, since I was looking to have something to do that was a bit deeper than just casually playing, and I'm not so eager to try to do so again. Especially since I have a job now and no time for that anymore. Not individually, but by and large as a whole, people suck (at least on Reddit, and especially Discord gaming communities) and I'm tired of pretending that this is not the case. So I'm not doing this again - fool me once, fool me twice, but I'm not dumb enough to do this for a 3rd game.
Context: I've played D1-3 but not 4 so that would not have been an option anyway, I just thought you might be interested in the perspective of someone who has done this for other, more strategy-type games than RP build theory-crafting.
On a positive note: if you find there to be a lack of good theory-crafting out there, maybe that's a great way for you to contribute and become known in the communities that you would enjoy talking in, if you would enjoy making such content? But if YOU won't make it, and OTHERS won't make it, indeed, there's likely a reason why... as the various comments to this post are going into various reasons why. People don't have as much time & energy these days as they once did due to rising inflation costs, and moreover the presence of disinformation does a fantastic job of masking the sources of true information, especially when compounded by bots and weird & alternative styles of up-voting campaigns where people flock to particular personalities more than paying attention to the content that is actually said. What you want may even be out there somewhere... but good luck getting the engagement algorithms to cough it up for you, b/c that's not what they are designed to do (anymore) - the world has changed, and we have already been eaten alive by the corporate giants.
It's a video game, it's meant to be fun. If you don't enjoy writing guides then don't write them but don't cry that no one wants to pay you for it.
Only crying I'm seeing is people upset that the quality of their free content isn't up to their personal standards.
People have been doing exactly that for decades, ever since video games (or learning in general) have been a thing. Nintendo's tipline in the 80s was free. Here is an in-depth guide to every version of tetris, complete with ascii diagrams and user-submitted cheats, released less than a year and a half after the gameboy version came out, when the internet was still a mess of rabbit holes. It's far from new.
Both of those attracted helpers primarily or entirely for the love of the thing itself. 99.9% of communities for any topic are the same way, and one would be horrified to find out the kinds of things that people get up to in knitting circles. Insinuating it's wrong to expect help to be both useful and accessible runs counter to human nature.
Frankly, when we're talking about YouTube, it's also weird. The watcher doesn't pay either platform. An uploader running two ads on a video with a million views makes $180, and that's if none of them is running an ad blocker (they are). Scrolling through the top Hades videos, the only ones with views that really broke more than the low thousands were the official trailers. No one is so much as buying chicken nuggets off that game unless they are the company that made the game.
From someone who jumped from Hades all the way back to trying to beat Suikoden Tactics, god fucking bless passionate text forums in general and gamefaqs specifically. I would not have have bothered with an obvious clickbait ""boss exploit"" video, but the information that there was one spread like wildfire among fans in paragraphs of nuanced Q&As. For free. Because people needed to talk about the game with each other, which they are still doing on Lemmy for free too.
Nor do I have the will to sit through what would be actual irl hours of letsplays to figure out the ancient coin is on the third floor of Obel, buried in the right-hand rubble next to the exit. Sometimes, often even, you just want the damn answer.
Conversely, not every aspect of society needs to be monetized and capitalized.
There existed a time when players made guides because they were passionate about the game, not because they were trying to hit engagement metrics or ad revenue breakpoints. The website GameFAQs, for example, holds thousands of user created guides, and many of them are extremely high quality.
Obviously this is not to say that we should expect all creators to work for free, especially if they're trying to make a career of it, but there's decades of precedent for passion-driven user created content and I don't think it's right to label it as entitlement when talking about the loss of those elements in a shift towards icy veins/maxroll paid guides.
It seems to be the combination of two things: Diablo is now truly a mass market product, not just a gamer’s delight. Games now make more money than movies. The audience to be reached is enormous and attracts the eye of infotainment professionals, and no longer just people who are really into the game and decide to maybe try a guide. These people start with the cheap content machine first and Diablo is just the topic du jour. after a while they will be on to something else.
All this points at the second topic, which is the way paid creator video platforms have evolved. There’s now significant commercial opportunity and competition is fierce. No longer does the deeper guide win but rather the one that games the algo most, appeals to the broadest audience most, and has the most production value (money) behind it.
I suspect there is actually more high quality game guide content than ever, but you aren’t going to find it with just a “Diablo” search because there is an enormous pile of cheap crap on top of it.
The number of articles out about the latest and greatest game updates from a few hours ago which are rehashing patches released a week or more ago drive me nuts. How many times do I have to wade through multiple screens of preamble to find out that content is being recycled from week old news.
But yes, the ratio of low signal to high signal content is crazy in general. I get that people have to make a living and want to do it via communicating on YouTube/articles/... but I feel we've really lost access to high quality content. ChatGPT and other LLMs are going to make this wayyyyyyy worse.
Content recommendation algorithms push for length and frequency, which inevitably means meeting the quantity bar is more important than quality. Meanwhile we have really thought out high quality content buried in a mountain of clickbait and those creators both don't get as good monetization or exposure. It's a sad system :(. I want to see more ErrantSignal quality bar and less clickbait please.
Yes, crappy advice on websites like gamesvideodiablo.com are at the top of search results somehow. Luckily established sites like maxroll and icy-veins are out there. You still have to watch who submitted stuff. Feel sorry for anyone that has to wade through the gamesgamerhintsnews.com sites.
I generally stick to those 2 websites and just specify them if I'm searching for something on Google. Worked good for the altar of lilith maps and character builds.
You Won't Believe These Top 10 Reasons Why Diablo IV Content Consumers Perpetuate Clickbait, Especially Number 9
😉
I just kick all clickbaity channels off of my YouTube feed. If this ends up in YouTube not showing me any Diablo IV stuff on my feed, so be it.
Yep. In order to use YouTube, it is critical to make significant use the "Don't recommend channel" function first.
yea its pretty nuts how EVERYDAY there is a new BEST MOST BROKEN build guide. Even when the same content creator made a similar one for the same class like a day or two ago lol
Saw a clickbait with something like "<person I've never heard of> SHARES SECRET HACKS TO REROLL AND UPGRADE YOUR GEAR STATS", the secret was to upgrade your gear and to reroll an attribute 😹 kinda died.
I mean he did share his secret lol
Yes and no in sharing the rage. I can understand the how and why, but I also decide not to consume it for the most part. If I look for info, builds etc in games I always go to discord communities where I can get info bite-sized and written instead.
The videos themselves are so strange, why spend 15 minutes talking about something that could be written in 1-2 A4 pages. Builds in games especially are something that just is so much better written, rather than spoken.
Attention spans. News content these days are moving to video other text to better grab your attention. When everything is really engaging, you have to be more engaging than that to get seen.
As someone who's not an auditory/visual learner I feel personally attacked by this. I skipped class and stayed home and read the book/notes for a reason.
I agree. I much prefer text stuff. It's hard deny the shift though. Looking at TikTok as an extreme example, a whole generation is getting their news from someone doing a dance while two other videos play of cutting playdough. I'm not saying it's wrong, but I do think it's really hurting our ability as a species to exist without attention hacking.
If you've managed to exist outside of that band of information exchange, I commend you.
Cause you gotta get dem "views". Don't forget to smash that subscribe button.
The format makes no sense for the information being consumed, it's like this for their benefit not the viewers.
Even the Maxroll build guides are like, oh yea go view our youtube video to get all the info.
The format makes no sense for the information being consumed, it's like this for their benefit not the viewers.
People are trying to get paid in a market where no one wants to pay. That's why the format is being used.
Aside from ads, there's no low-friction payment scheme for content creators.
I'd be happy to pay for useful content, but it's really hard to do that with existing payment schemes.
That doesn't make it more useful as a format, though. And there are zero things ethically wrong with preferring the concise, easily-referenced well of knowledge fans still very often provide each other for love of the game over something time-consuming that turns out repeatedly to be not the thing you were looking for at all.
My favorite is the videos that are titled “HOW TO GET THE BEST LEGENDARIES FAST!!!” Then the content is basically 12 minutes of stretching out the statement “just play the game a lot.”
Totally agree with you but somehow i got arround this by use negative searchterms like "-youtube" "-video" and limiting the timeframe for newer topics. So or so, the newist info are community forums or discord servers. About the whole clickbait on google and youtube. they both go hand in hand, this "suggestions" wont go awy unless you stop interact with them. If i missclick on youtube i have to battle the algorithm by clicking "not interessted" for days until google stops trying to shovel this kind of content into my throat...
Was trying to show a friend a video of what a particular game mod looks like the other day, and everything was videos of people going over painstaking details on how to tweak the mod etc etc with little to nothing on what the modded game actually fucking looks like.
I really miss the era when you could look up how to do something and get a very long but detailed (often with pictures) set of instructions. For example game walkthroughs. Now it's a bunch of videos with a bunch of "don't forget to like and subscribe" dipshits narrating the whole thing through.
I once read a book called: The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters
And it really echoes to me now just how many self appointed experts there are now.
I’m liking that Icy-Veins website. I’m pretty sure they keep a close eye on some builds. I was following a build guide yesterday and it was tweaked differently today. So whatever is going on there it seems care is being taken. Also no horrible YouTube videos to deal with.
Icy-veins is legit, they've been around doing game guides since Wrath of the Lich King was new. I want to say the name is even a reference to the WotLK Death Knight ability. No idea who runs it or what their deal is, but they've been a good resource for 10+ years so they're doing something right.
Icy Veins was always my go-to for builds. I think in the first few weeks of the game it's not had the 'best' builds, but that's more to do with the fact theory-crafting is still taking place. I expect it to be the definitive place for build recs once rebalancing patches begin to settle and the theory-crafting for the base game (excluding seasonal affixes) is stable.
D4builds.gg is what I'm using for build Inspo at the moment, but it's taken a bit of digging around there and YT to find someone who's not constantly pumping out "BEST BUILD" vids that conflict with yesterday's "best build", and is instead refining the one build.
Yeah, its always a new best mega super ultra build you must've seen. And real new information gets drowed in those videos/articles. I rely only on a few places as a source and search on those first.
Feels like intermediate content is what’s missing. I find tons of “beginner” videos that aren’t useful to me, just explain the basic mechanics as anyone can plainly see them. A lot of these were made during the game preview and are highly ranked even though they are full of expired info.
And then there’s the extreme other end of people who use build names they assume you already know inside and out and are obsessing over spreadsheets and drop rates, making their life entirely about farming one particular unique - and they always play in a party as experienced as them on the absolute hardest endgame content and they hate everything Blizzard does.
Wish there were something in the middle. Like “how to lean in to a crit build” or “overview of popular Druid builds that are viable at level 70.”
Gamergate
I'm tired of the " look at all this dps!" Then it is someone with max gear at lvl 99.
This really isn't anything new though. It's pretty much what YT is nowadays and why I barely use it anymore.
The difference is the decreasing availability of alternatives.
Pretty sure the gaming community is where enshittification started. It’s an incredibly toxic community.
