The Rise and Fall of Geek Culture

[InsufferableCynic]

I recently had some mindless work to do, so I listened to this video someone had sent me

I immediately noped out when I saw the really high production values and the "This video is sponsored by CuriosityStream".

I have nothing against CuriosityStream or youtubers doing sponsorships, but I generally find highly produced videos don't tend to contain much useful or unique information, mostly just waffle containing the same talking points. I dunno, maybe I am being too harsh on it. I might check it out tomorrow anyway, since it's over an hour which means it's not likely to be your usual just-over-ten-minutes-clickbait.

With that being said, the content wasn't as bad as I expected, likely due to the fact that she has a background in formalized debate. For instance, she makes it all the way to the 56th minute before saying capitalism, 67 minutes before mentioning men in a negative way (shortly followed by claims of racism), and a full 70 minutes before mentioning gamergate. Still, the content rang fairly hollow to me. The crux of the argument is essentially "2000's-2010's geek culture was primarily white men, white men are toxic, therefore it was bad and failed." While some of the points made were entirely valid, they do not add up to support the overall claim of "everything I don't like is toxic masculinity." For example neckbeards truly were/are shitty people, but their toxicity towards you does not inherently represent a unique hatred towards your demographic. Funko Pops are dumb pieces of plastic that people should not feel pride in owning, but that speaks more to the stupidity of the average person than a valid criticism of capitalism.

Okay, maybe I won't check it out. It sounds awful. Thanks for the warning/heads up.

So this had me thinking; since I'm unsatisfied with this explanation of the downfall of geek culture, what is my explanation?

Background on me: I'm not looking to dox myself, but I was born in the early/mid-90's America in a town where, if you were to randomly take someone I went to high school with, you'd have roughly equal probabilities of picking someone who became a doctor/lawyer/etc. and someone who became an alcoholic day laborer. I was the smart, awkward, nerdy kid in school, so I was around to happily watch as the things that I enjoyed as a kid gained popularity as the mainstream picked up geek shit to the extent it did starting in the late 2000's. As I approached and entered my 20's though, I found that I no longer had the attachment to these things in the way that I once did. My life was occupied with new situations and new forms of meaning and fulfillment - put simply, I grew up. This meant that I was able to watch with unattached amusement as the whole scene fell apart later in the 2010's. I understood the infighting and was a witness to it on the various socials, but rarely if ever engaged as I was far more likely to laugh at both sides of the flame war for how emotional they would get over IP.

Yeah, yeah, get to the point: One of the good points made in the video was that at a certain time it stopped being about actually being a fan of something and was more about being part of the fandom monoculture itself. For a lot of people, this was their primary source of community and acceptance where they would convene to discuss their ideas, seek support, express their loyalties through various signaling devices, attempt to find meaning, and argue others who held opposing views... sound familiar? Basically, it is my opinion that nerd pop culture was the last stop on the secularization path that has railroaded society's normies from religion to culture war over the past ~50 years or so. These people tried to fill a god-shaped hole with graphic tees and funkos, failed to do so, and thus moved on to the next thing to fill that hole which turned out to be the culture war. Think about it, how many of the people that you knew who were super into the fandom scene are now either SJWs or incels? The pipeline of tumblr and 4chan to political extremism was definitely a real phenomenon by the mid/late 2010's.

If religion truly is the opiate of the masses, perhaps it's best to keep them on a slow drip instead of ODing or flushing the stash.

I see your point about monoculture and "being part of the thing", but honestly I don't think that's really the crux of the issue. I don't think blaming politics, or "the culture war", or SJWs, or anything like that is really helpful or relevant to the actual issue (as much as I despise SJWs). These people are opportunists, but the problem was already there and always will be there, even when these people have moved on to destroy the next thing.

There are plenty of areas of nerd culture that haven't become popular and where there is no desire to "be part of the thing" by normies (Warhammer 40k, DND, Anime) and yet which still have largely gone downhill, although at a slower rate than things that are popular (DND5 is dumbed down, as is 40k 8th edition), and some things that are wildly popular (Chess, etc) have basically always been unchanged despite always being part of nerd culture AND still being pretty popular amongst normal people.

I feel like the biggest indicator of something going to shit has to do with how much control over something (a product, a game ruleset, a community, etc) is in the hands of the general community vs the hands of a sole entity (usually a corporation), and how much money/resources that entity has.

This isn't just the case for nerd culture, however nerd culture is a good example because it's a relatively new industry that started out very grassroots with very low access to money and resources, and grew very large very quickly, only in the last decade or so, so it's fresh on everyone's minds.

Basically, my rule is: The more control a single entity has over something, and the more resources they contribute to it, the less risk they can take with it, and so more conservative they have to be with decision making. This naturally results in the controlling company broadening their target market, trying to appeal to everyone, and in doing so, only presenting a very shallow version of the original concept, usually easily consumable because those sorts of products make the most money. Anything deep or complicated is stripped away and replaced with surface level features - fan service, repetitive gameplay loops, simple basic plotlines and over-the-top action scenes, etc etc. This is also why chess is immune to this - nobody owns it and so it does not need to appeal to a wider audience, it simply is what it is.

I work in the game industry professionally, and as the industry has grown I have directly seen the decision making taken out of the hands of game designers and placed more and more in the hands of the true income sources - the customers (which actually means focus groups). If you're wondering why everything is an open world sandbox with collectibles nowadays, it's because that's what players want, unfortunately, and more importantly, it's what they are willing to pay for. The reality is that hardcore fans, even hardcore fans who are whales, simply cannot compete against the average consumer when it comes to spending power, except for in specific cases where mass appeal hasn't been accomplished (like with RTS or simulation games, most of which are still interesting as a result)

So she was right - it is capitalism. But I'm sure she was mainly complaining about capitalism as a concept - like an evil boogeyman out to destroy everything good, rather than actually trying to get to the bottom of the issue and understand how the market functions.

Unfortunately the only way to really fix this issue is to abolish copyright, which I don't think is practical for many reasons. At least then, die hard fans would be able to create something good for themselves. We already see this with things that largely exist outside of our traditional copyright system, like game mods, where amazing content is lovingly crafted daily, but everywhere else, nerd culture is a snoozefest.

Of course, soyboys and "OMG STAR WARS!!!!" types don't help. But, while they are easy to point out and make fun of, they aren't really the problem either. The problem is the average person engaging in something at the most basic, surface level, which is everything nowadays.

TL;DR the absolute worst thing about capitalism is consumers. Also, gamers ruined gaming.

 

[pfych]

Consoom culture & Megacorps milking everything ruined almost all subcultures. Milking every franchise and idea for every last dollar has made geek culture unbearable. Funko pops were the beginning of the end.

 

[Atlas]

Read this as the fall of "Greek Culture" and it got me seriously confused until the Funko Pop stuff started getting mentioned.

 

[InsufferableCynic]

Read this as the fall of "Greek Culture" and it got me seriously confused until the Funko Pop stuff started getting mentioned.

"The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy Funko Pops." - Socrates

 

[theshredneckcsr]

Geek "culture" is something I'm aware of but don't really understand. I guess you could call my interests "classically" nerdy in a sense. That saying I'm interested in things like comics, books, TV, anime, video games and the like, but I don't really use them as some kind of group identity. I've always thought fandoms were stupid and half the time they evolve into spergy circlejerks full of porn, shipping wars and other retardation. Where I'm interested in these nerdy activities out of genuine interest (reading pulp books, playing vidya, etc.). I've seen a trend where a lot of people become interested in things to be a part of a fandom. This was a big thing in the Tumblr days and it's an infection that's still around now. The fact is: "geek culture" itself sucks, it hasn't fallen at all, it was just the farthest you could fall.

 

[InsufferableCynic]

Geek "culture" is something I'm aware of but don't really understand. I guess you could call my interests "classically" nerdy in a sense. That saying I'm interested in things like comics, books, TV, anime, video games and the like, but I don't really use them as some kind of group identity. I've always thought fandoms were stupid and half the time they evolve into spergy circlejerks full of porn, shipping wars and other retardation. Where I'm interested in these nerdy activities out of genuine interest (reading pulp books, playing vidya, etc.). I've seen a trend where a lot of people become interested in things to be a part of a fandom. This was a big thing in the Tumblr days and it's an infection that's still around now. The fact is: "geek culture" itself sucks, it hasn't fallen at all, it was just the farthest you could fall.

Being a part of a community or group definitely has value, especially for more niche topics and interests, as it encourages a free flow of information and serves as a good point of discussion.

For example, I really like Linux, and it's genuinely interesting seeing all the different opinions on things like systemd, pulseaudio, whether it's better to go lightweight or be a "fully fledged" OS, and it encourages people to contribute to projects like WINE, etc.

It also has it's fair share of toxicity, feminist bullshit, and general sperginess.

I guess at the end of the day, group membership should be transactional - by being a part of the group, you should tangibly gain something, and others should tangibly gain from you. It seems that now people are just joining fandoms as a sort of status symbol or, in the absolute worst case, as a way to gain power (like the people who join groups specifically to change their politics, people like Anita Sarkessian), who have no intention of engaging with the community in good faith or contributing anything of value in return. The absolute worst position that a community can be in is one where they are basically controlled by their corporate overlords - think the Star Wars community, where you're basically required to be a Disney shill in order to be a member. That's transactional, but it's unhealthy because it's not transacting within the group to mutual benefit, it's benefitting a third party instead (in this case Disney).

In my opinion, the thing that destroys or degenerates fandoms into garbage is when the group contains more bad actors who are self-serving or not interested in transacting than actual fandom members, and so the entire focus of the group changes from being about the subject matter to being about something else, like politics, with the fandom only as a secondary backdrop, and a community that would be helping and building each other up becomes self serving, full of drama, and generally unsafe. Worse, people who do try to genuinely help others frequently and consistently get abused by the self serving individuals, and eventually leave, which results in the entire community eventually being a hollow husk of self-serving individuals with no genuine interest in the actual subject matter. Prominent examples of this exact situation happening are: Star Wars, Star Trek, Steven Universe, Doctor Who, Fallout (and tbh gaming in general), and many more. Every single one of these communities has been taken over and all the good people have left, and are now nothing but a bunch of angry individuals yelling into the void and being controlled by external corporations. Naturally the actual subject matter that spawned the fandom in the first place also took a nosedive in quality because it was no longer imporant, which is why all of these things are no longer enjoyable even to a casual outside observer. It's like a ponzi scheme - the product doesn't actually matter, only the whims and the greed of the members. It's why Disney is more focused on fan service and "writing wrongs" in Star Wars than they are about telling a logical or even coherent story. The product doesn't matter anymore, only serving the whims of the fandom. Of course this tactic is ultimately self defeating because it alienates everyone else, including people genuinely interested in the subject matter, which is why Star Wars managed to go from the most profitable movie franchise of all time to an absolute money-sink dumpster fire in less than a decade.

This problem can usually be prevented from occurring by adequate use of gatekeeping, which is why unpopular hobbies usually remain relatively good quality, since being obscure is a natural form of gatekeeping.

Also, shipping and porn may be cringe, but I don't see an actual problem with them. They are easy enough to avoid and usually most members of a fandom already shun them and find them weird. That said, I have never seen Ubuntu porn, so maybe it's just not something that affects the Tech/Linux scene as much, so I could be underestimating the problem.

 

[theshredneckcsr]

Being a part of a community or group definitely has value, especially for more niche topics and interests, as it encourages a free flow of information and serves as a good point of discussion.

For example, I really like Linux, and it's genuinely interesting seeing all the different opinions on things like systemD, pulseaudio, whether it's better to go lightweight or be a "fully fledged" OS, and it encourages people to contribute to projects like WINE, etc.

It also has it's fair share of toxicity, feminist bullshit, and general sperginess.

I guess at the end of the day, group membership should be transactional - by being a part of the group, you should tangibly gain something, and others should tangibly gain from you. It seems that now people are just joining fandoms as a sort of status symbol or, in the absolute worst case, as a way to gain power (like the people who join groups specifically to change their politics, people like Anita Sarkessian). The absolute worst position that a community can be in is one where they are basically controlled by their corporate overlords - think the Star Wars community, where you're basically required to be a Disney shill in order to be a member. That's transactional, but it's unhealthy because it's not transacting within the group to mutual benefit, it's benefitting a third party instead (in this case Disney).

Also, shipping and porn may be cringe, but I don't see an actual problem with them. They are easy enough to avoid and usually most members of a fandom already shun them and find them weird. That said, I have never seen Ubuntu porn, so maybe it's just not something that affects the Tech/Linux scene as much, so I could be underestimating the problem.

I hold my opinions for a reason, but I definitely see where you're coming from.

 

[no_mad]

That snob and up -tight elitist caricature that was always depicted in media and tv shows when we were kids, was always right.
They were not the bad guys. Don't be accepting of everyone,
Some people are not worthy to carry and represent things greater than themselves.
Work that is generated by individuals that are far more talented and gifted than them, Have dedicated decades to produce and influence content and culture that we know of today.

Remember, none of this had to happen.

 

[Some_porcupine]

For the record, I'm not a Brony anymore. Most of them are hypocrites, most of them have something wrong with them, a majority of them masturbate to ponies (EquestriaDaily confirmed this with a poll a while back), so I got sick of them and left. Everyones a dumbass when they're 14.

except me. but i missed some of childhood, so i was 30 grumpy by then

 

[Some_porcupine]

(*)I have the intuition that fandom infiltration dynamics as depicted in the comics above are actually designed and promoted by the state and their intel communities, which is why you can observe media screeching about "inclusivity" in hobbies and shit. Their desired outcome is destroying all kinds of association and force people into parasocial activities that can be dictated top-to-bottom, achieving total control on the populace.

yes, no silver line - no "excuses" "no exceptations"
"either like it (shoves it up your face), or KYS", basically

 

[Some_porcupine]

but since those people are the most easily observable of the fans, those are the ones the executives cater to. Surprise, surprise, they're also the most toxic and the most lost of the fanbase.

oh, so they hold into /thing/ for that reason
i know, it is just... weird
that they let themselves be seen as deranged no-brainers
but makes sense
except, it blackmail the whole "market" in these moves
think of rad-fems for example
they want for women to be equal
some want more than that, for women to be MORE than men
but they do it the exact opposite way they would...
sus, weird (i thought it was normies (and contra-pointeurs) tho, mocking them - switch and bait)
they want both, the mockers and, normies, and /example, rad-fems/ the same thing in the end
end is same, but reasons are different
i cant made up my mind on this, i am too dum-dum
:/

 

[Some_porcupine]

pony music

oh, so its not ponycon japan label lol

 

[passerby]

I recently had some mindless work to do, so I listened to this video someone had sent me regarding the rise and fall of geek culture. If you're not familiar with the creator, she's a Canadian progressive who makes these long videos about cultural topics - a style that the YT algorithm currently loves. With that being said, the content wasn't as bad as I expected, likely due to the fact that she has a background in formalized debate. For instance, she makes it all the way to the 56th minute before saying capitalism, 67 minutes before mentioning men in a negative way (shortly followed by claims of racism), and a full 70 minutes before mentioning gamergate. Still, the content rang fairly hollow to me. The crux of the argument is essentially "2000's-2010's geek culture was primarily white men, white men are toxic, therefore it was bad and failed." While some of the points made were entirely valid, they do not add up to support the overall claim of "everything I don't like is toxic masculinity." For example neckbeards truly were/are shitty people, but their toxicity towards you does not inherently represent a unique hatred towards your demographic. Funko Pops are dumb pieces of plastic that people should not feel pride in owning, but that speaks more to the stupidity of the average person than a valid criticism of capitalism.

________________________________________

So this had me thinking; since I'm unsatisfied with this explanation of the downfall of geek culture, what is my explanation?

Background on me: I'm not looking to dox myself, but I was born in the early/mid-90's America in a town where, if you were to randomly take someone I went to high school with, you'd have roughly equal probabilities of picking someone who became a doctor/lawyer/etc. and someone who became an alcoholic day laborer. I was the smart, awkward, nerdy kid in school, so I was around to happily watch as the things that I enjoyed as a kid gained popularity as the mainstream picked up geek shit to the extent it did starting in the late 2000's. As I approached and entered my 20's though, I found that I no longer had the attachment to these things in the way that I once did. My life was occupied with new situations and new forms of meaning and fulfillment - put simply, I grew up. This meant that I was able to watch with unattached amusement as the whole scene fell apart later in the 2010's. I understood the infighting and was a witness to it on the various socials, but rarely if ever engaged as I was far more likely to laugh at both sides of the flame war for how emotional they would get over IP.

Yeah, yeah, get to the point: One of the good points made in the video was that at a certain time it stopped being about actually being a fan of something and was more about being part of the fandom monoculture itself. For a lot of people, this was their primary source of community and acceptance where they would convene to discuss their ideas, seek support, express their loyalties through various signaling devices, attempt to find meaning, and argue others who held opposing views... sound familiar? Basically, it is my opinion that nerd pop culture was the last stop on the secularization path that has railroaded society's normies from religion to culture war over the past ~50 years or so. These people tried to fill a god-shaped hole with graphic tees and funkos, failed to do so, and thus moved on to the next thing to fill that hole which turned out to be the culture war. Think about it, how many of the people that you knew who were super into the fandom scene are now either SJWs or incels? The pipeline of tumblr and 4chan to political extremism was definitely a real phenomenon by the mid/late 2010's.

If religion truly is the opiate of the masses, perhaps it's best to keep them on a slow drip instead of ODing or flushing the stash.

Geek Culture started dying when phonies took over. Social incentives no longer favor authentic behavior.

 

[CycFL]

I think it's more that 'serious business' ruins every space it touches. You can see surprisingly modern trends in old fandoms in regards to the nature of the culture (fanfic spaces are especially prone to the infiltration of this stuff for a number of reasons that I will elaborate on if anyone asks); this is where it inevitably leads to. The only reason that it wasn't as common in the past is that it was actually possible to avoid such topics without enforcement back then due to a lack of social media.

Re: Gatekeeping
One thing often missed in this discussion is that there is a right and wrong form of gatekeeping. You shouldn't gatekeep for things wholly unrelated to the space being gatekept.

 

[manpaint]

I am curious, can you guys think of any example of something that have not been touched by the mainstream but was invented in the last 30 years?

Personally, the only thing I can think about is the various communities for RPG Maker. That thing mostly stayed the same from the 2000s. I presume that this because partaking require efforts, something "normies" don't want to indulge in.

 

[InsufferableCynic]

I am curious, can you guys think of any example of something that have not been touched by the mainstream but was invented in the last 30 years?

Personally, the only thing I can think about is the various communities for RPG Maker. That thing mostly stayed the same from the 2000s. I presume that this because partaking require efforts, something "normies" don't want to indulge in.

I am very involved in the System Shock 2 modding community, and somewhat involved in modding communities for various other games. I have probably created and released over 30 mods for various games over the years, most focused around balance or adding in additional gameplay twists, since I am a programmer by trade and absolutely suck at making artwork. I won't list out what I have made because it will link other parts of my identity, which I don't want, but if you have played System Shock 2 recently, or intend to replay it soon, there's a reasonable likelyhood you have used or will use one of my mods, especially if you're a veteran player who knows the game like the back of their hand.

Almost all of the changes in the System Shock 2 space have been technical (engine upgrades, etc) and have all been largely positive. In 10 years we have gone from a small number of incompatible mods to a large number of mods that can all be used together without issue, and now with the right combination of mods you can have a reasonably well balanced game that fixes many of the balance and gameplay issues of the original release.

Game Modding in general is already something that the mainstream doesn't care about, and in fact I would argue the mainstream is actively trying to destroy game modding because it threatens the corporate bottom line (it actually HELPS the bottom line, but that's their opinion), which is why we are seeing less and less accessible and moddable engines, less games released with SDK support, and more and more companies cracking down on custom content or trying to legally claim ownership so they can monetise it. More gamers are shifting to the console mindset of "just play it the way the DEVELOPERS INTENDED", and things like game streaming are a serious threat to the modding scene. This isn't just something being attacked by greedy corpos, gamers are actively hampering modding too by not caring about it enough to make it possible in many newer games.

System Shock 2 being an ancient game that was never very popular additionally contributes to it's obscurity, which is why I feel like the space is improving even more than mods for other games, because it's being worked on by people who actually care enough to be part of the community and aren't just casually hanging-around to gain clout within the space while doing nothing.

If you want to find anything interesting to be involved in nowadays, and you want to find areas of society that aren't declining, look at what society actively works against and tries to destroy. If everyone says something is bad repeatedly and never gives any tangible reasons why, chances are it's a dynamic and growing space that you should look into, you might find positive developments. If the community is small enough, you might even be able to gain a lot of respect for contributing because there will be very little competition, so one person can make a big difference, which feels extremely rewarding and will garner a lot of respect for you (genuine respect, not the "we need to respect the boss" kind of respect).

 

[manpaint]

I am very involved in the System Shock 2 modding community, and somewhat involved in modding communities for various other games. I have probably created and released over 30 mods for various games over the years, most focused around balance or adding in additional gameplay twists, since I am a programmer by trade and absolutely suck at making artwork. I won't list out what I have made because it will link other parts of my identity, which I don't want, but if you have played System Shock 2 recently, or intend to replay it soon, there's a reasonable likelyhood you have used or will use one of my mods, especially if you're a veteran player who knows the game like the back of their hand.

Almost all of the changes in the System Shock 2 space have been technical (engine upgrades, etc) and have all been largely positive. In 10 years we have gone from a small number of incompatible mods to a large number of mods that can all be used together without issue, and now with the right combination of mods you can have a reasonably well balanced game that fixes many of the balance and gameplay issues of the original release.

Game Modding in general is already something that the mainstream doesn't care about, and in fact I would argue the mainstream is actively trying to destroy game modding because it threatens the corporate bottom line (it actually HELPS the bottom line, but that's their opinion), which is why we are seeing less and less accessible and moddable engines, less games released with SDK support, and more and more companies cracking down on custom content or trying to legally claim ownership so they can monetise it. More gamers are shifting to the console mindset of "just play it the way the DEVELOPERS INTENDED", and things like game streaming are a serious threat to the modding scene. This isn't just something being attacked by greedy corpos, gamers are actively hampering modding too by not caring about it enough to make it possible in many newer games.

System Shock 2 being an ancient game that was never very popular additionally contributes to it's obscurity, which is why I feel like the space is improving even more than mods for other games, because it's being worked on by people who actually care enough to be part of the community and aren't just casually hanging-around to gain clout within the space while doing nothing.

If you want to find anything interesting to be involved in nowadays, and you want to find areas of society that aren't declining, look at what society actively works against and tries to destroy. If everyone says something is bad repeatedly and never gives any tangible reasons why, chances are it's a dynamic and growing space that you should look into, you might find positive developments. If the community is small enough, you might even be able to gain a lot of respect for contributing because there will be very little competition, so one person can make a big difference, which feels extremely rewarding and will garner a lot of respect for you (genuine respect, not the "we need to respect the boss" kind of respect).

I see. I have not played that game, but I recall seeing a video sometime ago that showed how daunting the (unmodded I presume) interface of the game was. If I am indeed thinking about the right game, this mean that this culture has many barrier of entry (the first one being already liking the game).

But yeah, this seem to align with my "effort requirement" theory. Even if System Shock 2 was popular among the mainstream, I doubt that most people would even bother enaging with modding community.

You mentionned obscurity and that was indeed something I did not immediately thought of. As many instance (including this forum) shows, the small communities tend to be healty.

Now all this modding talk made me curious about something. Minecraft is very pouplar game that has a very active community. I wonder how that community is as enganging directly in it obviously require some effort. Obviously a lot of normies download Minecraft mods, but that dosen't really count as an "interaction with the modding community" imo. I guess it might be large enough to be toxic, but I don't know.

I also realized that the community of people still playing MUDs and IF games also probably fit my original question and I suspect those communities have been mostly untouched too.

 

[InsufferableCynic]

Now all this modding talk made me curious about something. Minecraft is very pouplar game that has a very active community. I wonder how that community is as enganging directly in it obviously require some effort. Obviously a lot of normies download Minecraft mods, but that dosen't really count as an "interaction with the modding community" imo. I guess it might be large enough to be toxic, but I don't know.

It's absolutely "interaction" with the modding community. Make no mistake, the needs of normies are the driving force behind a lot of mods and shape the mod scene far more than the passionate developers do.

I can say with experience that it sucks to put hundreds of hours into a mod project to have 3 people download it. When everyone wants to download a particular type of mod, that's what will get made. People try to make all sorts of mods "for the love of the game", but the reality is that it's so hard to continually put in effort for so little recognition or gain, as it feels like you're yelling into the void. So a lot of mod makers stop completely, leaving only the "popular" ones, which shapes the community and as they are the only mods being actively developed, they determine the "identity" of the mod scene. It might sound shallow, but doing work for no tangible recognition seems to be an underlying demotivational factor in general, I don't blame any mod maker for stopping if they aren't getting anyone on board.

If you're a mod maker for Stalker, better make "hardcore" difficulty mods if you want to get ahead, nobody cares about anything else. If you're a mod maker for Doom, you better make a gore and "badass" gameplay mod if you want to get ahead. If you're a mod maker for Skyrim, you better either make a quest mod or a nudity/porn mod if you want to get ahead. Etc etc. Other people make other mods, but they are rare because it's so hard to actually make something people enjoy enough to justify continuing.

Unfortunately the modding scene is as fickle and prone to trends as the game industry proper, it's just not driven by money.

Being largely obscure is definitely to the benefit of certain came communities, because when every mod is getting 20 downloads, and when there's only a few to compete against, it becomes much more reasonable to create something you care about for the sake of the game, rather than the download count, without having to fight an uphill battle against all the "must have mods" while being overlooked.

As for your comment about System Shock 2, the interface really isn't that complicated. If you have played Bioshock or you played the SS1 remake (which I recommend, it's quite good despite what purists will tell you), then you are already very familiar with the interface of System Shock 2. Even if you haven't played these games, most modern games now operate in a similar fashion - standard FPS controls normally, then you press a button to "toggle" to a menu mode for managing inventory etc. System Shock 1 is the game with the really weird interface, but even then, the Enhanced edition largely modernises it to be similar - toggle mouselook mode which plays like any other FPS or interface mode where you have a cursor and can click and drag to interact with the world. The said, the enhanced edition is still a little clunky but in a charming way, I highly recommend checking it out because it's unlike anything else you will ever play and is the strangeness of the interface is actually beneficial in some ways as it makes the game feel more personal with how configurable everything is. If you haven't played either System Shock game, do so, they are both masterpieces, and I promise the small amount of effort to learn the interface (and in the case of SS2 to mod it for modern graphics and run ss2tool for modern PC support) is absolutely worth it for what are legendary experiences.

 

[mesaprotector]

Sure there are fans who are mostly into the community ("fandom") to buy figurines and w/e, but that wasn't my experience. Most people are into it to find friends, the same way 40-year-olds join hiking groups and 70-year-olds join bridge clubs. It's a lot less pathological and a lot more ordinary than some of you guys are making it out to be.

The first thing I had resembling a normal social life was after I starting seeking out Homestuck fan meetups in 2011. I was a teenager; most of the rest of us were teenagers; "merch" barely existed for the series at that point so everything was fanmade. You weren't gonna be buddies with everybody, but most people who stuck with the group eventually found a couple of good friends they stuck with after everything fell apart from drama in 2014. I doubt it's any different in the brony/furry/tabletop gaming scenes, except the political dogma is a bit different.

(I won't get into the political stuff except to say that maybe 20% of the group genuinely cared about identity politics, and the rest of us knew when to shut up. Well, most of the time. But that's how teenagers are.)

Game Modding in general is already something that the mainstream doesn't care about, and in fact I would argue the mainstream is actively trying to destroy game modding because it threatens the corporate bottom line (it actually HELPS the bottom line, but that's their opinion), which is why we are seeing less and less accessible and moddable engines, less games released with SDK support, and more and more companies cracking down on custom content or trying to legally claim ownership so they can monetise it. More gamers are shifting to the console mindset of "just play it the way the DEVELOPERS INTENDED", and things like game streaming are a serious threat to the modding scene. This isn't just something being attacked by greedy corpos, gamers are actively hampering modding too by not caring about it enough to make it possible in many newer games.

I imagine the "gaming as a service" model doesn't help much either. I'm not very familiar with modding but I know that for old VNs once someone finished a patch they could just leave it and it'd essentially keep working forever. Sometimes I wish video games were just released in one piece and never updated... not that I think we're ever going back to that.

If you want to find anything interesting to be involved in nowadays, and you want to find areas of society that aren't declining, look at what society actively works against and tries to destroy. If everyone says something is bad repeatedly and never gives any tangible reasons why, chances are it's a dynamic and growing space that you should look into, you might find positive developments. If the community is small enough, you might even be able to gain a lot of respect for contributing because there will be very little competition, so one person can make a big difference, which feels extremely rewarding and will garner a lot of respect for you (genuine respect, not the "we need to respect the boss" kind of respect).

So... about 10 years ago, that'd have been bronies and furries? It's a fine line though, because once a community gets too small it's both lonely and a lot of work to try to keep interest alive. The first forum I ever joined on the internet was for a flash game. I built the wiki almost by myself. Once that was done and once about half the (very few) forum regulars had fucked off somewhere I stopped caring about the community, even though the forum might still exist with a group of people I've never talked to on it.

 

[manpaint]

It's absolutely "interaction" with the modding community. Make no mistake, the needs of normies are the driving force behind a lot of mods and shape the mod scene far more than the passionate developers do.

(...)

I see. Yeah you got a point that people generally need some kind of reward for their work. Hmm, I wonder if there is any tech hobby where sucess is not an easily quantifiable metric? Granted I suposse you could argue that people would just make up their own metrics. People really want signals I suposse.