Adam Jackson, who is well known in the Diablo community as the Lead Class Designer for Diablo 4, took to Reddit earlier today to respond to some of the chatter going around about Season 4.
He, along with Diablo 4 Associate Game Director Joe Piepiora, have appeared in some YouTube interviews over the past week, which were hosted by a handful of Diablo partners. Both of these Devs did a fine job of providing thorough, and even somewhat exhaustive, answers to questions that were broad, intensive, and highly technical in nature. The feedback following the interviews has been generally positive, and the Diablo community at large seems appreciative of the effort they made.
Alrighty then, so, nothing else to see here, right? Well, not so fast. Let’s not forget that there’s always something dark still lurking down in your mom’s basement. Ever since the early days of MMOs, there’ve been groups of guys huddled together in back rooms in Southeast Asia whose job has been to farm Gold for resale to other players. Gold Farming may not be as lucrative today as it once was, but now there’s another way to hack your way into making some good money, and it’s called Hate Farming. In fact, back in October of last year, PureDiablo published an article, Will Diablo 4 Rise from the Smoldering Ashes?, that addressed this very issue.
As soon as the Dev interview videos get published, or the Campfire Chat recaps get posted, the Hate Farmers get right to work picking apart the content and twisting it on its head. Earlier today, a Redditor posted some comments about how he’s “Fed up with [the] hate farming content on YouTube.” On one hand I’d say that responding to the vitriol only serves to feed the beast. At the same time, pushing back can also be a good thing if it helps to properly put things in perspective for the Diablo community as a whole.
In any case, Adam Jackson unexpectedly, but thankfully👏 , replied to the post, saying how he appreciated folks taking the time to express their support. He then elaborated further on his goals for the communication process:
“As I said at the end of my last interview, my personal goal is for us to have better conversations with more thought and empathy behind them. I think we all enjoy games more when we better understand how they’re made. It’s a very cool thing to be able to play the amazing, wonderous games that have come out in recent years and to be able to see and understand the roadblocks and tradeoffs that those developers went through to create the art that they did.”
Adam also took the opportunity to specifically address the issue of the runaway rage hate bandwagon:
“It’s not a secret that a lot of online discourse isn’t great. A personal pet peeve of mine is when people take small quotes or parts of conversations out of context and run away with them.
We are often put on the spot and have very little time to discuss complicated topics so it’s hard enough to do justice to many things we cover, let alone to do it in such a way where things can’t be taken out of context. It’s just the way things are for now though, and it’s up to the individual to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to consuming content online.
Threads like this give me hope that as it becomes more of a problem that people openly talk about, we get better at separating rage bait from real intellectual discussion about differences of opinion.”
Adam had a good deal more to day on the subject, and you can read the full text of his reply HERE.
My Two Gold Pieces
In the meantime, just keep the faith and keep pushing back against the hate farming meta. I’m talking about the “reaction” videos on YouTube with thumbnail images showing the host with his mouth hanging open and his eyes bugged out 😮 (seriously?). Either that, or the thumbnail shows him with his head bowed down while covering his face with his hand. 🫣 Virtually all the well known Diablo content creators on YouTube are guilty of doing the emoji thing to get clicks. Even some elite Diablo partners produce videos like this from time to time (you know you do, guys).
Anybody who posts that kind of video is just cherry-picking tiny bits of nasty cheese because they still need your clicks even though they’ve got nothing worthwhile to share. Nevertheless, those content creators continue to make lots of money by producing one rage hate porn video after another. Don’t fall for the “I can’t stand playing this game anymore so I’m leaving Diablo” videos either. If I had a dollar for every time Cousin Itt posted one of those videos, I’d be a wealthy man. There’s absolutely no reason for us to waste time on junk commentary like that because there’s always plenty of Diablo content available online that’s actually good.
See You Next Time
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Gazerrick is a staff writer for PureDiablo who focuses primarily on casual gaming interests and lore for the Diablo community. When not hacking and slashing his way through a new Season, he can be found participating in, and presenting at, various pop culture conventions in southern Arizona. You can follow him on Twitter @Gazerrick9000 for even more of his gaming indulgences. A collection of his creative media is also available at Cactus Palm Perspectives.
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