Does everyone just think they can make a living playing games? Trying to search for Diablo 4 info gets you nothing but mountains of useless clickbait youtube videos. Gotta waste my time jumping thru the video just to find out the guy is dumber about the game than I am.
Like I get it, YouTube is the only place you can monetize your “game knowledge”, but still… Why are there are only like two sites with build guides and info? And those two sites don’t even have community builds, its just a couple guides written by some l33t dude we are suppose to trust. Why is there no useful discussion forums, discords, or at least something not in video format? If people care about becoming gaming influencers so much why can’t we at least come out with a new monetization platform that doesn’t suck and has a dislike button.
Anyone else sharing my rage?
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 it 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.
There are multiple factors. Some people are trying to get something for nothing, ofc. Like you also said elsewhere here,
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.
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.