Bodybuilding.com misc & 4chan are super toxic communities.
I look back at my teenage years and realised how hazardous they are to mental health. My curiousity & engagement on those communities was limited to infrequent lurking.
I now understand why alt-right/q anon movement popped up so quickly.
A big issue with these boards is that the ownership can't overmod because these communities are a big drawcard, even if they're financial negatives.
Interestingly, I recently read an article regarding the gaming in China.
Most video games were accessed pirated, with hacks built into the install. Not saying this is the case with PUBG, but it can explain why there is a higher distribution of hackers in some video games (namely CS Source).
- Grand Theft Auto V had the 2nd highest amount of total reviews
- There 927 total negative reviews gathered (from clusters containing 193+173+164+130+124+31+113 negative reviews)
- There were 243 positive reviews (from clusters containing 54+43+27+22+15+58+24 positive reviews.)
- This gives it a rough ratio of 3.8 negative reviews for every 1 positive review. This was the largest amount in the dataset.
- A large number of complaints revolved around banning. Whether it was a general complaint on bans, unfair banning or the ban appeal.
- A large number of reviews were orientated around general mods references or specific mods. Words that came up were related around “mods” “modding” “openiv”
- Certain missions, vehicles, or purchases were mentioned such as “Royale” & “Alpha”
- There was a less quantity of negative reviews regarding hackers.
- There were a less quantity of negative reviews relating to microtransactions with specific mentions of “rockstar”, “greedy”, “gtx”, “currency”, “pay”, “paying” “overpriced”
Rocket League
- Rocket League had a total of 517 recommended reviews (in clusters of 49+351+117 ) to 10 not-recommended reviews (in clusters of 3+6+1).
- The largest cluster of reviews made specific references to “addictive” “addiction” “fun” as qualities of the gameplay.
- Many positive mentions of the game being “entertaining”, “fun” & “enjoyable”
Rust
- Rust had a distribution of 569 recommended reviews (from clusters of 64+323+182)
- It had a not recommended reviews of 103 not recommend reviews (from clusters of 34+52+17)
- Many references were made mentioning “cancer” with regards to the game itself or the community.
- Other references included “gaming” “gameplay” “ammo” “community” “Gamers” “ultimate” “simulator”
- This game received many mentions of other games including “skyrim”, “fortnight”, “battlefield”, “minecraft”
- Specific items or gameplay mechanics were mentioned like “Death” “health” “dying” “war” “toxic” “survival” “pain” “fire” “build” “nake” “run” “kills” “looting” “gunplay” “spawns”
Overall positive recommended reviews
- 378 recommended reviews skewed towards co-operative video games.
- The most positive and popular recommendations (within two clusters of 351 & 323 reviews) specifically referenced the video games gameplay.
- 129 positive reviews were made making general mentions of the video game as being fun to play (a large portion of these making specific reference to Rocket League)
The negative sentiment reviews gave much meatier insights though.
Overall negative sentiment reviews
- 204 negative reviews that were made in relation to bad game play or poor game play quality.
- In 193 reviews, users complained about being banned by Steam.
- 173 negative reviews were made with reference to “mods”. These reviews were related to mods causing bugs that made their game crash or become unstable.
- 159 users complained about experiencing lag and latency issues within multiplayer video games.
- 153 negative reviews blamed games for crashing and glitching that rendered them unplayable or disruptive.
- In two different clusters that contained 147 & 142 each, negative reviews were posted, voicing complaints regarding hackers, which is common in online multiplayer games.
If I had my time again, I would...
- Like to spend more time mining for insights
- Work on updating or scraping my own dataset with a larger and more updated dataset.
- Track which game developers as well as video games had the highest amount of negative reviews, positive reviews and positive to negative review ratios.
- Begin to visualise each genre of video game, their review totals, and negative to positive review ratios.
- Map out repeatable criticisms or issues with larger marquee games, over a wider & more up to date dataset. (i.e Specific mentions of Fortnite Skins being too expensive, or negative sentiment with reference to GTA V Shark Cards)
My earliest memories of the internet were back in 2005. I still remember the long bus ride and walk to the nearest shopping centre to purchase a phone line cable from Dick Smith Electronics in Northland as my modem didn't have the right connector for our units old phone lines.
My mum saved every dollar from my early birthdays and when she explained this to 14 year old, I hounded her to purchase a computer for me.
Thankfully she did, and I remember going through the arduous process of getting the internet credentials, loading the modems driver, the ISP connector and needing to manually connect to the net, then pulling up my first website playboy.com haha
From here, I returned back from the library with a bundle of HTML and web development books (mostly the dummies series) and drafted my first tests into notepad, then opened the saved files into the early Mozilla versions to see it in all its glory.
From here, the first mention of World of Warcraft was amongst my high school friends, who were big Warcraft 3 players. We all made a pact to purchase the game and begin playing it together.
I played on the Gilneas realm with my school friends, and whilst they rolled Alliance, I somehow decided to go with horde and rolled a Hunter called Rover.
Over the months, I leveled up super slowly and fell in with a guild of RL friends who graciously allowed an Aussie teen to come on board. They were my first community I ever fell into and took me into instances, enchanted my armor and weapons, helped me tame rare and exotic pets.
My real end game raiding happened on the WoW forums where I was an infamous troll on there and interacted with a lot of server personalities. A lot of people knew me, and it was a love hate relationship most players had with me. I was targeted a ton in PVP and god knows I probably deserved a lot of the griefing thrown my way. Never trust young testosterone fueled teenagers with anonymity.
I famously skipped two weeks of school just to play it. Such was my love and addiction for it.
All in all, WoW was my first taste of interacting with adults in a serious and meaningful way. I learned to:
- Code in XML
- Use Windows in a much more advanced manner by trying to hack
- Understanding how to make strategic choices with gear
- Learning teamwork in instances and raids
- Got my first dollar online by farming gold and selling it
- Got my first job online freelancing as a video game reviewer just to pay for my WoW subscription (which led me to a lucrative career in Digital Marketing. 14 years later, I'm Head of Marketing at startup).
I owe so much to this video game. It had given a young child from a poor, single parent household a lot of hours of escapism, plus developed crucial tools and skills that I translated into a professional career which aided in my ability to rise out of my social predicament.
I'll never forget the magic of opening up the discs, the smell of the packaging and waiting hours for it to download & patch to play.
You can never talk about World of Warcraft to me without bringing up the bittersweet pangings of nostalgia for a time that will never be re-created.
I have forgotten the names and usernames of so many online friends who I spent an incredible amount of time with, but I will never forget how they made me feel and the overall memories of the game.
Title gore aside, I was talking to a colleague and jokingly asked if he ever had dreams or lucid dreams where he sees code or develops with it in the dream, and his response was "yes all the time".
Now I'm curious to find out if this is a common thing?
Yes but Wikipedia isn't translating their own content to Portuguese as an authorised sub-domain.
Their volunteers are doing so, and will also include additional or completely different content that the English version doesn't have (especially so if the subject/topic/article is more relevant in Portugal/Brazil).
It would be like if YCombinator bought a new website called PortugueseWikipediainSpanish.cc and started to scrape all of https://pt.wikipedia.org/ then auto translated it into Spanish with no authorised CC licensing.
Not only is it Blackhat SEO, it's also plagiarism and unethical.
From a Digital Marketer who has worked with search engines since 2007, and can remember using Google as a primary student in 1998/1999, Google has made some incredible leaps....
Their search results however are getting worse, whilst also being exploitative. I'm a big believer in an open, free internet, but ripping off content to display on the home page isn't justifiable except for a monopoly, wanting to consolidate as many impressions onto their ad laden serps.
Google Flights imo was the start of Google's greed in unfairly competing against content platforms & aggregators. Pretty big conflict of interest there.
They're really stuck with Google Ads and dependent on it for a lot of their revenue. This will only get worse.
Work from home. I can't describe how much better my life is doing remote work full time.
I actually have the ability to exercise, cook wholesome meals, spend time with my girlfriend and invest the time spent travelling into hobbies / businesses /
Never again will I be in an office. It's a hard limit for me now.
I would argue that ideation aside, the person responsible for executing said idea needs to have a clear motivation & reward for taking up ownership of actioning it.
Brainstorming might be a throwback term, but it works.
If a business takes a performance hit, perhaps their talent acquisition, organisation, process flows and leadership are sub par?
Don't believe me? Wait till you lose your best performers because you want them in an office. There's a bigger performance hit you'll take there, along with staff who are demoralised and stressed out with one eye open on the job's market, trying to drop kids off or whatever else they need the flexibility for.
Remember my post as a warning the next time you espouse this view, because it's inaccurate and it isn't valid in every single case.
Pigcat, if you ever need advice for marketing ideas, feel free to pm me. I have a 14 year marketing career under my belt spanning growth & inbound for B2B/B2C/D2C businesses.
I know exactly what it's be unable to come up with the ideas that stick in putting your product in front of a receptive audience of buyers. Especially in this day and age, where it can feel hard to find the confidence or angle for an organic non-spammy message.
My side business that I work on outside of business hours is my lifelong passion in filmmaking & photography, although I have done more livestream production as well.
My video/photo/livestream production company produces roughly $6 to $12k per month in revenue at a profit of 40 to 60% depending on the type of work and whether I shoot it myself.
Estimate that 60% of work that I quote are projects that I shoot myself. The other 40% I produce the jobs and have contractors work on them.
I've recently shot for a Fox Studios documentary that has spanned pre-COVID to next year, which is a real highlight for me. I also happened to shoot for the broadcast team at the first music festival in Australia since COVID hit.
Now for NYE, I'll be shooting the promo videos for a large music festival which is an awesome way to spend the holiday season, getting paid to party.
I really love my job and I'm grateful for all the opportunities that it brings me, whilst being able to sustain myself with a full time career in tech.
There is a difference though as those platforms have larger moderation resources though.