Why Are Gamespots Comments Section/Forums So Terrible?

Maybe It's just me, but everytime I look at GS comments and forums I kind of throw up a bit in my mouth. It seems like it's just a bunch of people who have verbal diarrhea and don't have any respect for others.

Its nice to come to GB where people can have an actual discussion without any bullying or name calling :D

Anyone else feel this way?

It's the third result in a google search for the term "video games". All it takes is one bad apple to make the whole bunch think it's okay to go rotten, and the popularity of the site being what it is is bound to attract at least one or two bad apples.

Human Nature, ya'll.

A part of it has to do with the number of users on their site. Gamespot has nearly 5 times as many unique monthly users as Giantbomb does. More people will likely lead to more of a clusterfluck within the comments sections.

Comment sections on any major site are like that.

Seems like this question is asked a lot lol. I stopped going there altogether a few years ago the user base is just typical "Why did this game get this but this game got that! payoffs!" My guess is the average age is still in gradeschool.

Because their audience is much bigger and they're more lenient on what types of messages they moderate. Some of their news articles also attracts vitriolic discussion.

I think they tried to address it by hiding the comment section behind a button. The idea is that people don't see a toxic comment while reading an article and deciding to fire back with their own toxic.

This is at best tangentialy related, but I just recently noticed that there are popularity spikes on some gb qls that will have 10 times the views of their average qls on youtube (270k vs 20-30k). And that extends to the comments sections, where you get to read things like "stick to playing minecraft and shit like that" or "shut the fuck up both of you and let us hear the god damn game", which is hard to imagine anyone with even just passing knowledge of the gb crew and the kind of content they create would write about them. That was on the ufc2 ql, by the way, so I guess big name games drive odd traffic their way on youtube, and with that far less bearable commenters.

To bring this completely off-topic rambling back on track, I'd guess gamespot is maybe also more the target of average bro-dude gamers and that probably shows in the comments there just like on youtube?

They've spent a very long time cultivating that following. You know how these forums don't tolerate people being jerks and actively discourage petty console war arguments? Well, the Gamespot forums have for years had an officially sanctioned subforum specifically designed to allow people to argue over platform allegiances. Every fan group has their own official label within those boards, and they argue with each other nonstop and keep score of the coveted system wars by tallying gamespot review scores. It's a cesspool of total garbage that just so happens to be the most popular board on the site.

The whole Twilight Princess 8.8 uproar back in the day was actually directly linked the system wars board. Scores of 9 and up are worth the most points, and since that game was expected to get a 9 and didn't, it was considered a "flop" (yes, a multimillion seller with a mid 90s metacritic was considered a flop simply because Jeff didn't enjoy it as much as other critics).

So yeah, when you have total inanity like this which actively encourages hostility and pretty arguments as the cornerstone of the site's discourse, it's not too shocking that the community that's built up around it is horrifying.

The better question is why do I intermittently decide to look at them, knowing full well that they'll only make me angry. Every few weeks, I feel tempted, and always regret it. Every single time.

I honestly feel bad for the guys that work there, who are a good bunch, that all their efforts and talent are basically wasted on that userbase.

Depends on the number of people vs. the number of mods, plus acceptable community norms.

Even GB at this point can get overwhelmed a little when something controversial shows up, and you wind up with Rorie and the mods staying up til like 2 am cleaning this stuff up. But there are a handful of new posts each day here, whereas a site like IGN is posting a hundred things a day, plus the forums, and the sheer volume must be overwhelming (granted, I don't know the size of their mod teams).

IGN used to be a little more lenient with stuff, so videos with Jessica Chobot or Naomi Kyle were always such shitshows. I think at one point they tried getting a little more strict, but who knows if that's worked out or not. And 15 years ago on Gamefaqs, there were so many little communities for each game that you'd wind up with people jumping in going "this game sucks and so do all of you *flame shield* up" and no one really policed it due to so many different locations of stuff. When I was younger, I didn't mind seeing that stuff but it eventually got to be too much.

Giant Bomb has the forum tab where everything shows up, and the activity is such that every single post gets seen by a mod at some point. And there are a handful of videos a day (or less) so sneaking in some garbage can be tough if that's your goal. So eventually I lurked around here, thought the comments and forums were kind of ok, and I've been here ever since.

I use a chrome extension to hide youtube comments. I'm serious when I say its improved my general mood when on the internet.

Long time listener, first time caller here.

This is something thats been getting to me more and more recently. Gamespot comment sections have been a mess that I've tried to avoid for the past two years or so, but especially the last couple of days with all that nastiness thrown Patricks way on his Twitter (which I know others have mentioned, but seriously. Urgh, that stuff was vile) makes me really question where I'm at when it comes to the internet, videogames and the people that use it/play them. that stuff got to me in a way that "It's the internet, it's a shitshow" couldn't really fix.

And then I see a post like this, and its helped restore a little faith in people. This community has always seemed rad, and to see people knowing when something, even less serious such as just general crappiness on Gamespot forums, is shitty and not what we want here, is really great to see.

Sorry, I don't really have much to add, but seeing people know what's bullshit has made me feel good about the video game community in a way i was worried I was going to lose.

Giant Bomb... A beacon of hope in a sea of craziness :)

Do they have any moderation in place?

Because there is a staggering amount of vocal video game fans out there who seem literally incapable of anything remotely relating to empathy and grasping the mere concepts of opinions. Sure, there are a staggering amount of people in general who fit that bill, but if you ask me, video game fans seem the most eager to display that on such a regular basis.

Gamespot is not alone though. IGN gets way more than it's fair amount of shit on a regular basis. And have you seen reddit threads in r/gaming and r/games? Oh, and don't even get me started on Youtube comments.

I think once that kind of culture and tone gets established it is supremely difficult to undo, especially in large communities. Maybe impossible. You can kick everyone out who is being nasty or mean spirited, but that doesn't mean productive people will come back. And perhaps just as importantly that kind of rep is so hard to shake once a place has it, whether that's fair or not.

Look at League of Legends, I'm not sure sure I've ever seen a company try harder to fix a toxic player base than Riot and I'd say the average player still considers MOBAs the most toxic online multiplayer community out there. DOTA 2 and LoL seem light years better to me in civility than they have ever been, doesn't seem to matter.

GB probably really benefited in that regard from the reboot after the exodus from GS. Got to start with a clean slate and fresh reputation.

This is a hard problem. I'm not sure GS has the time, manpower or resources to handle it. And even if they did I'm not sure fixing it would benefit them much at all. GS is still a more or less old school early Web 2.0 ad model site completely dependent on traffic, they don't really care who it is or where it's from, just as long as it's an impression not using Adblock.

The reason it makes sense here financially I bet is because of the subscriber base, it's more important here to maintain a positive environment. To keep regulars coming back and to make sure they have a good experience while they are here so that they do.

I think its because it's mostly a flood of people checking up on gaming news and not a smaller community of repeat posters such as this one. I see a lot of the same avatars and names here and I get a sense of users' personalities without even directly interacting with them. That builds a sense of community that you can't get at an IGN or gamespot, and I think this all stems from the fact that Giantbomb itself is a personality driven website, and not some cold news outlet. I wouldn't want to be a dick here because I wouldn't want to disappoint papa vinny.

People will argue over anything, they would here as well if it weren't for harsh moderation.

Gamespot has always been that way. Do they still have the system wars forum or whatever they called it back in the day? Basically Gamespot is now what Neogaf was before they closed memberships and started verifying people.

Any time I read the user comments on a Gamespot review, 90% of them seen like they were written by individuals who don't understand the concept of subjectivity. I dunno if they're all just 13 or what, but they weren't much better than when I was 13 and lurked on Gamespot's comments like a decade ago.

I actually almost miss terrible posts, in a battered housewife kind of way where I have a jaded, sadomasochistic/Stockholm syndrome-like appreciation for the bullshit I've both bared witness to and endured over the years. ...not enough to ever get into game design since the internet at large makes it seem like an extremely thankless job, but enough to where a bunch of posts saying "Come at me, bro!" and other memes are bittersweet.

Yeeeah that sounds about right.... Ah the good 'ol days!

You don't want papa Vinny to start counting. You REALLY don't want him to get to 3.

Well they benefit in some way from controversial forums and comments. People returning to argue about stuff are returning ad viewers. There is a fine line to balance between addictive controversy that brings people back and toxic controversy that keeps people away. I'm not suggesting Gamespot is going "lets give it a 5/10 lol that'll bring the morons", but controversy is interesting and interesting keeps people employed.

While we are bad mouthing gaming forums I'd like to note the escapist was a bit of a cesspit when I stopped posting there. I think Yahtzee is a talented, thoughtful individual, but he seems to attract know-it-alls who enjoy feeling smugly superior in their refined tastes. This was several years ago, I can't really comment on the state of the forums now. Perhaps it has mellowed out a bit.

The Carolyn Petit GTA fiasco really shone an ugly light on the GS commentariat. GS's community may be worse than IGN's, though it's been awhile since I've hung around either of those sites.

One interesting tidbit is that Gamespot has about five times as many moderators as Giant Bomb does. You'd never guess that based on the quality of their article comments and System Wars, but they're out there. Somewhere.

I was about to come in and say "It all comes down to the moderators" but damn that is just sad.

@trilogy: what happens at three??? :O

I miss the days when shit posting was easily recognized on the internet and everything wasn't taken so damn serious lol

Send a sane man into System Wars, and System Wars will spit back out a savage

Papa Vinny says the "C" word. He has a...uhh... history of that....

@wolfgame: I can understand that but I think calling someone a f***ing F** just because they dont like something is a step too far O.o there really isn't a reason for all the negativity.

Maybe it's cause i've experienced homophobia my whole life im a little more sensitive to that than others. I just don't see a reason for it. -_-

Because internet.

It has far from mellowed, but their moderators do a good job at keeping things calm, especially for the amount of freedom they allow the conversation there. They made the decision to allow discussion of certain hashtag movements in the gaming world, which is a large difference between the "this causes too much fighting, so we're closing these topics" approach of most forums, or the "agree with our opinions or we will ban you, even if you're being respectful" of NeoGAF.

Of course, the escpaist sub-forum that allows those topics can be pretty unpleasant, and usually consists of straw-man arguments and generalizations from all sides of the discussion. Outside of that, and their religion / politics forum, they're pretty civil.

The thing I like most about their modding system is when you come across a banned user, every one of their posts will have a link to the post that caused them to be banned or suspended. You get a good idea pretty quickly what is and what isn't allowed on that forum.

But while I do respect them for allowing difficult discussions, I still much prefer Giant Bomb. I've only been a member of a couple other forums that were more respectful and polite than people are at Giant Bomb, and they were MUCH smaller communities.

The cynic in me suspects that the reason some sites are happy to let their forums run riot is because they've very carefully sat down and looked at the numbers and figured out that, actually, the system wars threads generate 10 times as much traffic as the rest of the forums combined. Or maybe they just don't give a fuck?

The bigger the site, the shittier the comments. There's no incentive to filter out the trash. People clicking on an article just to say "I don't get why people like [article topic]" or to say "lol 720p" are earning them money. There's more money to be made by having a shitty comments section, especially with these mega sites like GS and IGN. That's my guess anyway. They're not encouraging it, but not discouraging it either.

Agreed, but I'd argue that it's because it's very difficult to moderate that amount of people, too. You can't just throw more moderators at the problem and hope that works. You need someone to manage them, and you need them to work together and manage each other, often spread across multiple different time zones. Unless you've got someone like Rorie who has their shit together, that's a lot more complicated than it sounds. For the amount of moderators you'd need to effectively manage gamespot to the standard we have here, you'd need maybe 100 mods, and you'd need them to all be in the loop and on the same page at all times. You'd need mods just to moderate the moderators - effectively "officers" who relay orders from the community manager, and each manage a pod (of mods). That's a full time job, and people would be expected to do it for free? You'd be hard pressed to find anyone willing, let alone experienced enough to jump straight into it. Anyway, I'm not saying it's impossible, but you'd need to basically throw away the current system and start building a new moderation hierarchy from scratch, with new rules and a new flagging system. You'd also need to make some pretty public examples until the "core" userbase got the message, and you'd need to be prepared to see your numbers drop significantly as people slowly adapt to the new way of thinking. It would be a large undertaking and just thinking about it makes me exhausted.

Anyway, it's all of little consequence what I think because by allowing their system wars threads to exists they're basically saying they're not interested in enforcing our kind of rules in the first place. Would be interesting to see what happens as a social experiment, though. I don't think any site has so dramatically tried to turn around their community before.

I don't think it's a question of size of the site or number of mods, but the quality of moderation and the right amount of "social engineering" applied to the forum. Take Something Awful for example, which might be about the longest running super popular message forum around. As I'm posting this, there are about 4400 users logged ontot he forums at the moment. Already today (at 9:16 a.m. EST) there have been five users put on probation. Yesterday, there were 22 users put on probation and one user banned. Something Awful is fairly ruthlessly moderated despite being a site born on snarky humor. But everyone who posts there knows the deal because that is the culture fostered there.

And even with that said, some forums on SA have suffered either presently or in the past from bad moderation. But the point is people pay money for a forum account because they want the type of moderated conversation found there.

Sites like IGN and Gamespot are more about public appeal and want to maximize site traffic. Every discussion forum, whether it be a board or a chatroom or what not, goes for something different, and Gamespot reflects that model. I hesitate to call Gamespot's modern incarnation "click baity" because that conveys a negative connotation, but that's what a large section of the site goes for (though the review side is more personality-based). Hence the comment sections become about which group can scream the loudest and the most often.They could tell the mods at any time to start policing certain behavior, but the thousands of potential lost clicks by people needing to remind you over and over that such and such a score doesn't match what they were expecting would hurt their business model. Gamefaqs does similar, and its message forums are even worse.

I just hopped over there to check it out. I have no idea what you're talking about. The comments are incredible.

The only time I look at GS and IGN comment sections is when I'm already having a bad day. The logic being that the day can't get much worse than it already is. They usually prove me wrong...

Go to the Steam forums if you really want to see the dregs of humanity.

@planetfunksquad: Thank you for this

Although many sites' (Youtube!) comments sections are so full of children, and ignorance/vitriol, that they become useless - I also like the freedom of being able to have a debate, make jokes, etc as well - which we used to have on GB. Since CBSi, it's become more policed than a pre-school playground, many times to the detriment of honest/open conversation.

sounds like a poor example, i've seen people make those comments on gamespot and once flagged they were removed. An argument could be made that due to the number of boards gamespot has to manage they aren't as fast as GB mods in removing offensive content, but aside from that difference their isn't that much that is different between gamespot and giant bomb boards.

How much are those comment sections moderated? I feel like aggressive modding is part of what keeps Giant Bomb comments on the up and up most of the time (thank you mods!)

Maybe when you are Gamespot and going for as many eyeballs as you can get on their website, maybe they don't want potentially drive users away by heavy moderation of comments? I feel you have to be really aggressive because of how stubborn some jerks can be. And everyone has a different opinion of what is beyond the pale and what isn't. Honestly, keeping those comment sections in line sound like a shit ton of work, and I wouldn't be surprised if Gamespot just doesn't want to try.

Seriously, thank you mods (@sweep , @mike , many others!) for the work you do to keep this community as it is here. Culture is one of the hardest things to establish and control in a business, and doing it on a website seems beyond imposing to me, so credit to all of your team's hard work on maintaining what this site and community stands for, and for keeping it refreshingly different from certain other sites.

Beyond that, though, the tightness of the community to the point of recognizing and connecting each other I think is one of the key factors. I see many of you in chat on the live streams, the chat on Jeff's Mixlr. I'm friends with many more of you on Steam and Origin. I think the recognizable nature of having a community like this is really important, because it is in direct opposition to the typical internet reflex of seeing a person's opinion and attacking or shouting it down. Actual conversation happens in a community where you know there are good people behind each Avatar and username, and it seems like that would not be possible in the manic traffic of bigger sites like GS and IGN.

That's what I think, we all shun what if not know to us. I'm sure people from other websites come here and belch at what we say.

I guess I'll be the stick in the mud that points out the irony of comments in here noting that other forums endorse certain "Us versus Them" mentalities when this very thread is just a circle jerk of people heralding how much better their preferred forum is versus others.

what do you mean? it's a paradise here where everyone is nice, moderation is always fair, and there are no garbage posts! Clean and clear and under control is the GB motto!