I know this is human nature and this is nothing new. It’s absolutely impossible to make something that everyone is happy with, but what’s the need to be so destructive?
I recently finished The Callisto Protocol and in my opinion it’s a great game but I remember people saying that “The game was so bad that they (Krafton) had to give it away (PS Plus) for someone to play it”.
Oddly enough I probably like to contradict most people because another game I’m interested in playing is Immortals of Aveum and when I read one or another review people say that “It’s just another generic dead game, like those generic trash Netflix series”, I mean, is it really necessary to be so destructive? And I want to clarify, I don’t give a shit what people say, if I like a game and I enjoy it I don’t mind paying full price for it, and if I don’t like it, I just don’t do destructive reviews.
What I least understand about the gaming community and what I find most toxic is when they criticize others for playing something they like, like the phenomenon of criticizing Genshin Impact players or in the past the same with Minecraft. Do I commit a sin by playing something I like?
It’s important to keep in mind that the internet is big.
Before the internet, we could not hear the opinions of people except the ones closest around us plus whatever got exposed through the news. Which in turn is vetted and filtered, partially to remove extreme choice of words and professionalize it.
However now everyone is on the internet, and there’s a whole lot of humans around ([citation needed], obvs 😅). It’s not difficult to find a handful that would review Callisto Protocol in a toxic manner. It’s not difficult to find an ex-president that condones an insurrection while trying to steal federal secret documents, either. Given enough people to look at, you will always be able to find a few that do X or think Y. Now if you then again filter your view down to a myopic but selective enough choice, you will be able to include those people, making the context seem very extreme.
Ask yourself this: Of the people in your immediate IRL surroundings, how many have strong negative feelings about Callisto Protocol? (I bet most don’t have any opinion, and most don’t even game?) But if you select just people who played it, who had opinions on it, and then strong enough ones to write a review, of course you’ll find a lot of toxic opinions.
(edit)
And of course in this case it adds that the Callisto Protocol is genuinely bad, and just about everyone agrees. That doesn’t mean people won’t enjoy it (as you do), but anyone already negatively inclined will feel far more able to post aggressive words about it, fearing retaliation less.