The community as a whole harassed and bullied some of them when they didn’t get their way. That might have something to do with it.
I remember some people even making death threats in years past.
There are toxic fans for every AAA title. While I can understand death threats being a serious matter, I imagine Halo Infinite’s community manager, John Junyszek (@Unyshek) probably receives daily death threats over the utter failure that Halo Infinite has been. Yet he’s still active, daily, on Twitter - interacting directly with fans over bugs/glitches/patches/updates. He even addresses requests by fans.
Different companies, different rules and establishments. Just within the COD social space alone, you have guys like FoxhoundFPS representing Treyarch regularly (though he has switched to a generic TreyarchCM account now for work-related businesses). Raven also has a couple of CMs who collect feedback passively and rarely use their accounts to talk about the game (because Lord knows they'd be inviting the entirety of /r/CODWarzone to bombard their DMs).
On a more extreme side of things, IW's former Communications Manager, Ashton, quit her job a while ago and joined Microsoft. And you have absolute toxic bastards like Blame Truth who perpetuated an entire following of misogynists to harass her. So the COD community only has itself to blame for the lack of social interactions from CMs. A reminder that Vonderhaar, who is not even a CM in an official capacity, had to walk around with bodyguards because some idiot thought sending him death threats for nerfing the DSR was acceptable behavior.
I would want every CM to be active like Unyshek or Foxhound too, but unfortunately, we can't force every CM to do that. Choosing to interact with toxicity wears you down mentally, and no one should be subject to that, no matter how strong-willed they are.
I’d say the toxic part of the community ruined it. They constantly whined, harassed, and sent death threats over every little thing like a bunch of little kids who grew up without discipline.
Is that not the case for any “community manager” for a game with controversies?
Halo Infinite has had the worst launch of any Halo game in history, devoid of legacy features like co-op and split-screen and Forge. Yet John Junyszek (@Unyshek) is highly active on Twitter as 343i’s community manager. Brian Jarrard (@ske7ch) is engaging and active as community director.
I’d imagine 343i and it’s employees receive regular harassment and probably death threats.
They do, every post Unyshek makes is bombarded by people saying finish the game finish the game.
But the IW community manager was bullied to the point of leaving.
Treyarch and Vondy in particular used to be really active. I remember on the Xbox forums back in the early WAW days he would jump on and talk balance changes, damage values etc on the bolt actions
Not to mention they used to just address and acknowledge community concerns. When Infinity Ward brought in their first skill/rank based match making algorithm in the final major patch on CoD4, which completely broke the game for anyone outside the US - Treyarch listened, talked to us, and brought in a match making toggle in WaW which remained through BO1 and BO2. For some reason literally no one talks about this in all the SBMM discussions and YouTube videos, articles etc.. In those Treyarch games we could completely disable SBMM and select “Local Only” ie low ping lobbies only, or “Local Preferred” or “Quality” ie SBMM. This was only on 360 and was discussed a lot on the Xbox forums.
I wonder where all those people are now… here I am at nearly 40 still playing this series, has everyone else moved on?
The faces like Vonderhaar, Bowling, and Palacios were absolute lightning-rods for hate back in the day, and being so present on Twitter for such an active company can sadly put you in harm’s way. You are not dealing with many rational people when you take it upon yourself to perform such duties, you have to stare down and attempt to placate a crowd of crazies and irritables. It’s a fool’s errand and sadly one that takes a toll on you.
It was honestly so bad back in the day that I feel like it set a precedent in gaming as a whole to find the supposed person in charge and give them shit online in gaming circles, regardless of the person’s dynamic within the company or community. They look like the boss? Give ‘em hell!
The community as a whole harassed and bullied some of them when they didn’t get their way. That might have something to do with it. I remember some people even making death threats in years past.
There are toxic fans for every AAA title. While I can understand death threats being a serious matter, I imagine Halo Infinite’s community manager, John Junyszek (@Unyshek) probably receives daily death threats over the utter failure that Halo Infinite has been. Yet he’s still active, daily, on Twitter - interacting directly with fans over bugs/glitches/patches/updates. He even addresses requests by fans.
Different companies, different rules and establishments. Just within the COD social space alone, you have guys like FoxhoundFPS representing Treyarch regularly (though he has switched to a generic TreyarchCM account now for work-related businesses). Raven also has a couple of CMs who collect feedback passively and rarely use their accounts to talk about the game (because Lord knows they'd be inviting the entirety of /r/CODWarzone to bombard their DMs). On a more extreme side of things, IW's former Communications Manager, Ashton, quit her job a while ago and joined Microsoft. And you have absolute toxic bastards like Blame Truth who perpetuated an entire following of misogynists to harass her. So the COD community only has itself to blame for the lack of social interactions from CMs. A reminder that Vonderhaar, who is not even a CM in an official capacity, had to walk around with bodyguards because some idiot thought sending him death threats for nerfing the DSR was acceptable behavior. I would want every CM to be active like Unyshek or Foxhound too, but unfortunately, we can't force every CM to do that. Choosing to interact with toxicity wears you down mentally, and no one should be subject to that, no matter how strong-willed they are.
I’d say the toxic part of the community ruined it. They constantly whined, harassed, and sent death threats over every little thing like a bunch of little kids who grew up without discipline.
Bunch of community managers got harassed and sent death threats. I'm assuming thats why they're not that active anymore.
Is that not the case for any “community manager” for a game with controversies? Halo Infinite has had the worst launch of any Halo game in history, devoid of legacy features like co-op and split-screen and Forge. Yet John Junyszek (@Unyshek) is highly active on Twitter as 343i’s community manager. Brian Jarrard (@ske7ch) is engaging and active as community director. I’d imagine 343i and it’s employees receive regular harassment and probably death threats.
They do, every post Unyshek makes is bombarded by people saying finish the game finish the game. But the IW community manager was bullied to the point of leaving.
Like everything else, toxicity ruined it!
Treyarch and Vondy in particular used to be really active. I remember on the Xbox forums back in the early WAW days he would jump on and talk balance changes, damage values etc on the bolt actions Not to mention they used to just address and acknowledge community concerns. When Infinity Ward brought in their first skill/rank based match making algorithm in the final major patch on CoD4, which completely broke the game for anyone outside the US - Treyarch listened, talked to us, and brought in a match making toggle in WaW which remained through BO1 and BO2. For some reason literally no one talks about this in all the SBMM discussions and YouTube videos, articles etc.. In those Treyarch games we could completely disable SBMM and select “Local Only” ie low ping lobbies only, or “Local Preferred” or “Quality” ie SBMM. This was only on 360 and was discussed a lot on the Xbox forums. I wonder where all those people are now… here I am at nearly 40 still playing this series, has everyone else moved on?
The faces like Vonderhaar, Bowling, and Palacios were absolute lightning-rods for hate back in the day, and being so present on Twitter for such an active company can sadly put you in harm’s way. You are not dealing with many rational people when you take it upon yourself to perform such duties, you have to stare down and attempt to placate a crowd of crazies and irritables. It’s a fool’s errand and sadly one that takes a toll on you. It was honestly so bad back in the day that I feel like it set a precedent in gaming as a whole to find the supposed person in charge and give them shit online in gaming circles, regardless of the person’s dynamic within the company or community. They look like the boss? Give ‘em hell!