1y ago

The Diablo clickbait is unreal, is the enshitification of the internet reaching the gaming communities now?

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?

52 comments

I wouldn't lump this in with the whole "enshitification" issue.
This is the end result of gamers not placing any value on the content they consume. People want free content, regardless of quality, over anything else.
So, as you would expect, what you are seeing is free content, regardless of quality, being created en masse.
- It really is though. Remember back when we just had gamefaqs guides? Or actual game wikis that weren't plastered with ads?
  It's especially apparent in the japanese gamersphere. There used to be great (grassroots) wikis for basically every Japanese game, now they're all run by e.g. game8 and their clones.
  
  Enshittification really does mean something quite specific and is not just a word meaning “things aren’t very good anymore.”
  If you haven’t read Cory Doctorow’s essay that coined the term, definitely do. It’s a modern classic.
- We used to make build guides for Diablo 2 for free and it worked well. I'd say this is more a sign of everyone trying to monetize everything.
- I mean I would argue it's related, the reason behind it is $$$. Corporate interests have homogenized content and de-normalized diversity and community.
  People who use to just post their excel sheets and research on some bb forum for free somewhere starting getting paid by icy veins or maxroll. Overtime they establish a monopoly on the content and can do whatever the hell they want.
  Why make a platform that depends on the community and you get the ad views when you can adopt a business strategy that also gets you youtube and social media views while eliminating your competition.
  And the youtube trend is just people trying to emulate the handful of people who managed to make it big off the twitch/youtube bag.
  
  Social media has now existed for an entire generation and those users are very averse to creating accounts on new websites. They also aren't willing to put up with growing pains and lack of content. Alternatives are almost impossible to get off the ground now.
  
  People who use to just post their excel sheets and research on some bb forum for free somewhere starting getting paid by icy veins or maxroll.
  Maybe your expectation that people should do all that work to free is unrealistic and just a sign of your own entitlement issues?
- It seems to be the combination of two things: Diablo is now truly a mass market product, not just a gamer’s delight. Games now make more money than movies. The audience to be reached is enormous and attracts the eye of infotainment professionals, and no longer just people who are really into the game and decide to maybe try a guide. These people start with the cheap content machine first and Diablo is just the topic du jour. after a while they will be on to something else.
  All this points at the second topic, which is the way paid creator video platforms have evolved. There’s now significant commercial opportunity and competition is fierce. No longer does the deeper guide win but rather the one that games the algo most, appeals to the broadest audience most, and has the most production value (money) behind it.
  I suspect there is actually more high quality game guide content than ever, but you aren’t going to find it with just a “Diablo” search because there is an enormous pile of cheap crap on top of it.

The number of articles out about the latest and greatest game updates from a few hours ago which are rehashing patches released a week or more ago drive me nuts. How many times do I have to wade through multiple screens of preamble to find out that content is being recycled from week old news.
But yes, the ratio of low signal to high signal content is crazy in general. I get that people have to make a living and want to do it via communicating on YouTube/articles/... but I feel we've really lost access to high quality content. ChatGPT and other LLMs are going to make this wayyyyyyy worse.
Content recommendation algorithms push for length and frequency, which inevitably means meeting the quantity bar is more important than quality. Meanwhile we have really thought out high quality content buried in a mountain of clickbait and those creators both don't get as good monetization or exposure. It's a sad system :(. I want to see more ErrantSignal quality bar and less clickbait please.

Yes, crappy advice on websites like gamesvideodiablo.com are at the top of search results somehow. Luckily established sites like maxroll and icy-veins are out there. You still have to watch who submitted stuff. Feel sorry for anyone that has to wade through the gamesgamerhintsnews.com sites.
- I generally stick to those 2 websites and just specify them if I'm searching for something on Google. Worked good for the altar of lilith maps and character builds.

You Won't Believe These Top 10 Reasons Why Diablo IV Content Consumers Perpetuate Clickbait, Especially Number 9
😉
I just kick all clickbaity channels off of my YouTube feed. If this ends up in YouTube not showing me any Diablo IV stuff on my feed, so be it.
- Yep. In order to use YouTube, it is critical to make significant use the "Don't recommend channel" function first.
- yea its pretty nuts how EVERYDAY there is a new BEST MOST BROKEN build guide. Even when the same content creator made a similar one for the same class like a day or two ago lol
  
  Saw a clickbait with something like "<person I've never heard of> SHARES SECRET HACKS TO REROLL AND UPGRADE YOUR GEAR STATS", the secret was to upgrade your gear and to reroll an attribute 😹 kinda died.

Yes and no in sharing the rage. I can understand the how and why, but I also decide not to consume it for the most part. If I look for info, builds etc in games I always go to discord communities where I can get info bite-sized and written instead.
The videos themselves are so strange, why spend 15 minutes talking about something that could be written in 1-2 A4 pages. Builds in games especially are something that just is so much better written, rather than spoken.
- Cause you gotta get dem "views". Don't forget to smash that subscribe button.
  The format makes no sense for the information being consumed, it's like this for their benefit not the viewers.
  Even the Maxroll build guides are like, oh yea go view our youtube video to get all the info.
  
  The format makes no sense for the information being consumed, it's like this for their benefit not the viewers.
  People are trying to get paid in a market where no one wants to pay. That's why the format is being used.
- Attention spans. News content these days are moving to video other text to better grab your attention. When everything is really engaging, you have to be more engaging than that to get seen.
  
  As someone who's not an auditory/visual learner I feel personally attacked by this. I skipped class and stayed home and read the book/notes for a reason.

My favorite is the videos that are titled “HOW TO GET THE BEST LEGENDARIES FAST!!!” Then the content is basically 12 minutes of stretching out the statement “just play the game a lot.”

Totally agree with you but somehow i got arround this by use negative searchterms like "-youtube" "-video" and limiting the timeframe for newer topics. So or so, the newist info are community forums or discord servers. About the whole clickbait on google and youtube. they both go hand in hand, this "suggestions" wont go awy unless you stop interact with them. If i missclick on youtube i have to battle the algorithm by clicking "not interessted" for days until google stops trying to shovel this kind of content into my throat...

Was trying to show a friend a video of what a particular game mod looks like the other day, and everything was videos of people going over painstaking details on how to tweak the mod etc etc with little to nothing on what the modded game actually fucking looks like.
I really miss the era when you could look up how to do something and get a very long but detailed (often with pictures) set of instructions. For example game walkthroughs. Now it's a bunch of videos with a bunch of "don't forget to like and subscribe" dipshits narrating the whole thing through.

I’m liking that Icy-Veins website. I’m pretty sure they keep a close eye on some builds. I was following a build guide yesterday and it was tweaked differently today. So whatever is going on there it seems care is being taken. Also no horrible YouTube videos to deal with.
- Icy Veins was always my go-to for builds. I think in the first few weeks of the game it's not had the 'best' builds, but that's more to do with the fact theory-crafting is still taking place. I expect it to be the definitive place for build recs once rebalancing patches begin to settle and the theory-crafting for the base game (excluding seasonal affixes) is stable.
  D4builds.gg is what I'm using for build Inspo at the moment, but it's taken a bit of digging around there and YT to find someone who's not constantly pumping out "BEST BUILD" vids that conflict with yesterday's "best build", and is instead refining the one build.
- Icy-veins is legit, they've been around doing game guides since Wrath of the Lich King was new. I want to say the name is even a reference to the WotLK Death Knight ability. No idea who runs it or what their deal is, but they've been a good resource for 10+ years so they're doing something right.

Feels like intermediate content is what’s missing. I find tons of “beginner” videos that aren’t useful to me, just explain the basic mechanics as anyone can plainly see them. A lot of these were made during the game preview and are highly ranked even though they are full of expired info.
And then there’s the extreme other end of people who use build names they assume you already know inside and out and are obsessing over spreadsheets and drop rates, making their life entirely about farming one particular unique - and they always play in a party as experienced as them on the absolute hardest endgame content and they hate everything Blizzard does.
Wish there were something in the middle. Like “how to lean in to a crit build” or “overview of popular Druid builds that are viable at level 70.”

I once read a book called: The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters
And it really echoes to me now just how many self appointed experts there are now.

Yeah, its always a new best mega super ultra build you must've seen. And real new information gets drowed in those videos/articles. I rely only on a few places as a source and search on those first.

Gamergate
I'm tired of the " look at all this dps!" Then it is someone with max gear at lvl 99.

Pretty sure the gaming community is where enshittification started. It’s an incredibly toxic community.

This really isn't anything new though. It's pretty much what YT is nowadays and why I barely use it anymore.
- The difference is the decreasing availability of alternatives.

52 comments