Well, looks like I might be getting banned again on the Unity forums. I lasted about a week. Bleh.  We'll see, not banned yet, but just had my post removed and that's how these things often go. Asking some pertinent questions to the mod who struck my post and bracing for impact.

I figured i'd make this blog to show the post I made that got deleted, I put a lot of effort into it, shame to see it just poofed out of existance for as the mod said "Slander". It's so sad to see that others see posts like this as hostile. Like holy shit do people see what they've become? That THEY are the hostile ones and then they beat others for complaining about it? It's so depressing.

This path would be so much easier if I just let it slide and not engaged, but I can't curtail my neckbeard nature, no matter how much I try to just focus on the project.

Anyhow, I'm planning on a big change around here (not related to these ban happy mods, had this epiphany before that), I will probably make one or two most posts as this cantankerous annoying neckbeard. In short, I see this fight as larger than myself, and stirring the pot isn't doing any good, though it is the go to strategy my animal brain compels me towards. We're going to try to be better, we're going to try to be successful, and we're going to seek a more reliable means of being a positive influence in this world.

Below was the post in question, I really spent a lot of time trying to make this uplifting and inviting to all readers. It's such a gut punch to see others taking your sincere efforts to try to quell the hate as agitations. 

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! Am I crazy? Probably... bleh.

Oh well, the best chance for us to have a voice is for SeaCrit to not be terrible. We have a record here of the trials and tribulations.

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It’s so darn quiet around here! And the other Unity forum isn’t much better, this once vibrant community feels like a ghost town.

(Gimme a second let me put my eggshell walking shoes on)

CRUNCH! Eh, screw it.

Here’s a little reading music if you’ll indulge me:

I speak for a lot of people when I say we kinda want to know what the plan is. Is there a plan? It’s no secret that Unity has been on a rocky trajectory, spilling users and good will over the past few years. How do we get over this decline? What’s the mission statement? We see this forum coming online, and change can be good… but what are the thoughts moving forward?

That’s to say nothing of the overall decay and animosity that’s been fostering in the gamedev space at large. It used to be such a great, enlightening place to be a fly on the wall and see all kinds of great content and learn through osmosis in an uplifting place full of positive energies.

If only it were as easy as enacting a couple rules to supercharge a better and more vibrant community again:

1. Don’t be a doucher

2. Post cool stuff!

I feel silly posting this. Not the first time I’m sticking my foot in my mouth. I earned the reputation of being an eye roller on the other forum for posting rambling emotional appeals such as this, I’ll try to refrain from exploding on this forum moving forward with too many diatribes.

I should probably be working on my project instead of creating inflammatory posts in this corner of the internet that people may take the wrong way. But I can’t bring myself to work until I get this off my chest, so here we are, sorry to ramble. Haven't been able to engage here for a minute and had some pent up energy.

Sometimes in life no matter how much you want to put your head down and push forward on your work, you see a battle raging outside and you feel the need to put down everything and deal with the emergency. It’s as if this industry has caught fire and everyone is strapped down, mouths gagged unable to do something about it.

Roll your eyes if you have to, this is an important conversation, this forum is a clean slate, for us AND for Unity and it would be great if we can get off on the right foot. Maybe this can be a new Era of gamedev where we don’t have to be so petty and have knives at each other's throats. Or maybe not feel as though we’re walking on eggshells all the time when discussing various topics, when talking about elephants in the room. 

Apologies if this sounds overly dramatic to some of you, but some of us have experienced some really rough times over the past few years, lost friends, family, jobs, opportunities. I think we can all agree that discourse and just the general attitude in these parts was more optimistic and enriching years prior at the very least.

This fear of wondering if the thought police are going to swoop in and cancel you is ever present, and still feels so weird, it’s never been like this before. And threads like this feel awkward. It’s like everyone knows the air needs to be cleared, but no one can step out and say anything for fear of people taking it the wrong way. You can lose your job, you can put a target on your back for the mobs that pass for communities these days. 

Why even make a post? Or post a meme? The consequences are too dire? Why have fun? Why stand for something? There's no conversation to be had anyhow as everyone sane has left.

We’ve been hard coded to come after and destroy one another over the smallest infractions these days that we think it’s normal. 

It doesn't even have to be a taboo topic, it can be a casual observation about friggin' Palworld. Like holy sh*t can we learn to take a deep breathe? We casually hit the report button or seek to slander someone and put them on a list for wrong think. Why put your career on the line to have an opinion about a video game, let alone a massive issue that MATTERS?

This didn’t happen overnight, it won't be rectified over night either, but year after year this is where we’re at now. We slowly became conditioned to lay low, not rock the boat, not create any confrontation and now we’re all so delicate and the conversation is so stale, and those who do remain in the discussions are often prone to rage bait, negativity, or just say the pre approved talking points while having itchy ban and report fingers.

We’ve become a divided community, a shy community afraid of see no evil, hear no evil, while taking no actions to improve anything for fear of damaging delicate sensibilities leading to life changing destruction. The reward for putting your neck out any more and pointing out these problems is a guillotine drop.

I have the luxury of having nothing to lose, I am in a unique position to say what others would like to say if they haven’t already left these communities over the years. I don’t work for any big company, no HR department to clash wish, no coworkers to offend, no filter saying “Hey dumb arse, don’t say anything stupid”.

I suppose I could get banned again, that would sting... whatever. 

I posted a critical drinker video in the other forum and boom, permanent ban. It went into the divisive forces destroying the gaming space.

This is such a taboo topic. I wish it weren’t so murky and there weren’t so many relativities and discussing this could be a purely positive thing that everyone could rally around.

This censorship culture, this cancel culture, this general malaise that has gripped this community is like a band aide that needs to be ripped off. Can we even have open and frank discussions any more without blowing up at each other and tearing each others' throats out?

We’re so damned accustomed to walking on the egg shells, to worrying about offending anyone this way or the other that we’ve become weak and coddled, we don’t know how to deal with any level of confrontation, we don’t know how to think for ourselves, we don’t know how to have a conversation any more unless we’re just agreeing with one another. We view this quiet awkward decline as success in a bizzare sort of way. "I'm not rocking the boat, I'm not offending everyone, everything is going to sh*t, but I still have my job."

Gamedev and engine dev is hard enough, why the frick are we making it harder for ourselves with all this added ideological BS?

And when you think about it, maybe this is why gaming as a whole has decayed so much over these dreadful years. We’re so damned afraid of saying, “hey, this is f*cked up, we need to fix this”. And accusations and attacks carry so much weight that the biggest and most petty groups end up wielding the most power. It’s been  dreadful being in gamedev that wants to see this industry grow and improve again over the years. It was bad enough when we were angry at each other for introducing an unintended bug, this just takes things to another level.

Truth is, if you want to make a quality game, you kinda gotta be at least a little bit of a neckbeard, some part of you has to hold on to base realities of the demands of this industry. You gotta be the kinda person that knows what works, and what doesn’t work, and you have to be damned uncompromising about it, because if you’re not, your game is going to fall apart as the dividing forces coalesce and brown nose and point fingers.

There’s nothing grey or wishy washy about bugs, or implementing best pipelines. You gotta have a real and honest perspective about these absolutes or else your game is doomed, or Unity is doomed. 

For better or worse, there are many people who depend on Unity working, and for many of us, we have others depending on us too. You guys need to get your act together not just for the gamers, but for game developers and their families too. I mean, i'll be fair, we all have to get our act together and stop acting like such f*c\kwads on the internet.

We’ve watched as Unity fell from grace, we watched as massive triple A studios one by one fell to ruin. Time and again media and employees of companies all turned a blind eye, and anyone who questioned anything got shot out of the airlock for trying to stand up for the truth.

Point of this post is, it's just so damned depressed seeing this forum the way it is. Barren, devoid of optimism, devoid of cool forward thinking posts about cool features to look forward to. What happened? 

We used to be full of piss and vinegar and ready to kick some f*cking ass! Excited for what’s going to be the next big thing. We were going to get better terrain! We were going to get better fully featured input systems that would replace the old one! DOTS and ESC was going to power and improve the engine across the board as strike teams reinvented Unity to be a powerhouse with new features! Then all the hard working visionaries left in silence...

Nowadays we’re just excited if we’re not going to be laid off. We keep our heads down, we are desperately afraid of offending anyone, afraid of pointing out any of this decline, afraid to stand up for quality features and pipelines and getting back to making cool stuff. Day after day these forums deplete and become clogged with mundane questions about bizarre edge cases of the Unity Engine or people frustrated by the state of things.

I want to commend you guys at Unity for the energy that’s in the Animation Status Update thread:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/animation-status-update-q2-2024.1580340/

More of this! Chinny is optimistic, clear, and you really get the sense he’s excited to push forward and give us exciting new features and has a holistic view of the pipeline and how to make it better. I don’t have to tell you guys this, it’s obvious! Oh yeah, and he friggin' engages, and exudes this aura of being in the trenches and wanting to get this right. A great balance of taking feedback while also getting the job done and not appearing to be at the whims of random forum posters.

Like this sh*t isn't rocket science. We gotta start giving a damn about gamedev and the tools first and foremost again and focus on finding people with a fire in their belly to make cool sh*t! And what's so damned sad is you guys had this in spades just a few years ago. Again, WTF happened!? And short of answering that, can we at least get some comments about how things will get better?

It’s a very volatile time to be posting anywhere online. I totally understand if there’s a low tolerance for any sort of political messaging on either side, that sorta sh*t will sidetrack any conversation no matter who veers the discussion off course, EVEN A WHIFF OF IT. 

And in full disclosure I may have said some sh*t about a certain city in the bay area in the post that got me banned on the other forums. But I hope in the future instead of immediate, permanent bans you guys afford at least a small warning “Hey, no political inferences here, this is your warning”. That would be fair. My bad on that one, it's easy to get worked up this day and age as each side does petty crap.

I don’t envy your guys' position at Unity. Games are made by passionate people of all sorts, and everyone feels as though they’re saving the world in their own way from the "evil doers". We all think we're righteous from our own perspective. 

But the proof is in the pudding. And we can see in real time what has been wrought with all this toxicity, gatekeeping, and change of focus from creating great products to ulterior crusades and for too long it's been very taboo to even point out this problem exists. Maybe I’m digressing, again this is such a heavy and taboo topic to talk about without looking like a bad guy in many peoples’ eyes.

Anyway, I just wanted to get that off my chest. Feels like this community is on the verge of dying and wanted to put some thoughts out there so we can start the healing process.

For all I know, allowing people to say what’s on their mind or changing the culture at Unity could be the final stake through its heart. Times change, culture changes, maybe this is just how the world is now: No grit, no determination, no eyes on the prize, no fire in our belly to make cool sh*t, no unwavering drive to kick some ass, take names and make the best f*cking tools and games we can. We've lost that piss and vinegar that compelled us to go online, neckbeard out about render tech, best scene optimization practices, and file structures. 

Maybe all gamedev is nowadays is getting good boy and good girl points for keeping our head down and placating the mobs roving about.

I feel I’ve sufficiently sperged out at this point, I think I MIGHT have said what I needed to say. I dunno, things are awkward these days in gamedev discussions, many are high strung, and most the sane voices have left long ago. I feel like i'm either talking to a wall or offending people any more. We're all just so friggin' over this drama and the divide, it's like the last thing we want to deal with, so I get it if this post sears your eyes, and I just come off as an agitator or whatever. At the very least, I hope reading this gave your some level of entertainment or made you feel something in this void that was once the Unity community.

I’ll end with this. It’s a good thing this place is so quiet right now, it gives you guys at Unity the floor to post and create a higher level of discord that can carry into the future. I look forward to more posts in here from the likes of UnityChinny, and it’s been so damned awesome to see you guys kickin’ ass with the 6.0 release, it really feels like you guys are putting it into high gear and doing good work after a long hiatus. No joke, super impressive and I've been loving Unity 6.0 so far.

It will take time for this community to grow back, for faith to rekindle, but you guys are doing leaps and bounds better these past few months and after so long, there's a spark of optimism. I know not everyone shares this, but maybe that changes in the near future!

Will we be getting posts about kick ass new features and work flows and animation systems and visual scripting and who knows what? I sure hope so!

In the short term, here’s hoping you guys can foster more of that optimistic and can-do spirit in these forums, and maybe years from now we can look back at this as the turning point when gaming and gamedev were no longer in the dog days.