(I've put brightest examples everyone can recognize, there are many creators like them)
UTDR and ULTRAKILL communities are infamous for many reasons but that doesn't stop creators like Hakita or Toby Fox to develop their own projects while interacting with their fanbase on very rare occasions, while actually listening to the general critiques on gameplay and making patches as they go with development and occasionaly making posts about how the development goes. The problem with interacting with own audience is that you can put more of a bad image for the entire thing you've made, as it might not be associated with just "bad" fanbase, but also the creator being "bad". This is why, sadly, a lot of people mock on TADC and Hazbin Hotel & Helluva Boss and specficially their creators because both Gooseworx and Vivienne tried to prove something to their own audience, making the backlash only worse. And to be honest, from what I know, Hakita used to flame on random people of his community for saying stupid stuff or suggestions but from what I know now he doesn't do it anymore, which makes me have even more respect on him as an author
Itâs one of the reasons I really like when Toby writes his newsletters, because he can upload everything in free formats and explain what he needs to, whilst making sure that people canât just leave Twitter threads or reaction images under those kinds of important news. Theyâre very good at forcibly separating his thoughts from forums, meaning we have a lot more time to just read what heâs saying and think about it BEFORE discussing it amongst ourselves.
I used to think Hakita was mean for stuff like this but after what happened with the TADC fandom and Gooseworx I've changed my mind and think this is actually just the correct way to interact with your fandom
Other memorable quotes include "If you guys were making this game it would be bad" (paraphrased cuz i dont got the screenshot) and "Nothing is ever confirmed/deconfirmed. It was considered public knowledge that Sisyphus Prime was deconfirmed before he got added."
Actually the quote was "It's a good thing you guys aren't designing an ultrakill or otherwise it would suck", which is one of the wisest quotes i've heard about game development alongside Gabe Newell talking about fun and interactivity being the main point of a game, not graphics or story.
Gabe Newell also talked about realism and how it sucks ass
Which tbh true in most kinds of games, they'd be boring if they stuck as much as possible to reality, and it serves a bit as a reminder that grounded and realistic are not synonyms
Whenever someone tries to bring up realism for game balance I always think back to how even Tarkov takes liberties in their realistic balance because otherwise the balance would be awful. Donât ask me what makes it fun idk either
A huge part of what makes extraction games like Tarkov is the constant threat of getting absolutely fucked over and lose it all. There's certain thrill to it.
Not my thing but get it. The rest of the balancing is just to make it not suck ass.
Tbh it is highly dependent on a lot of factors, there is no universally fun kind of realism and it frequently has a few fictional elements that don't stick out of place too much.
Keep in mind the context that the people he was referring to wanted sentries to do 75-100% of your hp per shot, with reduced charge times, because otherwise they'd be "too easy"
Theyâre a thorn in your side when youâre dealing with a bunch of things already so you gotta have their beeps in the back of your mind to know when to dodge
Imo after chapter 5 going out of its way to show Toriel and sans in a better light and addressing criticism about that from people who read them as having bad behavior in chapter 4, it's clear Toby does read it a lot and is just not engaging outside of likely his own personal accounts.
In addition like... With the ARG responses and the sweepstakes, I think Toby interacts with players more than the average dev but does it very professionally
I mean chapter 5 is also full of easilly missable dialog that is very obviously a response to the fanbase.
Its why i think toby saying he doesnt read theories is fibbing a little bit. He has clearly referenced them indirectly in some jokes.
But its just that he does interact with us. Using his own game. The Mikes are almost entirely a tool to kind of point out he sees things we talk about in a fun an endearing way.
absolutely. him seeing andrew hussie interact with homestuckâs fanbase gave him an easily observable crash course in how to try not to say things on main as much as possible
He has mentioned an alt account in his famitsu column I think - specifically that he uses it to look at Kris x Susie fanart. It was that or an interview.
That isnât necessarily âoh people took this scene x way so I need to add stuff making it turn out it was y way instead,â I think itâs equally or more likely that it was âI totally wrote this scene to make it look x way only to have next chapter go oh nope it was this actually.â
Especially with the bit that they werenât actually locked out because Kris knows where the spare key is, I donât think thatâs an attempt to make Toriel look less bad, I think thatâs to give us another âKris you motherfuckerâ moment because they jabaited us to railroad us to the church.
Still not quite sure why they felt the need to troll the fanbase with the cake thing. I think if Silksong was anything less than what it was, people would have been PISSED
I meant that he did it independently from the company, and he had been posting shitpost even before the cake thing, and he still does to this day every couple months
Yeah like, it was a big troll through a convoluted puzzle which had convoluted pieces. I was in thr sub during that time and it was fuclong amazing seeing it come down
They didn't, actually. The Silksong reveal happened on the exact date people figured out from the "ARG". They just probably got shut down by Nintendo because they wanted to preserve the surprise for the direct.
There is still a point where even just saying "working today" would have been better than months if not years of silence. I don't want to know what you're implementing in the game, but disappearing off the face of the earth and then using "we were engrossed in making the game" as an excuse doesn't work for me.
last time i saw the ultrakill sub almost every suggestion had at least one comment that was this screenshot because they thought hakita was just being mean for no reason and that that was funny
I thought it was two people who wanted sentries to deal like 50-75% of your health in one attack on top of having faster charge-up times for said attack
oh damn, thought this was also about the even worse idea of the shield arm. he's still right though, any tweak to the damage or health of enemies will make it end up like how bullshit nightmare difficulty is in doom eternal.
I dont agree on the wording, having a monthly newsletter is not the "bare minimum", its actually alot of effort from Tobys part, which by and large is the reason he has such good communication with the Deltarune fanbase.
I think authors that do actually make the bare minimum effort are mishandling the situation just like the creators over talking. For example Team Cherry, while they didn't need to talk with their audiance, the fact they went radio silent for all these years is the direct result the fandom got sorta crazy in the first place. And while sure, to Team Cherry might of been a good thing as it built hype that payed off in the end, the lack of any progress indicationn at the end of the day can cause fatigue and burnout to your fans.
Honestly, prob could eliminate most of that discourse by time-traveling and stopping Gooseworx from posting the "if yall don't behave, ill ruin the ending" (primed the community toxicity) and "so everyone knows their favorite character isnt get shafted, heres each character spotlight" (set up the expectation that each character was equally important with the exception of pomni as the MC) post.
As a GD fan, no this is too far in the other extreme. Despite the amount of problems with the game and itâs community RobTop never listens and is basically radio silent
Being overly transparent and indulging your fans with out-of-content material, answering lore questions online, explicitly detailing and foreshadowing stuff on Twitter or whatever just kind of caters an aggressively parasocial audience, who spends more time combing your social media presence than engaging with the actual text, and leaves the rest of your audience who only watched/played the damn thing out of the loop.
Thatâs part of how you get stuff like Gooseworx and TADC
Edit: Ultimately there is a balance to be had though, of course. Complete radio silence under all circumstances (like with TF2 in many cases, or Silksong) is rough. But you donât need constant status updates and engaging with the audience, an occasional poke and âhey, weâre still working on this!â will suffice
Yeah the lore drops are usually from the books and then there will be like a one line in the story that implies there's a lot more they left out. Like Ran knowing Yuma
There's like 20 different instances of him replying with some variation of "suck my nuts" to fans that annoy him on discord, dude does not give a shit.
The lesson of TADC is that interacting with your fandom at all, especially if it skews young, opens the door for a lot of parasocial horseshit. Let the work stand on its own and run far away afterwards.
Hi,I am sorry for asking this but what exactly happened between goosework and the fandom?
I dont know much about it, can you explain it?
I dont mind if it is a long explanation
Gooseworx at some point said âAll characters will have equal attentionâ (paraphrasing) which a lot of people took to mean having equal IMPORTANCE in a narrative, which cause a lot of friction in the fandom. People were already parasocial with the show prior, but that statement solidified a weird âmy favorite character requires just as much screentime as all the othersâ opinion in a very vocal minority.
Because of this weird parasocial situation, yhat same vocal minority believed that whatever their theory or headcanon was, was the correct one, no matter where the narrative was going. Gooseworx kinda responded by saying âYou guys make theories based on whatâs most surprising not based on what the story and themes areâ (again, heavily paraphrasing)
There were some onsie twosie controversies regarding Glitch itself, the Movie aspect, and a couple old things that happened with the VAs that were blown out of pre-portion by a lot, and people blamed Gooseworx specifically for it, cause sheâs the creator.
I could be totally wrong on some of these, this is off my memory.
If I ever actually publish a popular work to the internet I know my ass will not be able to fend off the urge to interact with the fandom. There is no way I wonât be able to yell at someone whoâs completely misunderstanding the themes and such. Mad respect for Tricky Toby âRadiationâ Fox
Fujimoto rarely acknowledges chainsaw man in favor of posting about random shit like movies heâs watched and if a fan met him irl thereâs a 60% chance heâs dying on the spot
I also think its funny how people try to attribute this to the idea that Toby hates his fans when heâs basically constantly expressing his love for the fandom. His newsletters constantly express this (his latest one pretty much said that while he doesnât read them, he loves and wants people making theories as this is basically the only time they can be created), he has a trio of characters in Deltarune that basically act as a tribute to the fandom, and his 10th anniversary streamâs main message was âcreate fan content, your ideas matter no less than mineâ
I think Liam Vickers fits this pretty well. Interactions from him with the community were pretty rare to come by. Especially now since he left his own discord server lol
be greatful im not a popular indie dev becuase i would be fucking with you guys constantly no trailers no teases im releaseing a content update at exactly 9am on a Monday. i would do a most popular charcter poll then kill them off via random off-screen meteor strike.
One thing that lives rent free in my head is that I remember Hakita was asked about adding a shield to Ultrakill and they just started ranting about how its would just be a worse parry and that the person who said that needs to get good or something along those lines and I just find that really funny and in that I find it relatable
Iâve said it before and Iâll say it again. My dream music collab is between these two. Unfortunately this will never happen because it it did the music would be so good it would destroy our universe
Kikiyama the creator of Yume Nikki has had such little contact with their fans that people were worried they had passed away. They are just a very private person and have done 1 very simple interview ever. They were interviewed by Toby Fox.
you can kinda tell when someone posts on here and only interacts with media very popular in a certain niche space of the internet. most creators of everything dont speak to their fanbase at all, ever. these guys are actually far above average on the amount they talk or interact with their own communities.
I think Toby and the Undertale team sort of do too much as far with this whole "game to be explored inside and out" thing. I mean, it has to super tiring for the coders and the team knowing that people will check every part of the code you write, comment and potential left over file
It's funny how choosing to take the work to translate the Japanese version directly led to people shitting on him, whereas if he didn't translate anything no one would even think about it. I wonder if this type of phenomenon has a name, where doing some things but not all things gets you more hate than doing nothing at all
I mean once something gets big enough you can't really reply to the hundreds of comments under every OST, tweet and trailer that you post. People also het very parasocial with solo devs.
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u/ImpawssibleMeowssion Aug 19 '26