[Editor’s note: Community member AKK contributed a piece to ourWeekly Musing subjecton how to make gaming communities suck less. Please post your own over on theCommunity blogs. It may get read during our panel at PAX this Friday! — CTZ]
Talk is cheap. Anonymous commenting on Web sites such as Destructoid is even cheaper. You know what isn’t cheap (relatively speaking)? Posting on the Something Awful forums. It costs $9.95 to do this. Why is this a fantastic idea, and one that should be implemented elsewhere (to an extent)? Because it keeps the retards away.
Now, I’m not a member of the SA forums, simply because the site isn’t my cup of tea. Were I interested in being a part of the SA community, I’d probably plunk down the 10 bucks, because I’d find myself among people who A) won’t spam shit and B) won’t be retarded.
Why? Because when you’re able to potentially be banned due to retardation without a refund for a site you paid to access, you are significantly less likely to (I would think) do something retarded.
Now, I don’t think every site should implement this, abso-fucking-lutely not, because I don’t suddenly want to pay $200 bucks to continue with my current activities on the 20 or so sites I visit with immense frequency. However, were Destructoid to allow anyone to read all the articles, and have an ad-free version where you could pay and comment, I wouldn’t be as bothered as I’m sure most people would.
The problem is then segmenting the population. To a gamer, ten bucks really isn’t that much. Hell, it’s cheaper than most new XBLA titles, and I will get more enjoyment out of using Destructoid in the long run than probably any game that’s on my 360 HDD, but it still cuts the group into the “paid” and the “haven’t paid,” and that’s problematic in and of itself.
You won’t get a lot of complaints, because the people who would be complaining lose the ability due to the fact that they don’t want to waste their money getting banned for being a bitch, but there would certainly be a loss of traffic at Destructoid, possibly a significant loss.
Do the benefits outweigh the negatives? I don’t know. I’d pay the 10 bucks, and I’m probably not the only one who would (I don’t use my blog much, and I don’t comment with alarming frequency, but I still think it would be worth it in the end, given how frequently I use the site just to get news and have a laugh).
However, to get the dumb motherfuckers off the internet, you need to actually punish them. They can make a new email, get a new IP address, etc. What can’t they get? A new credit card number. But, even if they can (and I think it’s possible with certain online things), who’s going to waste a hundred bucks making 10 accounts solely to whine thatBatman: Arkham Asylumonly got an 8.0? Maybe one or two people, but it would immensely cut down on the overall stupidity.
As I write this, I read next to my words that Destructoid tries to be an open community, and that’s where this idea falls apart. It certainly privatizes some parts of Destructoid. Not all of it, certainly not, but it certainly wouldn’t be “open” in any logical sense of the word.
As I said at the beginning, talk is cheap. However, when you’re paying for the privilege to talk, chances are your words will be chosen a little bit more carefully. Or, we could add one of those YouTube “have your comment read back to you” things, and make it mandatory. Then, hopefully, retards will realize how fucking dumb they sound and change it.
But maybe not.
[Editor’s note: AKK didn’t have a single picture in his original post so I gave him some of my best animal pictures. I so go out of my way for you all! — CTZ]
