So maybe some of you have seen the recent ROM hack come out, by the developer of Pokémon Emerald Seaglass, called Pokémon Lazarus. This one has a far larger scale to everything, it’s quite clear that it is a massive undertaking for a sole dev, and most of the community is loving it.
Well, some aren’t behaving well. There’s been some petty, disgusting feedback from a (as ever) vocal minority. Those who are homophobic, bigots, who are mocking design decisions and the sound (which Nemo, the dev, has created from scratch), some who hate seeing a pride flag.
Anyway, Nemo has decided after this bullshit to step back from the public and stop interacting. We’ve seen this again and again with developers. And it’s getting SO damned exhausting:
With that said, I’ll be taking a step back from the community for a bit. I’ll post bug-fixing and new feature patches to the Development Discord server, but I don’t plan on posting anywhere else for a while. If I go on to develop a new project (which I do have planned!), it will likely be in secret until close to release, if I choose to release it at all. With everything going on in my life (Master’s program, work, real world commitments, etc etc), I guess I’m just not prepared to also handle the bad side of attention on the internet.
You deal with this by telling the bigots to go fuck themselves.
Even that amount of interaction can be exhausting/taxing after a while. Hell, even passively observing hateful remarks, even if you never respond to them (which, generally, you shouldn’t. Don’t feed the trolls) is emotionally exhausting. My recommendation is to just curate your community. Make a private space wherever you want, invite your friends and the most positive fans (people who you would like to be friends with perhaps) and that’s it, close the door. YOU decide who gets to come into your house and speak to you.