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Metagame 004: Just Let Them F**k the Sheep

Metagame 004: Just Let Them F**k the Sheep

"Seeing the reaction to Buck has been incredibly rewarding."

Man, I'm feeling really drained this week. But it sounds like a lot of y'all are as well. And so I got a weird question to kick it off. If you're feeling energized and lit up, feeling great and chasing after something right now, on top of the world - I wanna hear about it! I know I usually save the hit reply for the end, but hit reply and let me know. I wanna hear what's got people fired up these days. I'm inspired when you're inspired lol.

What we've got cooking in this issue:

  • Real Community Sentiment is Happening in DMs
    • Over a 100 of you read this newsletter. Zero of you commented. Yet 15+ of you sent me messages across 7 different platforms to talk about the newsletter and it got me thinking about how we measure social sentiment.
  • AION 2 launched to some big complaints but their numbers are doing fine
    • How much does loud, angry conversation matter if people are showing up and playing anyway?
  • Star Wars: Galactic Racer proves that good 'ol fashioned word of mouth still works
    • A licensed Star Wars game got better every single day this week and it was pretty quiet on social
  • Forza Horizon 6 launched and told Japanese players to leave their anime cars at home
    • Forza banned the anime cars. Japan left the chat
  • A New Zealand Bank launches a furry mascot and the internet reacts exactly the way you'd expect they would
    • A lesson in community management and the Streisand effect

1. Real Community Sentiment is Happening in DMs

Social listening is a fraught art. Yes, you can pull down and analyze all the data. Yes, you can use tools like Levellr to pull down your Discord server's data. But the real conversation, the real sentiment, happens in DMs.

I was thinking about this when it came to the newsletter. So few people actually comment on the newsletter itself (though I love it when you do it) or on posts about the newsletter. Instead, I get like 15-20 messages from y'all across every platform possible directly to me: email, text, whatsapp, line, signal, discord, linkedin, instagram, twitter, voice memos, phone calls(!).

On the one hand, I fucking love it. I love hearing from people, engaging with them on their takes, going back and forth, having a deeper conversation. It honestly makes my fucking week. But then I thought about how it looks to a reader. How would someone coming to the newsletter know that people are even reading it or engaging with it? If you came to the website to look at past newsletters, you'd think... is this thing on? Is anyone even reading this thing?

But if this is true of Metagame, how true is that of the normal person playing games or watching movies or whatever. Their propensity to leave a comment somewhere is low. But the chances they'll message one of their friends something about it is high, especially if they both like it.

I'm not going to put this friend on blast, but when I used to work on VALORANT, we'd talk a lot about the best ways to meet players where they're at. And companies love a deck. They love a meeting. They love talking about things. But my friend would go see their Gen Z barber (besides providing a killer cut, provides grounding takes), and the barber would always talk about the latest Marvel Rivals updates. So my friend asked his barber to show him his latest texts, and they were all just memes about characters in Rivals and how hot they were. No wonder they call Rivals the gooner game. But my friend was like, look, sometimes you forget the mindset of like a 21 year old is they just wanna laugh with their friends and send inappropriate memes.

And so how do I feel about that, especially as someone raising a son of his own? Who knows, I was a degenerate piece of shit growing up, and honestly, I still kind of am in some ways, but I think about this a lot when it comes to meeting audiences where they're at.

All to say: how would anyone working at a publisher know this unless you were doing deeper ethnographic studies or getting out into the field. Social listening tools are not going to help you fill all the gaps.

It's part of the reason I started writing a version of this newsletter when I worked at Riot. Data is important, but there's something about the flavor of a real player verbatims that provides color to the creative work we all do.

I think people forget this about the games industry. There's a lot of science, but this is a predominantly a creative enterprise: from the design of a game to the publishing and marketing of it. And great creative is fueled off of soul, heart, and inspiration. And you get soul, heart, and inspiration by talking to and understanding real people.

Look, I hate Zuck as much as the next person, but in Meta's 2025 FTC trial - Zuck said that "Messaging has been growing dramatically, and sharing with friends in feeds has been declining". This reflects my own journey with Instagram. I used to love posting on the feed, but I can't REMEMBER the last time I posted something. It's all stories and DMs now. Mosseri himself said this about Instagram "On Instagram, there are way more photos and videos shared into DMs". Discord says that "90% of all activity on Discord happens in small, intimate servers with your closest buddies".

And don't get me wrong. Public opinion and conversation still matter. A study by GameDiscoverCo found that 40.5% of buyers on Steam ALWAYS check the reviews before purchasing and 32% do most of the time - 72.5% of people who rely on public recorded opinion.

Everyone needs to have some connection to the audience that is personal. It's easy to live on second or third hand player insights or passion. It's actually how most companies end up screwing up. But the only way to make truly great work is to have primary player insights by talking to folks that love (or hate!) the shit you do.

2. AION 2 Launches, Players Have Major Complaints, Hits Massive Numbers Anyway

Take for example one of the biggest gaming stories of the week: the launch of AION 2. I'm actually surprised how many people haven't heard about this game. A game that was one of the most streamed games on Twitch and games played on Steam this week.

AION 2 is a free-to-play high-fantasy MMO. With a... specific art style.

It launched last week on the 5th, with paid early access starting September 30th, and the game hit a casual 397k peak on Steam. And with it came two very loud player complaints.

  1. Founder's pack items were locked to one character and one server
  2. The "Special Quai Membership" at $14.99/month, which unlocks all classes, dungeons, and core levels and grants access to the end game player markets, was only good for one character on one server. SO, if you wanted to have multiple characters, you needed to pay a casual $14.99/month for each one.

NCSoft tackled the first one pretty quickly. 41 hours after launch. Founder's items now work on other characters and servers. Easy.

The second got "fixed" 102 hours after launch with a free server transfer that carries your membership with you. (note it's a transfer and not multiples still - gotta make that moneyyyyyyy)

So yeah, the conversation was LOUD. A high volume of conversation around these two issues. And I think if you were to run a standard sentiment report for last week, you'd see primarily a lot of negative sentiment. Look at the reviews.

But if you look at that steam number and the 76k watching AION 2 on Twitch, it tells a different story. (Quick aside - this is another whole interesting conversation: Shroud went live on Twitch Friday night to 13k people playing AION 2 and his vods have 80k-190k views with almost no comments or even people talking in chat - no real interaction here - it's all passive views or bots. it's not where the meaningful sentiment is). Reviews hit their low (46.4%) on the same day the crowd went back up (380k).

Instead, there was probably a lot of conversation going on in DMs about the... unique art style.

Just because the numbers are good doesn't mean you can just ignore shit. I saw this happen a lot in my own work. When you have X amount of monthly players and the money keeps coming in, it's easy to say, eh, it's fine, we're still a huge game printing money. But when you run a live service game, you are entering into a relationship with someone. It's personal. And resentment builds over time. That's why negative sentiment is worth paying attention to, even if the people are coming in.

For example, the out of control botting situation or this shitpost which says it more succinctly:

As long as you keep fixing issues, listening to players, and don't let the resentment grow, players will probably keep having fun. And send shitposts.

3. Now This is Podracing

I don't wanna say that every story in this issue has a theme this week but...

...this one is at least pretty straight forward and positive. The best reviewed Star Wars game of the year has come out and no, it's not Zero Company. it's Star Wars: Galactic Racer.

In general, there's always some hesitation around anything Star Wars these days, but honestly, I think the Star Wars games have been more hits than misses as of late. And this is one of those examples. "Biddy Blas! Scrib doon!"

And sometimes that's all you really need. One hot vocal stim and not a lot of controversy that reads as a quiet launch. But check the slow and steady rise on Steam reviews: 75.7% to 81% to 84.6% to 87.8% to 90.6%.

And fun fan celebration posts like this with only 200 upvotes:

The point being, it's just growing the old fashioned way: positive word of mouth, players talking about it in their DMs, and just organically growing over time. And Fuse is giving players what they want, shipping a hotfix on the 8th and a future update that will double party sizes so you can bring in six friends instead of three.

If you're only looking for the things that are doing rounds or popping off, you'd miss what's happening in the DMs around the best Star Wars game of the year.

4. Forza Banned Anime Cars and Japan Said Byeeeeeeeee

Itasha is a Japanese car subculture where cars are decorated with full-body vinyl wraps, stickers, and graphics featuring anime, manga, or Vtubers.

And Forza this week said: CUT THAT SHIT OUT YOU WEEBS. (I do not feel like you can call anime fans in Japan weebs now that I think about it).

In Forza Horizon 6, you can upload custom designs around your cars, and the itasha community, who have been creating designs around this since Forza 5 , were excited to bring them over to Forza 6 and got burned.

On October 6th, Playground posted a message from the team, saying: "We recognize that we should have been able to talk with you more, and that we did not do enough of it," and "we are considering changes to both in-game content and the way we communicate with you." What they didn't say is that they've been quietly removing and banning itasha designs from the game without telling users why. But you can read between the lines.

You can see it in the reviews. Japanese players started walking away from the game.

And while I'm sure there's stuff going on behind the scenes, it's always hard to walk something back the community has been doing for years. Especially when they fucking love it. It's a rocky path when you start to police how players can have fun.

Speaking of...

5. Just Let Them Fuck the Sheep

This story has nothing to do with gaming, but I think it fit so well into the theme of the overall issue, and honestly, is a fantastic community management lesson.

On July 3rd, Kiwibank, a New Zealand state-owned bank launched "Bank Kiwi" with Buck, a green-wooled sheep who refuses to "follow the flock".

And honestly. Just look at it.

You already know where this is going.

But also peep the screenshot and you get the problem. In response to the community taking off with their feelings for Buck, Kiwibank turns off comments on its ads and starts issuing DMCA notices.

The best way to summarize the situation comes from The Spinoff: "for every lustful post killed by a legal threat, another 10 take its place".

And so yeah, honestly, the more you try to police a community and tell them what they can and can't do, the more they're just going to... want to do it.

I see it happen all the time with game developers and publishers. There's a specific way they see community engagement and memes happening in their communities. And then, when it takes on a totally different form, they can't handle it. They can't control it. It's not the dream they saw in their heads. And so they start policing the community. Or worse, ignoring it.

But this is why the word community is so frustrating to me these days. Every brand, every game developer, says they want to have a community focused company and put community first. But often times, their actions don't match up, because companies LOVE to control things. And actual community is uncontrollable. You can guide it. You can foster it. You can pour gas on it. But you cannot control it. Otherwise it's not community.

This is where I plug my friend Bex's newsletter about community management called Players First. It's a great take on community management and community in general from a legend who used to work on Path of Exile. If you play PoE, you're embarrassed I'm even introducing her. She's also the one who introduced me to this story and probably regrets it now that this is how I'm introducing her to readers of Metagame. But hey, you can't control community, ya know?

Bex has the best take on this whole ordeal imo that she sent me in, you guessed it, DMs: "WHY DID THEY MAKE IT LOOK LIKE THAT IF NOT FOR THE FURRIES"

That's it for this week. What are your feelings on the Kiwibank sheep? What other mascots are going on your hear me out cake. Hit reply and let me know you disgusting animals.

And again, thank you for all the forwards and referrals. This newsletter grows by you hitting forward and recommending to someone else. And oh boy! What a first impression of a newsletter this one is.

See you next Sunday.