You know, sometimes you get lucky and every single gaming story you come across is happy and positive and makes you excited for the future, and other days there come the terrible times where everything is unravelling before your very eyes. Even rarer still, are the days when the biggest news of the day is so cringe-inducing that you just want to shrivel up into a walnut and pretend that you never read it. Today is one of those latter days, it would seem, as the gaming community was 'treated' to the self destructive tale of a person who haphazardly attempted to sink the reputation of an entire game over a broken heart. (Kinda. Look, it's not as cute as it sounds.)
First of all I should introduce the uninitiated to a title known as 'AI: The Somnium Files' (Look I don't name these games, okay?) Hailing from the visionary mind 'Kotaro Uchikoshi', 'AI' looks to be another weird and wonderful Japanese title that's heavy on the likeable characters and melodramatic story. So why haven't I bored you by drooling about this title before? Simple, it's from the creator who gave us the 'Zero Escape series' which are all VNs (Visual Novels). I have a very hit or miss relationship with VNs, I don't like them too bad that I want to rip out my eyes or too good so that I become crippled with the depressing realisation that I'll never write like that, and I hear Kotaro's work is on the latter end of this scale. (Yes, I know I'm pathetic; but you can bet I'll lampshade the crap outta myself.)
Upon it's release this latest title was met very positively by it's niche fan base, folk love their visual romps and this game promised to deliver that in droves, I guess. (I read one reviewer who said that the protagonist is a dull lump of wood, but apparently that doesn't detract from the overall experience given the high review scores this title was imbued with.) Oh, but I shouldn't speak so soon, because a few months after launch there was a single night in which the Metacritic review scores were struck with a review bombing far worse than the one 'Warcraft 3: Reforged' was subject to. (At least in terms of scale, Reforged still covets the lowest user score on the site.) By the end of this vicious attack the user score had been sunk from the highs of 8.2 to the lows of 1.9. (That's out of ten, just so we're on the same page.)
So what happened? Did some grave misjustice untoward the community result in a violent user review backlash, as was the case with Warcraft 3? No, actually a vast majority of the fans were baffled by this turn of events and couldn't put 2 and 2 together. Kotaro even picked up one this and entreated folk to relay the situation to Metacritic through his Twitter, no one wants to see the reputation of their product drug through the mud so bitterly and without any real reason. Some folk made the assumption that this may have something to do with some short 'pro-LGBQ' scene in the game, but whereas that might make a fun headline for Vox, in reality the game had already been out for several months and there was no reason to believe this would be a cause for alarm now. (Besides, people tend to forget humanities capacity for apathy.)
So what was going on? Well, there was one individual who seemed to have a working theory on the matter. They, for I choose not to name them, deduced that this act was performed by a single individual and with the intention of highlighting how 'broken' Metacritic was and how easy it was to game the system, they even provided a list of reasons why Metacritic's systems were outdated and how they could be bypassed. Rather insightful as far as your average Resetera post goes, although one could find themselves surprised at how this user not only managed to guess that just one person was involved, but figured out their motive, method and even pinpointed the exact minute that the review bombing started. (The Wayback machine ain't that precise.) Things unravelled when this post was shared via tweet, likely from someone trying to spread this helpful post as far as possible, only for some new fellow to point out that they know the user who made that post, and in the vein of all truly stupid criminals, they were bragging about conducting the review bombing all over discord.
Rather curious case of a self-own right there as this individual managed to insert themselves into their own crime scene despite having no eyes on them at all up until that point. (Guess it's true what they say about returning to the scene.) And what did our illustrious review bomber do when rustled? Immediately jump down the throat of the person who narc-ed of them for claiming that the perpetrator "Hated the community". (So much for due process, the guy literally confessed.) So what was the ultimate reason behind all of this? Was he highlighting the 'problems with the system' like he claimed? Nope, turns out that was the equivalent of Martin Shkreli claiming he hiked up HIV drug prices to highlight how everyone else in the industry was doing it, not just to make a quick buck like he obviously was.
As with all Twitter spats, this revelation was accompanied by a tidal wave of petty personal dramas that only a regular denizen of Resetera could excrete, although it only took a little prodding to unfurl the real trigger factor behind it all. Turns out that our bot spammer here took quite a heavy exception to the game, despite enjoying a good portion of the promotional material. He even developed a crush on the character 'A-set', a fact which the community mocked him relentlessly for. Whilst he never explicitly stated it, and for the sake of what's left of his pride he likely never will, the running consensus is that he was disappointed with how 'A-Set' was portrayed in the final product and took to relieve his frustration by review bombing Metacritic. (Most people just settle with writing fanfic. Or heck, maybe even slash-fic if you're that riled up!)
Our pantomime villain immediately took to lamp-shading themselves (hey, that's my signature move!) by claiming that he has an "attachment problem" and that this entire predicament is just a testament to "how much A-set means to (him)"; but as you can rather predictably imagine this was met by a flurry of "You need help" replies and he ended doing nothing for his image. (Then again, at this point he's probably just defeated.) So why have I shone a light on this sorry saga? No reason in particular, other than to say; I get it. Storytelling is, at it's heart, the art of eliciting emotion out of someone, and in some cases there is no greater compliment then managing to have people care about a fiction character. Remember how 'Snow White' was specifically designed and manufactured to prove that,with enough talent, one could bring an audience to tears over an animation? Storytellers are all about making people believe in the intangible and, honestly, I have to give props to our fellow for admitting how this specific character from 'AI' managed to touch him. (Albeit, the manner in which it touched him is a bit weird. And a lot cringey. Should I add creepy? I think it's implied.)
The point at which this crosses the line, at least in my eyes, is where he decided to take his frustrations out on the game's user review score, because there's just no need for that. These sorts of actions have a knock-on effect to the popularity and success of a title and there's an entire studio of real people who don't deserve to feel the brunt of this kid's unrequited (I'm assuming) crush. Look at me, I'm spelling out the obvious to everyone here, but I feel the need to let it be known anyway. I don't endorse what he did, but I won't rag him for his obsession, however weird it may seem to some folk. (There's certainly a whole world's worth of worse things to be obsessed by.) That being said, the only reason I wrote about this here is because the entire situation managed to make me cringe into a ball yet fascinate me at the same time. That, and I just missed out on bagging a Shiny Ditto and I need something to take my mind off the pain before I throw myself out of a second story window. Well, that's all I got; see you for another impromptu blog the next time something this surreal goes down.
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