When I logged into Steam earlier today, I noticed a new feature: a user-generated tagging system complete with personalized recommendations for my account based on the games in my library and the tags attached to them. I also noticed that some of the players tagging games are very openly opinionated. Some games are being tagged as "bad" and all of its synonyms. Some games are being tagged as "overrated" and BioShock Infinite tops the list. Other examples of criticism-by-tagging are slightly more subtle. The "casual" tag is being placed not only on casual games as they are known in the traditional sense, but also on games deemed too easy by hardcore players who expect legitimate challenge in their games. (Notable examples include the Thief reboot, which is geared toward players who never played the original series or any difficult stealth game, and Call of Duty: Ghosts, the latest in a series of first-person shooters which has long been associated with an immature fan base who would eat garbage if the TV said it was cool).
Kotaku writer Patricia Hernandez noticed it too, and I don't usually comment every time a Kotaku employee writes something that annoys me — I don't have that kind of time — but on this occasion it will serve as a nice excuse to mention a couple of other things that were already on my mind.
"Trolling is definitely a thing in Steam Tags right now," Hernandez writes, and maybe she's not entirely wrong. Surely some tags are being added just for the sake of annoying the fans of certain games, just for laughs. The tags to which she's referring, though, are the ones that merely express a genuine opinion, like "casual" as applied to Dark Souls and "bad" as applied to Gone Home.
I'm not really sure when the meaning of the word "trolling" shifted so drastically. It used to mean saying inflammatory things for the sole purpose of angering other people, especially when the things being said are completely disingenuous. A good troll pretends to be completely serious when he posts deliberately flawed arguments the middle of an otherwise intelligent discussion for the sake of disrupting it. He pretends to be dumber than he is, or more ignorant than he is, because this makes his ignorant comments all the more infuriating, and he keeps this up for as long as possible because the game is essentially over when someone figures out that he's "just trolling." Trolls get attention because of the perception that they're incredibly stupid or incredibly horrible in some other way, not the because of their actual opinions.
But "trolling" adopted a different meaning in mainstream media soon after the mainstream media (thought they) learned the word, and maybe it's because successful trolls on the internet are so good at hiding their true intentions. The whole "pretending" part is conspicuously missing from the outside world's common understanding of what trolling is. Almost any type of online harassment or use of unkind words is, therefore, called "trolling" even if the supposed trolls are, instead of really trolling, just being completely serious and stating their actual opinions (albeit in a rude manner). Those who use the word "trolling" in this context probably wouldn't see through the ruse if an actual troll were trolling them, so maybe I can't blame them for getting it wrong, but I miss the times when words had meaning.
The past few years, I think, have seen the bastardization of the word come to completion. People are now using the word "trolling" even to refer to the expression of just about any unpopular or unacceptable opinion. We're seeing some of it right here in this Kotaku article.
Let's say I've never played Gone Home, but I tag it with the word "bad" just because I know its fans are likely to have a big cry and act like their human rights are being violated, resulting in a ludicrous and humorous display. That's trolling. If I play it and then tag it with the word "bad" because I genuinely think it's bad and should be categorized as such, I'm merely expressing an opinion. There's an important difference that Hernandez doesn't appear to understand. In fact, I'm really not sure if she knows how opinions work at all. The following is an excerpt from the article that comes right after her "trolling" comment:
Let's start with the "bad" tag. It does have games notorious for being poor—The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, for example. It's hard to argue the quality of that game. Gone Home, though? It's not everyone's cup of tea, but that doesn't mean it's bad!Really? It doesn't? One doesn't get to call something bad when one doesn't like it?
Let's analyze this bizarre logic. Tagging one game as "bad" is totally fine because it was unpopular (or because fellow Kotaku writer Kirk Hamilton thought it was bad too), but tagging the other game as "bad" is incorrect because... why? Because the right people (perhaps the kind of people who read Kotaku) like it? Because its perceived relative popularity means the alternate opinion doesn't exist? Hernandez seems to think that each game has an objective amount of badness, and that a certain threshold of badness (or of agreement on its badness) must be crossed before we're allowed to call it bad. In other words, "bad" is not allowed to be an individual person's opinion. That's kind of strange because, if you ask anyone who has a firm grasp on the difference between facts and opinions, the fact that it's "not everyone's cup of tea" does mean it's bad — it's bad in the minds of people who would prefer some other tea in a different cup.
A normal person in Hernandez' position would just say "I disagree with these people," and maybe that's what she's trying to say, but if that's the case then she has a very strange way of saying it. She's not simply stating her own opinion about the game; she's suggesting that some opinions are true while other opinions are false. She's saying it's wrong for anyone to tag Gone Home as a bad game on Steam, not only because the tagging system wasn't necessarily meant for opinions, but more importantly because this particular game wasn't as universally unloved as The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct. She's calling it "trolling" and, whether she knows the actual meaning of the word or not, it makes her look like a gigantic moron.
This is just the latest example of a worrying trend in which people take Thumper's advice about saying not-so-nice things and apply it to everything said about their favorite commercial products. In addition to the misuse of the word "trolling" (as usual), Hernandez' article uses words like "unfair" to describe the negative tags placed on games that she likes. Some of the tags being used are definitely uncool — concisely written spoilers and random profanity, for example — but expressing negative (or otherwise unpopular) opinions about a game is not by any means "unfair" and, in my opinion, even using tags to express these opinions doesn't really amount to abuse of the system. It was designed to let players tag games as they see fit. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that "gaming" "journalists" disagree. After all, they're the ones who make a living pumping out reviews with inflated scores because their advertising revenue depends on it, while they push the notion that players who complain about bad games are just displaying a false sense of entitlement.
The most popular tags for Gone Home right now are "not a game," "walking simulator," and "bad." Hernandez thinks these tags aren't helpful, but they are if a player wants to know if a game is worth buying. Since tags are more visible if they're more popular, even tags like "good" and "bad" are just about as helpful as the user scores on Metacritic. Tags like "not a game" and "walking simulator" are meant to be humorous but they do give players an idea of what Gone Home is like. They're informative even if they're exaggerations. The "not a game" tag is sure to be the most controversial, but people have been accusing Gone Home of not being a game since it was released, and it's a valid criticism. We don't get to say it's unfair just because it hurts the developers' or fans' feelings.
I sincerely hope that Valve doesn't side with the crybabies at Kotaku by moderating all traces of opinion out of the tagging system. If the people running Steam didn't want opinions to show up in user-generated tags, they shouldn't have implemented the feature at all. Games on Steam are already sorted by genre, and they could have just expanded upon this if they only wanted a dry, boring and sterile categorization system devoid of anything subjective.
Update (February 15, 2014):
It looks like Valve is indeed moderating the user-generated tags, and on second thought I really can't blame them for not wanting strongly negative descriptors attached to products on their own store. (Tags were never meant to be used as mini-reviews, so I can't even call it a scandal as long as no one is tampering with the actual user review system.) Apparently tags like "bad" are no more, and even the popular "not a game" tag has vanished. As of right now, though, Gone Home is still classified as a "walking simulator" first and foremost, and I think it's pretty hilarious.
