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Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

farewell.bostonunitygroup.com

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Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#301

Post by jodrellblank »

kdottt wrote: post #5

"More importantly, we've seen how easily and flippantly an executive-led business decision can risk bankrupting the studios we've worked so hard to build, threaten our livelihoods as professionals, and challenge the longevity of our industry. The Unity of today isn't the same company that it was when the group was founded, and the trust we used to have in the company has been completely eroded." Profoundly sad, and c…

> "Have never seen a company so quickly and completely just throw away all of their public good will."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner - head of a chain of jewellery shops described his company's products as 'total crap' and that speech tanked the shares by £500M in 1991 money - around $1.2Bn equivalent today.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#302

Post by plagiarist »

Karellen wrote: post #201
musicale wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have never seen a company so quickly and completely just throw away all of their public good will. Over the past year Docker and D&D/Wizards of the Coast come to mind...

And tumblr, when they announced they would no longer support creators of "adult" content. And (nearly) OnlyFans, when they announced they would no longer support creators of "adult" content (aka, "did a tumblr"). They just about backpedalled quickly enough, and had enough stickyness (no pun intended) from followers, to contain most of the damage.

I don't understand how it is possible to advance to a decision-making role if someone is stupid enough to attempt to remove porn from OnlyFans, the household name for amateur porn.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#303

Post by nitwit005 »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #259
nitwit005 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A history of doing the right thing doesn't matter in the slightest, unless you can somehow guarantee their leadership won't change (or is unlikely to, at least).

> A history of doing the right thing doesn't matter in the slightest If we all thought this way, certainly there'd be no incentive for anyone to do the right thing at all? A good track record should be rewarded, up until the point when it stops. You shouldn't trust any company indefinitely, but there are a few that you can trust "for now".

I suspect the incentive to care about company reputation has genuinely decreased.

I'll note companies seem genuinely okay with being on lists of the most hated brands in America.

Edit: typo

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#304

Post by Willish42 »

kulahan wrote: post #196
a_e_k wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the noun phrase and wiki link you're looking for is "door-in-the-face technique", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique .

It's all just based on the idea of anchoring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_effect

These are both exactly what I had in mind. DITF was specifically something I'd definitely read about but couldn't remember the name for. Also think this reply correctly identifies that anchoring bias is the underlying more generic version of this effect / tactic.

Thanks!

Edit: Specifically, reading through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negotiation#Tactics, I believe both the "Highball/Low-ball or Ambit claim" and "Anchoring" sections describe the phenomena I was thinking of.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#305

Post by viscountchocula »

protocolture wrote: post #288

The term I am using most often this year. https://therightstuff.medium.com/the-trust-thermocline-expla...

That article seems strange. The example shows the opposite phenomenon. The upper layers change temperature quickly (going from 22°C to 6°C over the course of ~500ft. The lower layers change slowly (going from 6°C to around 1°C over the next 6000ft.

The graph makes it look like top changes slowly, but that's because the axes are inverted: the independent variable (depth) is on the Y.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#306

Post by AndrewKemendo »

worldsayshi wrote: post #269
gameman144 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an example here, my father and grandfather used to swear by Craftsman tools. No matter the context, if there was a Craftsman version, they'd go for it because they implicitly trusted the quality. Then the Craftsman brand downshifted its production quality to compete in price and their reliability fell through the floor. Now my family will skip over Craftsman entirely even if it's competitive in price, since the br…

Very much feels like long term brand building has fallen out of fashion. Has the incentives shifted or is it just viral greed?

Basic greed is sufficient, no need for the viral part

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#307

Post by Hnrobert42 »

worldsayshi wrote: post #270
nitwit005 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, I just assume that no company can be trusted these days. It wasn't too long ago that the leadership of companies was often fairly stable. Now you see people rotating through every couple of years, rarely having to face the fallout of their bad decisions.

Is there a reason for this trend? Why does so many companies seem to have stopped caring about their long term reputation?

Under Clinton, there was an effort to tie executive compensation to company performance. The idea was good, but the consequence was that executives got paid much more in stock than in cash. That led executives to juice the stock price.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#308

Post by [deleted] »

ncallaway wrote: post #283
shmatt wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to decide on its meaning first. Most people these days use it as a death mark. Except the original op-ed often quoted used Meta, Uber, TikTok and Google - companies who make billions of clean profit per quarter, and more profits than they ever have, as examples Enshitification = more profits is unfortunately correct in my mind, but most people use it with a much different meaning. I don't think Unity…

Enshitification is when you make a product worse for the users with the goal of increasing profit. It may work. It may work in the short term, but cause collapse in the long term. It may fail in the short term. All are enshitification. There are two keys elements in my mind: - the product gets worse - in an attempt to increase profit

[deleted]

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#309

Post by irksomehails »

MattRix wrote: post #290
ilc wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us saw what was going to happen with D4. It was pretty obvious. After DI, and D3, to expect D4 to launch in any decent state would have been naive at best. I've said as much in the Diablo subreddit. D3 is now a good game, if it is what you are looking for. It's a fun romp, but... It isn't a truly heavy ARPG. If you want that POE is calling you.

Diablo 4 was great. I put probably 50+ hours into it and enjoyed it a lot. I also completely ignored the opionion of whatever communities existed for it, because they ALWAYS complain and turn toxic, especially for Blizzard games. It’s inevitable and says very little about the actual game. Same thing happened with Overwatch 2 as well. It’s a great game yet somehow has only 10% positive reviews on Steam.

It is okay to like and enjoy a game that the majority of the playerbase does not, I've had similar experience in multiple games, mostly MMORPGs and ARPGs with expansions but that does not take away from the experience of other players.

It comes down to personal preference. If you find yourself liking a game/expansion when most of the playerbase does not, it is best to avoid online forums/subreddits where the game is put on full blast (sometimes unfairly) becuase people are extrememly emotional, when the best thing for the to do is to walk away and play games they enjoy, it is just a game the stakes couldn't be any lower.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#310

Post by berniedurfee »

anymouse123456 wrote: post #289
berniedurfee wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had the same experience many years ago. I have a bunch of old Craftsman tools that are superb quality and will last decades more. Sad to see them as an empty house brand now. Just like GE appliances, all that’s left is a sticker.

I don't doubt there are plenty of experiences that went the wrong way, but wanted to share an alternative anecdote that went well. I bought a brand new ~$900 GE dishwasher last year (for a non-intended purpose) and needed to take it apart - for reasons. IMO, the engineering in this thing was just marvelous. It was almost entirely tool-free click/snap fittings for full disassembly and reassembly. The parts were good q…

You actually bought a Haier dishwasher with a GE sticker on it.

It’s hard to tell these days whether you’re buying a product from a brand you trust or from a company that bought the brand you trust.

Though, having said that, I recently bought a Bosch refrigerator because Bosch is still Bosch and I trusted Bosch.

But the refrigerator is crap, broken on arrival and it took 5 phone calls and 3 weeks to get service.

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