Originally this video was going to be very different, the premise was to expose a Dragon Age discord community that became increasingly hateful and toxic over the years. However, as I assembled this video together, I came across shocking and frankly diabolical behaviors all stemming from one particular community that is overshadowing the BioWare fandom.
The Dragon Age subreddit.
Some of you might be surprised by this revelation due to the number of how many Dragon Age fans participate in this subreddit, which houses up to 126k members, but actually averages to hit up to barely 2k members who only show up to snark at people who just started the game.
For those who don't go on this subreddit, then, congratulations, you will have the most healthy opinion about the Dragon Age community. However, if you're an avid participant of the subreddit, then, you already know what I am going to be talking about.
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By the end of this video, I want to convince you how the most renowned community has fallen from grace. How this once beloved platform has failed and betrayed its very own content creators, game developers, and most importantly, the fans.
The Dragon Age subreddit was created on Oct 1st, 2009, which technically, would be a month before Dragon Age: Origins came out on November 3rd, the same year.
It was created by the Founding Engineer of Reddit called 'KeyserSosa', also known as Christopher Slowe. At that time, most of the creators of Reddit made a lot of game subreddits to primarily promote video games and making communities out of their fans. I guess you could say, that it might have been the 'origin' of the Dragon Age community.
And while at this time, users generally asked about the game mechanics and their own choices made within the game. However, there was a dilemma about how spoiler-related content and discussion would be handled for new subreddit users. And so, the first of the tags were born, a very much regrettable decision that would later cause mass confusion down the line.
The subreddit had quite a few changes during the anticipation of Dragon Age 2's release, with the high success of DAO, a huge fandom on the subreddit was booming, and users were very much excited for the next game...
In 2006, BioWare Senior writer Jennifer Hepler was interviewed about her opinions concerning the least favorite part of working in the video game industry:
"Playing the games. This is probably a terrible thing to admit, but it has definitely been the single most difficult thing for me... While I enjoy the interactive aspects of gaming, if a game doesn't have a good story, it's very hard for me to get interested in playing it."
— Article "Killer Women: Jennifer Hepler", by Killer Betties
Unfortunately, this interview was later resurfaced back on the subreddit r/gaming in February 2012, a post titled: "This women is the cancer that is killing Bioware".
The original Reddit post featured a heavily edited version of the interview, which subtracted the fact that Hepler is expecting a child in the coming months, and therefore has a minimal amount of time to dedicate to gaming.
The original screencap posted on Reddit included the words: Cancer, Infection, Sewage, {&} Plague...
— Kotaku
The screencap also included calling her the name 'Hamburger Helper', in reference to her last name, and the intention to body shame her. Users interacting in this post were commenting remarks about how she should stick to 'fanfiction' and force BioWare to get rid of Jennifer.
The Kotaku article later goes on to say that Hepler received much hate from other forums like 4chan's.
Nonetheless, many users decided to harass Hepler on Twitter. BioWare's Studio General Manager, Aaryn Flynn, rose to her defense against the attackers on Twitter, asking the user to justifiably, 'go fuck yourself'.
Hepler also responded tweeting "I just figure they're jealous that I get to have both a vagina AND a games industry job, and they can't get either."
This was just the beginning of the harassment, Hepler received many insults and slurs throughout Twitter, with many users still posting pictures and memes on Reddit and 4chan about her opinions regarding video games.
Less than a year later, Jennifer Hepler leaves BioWare after receiving many death threats to her children and her hated reputation as a video-game writer.
"A lot of the best artists and storytellers (and quite a few great programmers too)," she said, "tend to be sensitive people - we shouldn't lose out on their talents because we are requiring them to be tough, battle-scarred veterans just to walk in the door."
— Eurogamer, Robert Purchese
Reddit's reputation of their environment tries to uphold certain content regulations that violate Reddiquette standards, and despite removing that type of content, Reddit's users thrive based on posts that reach exceeding animosity (an-im-os-ity) and attention 6 years later. Spiraling a toxic environment of users to force a senior employee of BioWare to leave their job due to the horrific harassment that inflicted her.
Of course, this display of harassment was throughout 2012. You can only imagine how toxic and hostile the Dragon Age Reddit community has intensified since those events.
BioFan was a well-known news content creator and well, a Fan of BioWare. His content was generally very well received in the community as he promoted positive news updates on upcoming BioWare games. So much so, that the developers followed, and even supported him with interviews. But with great success and recognition from the majority of the community, comes Envy from the most expected platform:
"What is Envy? A coward sir."
Unlike most platforms who allow self-promotion throughout the internet, Reddit does not appreciate self-promotion, and according to their self-promotion guidelines:
Self-promotion is generally frowned upon, but if you want to have a presence on Reddit you should submit from a variety of sources (10% or less should link to your own content), talk to people in the comments (and not just on your own links), and generally be a good member of the community.
Their argument? Because Reddit is a community, not a platform for self-promotion.
BioFan adhered to those guidelines and generally tried to keep up with engaging in the subreddit for r/masseffect and r/dragonage. He even talked with the moderators before posting to ensure it was okay and fulfilled the self-promotion guidelines of the subreddit.
However, when he posted his video's, as always, he was watched adamantly/venomously by the mods, because users would always flag his posts of self-promotion even though he would abide by the subreddit's rules and talked to the mods prior.
He would commonly get moderators posting comments about their self-promotional policy:
'For every 1 time you post self-promotional content, 9 other posts (submissions or comments) should not contain self-promotional content.'
The thing about Reddit moderators is that they typically monitor and take control of posts that do not follow the guidelines in their subreddit criteria. But the issue with these subreddit moderators is that they tend to get big-headed and start to power-trip against users who generally are following the Redditique guidelines.
Now due to BioFan following these guidelines, these moderators kept tabs, and used their intimidating comments on the post so that they could make a statement towards him, that they are in control, and have the 'power' to withhold his content whenever they desire.
However, the moderators didn't stop there. r/dragonage and r/masseffect were getting more and more users daily, they decided to make Discord servers to connect more with other users. And as interactive as it might seem, this was opening a pandora's box that nobody needed to witness.
Discord generally follows many different guidelines and regulations about running servers, especially if these servers are partnered with them. Like the r/dragonage Discord server is.
Reddit, as you know, is very strict compared to Discord. On Discord, you need to be invited to a server to engage in the community and you can generally get away with a lot of things like trash talking. The masks of these 'esteemed' moderators suddenly fell off and revealed a very ugly face.
The moderators posted BioFan's content, making fun of him and deliberately going into detail about why they 'hate' BioFan.
They would comment on how he treats his audience like they are 'dumb' and like he's 'hosting a children's show', then compared his videos to 'Blues Clues'. They even went to measures of calling him 'excessively gay' and a 'shit-stirrer'.
As BioFan grew and grew, the hate in the server intensified. The mods would post his avatar/commissioned artwork saying he was 'slimy' and belonged on r/punchablefaces. When I inquired to the mods about this, they claimed "it was a joke and had no concerted effort to bully or harass any of these content creators."
When speaking with the mods who later banned me, I asked them how would you feel if these content creators joined this server tomorrow and saw that information? They replied dismissing my claim of harassment and bullying in this server.
When I reached out to BioFan asking if he took these comments as a joke, he said it was 'bullshit, there's clear homophobia here'. And he 'prefers to think of them as folks who don’t have anything better to do'.
So these mods are just blatantly talking behind his back, offering no means for BioFan to respond. And since they are moderators, more and more users blindly join in on the hate regardless if they liked BioFan or not.
This is because of the sheer fear of the moderator's backlash if any user dared to defend or watch BioFan. This created cycles of constant bullying and harassment for BioFan whenever he would release a video on YouTube, the mods would continually mock and hate BioFan, reminding new users how he is hated on the subreddit on r/me and r/da for promoting his videos.
According to moderator guidelines for Reddit, a moderator is not supposed to:
Remove content based on [their] opinion.
and
Ban users from subreddits in which they have not broken any rules.
So regardless if they were not showing their opinions on Reddit openly, they were openly sharing their opinions on Discord. Shortly after those posts, BioFan was banned from the subreddit and never allowed to connect and share his videos on Reddit ever again...
On Aug 31st, 2017, BioFan posted what would be his last video, detailing Mass Effect's future. Another content creator by the name of Jackdaw Journalism at the time was the next BioWare content creator to be boycotted. Merely 3 days later after BioFan's last video, Jackdaw was the next target on the server and has been ever since. The hate has elevated to the point of reacting to every single video he creates.
Other modern YouTubers that have been targeted since are Ghil Dirthalen, BioWare Follower, Ash/MEOdessey. And I'm sure plenty more if I wasn't banned from the server so quickly.
The point I'm trying to emphasize is that this hatred is happening right now, the toxicity in the Reddit community is at its peak, with the moderators creating the conflict. Every BioWare creator is under attack, for simply being a fan of the games. How can a subreddit that is dedicated to the fans swindle to these depths of hatred for the ones who provide the community with a positive and safe space to interact in?
In summary, I don't think I could end on a better note than what BioFan has said regarding the radical change for this community:
'I’d tell them they should oversee the community, not dictate what they want it to be. Moderate, but let the fandom decide what it wants to be within that space. If something isn’t wanted, it’ll be downvoted or non-voted into obscurity.'
and
'Also—I’ll be as excessively gay as I like. You’re welcome.'
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