MaddKossack115 said:
Well true, and I think Yahtzee shot himself in the foot when he basically admitted "I could have turned off the comments, but then I wouldn't have gotten to complain about it". What, he couldn't just take the option to turn them off, and then complain that we should really turn the comment option off first chance we get?
I can't say I'm fond of this line of reasoning, even if most of the time it's completely correct. There's lots of stuff where it makes sense to just 'turn it off', but that shouldn't excuse completely flawed designs.
There are very few situations I can think of where letting players throw down commentary on the level/game IN the level/game where it not only doesn't destroy immersion into the game, but actually makes sense.
The only one that comes to mind is Dark Souls, which restricted user comments to semi-predetermined phrases, all of which were oriented towards the gameplay as it happened. Turning it off didn't really lose you much, but you'd sometimes get useful hints or at least some amusing comments about what's happening as you experience it yourself.
But If you were to try and drop user comments into most other games, it doesn't make nearly as much sense. Mario, Zelda, Unreal Tournament, Mass Effect, and so on.
Sure, you could turn off the feature, but if it adds exactly nothing, and likely directly inhibits the game experience, why is it there at all?
As for the article, I can't say I was bothered by it. It was, as I read it, intentionally overzealous to get a rise out of people that think they were being insulted - but as others pointed out, he's directly asked for comments on stuff he makes before, like his games.
I think it's less 'no one should ever talk other than content creators' and more 'if the comments aren't, or even CANNOT be relevant, why would we even allow it?'
Rules on the forums here keep things from being snap comments, and as on-topic as possible. Random facebook comments, or basically anything on youtube will never have that, and so it makes you question why you would want that garbage to share space with the content you put effort into producing.