Look, this popular game for girls has reached 1 star in google play store. It's a game made for women as target audience, it's extremely popular and used to be well-received.
So what happened? Why did it reach 1 star? I've read that it's mostly about the divided opinions between the local and global community. The game was planning to release new content which seemed to "coincidentally" have many culturally insensitive things. Considering that China is a socially conservative country, it created a huge backlash in local playerbase.
However, the situation isn't as easy as it seems. This character has been teased and promoted so many times. The company has also earned a lot from the promotion of this character. Many global fans have also preordered for real life content and in game content. Cancelling it now means betraying both global fans and customers.
And so what did they do?
They cancelled the new content.
Thus, not only they have received the outrage of local playerbase, they're also now on the receiving end of the outrage of the global playerbase. The local players left 1 star reviews before and now the global players are giving 1 star reviews too. Just because the company apologized and cancelled the new content, there's still no reason for the local players to change their reviews back or give 5 star reviews. It's no surprise that such a popular game received a one-star rating across hundreds of thousands of reviews; it has turned their entire playerbase against them.
They're cooked. It will be interesting to see how they're going to salvage this situation. Likewise, it will also be fascinating to see the complete downfall of an extremely popular and loved game.
Say, if you were the PR Director for this game, what would you have done instead?
Ideally, one would pilot or beta test the new content to address cultural issues not seen in the original testing. Then make the content more culturally sensitive. Respond hastily to all accusers and satisfy them with additional in-game rewards. Respond calmly to real-life threats, blackmails, and evil gifts. Negotiate with the leaders of the opposition and make some compromise, like delaying the release of new content and giving them more in-game rewards. Lobby to the govenrment officials to get political protection. Hold your ground and do not surrender remaining leverage without getting anything in return. If worst comes to worst, separate the game for global players and local players, only releasing the new content for global players and giving generous apology gifts to local players.
But perhaps they didn't have a choice. The game headquarters was located in a strict authoritarian country with high levels of censorship and social conservatism. The government itself must have threatened their company with complete annihilation if they release and do not completely remove the upcoming new content. They couldn't act fast enough. And perhaps when they were about to finally get their sheep together and think of a creative solution to the problem, their government couldn't tolerate them any longer and threatened them. This threat probably shut down their creative functions, their fear took over and they kneeled instantly.
If only they made culturally sensitive content in the first place, if only they acted quick enough when the issue escalated, if only they didn't give in to fear and stood their ground while making creative compromises... then perhaps they might have salvaged some of it.
But because of the series of unfortunate circumstances and/or bad decisions, this is what happened.
Sigh.. do you know? There's two games I enjoy playing everyday. I gave them both a one star review in playstore and still kept playing them. The first one, because it has toxic community. The second one, because it's too laggy. I didn't bother to change the reviews because they're still true. But I'm still playing them.
Isn't this what they call Love? It is a piece of cake to see the imperfections of the things you love. You can call it names and dislike it, but you'll stay with it until the very end.
Or will you?
Love is beautiful because it can twist to become powerful hate. Extreme hatred is only possible when it involves something you are attached to, when it involves something you loved.
After all, your greatest fans can sometimes become your most creepy stalkers or your most relentless haters.
Only a fool expects loyalty from a crowd or audience. They are meant to be swayed, you cannot be swayed by them.
To say that you desire something, is to place an undue burden, an implicit demand for that "thing" to remain desirable.