I couldn’t agree more with your opinion on Reddit. Over the past 10 years it has become so much more toxic and unwelcoming. It is hivemind culture and it is only going to get worse over time. The reporting on the Boston bombings should have been writing on the walls and that was a good while ago. Looking at it now, I just can’t believe how depressing it was just doom scrolling on that app daily.
One summer night in highschool, I swear someone broke into our house and tried to enter my bedroom. I heard a rumbling downstairs at around 3 am when I was settling into bed after a long night of gaming downstairs. I initially thought it was a family member, but I started to get suspicious when I thought I heard my dad snoring through the door between the subtle chaos developing downstairs. As I opened the door slightly to see what was up, I heard something come running up the stairs. No one in my family would come running up wooden stairs at 3am when everyone was sleeping, so I instinctively shut the door as fast as I could. As I finished shutting the door, something or someone started pushing back to seemingly try and break into my room. I swear I held that door and fought back from these aggressive pushes for at least a minute until they stopped. I held that door close in a panic for what seemed like 15 additional minutes panicking about all the possibilities. Keep in mind, this was all happening after a recent murder in the town over that took place earlier that year. So, my young mind thought the worst.
Eventually I gathered the courage to open that door and run to my parent's room to alert them. My Dad and I ran downstairs to see what was going on, but there was NO trace of anything or *anyone * inside. We looked everywhere but the only thing weird was an unlocked but fully closed window.
This absolutely made me terrified for the rest of the summer and I was unable to sleep for almost a whole week afterwards. We never found out what happened or if it was even real! I still think about it to this day years later.
I just want to know why everything has to be open world today. It seems like developers are just constantly increasing scope and making games almost too big now.