My prediction for Dispatch season 2 is that there’s going to be steep disappointment for the folks who will remain plugged into the community right up until release, because that’s inevitably what ends up happening when people on here try to sustain their Special Interest on tumblr (or discord, or Reddit, or twitter, etc.)
There will be a lot of interesting meta and commentary that comes out of the fandom, but almost none of it will be integrated into the game because studios these days are mainly preoccupied with Reddit, because that's where every gamedev goes for the Good Fandom vibes. And because Reddit’s community is Very White and Very CisHet Male the game is going to reflect that in the content of the game.
Because even though they have a Discord server (where I’m sure a lot of tumblr natives are trying to give feedback rn) they’re ultimately only going to listen to the stuff that suits their interests and needs and discard the rest because, by and large almost every Discord community made by a gamedev I’ve ever heard of has this weirdly toxic aspect to it that no one has really figured out how to handle appropriately in no small part because the Discord server serves both as free labor for playtesting and feedback, but also because every gamedev squirms at banning anyone (even if it’s for valid reasons) because cliques form and certain people with too much time and energy on their hands get their kicks off of being the popular user in the community (and this person is usually popular for valid reasons, but ultimately they end up misusing their social currency to be a dick to folks they don’t like).
And if you think you know what community I’m talking about: I’m talking about 3 different communities where this has happened, and is still a problem on those servers. They are also all servers where their queer and POC audience is largely ignored in favor of the folks who are loud fans of a Certain Popular White Character. I would be really surprised if Dispatch/Adhoc is the exception in this regard.
Anyway I can’t wait for folks to preorder the game and be mad when there’s no queer romance OR there’s a queer romance and it has far less content than the straight ones. Round and round we go.
