Doki Doki Battling Club - Halloween 2023 Event Feedback & Discussion

[wanderist]

So, when (or even if) we ever do anything like this again, what can we do to keep it from getting out of hand like this?

I would make it clear from the start that it was an act, and give users the choice of joining in the act, watch it all unfold with popcorn/other treat of choice, or ignoring it altogether.

Definitely making it clearer, especially in a case like this so nobody gets attached to anything that isn't real or worries about someone over something that didn't happen. And also I think someone else mentioned actually doing it like right around Halloween and not dragging it out for week(s) prior. Part of the reason why I didn't suspect anyone of lying was because Nemona's account joined and all this started like...a week or two ago? I expected a Halloween event, but not weeks of deception. Even when something seemed off and I was like "has AI really gotten to where it can do that...?" I didn't see a reason to doubt anyone just because it's October. Like several said, I trusted the staff and didn't think they would lie about something so serious...the entire month, anyway.

 

[toastghost]

i think the big problem in all of this is not knowing when to stop committing to the bit. while the idea that a forum ai that starts off normal and gradually starts growing more and more erratic is fun on paper, it went too far in practice. you definitely should've started messaging people in dms and telling them that this was fake when people started getting upset/worried/angry.

also never make the themes mandatory. it was just an annoyance to me, but most people just don't like it when they can't change it.

 

[ReturnofMCH]

tbh I'm actually kind of mad over this whole thing, and found it very tasteless.

 

[helperman]

i noticed a lot of mistakes with the AI, but that actually made me more invested. if it was just a normal AI, i would have been slightly interested, but the mistakes in the AIs behaviour made me think this was the future of AI, and thus took my investment to a whole other level. though it was partially just my strong opinions that made me so defensive of nemona, it was also the fact that because of certain qualities of the AI, i thought that you weren't just killing an AI, you were essentially killing the future.

 

[ragnarokio]

I think it was a really fun idea and I'm thankful to the staff for putting so much work into it. It sounds like nemona said some offensive things and that's unfortunate but i suppose mistakes happen and it sounds like the person who made those mistakes is probably pretty traumatized from them and i imagine that will be a pretty strong lesson on its own.

the one thing that struck me as potentially being in particularly poor taste was electing not to do any damage control when several users expressed that they were legitimately confused and upset and that they wanted answers. Continuing to lie to those people at that point seemed to me to be in poor taste. I would have reached out to them, even if it might have resulted in the cover being blown. I can understand that for a group it can be hard to have a discussion and come to an executive discussion in the small period of time that tensions were particularly high though.

I'm sure the staff only had good intentions at heart, and i don't envy them being put into that kind of position with what was supposed to be (and was, for me) a fun arg-type event.

 

[Daren]

So now that the event is over I guess I'll post my thoughts. I won't touch on the major controversies since I'm not in a position to reasonably do so.

At the very beginning I thought it was genuine. I'll confess I wasn't thrilled about it; I tend to find AI unhelpful at best and an active hindrance at worst (I've read more than a few stories of people getting blatantly wrong info from them) and have serious concerns about current AI development, but I didn't want to say anything against the hard work that would go into building one for the forum, so I mostly just ignored the whole thing until Nemona "woke herself up", at which point I guessed that it was a Halloween event--especially since many of the errors weren't the sort I associated with modern AI and more "robot malfunctioning in a movie" like broken posts and sentencing.

I was in a slightly unusual situation where I only know about Doki Doki as one in the line of internet surprise horror games and wouldn't be able to spot any particular references, and I haven't played Scarlet/Violet so I had no idea how accurate the Nemona "AI" was to the actual character, which prevented me from interacting with them as much as I may otherwise have.

 

[MelodicCharm]

ok, just caught up with the debrief thread, here's my two cents:

the nemona thread was very fun and i enjoyed playing along. i can tell that a lot of effort went into this and i'm thankful for that. that said, i agree with people that it's really important to know when to break keyfabe to keep people safe, and i think people definitely should have been given definite clarity on the situation when they were genuinely worried.

i also agree that there really should have been clearer boundaries drawn and a clearer way to opt out. "you could have just toggled off the sidebar" is not a good response.

i wasn't here for phase one before Nemona went haywire, but i agree that it would have been a good idea to limit the event closer to actual halloween.

i also wasn't here for whatever the "NK fiasco" was but from what others are saying, the fact that it sounds like that wasn't moderated is pretty fucked. whoever did that should not have been kept on the nemona puppet team, at the very least. apologies if i misconstrued anything there.

sorry if this isn't really my place and i can edit this out if need be, but emmy is really right about how someone should have actually addressed it genuinely and out of character with her.

in general i think it was a fun idea, but the execution was messed up. i was able to tell that it was clearly a prank, but not everyone is able to tell so easily without anyone breaking character the most important thing to keep in mind is that for something to be fun, consent needs to be clearly asked for and respected; and there's a point where wholly committing to the bit really isn't worth it anymore, and for a lot of people that line kinda got crossed.

also for berryllium: i think you did fine, and you're being quite hard on yourself. you're new, you're probably not experienced with this stuff, and most of the negative stuff seems to be due to decisions from people more closely involved with the event than you were.

 

[ragnarokio]

Yeah I'm going to step in and say "no." For one, making an actual AI is a LOT of work. For two, even if you put constraints on them, it's possible for people to get them to say and do things that they shouldn't, and we really don't need one to learn to, say, be anti-semitic or something. It's not the sort of thing I want to have to genuinely worry about. I'm sure everyone remembers such cases as the "Seinfeld forever" AI that eventually got itself banned off twitch for homophobic/transphobic jokes, or the "Tay" fiasco that Microsoft unleashed on Twitter (seriously, who thought that was a good idea?).

If you're using chatGPT or similar commercially available software then the amount of work required should be within what is reasonable for a small volunteer team, and the possibility of the AI saying inappropriate things should be pretty low, probably appreciably lower than the possibility of a human staff member doing the same. As far as i can tell safeguards preventing AI from posting inappropriate content have become very strong, and both the seinfeld case and the tay case were using AI that did not have strong safeguards in place.

I'm sure there are plenty of other legitimate reasons for not wanting AI producing content on the forum though. Judging by the reactions to this event, I can't imagine it as something the user base would want to begin with.

 

[helperman]

so, i am assuming now that the creepiness of the "can i have your heart, helperman?" incident was intentional? at the time, i assumed that the AI is confused, but since nemona was fake, that means some one really was saying they wanted to take my heart with full knowledge that would kill me. i am not too upset about this, i just find it strangely interesting.

 

[FelipePR]

Anyway, I think that about wraps things up from my end. Feel free to chuck as many rotten tomatoes at me as you have to in order to feel better. I'm used to it.

Nah, I will pass on the offer. After all, I don't believe that rotten tomatoes have enough juice to color you or me.

Also full-disclosure, I was Greymon. I saw one of the Nemonaposters mention bringing a Digimon here to make friends, completely of their own accord, and had a stroke of brilliance. I hope y'all enjoyed that as well..

Yeah, you were truly brilliant. Your interpretation of the renowned Digimon seemed really on point to me, you mischievous rascal!

Maybe I am just a dimwit, but seriously, you truly portrayed the character so well that I genuinely believed Greymon was a scripted AI conditioned to act as Nemona's new outworld digital friend. Truly remarkable portrayal of a character.

 

[colours]

A couple of things as an outside observer (i was way removed from all of this due to being busy with work and personal things). Before I go into this, I do want to emphasize that feeling upset by all of this is perfectly valid. There are people here that have conflicted feelings about this event, because even though it may have been executed well in the sense of "fooling" people, there were things that were done that could've been done better. i will list all of those things here, though do not take the omission of a point to mean that it isn't being considered.

Timing - I agree that scheduling this closer to Halloween probably would've helped clue in people a bit more about the nature of the event. Personally, I'm of the opinion that events in general should take no longer than two weeks because event burnout exists. I'd rather things end on a high note than not and have people be tired of it.

Transparency - I definitely see the concerns here. There's the argument that being upfront about this would've ruined the "authenticity", but I'd rather people actually play along and feel like they're having a good time and enjoy the event, because ultimately I think that's what matters in the end. We make these events not for us as the staff, but also for you guys to enjoy yourselves and I think if we aren't achieving that, then something went wrong.

General Awareness/Care - It's hard to summarize this point, but I think the concerns basically boil down to that there could've been more care with dialogue and exchange with the users. Mistakes were made, although I do want to especially stress that those mistakes were just those - the staff that were playing "Nemona" were playing a character and there was never, ever any ill-intent behind anything said.

Having users opt-out - I think this is fair. Not everyone is interested in this, and the forced skin change perhaps didn't help matters. I suppose one could ignore the event thread, sure, but people like their skins for various reasons so I think at minimum we probably should avoid this.

---

I don't want people here to feel as if they're not being heard, because they are. A lot of staff are even feeling feel down themselves, because all of this was really meant in good fun and spirits, but things did progress past a line and I think we all can learn from this for next time. I could go on about how we didn't mean to harm the trust that was established, but perhaps the damage has been done. I cannot change anyone's minds or perceptions of the staff team here, but I will say as someone who's been with the community for years now: this is a passionate, fantastic group of people who would never deliberately act in a harmful manner. I'm hope many of you who have interacted with our staff publicly feel the same.

For those who have enjoyed the event despite bumps in the road: I genuinely appreciate you playing along or taking part. I think at the end of this the intention is to have good laughs about it, but it ended up more controversial than expected. Still though, I'm grateful to you guys for being in good spirits. We're going to take this event as a learning experience because I think that's what true growth is. We take the feedback from those who've enjoyed and those that didn't and try to do better in the future.

 

[Bolt Strike]

So it really WAS fake the entire time. I'm really pissed off. It was a well-executed prank and highly believable, but not quite in good taste because of how touchy a subject AI is. Some people are afraid of AI displacing them. Some enjoy having their favorite characters (or original characters) brought to life. In my case, I have trouble making friends so I see AI as a potential aid for my mental health/social life. I would've been able to see this causing controversy and blowing up like this a mile away. It was a good idea but it felt too soon.

I think I might take a break from the forums for a while. I am NOT happy about being played with like this.

 

[Salmancer]

References are great. References are funny. But if the hints here were just references to Doki Doki Literature Club, then staff bombed it. The story should make sense even if the references don't land. I think DDLC is on my "avoid" list now. That's a club so exclusive even notorious, money-swindling failures like Mighty No. 9 don't land there. Thanks for the negative memories!

 

[wanderist]

I will say in response to colours post that I can see that the criticism, concerns, and frustrations are being taken seriously and that you guys aren't just brushing this all off, and I appreciate that. The staff here have always seemed like good people to me, so even if I'm upset at how this went down, I'm not like... pissed off to the point that I can't forgive or anything. I know I'm only able to say this because I've already mostly calmed down, but I haven't lost all faith in the staff or anything. I know you guys didn't mean to hurt anyone and I hope we can learn and heal from this.

That said, I can see by some other posts that it may take some time for others to really forgive and/or trust again (if ever), and I can't say I blame them.

Basically, I don't agree with what went down this event at all, but I also don't like...think you guys are awful people or anything. I think things just went too far, but I know you the intention wasn't to harm anyone. Sorry, in a rush to get all this in during a break so hope that all made sense.)

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

So some backround that some of you may know, others might not: I'm a Community Coordinator over on the Zelda Dungeon Forums, I help plan and execute events over there.

We've never really tried anything as ambitious as this where every member gets wrangled into an event regardless of wanting to or not. I've always felt that event participation should be voluntary, not forced (however, I definitely understand that the forum-wide theme change was part of the narrative, and that a lot of the driving factors were all done for the narrative of an AI going haywire. I understand wanting to stick to the narrative for an event like this in order to have the impact that was being aimed for.)

Something to this magnitude is bound to have hiccups and negative criticism, and won't be everyone's cup of tea. It doesn't matter the scale of an event really, I've found even small events that are very tame in comparison to this can still get negative criticism from just one person or a few.

So to any staff kicking themselves down over this, be gentle on yourself. There are no event failures, just event learning experiences. Pool the feedback given, which I think most of you understand, and use it to improve, alter, or scrap a concept.

 

[Salmancer]

EDIT: oh this is one of those forums that automatically change text emoticons into emojis. Gross. Can I disable that?

I think there's a thread in the Grotto about this
Here it is

how to prevent emoticons from becoming emojis?

apologies if there was a pre-established thread i should have used to ask this, but is there any way to prevent emoticons from becoming emojis in my posts without having to space them out? i'm not really familiar with BBcode.

forums.bulbagarden.net

 

[Enzap]

I think colours's last post made it pretty clear we're open to feedback on this, and even though I was not very involved in the planning and execution of this event (I was actually on something of a leave of absence to take care of some irl stuff) I do appreciate reading your thoughts, both positive and negative. We want to create events that both staff and users enjoy, and this was one of our most ambitious events we've ever hosted on this site and had some of the highest amount of engagement I've seen. When trying anything new, especially something involving this many moving pieces, there's going to be growing pains. Honest, constructive feedback from you guys helps us make better events for the future.

So with that in mind, I do want to quickly address the "NK incident" that people have brought up a few times, but I don't think any staff member has openly discussed yet. I wanted to address it honestly to prevent rumors about what did or didn't happen and to give closure to people who questioned how this could happen in the first place.

First of all, I want to clarify that we had multiple staff members running the Nemona "AI" account to keep the entire responsibility falling on one person. This had its advantages, but it also made it much more difficult to have a single, unified approach to the account. The planned narrative from the beginning was that the AI would start off friendly and steadily go "wrong," leading to it getting shut off and then eventually turning itself back on. Because there wasn't a single mind behind the account though, different people had different ideas about what the glitchy middle step would look like and how to play it. This is the context that led up to the "NK incident," in which the bot first referenced a North Korean airline and then started spouting pro-North Korean rhetoric. It was in poor taste, both as a joke and from the perspective that some people thought we actually allowed an AI to say such things on our site. Though it was intended to make it obvious that the Nemona bot was not acting as programmed (which I think it pretty clearly did), the posts do not reflect the intended goals of the event. The staff member responsible apologized privately to the rest of the staff and to my knowledge did not access the account again for the remainder of the event. I am not going to name them or anyone else who puppeteered the account, but know that they absolutely recognize the mistake and all of staff have used this incident as a learning opportunity.

We have already begun reflecting on what we can do better in the future, starting with points that colours pointed out. Specifically to the incident I described above, during future events we will make sure that all staff are on the same page with clear boundaries. Despite some hiccups, I am glad that so many people did seem to enjoy this event, and we'll do our best to distill what worked well in this event to deliver a better experience next time.

 

[Dreary_Rowlet]

I'd say, this is a fun event to see, 10/10 would participate in again. Although to those I insulted while you were on the Nemona account, I am so sorry and I didn't mean those insults :C

 

[LightningTopaz]

Again, I have to applaud the staff for trying something on this scale, but I believe that it did go a little too far (including for me. Although for me, my reaction was more confusion--"What's going on?, Is this an act or is this real? Do I need to intervene, and if so, how do I do that?"

Since things were moving so fast, and getting more and more chaotic, it felt like a train wreck--I wanted to look away, but at the same time was interested in how the "story" would end. I will agree that it would've been better to pull the plug, come clean, and debrief as soon as people started to get genuinely terrified.

 

[Storm Aurora]

OK, I know there have already been a lot of apologies from staff, but I want to personally apologize to everyone who's upset with how the event went down. I'm normally a really honest person and I take other people ar their word, so I know that if I hadn't been on the joke, I would've assumed it was real, too. I got too caught up in the fun of it that I didn't take the time to consider how y'all were feeling, and for that I'm really sorry.

As Bulbapedia staff, I pride myself in being knowledgeable and I love sharing that knowledge with others, so I feel really bad that I helped to deceive you guys, even if it was all for the sake of the joke. I know I'm just Bulbapedia staff and I don't have any real authority on the forums, but I promise you all that in the future, if there's ever any event or anything going on on the forums that you're not sure about, you can shoot me a PM here or on Discord and I'll tell you everything I know about it. I will, of course, ask you not to spoil it for anyone else, but if my knowledge can give you some peace of mind, I'd love to share it.

Wishing you all a very happy November