If you do an Image search for “internet angry,” this is the 2nd photo that pops up. Thanks Google, very cool.

By this point, anyone who works on a live online service — and especially video games—is familiar with a very particular type of online event. It happens when a games company screws up in an obvious way online. And I’ve started calling it “72 Hours of Gamer Hell.”

It goes like this.

You make a change to your game that you’re pretty sure is going to work out just fine. Maybe some members of the community will have a problem with it, but you feel like your communication plan is solid, and that most people will see that you’re doing the right thing.

But the announcement doesn’t go well. It goes really bad. People are pissed. So pissed, in fact, that it starts to feel less like feedback from players who like your game and more like an attack from an angry mob. Your community is acting like they want you dead (and, of course, some of them actually do send in death threats).

I’ve got a theory about the 72 Hours of Gamer Hell: It’s a predictable phenomenon with distinct, consistent phases. A lot of this is specific to the field I work in, live service video games. But plenty of it would apply to any online service company.

Let’s break it down.

Phase 1: The Backlash (First 12 Hours)

The Devs launch (or announce) a Bad Change and The Community reacts. In this period, the particular nuances and finer points of criticism are unimportant — what matters is the size and scope of backlash that The Community can generate. It is understood by all participants that there’s a direct correlation between the volume of the outrage and the likelihood that The Devs will either reverse the Bad Change or at least make some concessions.

Careful Devs can successfully engage with players during this period of time, but it’s risky. One danger is that it’s very difficult to tell which members of The Community are open to discussion, and which are simply Engaged Detractors who are making bad faith arguments in the interest of contributing to the overall scale of the outrage. In many ways, the arguments made by The Community in this stage are like arguments made by lawyers pleading their case to a judge. Not every argument is logical, but it’s in The Community’s interest to try out all the tools in their kit, so as to acquire the desired outcome.

Some arguments boosted by The Community in Phase 1 include claims or statements that most members of The Community don’t actually agree with. This aspect of Phase 1 necessarily leads to Phase 2.

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Phase 2: The Sensemakers & Storytellers Emerge (12–24 Hours In)

In this period, a number of more articulate members of The Community step forward to try to redirect the indiscriminate collective rage into more specific directions. Call these folks The Sensemakers. “The problem isn’t with this part of the Bad Change,” they reason. “The problem is actually this other aspect of the Bad Change, and really if The Devs simply address this other, more specific problem, all will be well and The 72 Hours of Gamer Hell will conclude.”

The Storytellers emerge with their own posts. These people are most interested in situating the most recent Bad Change within a longer framework of Bad Changes that The Devs have done over the years. “This is just one mistake among many, and the pattern is clear,” they warn. The other members of The Community here begin reposting arguments which were upvoted in earlier threads — the goal here is to solidify permanent reputational loss for The Devs as punishment for failing to revert or otherwise fix the Bad Change.

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Phase 3: The Devs React (24–72 Hours In)

In this phase, The Devs announce their chosen path — almost always either some form of minor concession or a more complete reversion of the Bad Change. Because The Community is actually a collection of individuals who don’t share the same perspective on things, the reaction here tends to fragment. Advocates for The Devs will speak up in their favor. Engaged Detractors will call foul, usually with some combination of accusations that the change was made “too late,” or that the change is inadequate.

Even if The Devs’ reaction is satisfactory to the majority of the community (a Good Change), Engaged Detractors will find a negative re-framing of the Good Change. E.g. by murmuring conspiratorially that The Devs — who are, in this telling, masters of manipulation — foresaw this series of events all along.

Advocates (members of The Community who are generally willing to give The Devs the benefit of the doubt) will tend to shout down Engaged Detractors at this point, and Engaged Detractors will accuse Advocates of being shills. As in all online arguments, no one ever actually wins.

Here the 72 Hours of Gamer Hell generally concludes.

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If, however, The Devs fail to make an adequately Good Change to fix the original Bad Change, the full cycle repeats from the top. Each time the 72 Hours of Gamer Hell repeats, the time frame between the three inevitable phases is extended, and the intensity tends to decrease. Thus, the second cycle can often play out as 7 Days of Slightly Less Intense Gamer Hell, and the third cycle as 2 Months of Rumbling Gamer Dissatisfaction. If The Devs fail to fully fix the Bad Change, the cycles of ever-extended and diluted reaction can reverberate for years.

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Why does this cycle exist? My current theory is that it has to do with the power dynamic between online communities and developers. Players are invested in the games they play, and they want devs to make positive, good changes that make their games more fun, satisfying, safe, and fair. When Devs make a Bad Change, players have only one really time-tested tool at their disposal, and that’s The 72 Hours of Gamer Hell. If players felt that they had some more reliable, less destructive tool to influence the development of their favorite games, they’d probably use it.

I’m sure I don’t actually have any of this fully figured out, but I hope that readers will help develop my thinking on it.