Old Man Yells At Clouds (Sea of Thieves)

Oh, Sea of Thieves. I started playing during the initial beta (or alpha, wherever they only had one type of quest?) and was immediately drawn to it. I crewed up with randoms and we did our one quest over and over again on different islands. At the time, I was only typing for communication, which felt comfortable as I wasn't yet feeling confident enough to talk to these strangers. Then release came, along with all it's new quests and items--and players. And streamers.

The first real group that I consistently played with was great. I lucked out with having fun teammates. Despite all of our differences, we just clicked as a team. We played for months before we finished all the content the game had and they all went to their separate games. I stayed, hoping to find new players to interact with and help out.

There was this huge boom in the SOT streaming community with one particular streamer who did his own in-game game show with quizzes and different styles of games to play for prizes. I offered my help to set these games up and acquire loot to give away to contestants. Shortly after, two others would join me and the three of us became friends. Yay.

At the time, SOT partnered streamers influenced the game so much and I didn't notice until later that the game started to feel catered to streamers (with things like streamers complaining about players and literally getting them banned, or gameplay changes that would help them make content). Slowly, it started to feel, to me, like it was turning real players into props for viewer entertainment and it didn't sit right. Some people just wanted to play and have fun, not be exploited for views and laughs.

Back to the game show. There was internal drama that led to the host quitting and leaving the game altogether after a few months. It was strange and people took things so weirdly seriously to the point of harassment accusations, and a whole lot of jealousy regarding who is getting views or who is streaming at what time. It was so toxic and I just wanted to play my silly pirate game, but now I was being associated with people that others didn't like and getting recognition online and in-game. I didn't like it.

I took a break from the game and remained friends with the two players for a while until I had a falling out with one of them (I called him out privately for cheating on his girlfriend who he wanted me to be friends with. Blegh.) which lead to all him and his friends disparaging me on Discord and mocking my anxiety and depression. That was fun.

At this point, I just wanted to play my game again and I removed all my Twitch followers and Xbox friends (except family and close friends unrelated to the game) to just get a clean slate.

But I fell for it again. Ran into players who were streaming and I became part of their friend group. They turned out to be making racist remarks around me and I hightailed it out of there shortly after bringing it up to the streamer/friend. She even scolded me for not bringing people I knew who had higher viewer counts into her stream to up her numbers. Then that happened again with another group. Same scenario. [Side note: I don't know what it is about SOT but I've never encounted so many racists and bullies hiding behind "it's a pirate game" in my life, and I spent a lot of it in Halo 3 lobbies. I even had a group of 4 telling me that it's a white people game and to uninstall.] I then just uninstalled and left the game for good until just this year picking it up to play a few Tall Tales with friends.

I genuinely enjoy this game, and I miss it, but jeez. Either I'm extremely unlucky or that's just how the game was from 2020 to like 2023.

Not everyone has the same experience with a social game. Even friends now have told me how much they hated the harassment in that game in particular, while others have praised the community--streamers and otherwise.