If you’re a fan of the Destiny sub-reddit, which collects tons of useful information about the game along with boasting a friendly community, then you’ll be somewhat aware of moderator Cozmo23 aka Chris Shannon. Shannon was responsible for creating the sub-reddit and as it turns out, he’s been hired by Bungie to serve with David “DeeJ” Dague as a community manager.

Dague said the two will be working together to handle the “thriving population of impassioned people.”

“Bungie.net is visited by millions of unique visitors. Our forum is a fountain of feedback, insights, and creativity. When it comes to acknowledging the important things you say or celebrating the awesome things you do, we barely scratch the surface. And that’s just on our website. We all know that the Destiny Community sprawls well beyond the friendly confines of Bungie.net.”

If Shannon’s work on the Destiny sub-reddit is any indication, then fans should be able to look forward to more community-wide response from Bungie. Time will tell how this pans out for everyone so stay tuned for more information.

It’s a well known fact at this point that Bungie’s latest video game outing has proven to be somewhat divisive amongst gamers and the gaming community, but this is undeniably a nice little feel good story. Sort of.

After having gone through multiple brain surgeries, a doctor recommended to one persons wife that her husband should use Destiny as a sort of therapy to help in the recovery period.

Bkbunny 87 tells the story, “”Yesterday I had a post talking about my husband and his Doctor recommending Destiny to serve as a form of physical therapy for him following several brain surgeries. This community was amazing, and raid groups are being organized for him out of all the people who offered to help him…”But just as amazing, Deej contacted me and has sent my husband a care package from Bungie that is on the way. Then this morning, a message from Deej told us to have my husband check with Tess the Post Master in the tower. Lots of screaming ensued…”He has been sent the exotic gun Fate of All Fools, a solar primary that looks like it will be available in future content.”

Personally, I think it was really rather nice that the community and community manager have all reached out to be supportive, and giving that chap exclusive access to a weapon is a nice gesture of good will. Though the cynic in me thinks that the rifle should remain exclusive for good and not be included in future DLC packs. Otherwise the gesture seems to be diluted a bit. But either way, props to Bungie, Deej and the Destiny community for being so kickass!

[Source]

After promising to do an Ask Me Anything or AMA session for Reddit after $500,000 was raised for a charity of his choice, Valve Software boss Gabe Newell has been forced to reschedule the same after severe complications.

Well, not really. It was more of a case of Newell not having had his AMA submitted through the approved channels and then not posting the AMA half an hour before it was scheduled to begin. Mods closed the thread and while a new one was created, the mods couldn’t get in touch with Newell afterwards. Kotaku then reported that the AMA has been rescheduled and will be taking place at 2 PM PST tomorrow.

So for those of you cursing Gabe for no-showing, worry not – the man himself will be on hand tomorrow to answer all your questions regarding Steam, SteamOS, Steam Controllers and maybe the number 3 or something. So stay tuned and get your queries queued.

In a post on Reddit earlier today, Gabe Newell himself promised the community that if his charity of choice, the Seattle Children’s Heart Center, receives donations of at least $500,000 he will grace Reddit with his undivided attention for an AMA.

An AMA is what’s known on Reddit as an “Ask Me Anything” where people of interest will post who they are and what they do and then field questions from the Reddit community about their jobs or themselves. It’s understandable why a Gabe Newell AMA is absolutely something to be desired.

His awesome job and previous endeavors in the video game community notwithstanding, Valve is arguably the most respected company in gaming, and in the technology development world overall. They’ve got the mysterious Steam Box coming out soon, so people will surely be asking about that. And, even though I’m sure I don’t have to say it… Half Life 3.

Now with the confirmation of the game’s development, a chance to over-analyze every letter Gabe types in response to a Half Life 3 question is something that no self-respecting Redditor would pass up.

This is funny because just about every site in existence that uses such a system sees the same problem – that is, users finding ways to gang up on others and just outright burying them.

Take Reddit for instance. You can upvote stories, which allow them to make their way to the front page. You can also upvote comments and these will float to the top of the page allowing users to see them first under every story. Until a while ago, user scores were visible for all and sundry. But Reddit later introduced a system where user scores could be hidden. Why?

"Give users any measure of freedom to decide what they do and don’t want to see, and you’ll be surprised by the results."

Because users tended to upvote comments with the highest number of points, and conversely, comments that were downvoted would be further plunged into oblivion. This is an example of the mob mentality – but then again, give users any measure of freedom to decide what they do and don’t want to see, and you’ll be surprised by the results.

Does it happen enough on Reddit to be a major problem? Not quite and there are enough mods coming up ways to circumvent the issues. But every once in a while, you will see posts of people who have left the site and never returned for reasons unknown.

Maybe real life got in the way or something else happened. One of the major practices is to create a throwaway account, because you don’t want to be carrying around things for the rest of your time on Reddit, much less give people a way to find you. While you may not find something similar on Xbox Live, it’s a testament to the fact that the mob can get to you online, one way or the other, no matter what you try to do. And unlike on Live, there are no throwaway accounts to hide behind.

"We’ll wait and see how the new Reputation System plays out before cruelly condemning it and then forcing Microsoft to change it."

Are most of the users on Live anything like that? If you count the fact that most people’s testimonies seem to come from dealing with children, then probably not. And the last time we tried to criticize Microsoft on doing something that was forward thinking – never mind how badly they bungled their message and delivery of it – was it reversed its DRM policies on the Xbox One. We had the freedom to play used games and never log in online, but features such as digital game sharing via the Family Policy were lost.

So we’ll wait and see how the new Reputation System plays out before cruelly condemning it and then forcing Microsoft to change it.

There are also enough posts and comments talking down to those complaining. Some are even making posts with lines like “stop the circle jerk”. But a Reddit user posted something interesting regarding this very same trend.

Apparently working with a marketing firm in Redmond that has a contract with Microsoft, the user visited one of the Xbox offices and got a sneak peek into what is referred to as “reputation management”.

“While we were waiting, various marketing employees said hello to us/shook our hands – it was a pretty friendly place. Just nearby were two guys chatting at one of their PCs, and they caught my attention because they were on Reddit! I thought that was pretty cool, and presumed they were having a late lunch break and were just goofing around online.

“I kind-of started to eavesdrop (I honestly couldn’t help it, they were talking about Reddit!) and realized they were actually talking business. One of the exchanges went like this: ‘I got a few more on pics and some of the smaller subs.’ ‘Honestly just don’t bother I think, stay focused on gaming. We really should be spending 90% of our time there.’ [Note: I presume they were referring to /r/pics and /r/gaming]

“His coworker went back to his own computer, and he continued Redditing while we waited. He must’ve really been hyped up on caffeine or something, because his typing was like a machine gun and he was switching tabs like crazy (or maybe that’s just because Microsoft hires the ‘hacker’ type of guys?) Anyway I noticed he was mass-downvoting a ton of posts and comments, and he kept switching to other tabs to make posts and comments of his own.”

The reputation management involves, “‘debunking’ people who make negative or critical comments about the brand online. I’ve done this myself for numerous clients before (even on Reddit once, sorry!)” and the user noted that, “in any case, they seem to be putting a BIG focus on it for the Xbox One.

“Not only in-house; they’re also dishing out the big bucks for some pretty high-profile marketing firms to do the work for them. Reddit will absolutely be a part of that strategy, and the couple of guys I saw were probably just the tip of the iceberg.”

Of course, he notes that it’s just a hypothesis so empty your last batch of salt and take some more. But nonetheless, “There’s a good chance that many of the positive posts/comments we’re seeing about the Xbox One have been posted by employees from one of those marketing firms.

“It’s fairly standard to diss your competitors too, so I’m guessing some of the negative posts about it might even be from Sony. That’s just a hypothesis, though it wouldn’t be the first time a seeming-crapstorm ‘among Redditors’ was actually just a proxy war between marketing employees.”

Thoughts on this hidden war?

In short: Yes, Mojang could’ve claimed revenue from all videos that used Minecraft in some shape or form for profit. They thankfully refused though, as stated on Twitter:

We had a meeting with YouTube and got told we could get a cut of all Minecraft video ad revenue. It was tempting.

— Markus Persson (@notch) May 16, 2013

The developer also revealed on Reddit that video site Machinima demanded a cut of their revenues, stating that, “their videos were driving sales for Minecraft, and that they should get a cut.

“While that was almost certainly true, and that this is one of the reasons we allow videos (another one is that I personally love watching gameplay videos, especially speed-runs), they’re also making money off our work. It’s the perfect example of a win-win situation, and them asking money from us was just offensive.”

He went on to state that Machinima has “amazing engineers and passionate directors, but their business practices are insane.”

In response to queries, Price stated, “We’re not working on games for it.” But “when it comes to PS4 I’m excited that they seem to lowering barriers for independent developers. It’s cool to see almost weekly announcements from Sony explaining how they’re opening things up for indies. And of course I’m very excited to see what Microsoft announces soon.”

In fact, Price expressly stated that, “Wii U is something I’d consider more current gen.” So don’t count on seeing FUSE – or any games for Insomniac – coming to the console despite the developer’s current multiplatform status.

FUSE will be releasing on May 28th for North America and May 31st for Europe.