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Collective Experience Reflection Part 1: Goodbye Collective

On Jun.18th, the devs of Collective recently announced that the game will shut down on July 31st. I knew that the game was going to die soon but it was still a very emotional moment. It was midnight on a Sunday but I couldn’t help but read every message sent by everyone from former designers to the old dogs of the Collective. Sleep was terrible as all the memories from the past 2 years of me playing this game flew into my mind. 

My mind is now calm and it would be a good time to reflect on my Collective experience. I may not speak as much as other members do but I was one of the more invested players. I have 937.3 hours in Collective according to Steam, but also hundreds more hours in the designing aspect. 

This is my final story about Collective. I suppose I am writing this because I don’t want to feel regret and I don’t want to forget where I came from. 

I suppose. Magneter wanted the rest of the community to see how I feel because apparently, my feelings had the power to save Collective. It was impossible, but I appreciated the thought, Magneter. 

Experience as a Player (2021 Oct - 2022 May)

I started playing Collective because I wanted to make content by reviewing lesser-known Indie games for a website. I was unimpressed with it at first but the more I played, the more I fell in love with it. I wrote a 3.8K words review of Passion but rather than continuing as a game reviewer, I just played more Collective instead and left. 

While I loved Collective, I was still trying out other games and took frequent breaks from Collective. Since my goal was to become a “game designer” / “game critic” I wanted to play as many games as possible. But nothing was as good as Collective for various reasons. 

-> It was really fun playing against a few people over and over again, monsterland and Cornmeals come to mind. When I just started playing, there were some nights when it was only me and them online, and we would go on a spree of 10 games in a row where we are constantly swapping decks to see how the matchups will go. 

-> There were a ton of community discussions and they were addictive and interesting to read. 

-> I came during the time when Alt Collective movement was going strong. I always considered myself to be a Draft only player in card games and didn’t like Standard formats that much. It was fun to play in tourneys weekly and see the same few cool people all the time. 

Drafting cards from Discord bots, and playing against others through card creator mode (where anything can be played) was a very magical feeling. The ability to play any card I want in card creator was a generosity that I have never seen any other card games do. 

The wins and losses weren’t met with a dopamine-inducing screen of a bar going up/down but were met with real reactions from other people. We were sharing decks, giving each other advice, and congratulating each other whenever one of us pulls off something cool. Ambers and Golds were not as cool as Sevas and monsterland. 

Not to mention, there was even an entire show for evaluating card designs! I watched a lot of episodes of Submitted for Your Approval and I was a huge fan. Though the realm between a designer and a player is not something that can be understood until the player actually tries to make designs themselves. I didn’t understand everything they are trying to say (especially Grief, I cannot comprehend Grief), nevertheless, I just vibed with it and enjoyed the show. 

I took a break during Dec 2021-Jan 2022 when I was less active, and came back to the game and there were crazy ass cards such as Lumbering Lichiwing and Karma. It was something so broken and the “novelty” of seeing the game break this hard was something cool to me because it is impossible to happen in other games, there was something beautiful about it to me. 

There were weekly Standard tournaments, too. I wasn’t a fan of that format but it still felt (purely psychologically) that the game was moving forward in a positive direction. 

During this period as a pure player, I had nothing but good things to say about Collective. Yes, the game can be broken. Yes, there were a lot of flaws in the general look and presentation of the game. But it was enjoyable, it was fun, it was like nothing else. 

Although I was interested in designing, as I did decide when I was 18 that my life goal was going to be designing a card game worthy of carrying to my graves, I never took up designing for the first 8 months of playing the game. 

I was busy getting used to working 40 hours a week on my first job. I was still trying other various games in life along with spending all my free time playing my favorite game. Not like I knew how to draw either and the card creator looked too confusing and ugly to me. “I wouldn’t be good at that”, I thought, and thus, I never tried. 

I only experienced the gameplay aspect of Collective during a time when the designer population was still high and discussions around how to improve the game together were happening all the time. 

I was completely blind to the other side. 

I was naive. 

The Truth about Anonymous PT.1 (The Beginning)

After reaching Rank 1 on the ladder and spamming games during May 2022. The novelty of Collective is finally wearing off and I got to a point where I was bored of playing the game. I wanted to try my hand at design cards instead. 

However, I had extremely low self-esteem. When I posted my first card in the card lab, people didn’t respond to the post that much, and then when I posted the card to Reddit, the vote went to zero in 10 minutes, it was a horrible feeling. This was in March of 2022. I deleted the card and then didn’t design anything for the next 3 months. 

Going back to my university days in 2020, I was finding social media to be toxic and I tried to quit it completely. I created a Discord for me to talk to myself only because I didn’t want to talk with anyone else. However, this alienation has made me go “crazy” in a sense, I couldn’t manage my stress anymore. 

I joined my old social deduction game group werewolv.es as “Lovepon” rather than “TheSilentOne”. My old self “TheSilentOne” carried a lot of reputation for making crazy plays and saying outrageous things, and honestly, a part of me wasn’t comfortable with being “TheSilentOne” and carrying such a reputation since I changed, I became bland. 

I joined the werewolv.es as Lovepon and I pretended to be a newbie. And meeting the old and same people again but as a different “person” was the most enjoyable online experience I had. Pretending to be an idiot, being completely new, I was able to play werewolv.es became something far beyond just a game, it was my life support I suppose, and a window to the other side of the world beyond my pessimistic real-life. 

The point of writing all this is that I thought, what if I can recreate that in Collective? What if I can pretend to be a dumb newbie, make some outrageous cards, and gradually start enjoying the process of designing? I used to be TheSilentOne, and now I am Lovepon, but I didn’t want Lovepon to design. 

I created a brand new account named “WeAreLegion” on my own and started trying my hands at making cards. I created a 1 mana 30|30 card with a nonsensical flavor text with the thought “What if an 8 years old Chinese kid designed a card?” 

The card was removed a few hours later. I laughed, I thought it was weird that it got removed, but I didn’t think much of it. 

As I was trying to figure out how card-making works and posting cards as WeAreLegion, I saw that there was a new designer named “Anonymous’ and it was painfully obvious that it was monsterland. I remember asking monsterland a question, but the question implies that “Oh you are Anonymous and you did this weird thing, how did you do it?” and monsterland sent a disappointed emoji back that was like “damn I am too obvious”, it was hilarious to me.

But I was also cheering for monsterland. I casually read the server and I felt quite bad for them. Moments where Strangerside pulled up monsterland’s card and typed a bunch of laughing emojis and Acoustic pulled up monsterland’s Death Wish card and called it dogshit and a waste of good art, it was inked into my brain. 

I didn’t know monsterland that well, and I thought monsterland was weirdly unexpressive at times, but nevertheless, I liked monsterland a lot. And it made me feel bad watching them getting dogpiled in conversations, I love an underdog story.

We were both creating an alt account for the sake of making cards at the same time in an obscure card game with 10 players. It felt surreal, it was like fate. 

It was never just monsterland’s idea to create Anon so that they can “avoid criticism”. For me, I wanted to get over my lack of self-esteem and fly towards doing something I always wanted to do. And there was no better way than to get out of my lonely hole and do it together with people that I enjoyed playing with in the community. Not to mention, how can they recognize a design style from someone that never designed before? It will be fun I thought. 

Monsterland, I, and Magneter joined, and we invited Sevas to set up Parrot. The Cult of Anonymous was born. I was filled with excitement, stepping into a brand new chapter of my life, unaware of the road ahead. 

The Truth about Anonymous PT.2 - “The Community”

I told myself, “The best way to learn how to design is to just do it.” I started to make a lot of cards and posted them to see how people would react. My ability to block (Collective coding) was limited and I started things off simple. 

One day, I was moving cards that I was in the process of making to the Cult of Anonymous, just so that I can block it later and get rid of the “WeAreLegion” contributor name. That was when the first disaster caused by the evil Anonymous happened. 

I posted “Sneak, 1 mana 1|2 Exemplar” on the server to get rid of the “WeAreLegion” contributor name. I had this card as an idea because I was sick of the EXP system where heroes never reach level 4 ever due to how short the game is and wanted some EXP gain in the game. I found the card interesting but I thought to myself, “Huh, this might be too op with Sacrosanct Sigil.” 

Monsterland saw the card and instantly replied: “I love this.”

“Okay if you love this then we are posting, what could go wrong?” and then, wow, Sneak actually got into the game. I was pleasantly surprised myself since I didn’t spend much effort. 

Getting the first card into the game should be a happy moment but it was the start of the downward spiral of spite and hatred towards the game. The community reaction was just one insult after another. Sure, the card could get nerfed and slightly redesigned, but the reactions felt a lot more sinister than purely that. 

Acoustic later that week went to monsterland’s DM and told them to cut the Anonymous crap, in a week where most of the designs were made by me, it was as if he was telling me to quit when I just started doing this. Strangerside was talking about the “consequence of not listening to anyone” while I was watching his shows all the time and reading every Discord message (yes, he doesn’t know that). Wujek was talking about Anon’s “presumed non-factual bias” and “refusal to adapt”. 

What the fuck was I getting myself into? 

They were all comments made specifically under the assumption that anonymous = monsterland only. The reason why monsterland left the server was that monsterland wasn’t a fan of the behavior of the rest of the community and the condescending attitudes that were “anti-community”, but still liked the game enough to design cards anonymously. 

Apparently, the idea that “maybe they found the community to be too toxic and that the community might be at fault” or even the idea that “people see the world differently and no one is at fault” is just impossible, it is all monsterland’s fault for leaving the server and not seeking feedback. If they posted in card-lab, they would have gotten 0 upvotes after 100 comments on what to change instead of -1, that was the ultimate downfall of monsterland and Anonymous. 

Anyhow, at that time I just felt so awful for monsterland. I felt that I was being a burden to monsterland as I was the one who made the majority of the Anon designs that week. While feeling the burden, I went into the VC to lurk when I saw an Anon card getting pulled up. Wujek was throwing comments of “utter failure at the flavor and mechanics” and “I will veto Garbage Golem”, I don’t hate criticism (Like most of Puapka’s feedback during SFOD) but the way Wujek talked about things was extremely hostile, and unwelcoming. 

Then, Acoustic went and asked for a ban on Anonymous posting and I couldn’t stop shaking during work the entire day. Not that I thought it would be possible but just the passive emotional damage associated with it. 

I continued forward, I wanted to learn to design cards with friends because this is somewhat what I always wanted to do for my life, but then Magneter was having a hard time during July 2022 and had to leave the internet world temporarily. It was bad for Anon as a whole without Magneter because she was the only one capable of making “normal” designs at that time. 

I saw Strangerside’s take on Magneter’s situation with his “The Missing Piece”, but I felt strongly that I thought of her situation as something different and wanted to express that feeling.

Thus, I rushed in without thinking, I assumed that the art was free to use because he posted it to the Collective subreddit, and I also didn’t want to scroll 90 pages on the card creator page to find Strangerside’s art (which I assumed was in there) and I didn’t know about how art sheet worked. 

Strangerside saw it and was furious, a “breakdown” asking the card to be removed since he never gave permission to others. That was a culture shock for me because I only associated “rights to art” with profitability and the idea of “I will post my card with my art for a free game for developers to use but no one else can use my art” was counterintuitive to me. 

Nevertheless, I wasn’t right, a thief is a thief at the end of the day but it felt impossible to anonymously reach out to Strangerside to apologize/explain that it wasn’t intentional due to the hostility. There was already too much stress built up from community reactions and I wasn’t ready for more. Silence is my way of handling most of my difficult interpersonal problems in life, it is not the correct way, but often the only way I know. 

Slowly, gradually, I learned the rules: Only art in the art sheet is allowed and I must add a contributor to the artist manually, I am allowed to make the card’s name different from the text at the right bottom of the screen. I must ask for permission first if I want to use art not in the art sheet (like the time I asked Gokun for art permission for Tampon Sword a.k.a Ponpon Stick). There were many soft rules as well, such as “realm identity” and that “realm owners” are like property owners where if someone steps in without permission, they are trespassers. 

“Bad news” continued, we were posting cards with Parrot, and then, the “committee” that typically doesn’t do anything ever had to “stop” it. I was making cards and now there was no way to post them. We had to create a Reddit account, we posted two cards, downvoted to below 0, then the new card posts were shadowbanned from the Sub. 

Eventually, thanks to the genius of Pholidia’s social media talent, we were able to get enough upvotes to last at least 100 monsterland cards (700 upvotes). 

Nevertheless, the whole process was incredibly stressful. I was trying my best to just design cards myself with some friends and we were talked about as if a bunch of parasites. I assumed that Collective was open to everyone, but that was a bad assumption. 

“The account and people behind it have become more of a disrupting annoyance than anything that is worthwhile keeping in the community moving forward.” - Grief. It was tiring, especially knowing that Anons are the biggest supporters of Collective from a gameplay perspective. Multiplayer queue wouldn’t be real without me, monsterland, Magneter, and Sevas, and Alt Collective would not be runnable without us as well. 

The game had fewer players than the number of fingers on human hands and the player base wanted to cut them off. 

I continued making cards but it is very tiring. It didn’t matter what I made. It was flavorless. It was mechanically broken. The realm I was using was wrong. If the flavor wasn’t flavorless, then it was cringe. This card has the wrong tribe so it is an utter shit design. I was doing a disservice to Collective by existing. 

When there are Anon cards in the midweek, the midweek is the “worst midweek ever”. Floodgates of submissions from Acoustic went in, not because he had any new ideas on how to make the game better, but because “shit designs” don’t belong in Collective. 

I wanted to quit many times but, if I quit, it would be validating the points and efforts made by the rest of the community on gatekeeping me/us from designing cards anonymously. I was hating the game more and more and also becoming more obsessed with it at the same time. I didn’t design out of love and curiosity anymore, but pure spite.

I just kept going out of impulse. I was barely doing anything outside of Collective anymore. I was possessed. Collective’s main purpose is that the player can create cards and submit them to the game, the feeling of power from your creation being validated. And yet, the very thing that makes the game “special” is a machine that breeds mental illness. 

Reddit and Discord were giving me terrible anxiety, every week when my cards don’t get in, the feelings of dread and existential crisis come in. It is especially bad when cards that used to be in midweek get knocked off. All the added salt also just makes things feel a lot worse. The rest of the “community” believes that they are the pillar of the game, but I didn’t even know they existed until I started designing for the game, I knew their names somewhat but wasn’t familiar with their demeanors and their baseless elitism.