Naughty Dog’s Latest ‘The Last Of Us Part 2’ Tweet Is Troll-Proof, For Better Or Worse

It’s been a rough stretch for game developer Naughty Dog, the studio behind the Uncharted series of adventure games and upcoming The Last Of Us Part II.

First there was the big Kotaku investigative piece detailing the brutal levels of crunch workers at the studio faced. Then there was the global COVID-19 pandemic that forced yet another delay of the game’s release.

And then, of course, there was the massive leak revealing a whole bunch of spoilers for the game and stirring up an unhealthy amount of controversy, vitriol and backlash.

Game director Neil Druckmann said he was “heartbroken” after the leak, and one can hardly blame him. No matter your take on The Last Of Us Part II, it’s never fun to have all your hard work leaked for all the world to see, weeks before launch.

So it’s little wonder that Naughty Dog took advantage of a brand new Twitter feature when they made their latest The Last Of Us Part II tweet.

Here’s what the studio tweeted out yesterday, showing off two new images from the game and reminding us of its June 19th release date:

Now the interesting thing about this tweet is the replies—or, rather, the lack of replies. There are a grand total of zero. Nobody is shouting at Naughty Dog in the mention, nobody is spoiling the game for other users. It is simply a void.

This is due to a new feature that Twitter rolled out to a small percentage of users yesterday, giving them the ability to limit who can respond to a tweet (though anyone can still quote-retweet). You can choose between three options with any given tweet: you can limit replies to “people you follow” or “people mentioned in the tweet” or “everyone.”

Naughty Dog chose the second option for this latest tweet, and since they didn’t mention anyone, nobody can respond. With the character limit imposed by Twitter, this option could lead to very limited conversations which might be helpful in some circumstances. I’m less sanguine about simply turning off replies altogether, as in this instance, though I do see the appeal.

It’s sort of like turning off YouTube comments—you can post a controversial video without having to deal with a swarm of angry or vulgar commenters. But it also poses risks. Those risks are relatively small with a tweet like this. It’s unfortunate that Naughty Dog even feels the need to do this in the first place, as it limits the way gamers can interact with the studio and its game, but given the leaks it makes sense.

I worry more about echo chambers, which are already a huge problem on social media. I think we’re witnessing that problem growing worse, not better. People have already cordoned themselves off into social groups they identify with on sites like Facebook. It’s always been harder to do that on Twitter. This feature could make it easier.

I suppose I’m a bit mixed on the feature. I’ve been dogpiled on Twitter before and it sure isn’t fun, especially when you’re being dogpiled by a bunch of people who don’t know the first thing about you but are going off the bad (mean-spirited, cowardly) misinformation of someone they follow instead.

But there is always the mute option. You can block people. You can do your best to ignore, though this is hard given Twitter’s nature. The problem with Twitter is even if you clarify something to one person, another person might not see that. So you end up explaining yourself, or arguing till your face turns blue, over and over again with various threads and users. It can be exhausting.

On the other hand, that’s kind of what Twitter is. A bit chaotic, a bit free-for-all, a bit open. I’m not sure if this fix will work or simply change the very nature of Twitter altogether . . . for better or worse.

What do you think about this new feature and about Naughty Dog’s decision to utilize it? Let me know Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. 

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