Games Journalism 2014: The Wherever-the-hell-this-has-gone

[TimJames]

Good Lord, some of you guys lose all sense of perspective when it comes time to judge others.

Have you ever heard of schadenfreude? It’s happened about 8 million billion trillion times on the Internet. Every single one of you in this thread has relished the feeling at one point in your life. So if a guy casually keeps a watchful eye on someone who organized a deliberate smear campaign on the game he made, just waiting for him to finally screw up, that doesn’t make it creepy. Stop saying everything is creepy.

Now whether that schadenfreude would be more delicious served in public or private is certainly a debate worth having. But that’s a secondary concern.

[AntediluvianArk]

Well I just updated my List of Creepy People:

[ul]
[li]Paul Reubens [/li][li]John Waters[/li][li]John Getty[/li][li]Tim James[/li][/ul]

;)

On a serious note, point taken. “In poor taste” would have been a better substitute for creepy.

-Todd

[Nesrie]

The idea of issuing a death threat, even privately, is pretty alien to me. If you’re really gonna kill them, warning them is a bad idea. If you are trying to motivate or intimidate, it’s a bad method that will always make you look crazy. Zero upside, yet it seems to happen often.

And Twitter, is there anyone whose life it has made better? It’s a primariliy destructive personal and cultural force as far as I can see. I’d love to see a list of just how many people have been fired or otherwise had their incomes terminated as a result of stupid Twitter behavior. Got to be in at least the triple digits by now.

Yes. I believe twitter was used to a fair extent during the earthquake in Haiti where voice services is expensive and messaging is not, something like that. It has been a useful tool on a number of fronts. That does not negate that a number of people seem to use it as some sort of snippet diary which gets them into trouble. Now death threats… so unfortunate. It crosses a line, whether there is a police report or not.

[peterb]

This isn’t a case of someone being offended. This is a case where the dev thinks it’s appropriate to casually threaten death on Twitter to a business partner over a minor inconvenience that probably could have been handled with a phone call.

It’s the casual use of threats of violence when things don’t go your way that Valve appears to be trying to nip in the bud.

Heck, it’s not even a “threats of violence and a credible danger” issue. Who even wants to do business with someone with such a blatant lack of judgment?

Obviously, not Valve. I wouldn’t want to do business with that guy either.

[ShivaX]

I wonder if I have a different view on the “death threats” than other people because different cultures, etc. I don’t see why people give it so much importance, given that obviously, it’s not a real death treat, he wasn’t planning to actually kill Gabe. It was the typical “ugghh this sucks I’m going to kill that guy!”, same as “you son of a whore!” it doesn’t mean you think he is the son of a prostitute for reals (not that it isn’t an insult!). Though truly, it was stated matter of factly without obvious hyperbole or sarcasm, but that’s people tripping over a written medium like Internet, forgetting that sometimes writing something literally as you would say it doesn’t convey the same effect.
That said, he was too aggressive and overall assholish in his series of tweets.

Name any business where you can say : “I’m going to fucking kill you.” to another person and not be fired. There isn’t one, because saying that will instantly get you fired from every job in existence, especially if the person you’re threatening is a superior. Odds are the cops will also show up and you’ll have a nice long talk with them as well.

Was he serious? Probably not, but it doesn’t matter. You can’t tell your boss to suck your dick and still have a job either, it doesn’t mean you actually want his lips on your dingus.

[TurinTur]

Name any business where you can say : “I’m going to fucking kill you.” to another person and not be fired.

In a joking, hyperbolic manner, in a friendly work environment? Lots of sites, for example in my previous job.

[Wheelkick]

And Twitter, is there anyone whose life it has made better? It’s a primariliy destructive personal and cultural force as far as I can see. I’d love to see a list of just how many people have been fired or otherwise had their incomes terminated as a result of stupid Twitter behavior. Got to be in at least the triple digits by now.

Your view is shared with Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, Saudi Arabia’s top Muslim cleric:
http://news.yahoo.com/twitter-source-evil-top-saudi-cleric-135107747.html

[Razgon]

In a joking, hyperbolic manner, in a friendly work environment? Lots of sites, for example in my previous job.

That doesn’t sound like a very friendly environment, where people threaten to kill others.

[Teiman]

In a joking, hyperbolic manner, in a friendly work environment? Lots of sites, for example in my previous job.

Maybe in USA lines like “If somebody touch my lunch I am going to kill him” are rare. Perhaps they take it more seriously, since the person saying that can be crazy, and have 100 legal firearms on his house?, because is USA.

My cousin call firearms “disparates”, because their use is “disparar”.

[Wheelkick]

In a joking, hyperbolic manner, in a friendly work environment? Lots of sites, for example in my previous job.

The case we’re discussing here, this was not done in a joking manner in a friendly environment. It was aggressive.

[Menzo]

In a joking, hyperbolic manner, in a friendly work environment? Lots of sites, for example in my previous job.

Since when is Twitter a “friendly work environment”? This is the problem with lots of people who can’t tell the difference between what they say to their friends, and how they say it, and what they say on Twitter and Facebook. In one instance saying “I’m going to kill you” is fine, because your friends know that’s just a thing you say when you’re frustrated.

But Valve are not your friends when you’re a developer. Valve are business partners. You don’t say “I’m going to kill you” to a business partner under any circumstance.

Tough lesson to learn, but he was going to learn it at some point.

[TurinTur]

The case we’re discussing here, this was not done in a joking manner in a friendly environment. It was aggressive.

We aren’t discussing this case here, we are discussing “any business”.

[robc04]

Maybe in USA lines like “If somebody touch my lunch I am going to kill him” are rare. Perhaps they take it more seriously, since the person saying that can be crazy, and have 100 legal firearms on his house?, because is USA.

My cousin call firearms “disparates”, because their use is “disparar”.

I’ve worked at places where after building up a friendship with coworkers one could say this and everyone know it is said in jest. But you need to have moved beyond coworker and to friendship.

[peterb]

If you say that to your friendly coworkers in a business environment where all your coworkers totally understand you and are not offended, you are still doing something stupid.

It is hard to imagine a better example of unprofessional conduct. It’s the sort of thing that could easily come back later to be used against you even if it was fine at the time. Talking that way in a work environment is stupid beyond imagination. It is indefensible, so I wish people would stop trying to defend it.

[Juan_Raigada]

I have to say I understand TurinTur.

The standards of professional conduct in Spain are… well they are hard to even see. I have been in many (hiperbole, four really) jobs where tremendously offensive sexist comments and rough language like “I’m gonna kill you” have been made, in presence of people who do get offended by them. But then say nothing, because if the do then mobbing/social backstabbing -ie. he/she’s perceived as uppity and people talk behind his/her back- happens. Sure, there’s a chance nobody got offended by some jokes, but I have certainly been offended by many, and the reaction from other people when I voiced this offense has always been “don’t be so uptight!”.

I do believe it’s a cultural thing and those people do indeed not realize they are being offensive, or if they do they think the offense taking is not fair. They are, in their way, trying to keep a easygoing atmosphere with this kind of language (the “we don’t have to control ourselves so much/we are laid back at work” excuse). Ironic and sad, but true. Hard to say anything to management either, because in many places management shares this cultural attitude and will indeed perceive the offended party at fault. These are just not punible offenses in most jobs here.

We do have a long way to go (and not all places are like this, but for what I’ve personally seen and been told, it’s extremely common).

I lived in the states six years, so I’ve come to appreciate how this sort of bullshit is counterproductive and plain stupid, creating office politics that in turn create sub-groups within the team, or make certain members unproductive. But before I saw what a healthy work environment really looked like, and the benefits of it, I was also in the “don’t overreact/don’t be too uptight” camp.

[ArmandoPenblade]

I think it also weighs on how seriously you take your job. We were pretty fucking crude at Ben & Jerry’s and the gifted summer camp I worked for (among the low-level staff; I certainly wasn’t telling the camp’s Program Director to go fuck herself or anything), but those were fairly informal “jobs” at best. In any kind of serious work environment I’ve experienced since then (Call centers and two university gigs), I couldn’t imagine that sort of thing flying at all.

[ooomalley]

I think there’s a huge difference between me finding some bug in some communal code and going, “Dan, I spent an hour tracking down your bug! I keel you!” in a joking tone in an office, and me getting into an angry rant, building up steam, and ending the rant with “I will kill you.” In neither case are they serious threats, but it’s still unsettling to hear an angry rant and especially one that ends with a death threat, even a non-serious one. The twitter rant here seems to clearly fall into the second category. Frankly, I couldn’t imagine going on an angry rant like that, let alone ending it with a death threat, and I think termination of the business relationship is 100% appropriate.

[sclpls]

The issue isn’t the credibility or seriousness of the threat.

[instant0]

We do have a long way to go (and not all places are like this, but for what I’ve personally seen and been told, it’s extremely common).

I lived in the states six years, so I’ve come to appreciate how this sort of bullshit is counterproductive and plain stupid, creating office politics that in turn create sub-groups within the team, or make certain members unproductive. But before I saw what a healthy work environment really looked like, and the benefits of it, I was also in the “don’t overreact/don’t be too uptight” camp.

I think it is rather a ‘generalized’ US and other “uppity” (for lack of a better word) places, where you have to be worried about everything including being advised against taking an elevator with a lone female co-worker due to potential litigation issues have a long way to go. A casual/relaxed atmosphere would seem like a better environment than one where everyone are afraid of saying anything in case someone takes offense, contacts management/HR/the press and get the whole circus going. Perhaps there is a middle ground where people can be casual and make sometimes offensive jokes and where people that do have a problem with this atmosphere are able to say so without any repercussions for them either.

[Telefrog]

Perhaps there is a middle ground where people can be casual and make sometimes offensive jokes and where people that do have a problem with this atmosphere are able to say so without any repercussions for them either.

I’ve worked at places that hit the sweet spot. Basically, it’s like this forum. You can make jokes, be casual, even disagree and get into arguments, but there’s a line that will cause people to abruptly stop joking and say “Hey, man. That’s not cool.”