While I’m kind of flabbergasted by the idea of a Dev deliberately tanking their game to engender a negative fan reaction, I do think that this discussion is one that needs to be had. It has been gratifying to see the amount of soul searching / upheaval going on in the nerd community over the last year or two - we’re being forced to re-evaluate everything from our attitudes towards gender and non-heteronormative sexuality to our ever growing sense of entitlement, and while there’s likely to be a lot of drama along the way, I think we’ll end up being a better community for it.
As a developer, I’ve been an internet hate totem before - when Command & Conquer 4 came out, I did the majority of the press and thus took the brunt of the negative audience reaction, a lot of it in response to elements of the game I had very little to do with - and I’ve seen my friends experience much worse. While in an ideal world we’d just bunker down and shrug it off, different people deal with this kind of stuff different ways and not of all us can just let it go so easily - after the C&C4 debacle (and don’t get me wrong, it was a debacle, and the fans had every right to be upset, even if I found the way that many of them expressed their dissatisfaction to be pretty awful) I was stuck in a really dark place that took me several months to recover from. It affected my work, my relationship with my wife and my friends, even my ability to get a good night’s sleep. I was anxious, touchy and, to be honest, pretty angry too.
Thankfully I got over it, dug deep and got back to a place where I could remember why I started out making games in the first place, but my e-beating was a relatively light one. I have no idea how people like the Black Ops II creative director, or Tom, for that matter, deal with that level of hissing spiteful negativity, and even why (gainful employment and the love of making / playing games aside) they’d want to. They must be tougher folks than I.
Yeah this was my thought as well. This type of irrational anger has been there in many business sectors and parts of the population for centuries, the big difference now is the prevalence of social media and people’s ability to publicly complain, where in the past few would ever hear their rage.
Social media comes with a cost, and not everyone is willing to pay it. I for one have never touched Twitter or Facebook, and I feel none the worse for it.
But there won’t be a wake up call and I don’t see the level of discourse changing. And it’s not just video games, it’s any sort of pastime that develops a hobbyist mentality. We all have our level of fandom (or obsession, if you’re not charitable) and means of handling challenges to that outlook. Some people are jerks. Some of have a bad day occasionally. And most of us could probably benefit from counting to ten before hitting “Post Reply”. We only really control our own actions and responses, and then only on our best days. We try to make our enclaves, like Qt3. But we’re not much better really. Maybe we don’t quite reach that trough of calling each other faggots but I have my off days. And the only hint for it is just to back away from the keyboard. Not every random post merits a response. I will continue trying to take that medicine.
To be clear, I do not support the kind of irrational rage and hateful garbage that gets thrown around by people online, but I also don’t support shutting up about changes or issues the way a lot of people seem to think would be better. Voice your opinions, but be mature about it.
“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”
That’s pretty much how I feel about social media. When you start to learn what everyone around you really thinks it can be jarring to say the least.
Posting as a developer on game-specific forums is fun sometimes, but generally a recipe for disaster. There are always far more people that want your time and attention than you’ll ever be able to satisfy. It’s pretty easy for that to snowball into people getting frustrated and stalking you on the forums, demanding answers. And those are just the relatively positive people! There are also the folks that are there to “ask the tough questions” or are just pissed off that they didn’t get the feature that they want. When you’re spending some free time on the weekend trying to interact with fans of the project you’re working on, it can quickly become way too much work. It did for me - I stopped posting when I started getting frustrated with some of the interactions that I had.
As for intentionally doing things poorly - I’m not even sure where to begin on that one, Jeff. You must be thinking about a specific instance by a small developer. No one that I ever worked with did something like that, for a number of reasons:
If management ever found it, they’d be fired with prejudice. (And they’d get no sympathy from anyone else)
If they cared at all about their teammates (which mine did, anyhow) they wouldn’t sabotage their work by proxy
Sabotaging features would eventually be found and fixed by other people, which would tarnish their reputation in a small industry
Why work 60+ hours a week only to intentionally churn out crap?
That being said, there is plenty of joking about that sort of things internally. It’s the sort of gallows humor that can help keep you going when you hear yet another story about some entitled player whining on the forums. Heck, I proposed all sorts of things to intentionally mess with players - I’d never actually do them, though. And I never joked about that with players.
My theory is that society and this economy has screwed over so many people (except for CEOs and the rich) there is a lot of pent up anger needing release. Hardcore gamers of course focus their energy on gaming, so… QED
That sounds extremely unhealthy to me. I don’t want to derail the topic but seriously, someone who purposely tries to make people angry at them probably should talk to someone.
My attitude on these kinds of things has changed in the past several years (now that I’ve seen how “facts” get reported). There has been a tendency, in the gaming press, to try to turn game developers into celebrities of some kind. The personality profile of a software developer is typically very very different than that of say an actor/actress.
Singular features, not the whole game. Huge company.
Crater - I wish there was some good balance. But I have to say interaction on forums, though time consuming… isn’t that really good for sales and goodwill? For example, I can’t help but think what a big difference DBaum and “Dungeons of Dredmor” made via word of mouth and his participation on forums. That title and the developers dedication to it was just amazing. We never heard what sales figures were, but I can’t help but think that led to a exponential word-of-mouth distribution campaign and subsequently, I tried to get everyone I knew to try it. Dbaum’s time spent here was appreciated and on a personal level, is a game I desperately wanted to take with me into the hospital… so much that when they announced a port to iOS I finally broke down and bought an iPad (on credit no less). And even though the port didn’t happen I didn’t care.
But I’m not a developer, so I don’t know how many personal hate-mails are dulled for each “I love your game and appreciate your work” message one gets. <---- Brad - does it help take out the sting a bit? I hope so…
This brought back a few vivid memories of waiting tables in my early college days. It was far from everyone, but I am certain that more than a few customers who showed up at my table were in a restaurant for two reasons, and food was a distant second. I don’t know if it was a release valve for work or troubled marriages, but some folks were there to berate and getting prime rib with a choice of side was just a bonus. As this was a totally face to face form of cruelty therapy, I can’t imagine the internet or the megaphone of social media has helped one bit.
Whether reading online book review comments, listening to a podcast about home construction, or listening to a political talk show, it is there. In gaming, I think, generally you have a much more tech comfortable (not necessarily savvy) bunch that loves its pithy hate memes, so perhaps it is a bit easier to find examples within the hobby or industry. Still, it is everywhere and in every field-- just accelerated by technology and emboldened by anonymity.
The single biggest change I’ve witnessed over the last few years has been the personalization of the reporting. 10 years ago, developers could publicly talk about whatever online, even get into flame wars. Now, the media would pick that up, distort it, sensationalize it. The days of calling someone a shit eating pig fucker in a good old fashioned flame war are all over. The rules have changed. Phil Fish makes a joke about Japanese games and voila, he’s turned into a villain.
Most people aren’t aware of how many developers we’ve already lost to this phenomenon. Ask Ray Muzyka why he got out.
I don’t think there really is a situation other than for developers to get a thicker skin. I don’t think they should have to get a thicker skin, but it’s too profitable for the media to personalize their reporting onto individuals and they typically have no concern about whether the reporting is accurate. They only care that it gets page views.
The gaming industry is indeed sick in a number of ways. The economics are very bad and have always been bad, and this means the studios are treated badly, and tend to treat their staff badly as a result. There are a lot of inexperienced managers, and way too much not-invented-here syndrome. The average age of people in the industry tends to be low, and so along with the energy and innovation this brings, there is a great deal of immaturity and casual prejudice and bigotry as well.
Combine these inherent problems with fan interactions that generally take place through the Internet, with the vociferous audience of trolls and anonymity-enabled sociopaths this entails, and you have a program for social, commercial, and industry-wide failure.
For particular successful games, with fortunate combinations of respected and skillful community managers and leading community members who are full-fledged human beings, the usual forum and social media problems can be mitigated to some extent, but the rule is that there will be grotesque and even monstrous events as a routine, not only directed at the developers from the community, but at times in the reverse direction as well.
I think this is actually a big part of it. I would argue that part of the issue is entitlement of developers. Yes, some get criticized wrongly, or have undue expectations placed upon them by the fans. Many others, however, do royally fuck up, and still expect exculpation from their fuckups because its “gaming” or a “niche community that needs to be supported.” Gaming is no longer (for the most part) a sleepy little industry where you can just give it your best shot and if you fail, oh well, you tried hard, and it’s all okay. You go on podcasts, you talk up your game, you get people hyped up with discussions of cool feature X, and awesome ability Y, you engage in pre-pre-marketing, you take pre-orders, you have DLC prepared to sell before the main product is even ready, but you still want to be immune from the types of harsh criticism that other big industries receive? It doesn’t work that way.
When you step into certain occupations, including selling products to the public, you do so taking both the good and bad. Should people be verbally abusive? No, of course they shouldn’t. But it is going to happen, particularly when developers and publishers market and hype the hell out of everything years before even producing something concrete, and then repeatedly miss on deadlines, etc. Or when they badly miss on the final product. Consumers get very wound up with these sorts of things, and in some ways developers and publishers should be happy for that - apathetic consumers don’t buy games in the first place. I think you have to expect that there is going to be some blowback when you sell coolness, hype, and hope. Again, it isn’t always right, but it is part of the game (pardon the pun) you impliedly agree to play when you enter that market.
But I’m not a developer, so I don’t know how many personal hate-mails are dulled for each “I love your game and appreciate your work” message one gets. <---- Brad - does it help take out the sting a bit? I hope so…
Yea, for us we are very very lucky that we have a very supportive player base. But we make a very niche type of game - strategy games which appeal to a very different demographic. Which reminds me, JP, I’m going to need your help again on something you’re familiar with soon. :)
I think the debate here is that people fly off the handle at a moment’s notice, even when the developer has done nothing worthy of attracting their wrath. And there is no reason that people should ever be allowed to make death threats, idle or not, never mind because of a video game. People can be frustrated and can voice their concerns in a reasonable fashion but jumping to the utmost edge of sanity for the sake of “getting the point across” just shouldn’t fly. It’s that sort of thing that we need to deal with. And we definitely shouldn’t be saying that it’s okay for people to do that.
And, besides, if a game sucks and you don’t like it, or you don’t like the way a company is handling themselves, the best thing to do is voice your concerns in a way that the industry will understand. Don’t buy the next game from that company. Say something on their official forums. Ask devs questions. Voice your complaints in a reasonable manner. (I stopped buying Call of Duty after the whole MW2 fiasco, haven’t regretted it. It might be a tiny drop in the pool but I’ve voiced my concern as a consumer and feel very enlightened because of it.)
I blogged on this topic a while ago before the phil fish thing (http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2013/06/08/who-would-be-a-game-developer/), as it’s something I really think has not got the attention it deserves. I don’t think Ive had death threats per se, but I have had someone threatening to come to my house and kill my pets, and I’ve had some maniac on this very forum pretending he worked with me and I’d been abusive to him in person (turns out we have never met…).
I think anyone who isn’t in a ‘public facing’ role in games who thinks its overblown is frankly just wrong. The level of hatred and abuse you get as a developer is MUCH worse than you get on the net in general (for example in places where people don’t know who I am).
I think we lose a lot of good devs to this. I’m lucky, in that I’ve had a background in some relatively rough jobs (esp boatbuilder) where you develop a fairly thick skin, or you get your ass kicked. As a result, someone calling me names from behind a keyboard isn’t going to wreck my life, but the majority of game coder geeks are pretty insular, pretty shy, pretty quiet people who might not take such abuse as well as normal. Add to that the explosion in ‘social media’ meaning all game devs need to interact with the public, and you have a recipe for chaos.
There are huge issues in abuse by gamers, not just to devs, but other gamers, esp racist, homophobic and sexist abuse. How anyone expects the mainstream media to accept that gaming isn’t for kids, when we tolerate such childish behavior is beyond me. I’d love to see websites come down much harder on stuff like this. How anyone can type racist abuse in an online game and not have their account banned is just beyond me. I wouldnt think twice about banning peoples GSB accounts for that sort of thing.
I was far from a luminary in the field (a relative neophyte compared to a great many here), but I backed out of the industry due to realizing I just didn’t have the iron-plated skin required for it. I’ve had a lot of bad things said to me, as sadly most people have, but when it’s being directed at you about something you poured so much time and effort into, it feels a lot more personal than a simple drive-by FU.
I have to agree with Brad that the field has just simply become more personalized, as well. There’s an upside to that, of course - people identify individuals with favorite franchises (Sid Meier/Tyler Perry, anyone? ;), and that cache can garner a warmer reception for someone’s next effort. But the downside is so bad, it’s just brutal to witness let alone deal with.
