The problem of game developers receiving abusive messages
1–10 of 174 posts
Re: The problem of game developers receiving abusive messages
#2This.
Seriously, I run a bunch of FREE websites and I'm amazed by the stuff that shows up in my inbox. When did it become ok to harass someone running a FREE website?
If you don't like it, hit the frigging back button. And get a life.
Re: The problem of game developers receiving abusive messages
#3I got a glimpse of this working on my open source Minecraft clone, and it's at least half of the reason that game is sitting on the backburner. Gamers can be a pretty entitled group.
I also see this in the rest of my open source work, to a lesser extent. On the whole I probably get slightly fewer "fuck you"s than I get "thank you"s.
Re: The problem of game developers receiving abusive messages
#4Do all game devs experience similar types of abuse, or only the devs of games with environments in which the developer's company is attempting to monetize the player as they move through the game?
For example-- there is some beautiful sidescroller game I've seen where the animation looks like old-school Fleischer studio cartoons. Do devs of games like that get abuse from players, too?
Re: The problem of game developers receiving abusive messages
#5Do all game devs experience similar types of abuse, or only the devs of games with environments in which the developer's company is attempting to monetize the player as they move through the game? For example-- there is some beautiful sidescroller game I've seen where the animation looks like old-school Fleischer studio cartoons. Do devs of games like that get abuse from players, too?
> Do devs of games like that get abuse from players, too?
Yes, without a doubt. It's a huge problem.
Re: The problem of game developers receiving abusive messages
#6I don’t understand what forces devs to participate directly in this public discourse. Barring those so small they can’t hire someone to run interference, why precisely are you publicly interacting with your customers?
Anyone who works with the mass public, be they cashiers or physicians, knows damn well that the Public is terrible. Don’t give them a hotline into your head.
Re: The problem of game developers receiving abusive messages
#7> The big issue here is that when you speak to players (and I have, a lot), a large number of them would agree with this statement “There are times when it’s reasonable to send personal abuse to a developer,” although they differ on when those times are.
Seems disingenuous. Without qualifying what those times are, it's logical that almost anyone would agree with that sentiment on some level. Did the developer take a drug-fueled sex tourism jaunt with your Kickstarter donation? Yeah that person probably deserves a little abuse.
> And what will happen when the best established developers and most talented up-and-comers decide that it’s not?
I think that gaming is probably the last industry that will suffer from something like this. There's always going to be a glut of people that want to work on games/in gaming.
I don't think this editorial really says anything. Some people on the Internet are loud assholes. Game developers put themselves on the Internet. Ergo, some people on the Internet are going to be loud assholes to game developers.
You can find someone complaining about anything:
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23applesucks&src=typd
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23nycsucks&src=typd
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23berniesucks&src=typd
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23catssuck&src=typd
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23rainbowssuck&src=typd
This has been a problem for decades, and probably ages before that:
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
Loud, angry, vocal minorities tend to drown out the majority. If you can't ignore that, you'll never succeed.
Re: The problem of game developers receiving abusive messages
#8"I want [something] and I want it now."
This is what I hear from reading most of those angry tweets/comments.
Sadly, sometimes they are simply shouting because the game is not what they were hyped about. Maybe we are over-hyping games to get pre-orders in? I remember a time when the first time I heard about a game was when it was actually on the store shelves (good ol' boxes). Now there are dev-blogs and the likes years before a game is actually going to release...
Re: The problem of game developers receiving abusive messages
#9I guess it's not just game developers, I work with my team in finance sector on a customer portal and we also get almost similar level of feedback from some people... But we have millions of users. I like to think that at this scale we can't avoid to have some of those guys.
Re: The problem of game developers receiving abusive messages
#10Do all game devs experience similar types of abuse, or only the devs of games with environments in which the developer's company is attempting to monetize the player as they move through the game? For example-- there is some beautiful sidescroller game I've seen where the animation looks like old-school Fleischer studio cartoons. Do devs of games like that get abuse from players, too?
Several of the devs tweeted at in the article (camposanto and klei at the very least) are being tweeted at over games which have traditional (ie non microtransaction based) business models.