Over in my old stomping grounds on SWTOR, yesterday the lead community manager was forced to scold players for being self-entitled jerks.
However, following the posts John made yesterday, a few players formed a witch-hunt against John. These players tracked him down on some of his personal accounts and in some extreme cases, even those of his family members with the sole purpose of harassing, insulting, and threatening him based on those forum posts. The purpose of our forums, of our subreddit, and other official channels is to have a dialog. We know that sometimes we may disagree, and that’s ok. We want to have those hard conversations, we want to talk about what we can do to improve, and to pass on our thoughts on how we see things from the Development side. But taking that conversation off of official channels to make personal attacks against Developers is completely unacceptable.
Please understand John didn’t need to communicate his perspective about the class. John and the Combat team knew giving their views on Sentinels and Marauders, in some cases, would not be received well, but he did it anyway. The alternative, is that we stay silent.
Emphasis his, but I’m in full agreement – and in no way am I considering this unique to that game’s community. Game developers want to be able to talk to their fans, but when the response to us talking is not criticism but steps outside of our work lives and into our home lives, the natural impulse of developers is to shut down that communication. And when that happens, the dev attitude pretty much is forced into ‘you’ll take what you get and you’ll like it’.
I’ve written in the past about what we’ve lost in the recent catastrofuck – the desire for developers, to engage wanes when they think that there is actual real risk – risk to their job, or risk to their family – from engaging with their playerbase. But this is a problem that predates recent events, and runs parallel to them. Jennifer Hepler and Jade Raymonde. Ask the Call of Duty dev who was piled on by death threats for nerfing a gun. Or the Bungie executive who was swatted. Or for that matter, Brad Wardell, who I can remember mentioning at some point (I can’t find the link) that angry customers started reaching out to his family.
Criticism is fine. Disagreement is fine. Being opposed to changes in your favorite game is fine. Designers aren’t always right. Players aren’t always privy to all of the reasons that developers need to make changes. Shit happens. But when people stop arguing based on facts and start reaching directly for an attempt to indimidate, this ends up with a chilling effect for player/developer communications in the future.
I don’t dip into the SWTOR forums as often as I used to, too busy running alts through the new story content on Ziost.
When I do go past (maybe once/twice a week) I usually look at the Dev Tracker.
Saw the original posts by the combat team and thought ‘Cool, I get a bit of the thought process behind class function and design. Love to see more of this level of interaction.’
Came back a couple of days later and this was a thing.
When the anonymity of the internet makes it so easy to attack the creative teams behind a game (or other form of entertainment, this ties into the large number of celebrities that are hanging up their twitter accounts because of the abuse) I wonder why they even bother in the first place. With their level of skills there must be far more profitable avenues to apply their skills to.
Maybe one of the ways forwards is to keep the names of the Devs off the posts. At least this would minimise the ease with which individuals can be focused upon by the mob. Of course, depending on the size of the team this may not be possible.
Personally I would prefer the ability to hold a mature dialogue with a developer and actually engage on a level that contributes to the improvement of a game. It’s one of the reasons I stumbled upon this blog and have hung around ever since.
Again, I don’t think this is specific to the gaming industry (recently several high profile TV celebs in the UK decided to leave Twitter over harassment aimed at them) and it highlights the downside of the internet.
AAA devs have the “luxury” of being silent (some luxury that is 🙁 ). Those of us doing indie work, where there may only be two or three voices period, don’t really have that to fall back on. If we’re not out there talking about our games to the general public, then nobody is.
Which is to say this whole “threaten the developers because I don’t like what you’re saying” is frankly terrifying. Nobody deserves that, even folks who I vehemently disagree with.
One aspect among many in the autistic spectrum is the inability to modulate an emotional response.
Add that to the Total Fuckwad Problem, and that’s what game developers in general have to deal with.
Indies have it worse, because by definition they’re doing everything themselves. They have to market themselves along with their product, and have no one else to turn to.
I’m not sure I’d necessarily pin it on the autistic spectrum. I’ve caught folks who I’m acquaintances with be absolute jerkwads on the Internet. Nice as can be in real life, but complete jackasses when behind a keyboard in game or on a message board, and not diagnosed on the autistic spectrum whatsoever. Also note that plenty of folks troll or say things that will raise your eyebrows significantly while logged into their Facebook account in comment sections.
The lack of an actual face-to-face person with immediate social consequences to negative behaviour is a more likely driver of what is effectively psychopathic behaviour than either Autism or anonymity.
In either case, regardless of the driving force, it’s a shitty problem overall, and one I don’t know a solution to besides just taking my ball and going home. And as we both said, indies don’t have that option unless “home” is “leave the industry”.
Maybe another way to put it to avoid accusations of autism is to say, any personal graces you lack, even if you mean well, will get amplified, and you’ll look worse presenting yourself before your audience, when you’d rather your audience just play the game and judge it based on that.
There isn’t an easy solution for that yet.
Are we even talking about the same subject here? I feel like we’re not on the same page.
This isn’t abut how the developers present themselves, this is about the audience being assholes to the developers–or worse. Even if the developers are dispassionate and dole out just the facts, the audience shouldn’t be sending threats to the developers or their families, regardless of how the developer presents themselves.
That’s right, and if the developer is going indie, there’s no one in their employ to take care of unruly fans or other untoward external communications. Because they will always happen, and if you have to deal with them yourself, and it’s not what you do best, you run the risk of looking worse.
I know I mentioned it in another thread but I think it’s worthwhile just to mention it again…
I’m currently reading ‘The Lucifer Effect’ by Philip Zimbardo (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lucifer-Effect-Good-People-Turn/dp/1846041031).
It looks more at the situational and failings of system that can lead to abuse escalating out of control. It covers the Stanford Prison Experiment the afore mentioned author carried out in the early 1970s and the continued research.
While the primary focus is on abuse in the physical realm (ethnic cleansing, Abu Ghraib prison) it shares many (if not all) aspects with online abuse. The dehumanisation of the abused, the one upmanship of the abusers, the isolation of the community. It is an interesting and to be honest frightening appraisal of how easy it is to get dragged along despite having personal beliefs to the contrary.
Just stumbled across this link…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02qv3ng
It seems it may have something interesting to add to the discussion.
And, just in case you’re interested in the TED talk that sparked off the book…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMJgZ4s2E3w
I know exactly how this feels. I worked as the lead programmer on an indie MMO for several years (which I will keep anonymous). I started out being very vocal and open with the community on our forums and other social media. At first it was great, but after a couple years players became extremely upset over my decisions. Personal info about myself and my family was being posted in different places, and I was getting a barrage of “he said, she said” private messages about what people were doing behind my back.
It was a time in my life that I was constantly looking over my shoulder when I was coming and going from my own home. It was terrifying to feel that way. From that point on, I retreated from the game, shutting down our forums and basically ending all future development. It still runs, but I very rarely speak to anyone in the community or work on anything for fear that I may be stalked and harassed again.
Suffice it to say, I will never make video games again. The whole thing has destroyed my enthusiasm for it. It looks like it’s just getting worse for others out there in the industry.
There’s no excuse for this, autistic or not. And frankly I doubt this is autistic people. Screw this kind of abuse and the people who propogate it; talking to devs is a privilege, not a right.
I’m in full agreement, this sort of behaviour is not excusable, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look at the possible causes and think about changes that could alleviate the situation.