Interesting article on gamers harassing developers

[TheSlamma]

It has been out of hand for awhile. It really is sad, especially since in a lot of cases, the reasons people are so pissed probably weren't even the developers decision to start with, but their publisher instead.

It's this coming to age entitlement generation, the expectations they have are absurd and they think that having high expectations makes them smarter than everyone else. But then you hire them on for the job and most of them are sub par performers at best who want 18 hour work weeks cause they still live at home.

Not all their fault, the ribbons for everyone and mom and dad are friends before parents crap didn't help at all.

 

[sandorski]

The way Multiplayer works these days, IMO, contributes to the nonsense. Not being able to browse for servers is a major pet peeve of mine. Hosting your own server is also part of the problem. It has become too difficult to become part of a server community without jumping through the hoops of getting everyone to become Friends through some third party.

 

[TheSlamma]

That's a stupid attitude. Developers who ignore gamers, end up releasing broken games.

The bold word is the key though, $30 game is not worth threatening someones life over.. $300 game isn't worth a threat.. it's a GAME.

 

[ImpulsE69]

You guys are acting like this is solely a games issue. It isn't. Hell people can't even talk on forums and disagree about hobbies they all enjoy w/o getting all bent out of shape. I was discussing this with my wife and she said there are keyboard ninja wars even on quilting forums with people who hate and troll on them...quilting..i mean really?

People who are passionate about things get emotional. The internet is perceived as a safe buffer zone that allows them to say more than they normally would. It is mostly the younger generations who take it a step further and act like that in person..which is a whole other subject all together.

There is a difference in the person raging during a multiplayer game and the person raging against a dev/movie star/director/game company. They are triggered by different things, but have the same result.

I think threatening to kill people and their families (among other things) is way overboard, but IMO "devs" need to either get thicker skin or stay off the internet. Again though, it's not limited to them (as the article tries to hint). Everyone who is in the public eye is scrutinized and flamed daily.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Actually, maybe we should consider using the approach in things that matter. You know, harass a few school board members, IRS agents, lawyers, risk management and, medical billing admins.?

 

[cmdrdredd]

You guys are acting like this is solely a games issue. It isn't. Hell people can't even talk on forums and disagree about hobbies they all enjoy w/o getting all bent out of shape. I was discussing this with my wife and she said there are keyboard ninja wars even on quilting forums with people who hate and troll on them...quilting..i mean really?

People who are passionate about things get emotional. The internet is perceived as a safe buffer zone that allows them to say more than they normally would. It is mostly the younger generations who take it a step further and act like that in person..which is a whole other subject all together.

There is a difference in the person raging during a multiplayer game and the person raging against a dev/movie star/director/game company. They are triggered by different things, but have the same result.

I think threatening to kill people and their families (among other things) is way overboard, but IMO "devs" need to either get thicker skin or stay off the internet. Again though, it's not limited to them (as the article tries to hint). Everyone who is in the public eye is scrutinized and flamed daily.

Hah a friend of mine has a son, now 18. He was always a dick to everyone and always rude and sarcastic and unapologetic. One day he was l with his friends and they were cursing and making sexual jokes about people. Until one dude asked him to stop. He got all huffy and pushed the guy. Now he's missing a tooth because of his arrogance. His father says he got what he deserves maybe he'll be more careful about how he talks to people. I thought that was kind of funny personally.

The stuff about having the police send a swat team to some dude's home because you don't like them on the internet is serious though. That should be handled like a bomb threat hoax IMO.

 

[irishScott]

Except, that is the rec league. Gamers just don't want to accept they are not pros. The "pro" leagues exist already; 99.9% of just aren't good enough to make them. The MLGs, EVOs, Dreamhacks, TI4s, etc are there the professional gamers go. The rest of us are effectively amateurs playing the in rec leagues. Public games, even matchmaking, are for the every man.

Sadly, gamers are far to self absorbed in their own imaginary eliteness to accept this.

It's not just imaginary eliteness. If I'm playing a multiplayer match in say, Starcraft II or Copmpany of Heroes, I'm not relaxed like I might be playing a pick-up game of soccer. I'm intensely focused, highly invested and likely have been for over an hour, because that's what it takes to be competitive.

To exert all of that time/effort and to see it all go to shit because of 1 person who didn't know to block his entrance or tried charging Panthers with riflemen, it's infuriating. I know rationally that I did the same stupid shit starting out, and I don't get abusive, but that doesn't change the emotion.

Starcraft II's "leagues" were a great idea until they allowed people from different leagues to play with each other. I'd like to see a more rigid system based along those lines. Pure meritocracy based on record. Many games already have a casual system, where you'll see servers entitled "noobs welcome" and such.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

My point is, there IS NO REC LEAGUE! That is exactly what IS NEEDED. There is only one league in most online games, and effectively it is the "pro" league, except that you have people who have never played the game before being tossed right in with the pros on day one. There NEEDS to be a REC LEAGUE as well as the pro league.

In the past, at least for certain games, there were organized clan communities and ladders for formal clan matches. Often these communities had their own servers for the pros. Some games even had PUG matches, pick-up clan match style games that were organized for unscheduled competitive play. For certain games, the title of a new game room might also say, "Skilled" or "50 games played required" or some such.

I wholeheartedly agree that experienced players need to be more welcoming to new players, especially in games that have small insular communities, at least if the current players want to grow the player base.

 

[BSim500]

LOL. I agree up to a point, go after the shrieking loonies who issue death threats (they're usually the same "keyboard warrior" d*ckheads who hang round Youtube martial arts video's calling everyone a "pussy" until someone posts their dojo's address then invites them to join in ). Though in many people's eyes there also seems to be a never ending stream of why "PC gaming is dying" excuses that always seems to be the fault of someone else ("It's piracy!", "Some kid called me a name!", etc)...

Personally, I'd love to see a string of articles around : "When we started making sh*tty dumbed down ports of the same recycled core game over and over, with broken controls (like removing mouse sensitivity / rebindable keys from PC games, or leaving giant "designed for 10ft view distance" console HUD's in PC games without any attempt at sensible HUD scaling), then criticism went through the roof!" as I certainly wouldn't call what the article is talking about the greatest threat to PC gaming by a very long shot... (It probably is the greatest threat to BAD sequels / consolised PC ports, however).

"Fisk believes that online harassment is more of a problem for industries and professions which rely heavily on the creation and management of public image, than those that don't."

Maybe this obsessive "image shaping" is part of the problem? You whip people up into a frenzy with vastly overdone over-hype and "expectation management" with pre-rendered cutscenes masquerading as "demos", then they feel let-down when it turns out the hype doesn't fit the substance? It's not just games that are the victim of this, movies such as Avatar, etc, suffered too. It seems every business these days is run by PR men looking to turn everything into a new craze, rather than actual developers? Make a game fun / interesting/ different enough and it will sell itself. It seems to be only the AAA "cinematic experiences" that 'need' the over-hype.

It's also hardly limited to games as you see exactly the same "backlash" thing from Star Wars "digitized effects" to the most trivial political everyday stuff. There may be some overlap, but I see online bullying and criticism of bad games as two separate issues in general. Bullying of "newbs" purely for being new needs to stop, though much of that is crowd psychology of insecure teenagers showing off. But a lot of devs making badly ported games do need to understand what they get is at least 50% self-inflicted.

PS: For those who don't know, the ending of ME3, was more about broken game mechanics than "I disagree with the plot" sulking. Unless you spent a lot of time on multi-player, you basically got a "bad" ending no matter what due to "Readiness Rating" being halved on single-player only. Trying to force everyone to play multiplayer (even in single-player games) is a big no, no (especially after +150 hours of the whole trilogy's character development). I dare say, if they broke all 3 endings of Deus Ex or if you failed Thief, etc, unless single-players clocked up pointless hours on multi-player first (thrown in as deliberate padding), they would have gotten huge backlash too. Criticism was rightfully deserved for ME3. It wasn't a plot issue, it was a "false advertising of a multi-player game as single-player, and screwing up a whole multi-game character" issue that got many people riled.

Spoiler alert:-
http://uk.ign.com/wikis/mass-effect-3/Endings
http://uk.ign.com/wikis/mass-effect-3/Effective_Military_Strength

 

[CPA]

My point is, there IS NO REC LEAGUE! That is exactly what IS NEEDED. There is only one league in most online games, and effectively it is the "pro" league, except that you have people who have never played the game before being tossed right in with the pros on day one. There NEEDS to be a REC LEAGUE as well as the pro league.

LOL has a "rec" league and a "pro" league, and you will get just as much shit from players in the "rec" league as you would the "pro" league.

TF2 is about the only online game that I have found where the vast majority of players will help and have fun with you. Yes, there are still asses on some of the servers but they are exception.

 

[DigDog]

what BSim said;


companies started producing shit games, then they complain the shit people are their customer base.

oldskool games were eclectic, and only eclectic people played them. Look at the better half of the indie developers, like Mojang - their player base is great, full of nice people.
The other half of "indie" are just those who want to ride the gravy boat with CoD clones, and that's why they get shit.

shit out - shit in.


it's really not that hard to understand.

 

[waggy]

I hate the "elite" mentality of most gamer's. The sad part is those "elite" are just your average gamer's.

the problem is to many think they are TOP level gamer's. Instead of joining a raiding guild or high level guild they run low level stuff (such as LFG/LFR) and then act like **removed**.

oh wow you are running a easy **removed** raid! wooo! **removed** you. go raid herioc oh wait you can't? then shut the **removed** up.

Along the same lines these same idiots wan't to do away with things such as Looking for raid (LFR) and trying to do away with epic loot in them. Then when you say ok fine make epic only in herioc they whine and run off.




Please refrain from cursing outside of the social forums.

Anandtech Moderator
KeithTalent

 

[gorcorps]

"The root cause of the problem isn't in what we do, making games, it's that there are so little consequences to this wildly violent approach of communication that we are simply one audience of many that are subject to this type of focus," he said. "There's no real penalty right now."

I think this hit the nail on the head. Being anonymous online is creating issues. Part of me enjoys seeing facebook getting linked with everything, because if people can't hide behind a username the internet might be a less hostile place. There are a lot of downsides to it, but nobody should feel okay with sending people death threats.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I think this hit the nail on the head. Being anonymous online is creating issues. Part of me enjoys seeing facebook getting linked with everything, because if people can't hide behind a username the internet might be a less hostile place. There are a lot of downsides to it, but nobody should feel okay with sending people death threats.

I think it is cool that on the ps4 you can link Facebook and use your real name. It puts a face with that username and the interaction becomes more personal. It feels like you really have friends there instead of a bunch of random people named smokeout420, frostymcbake, hooterhunter25, or billybob123. Now you can put a name and face with that handle.

 

[shortylickens]

I will now use Hooterhunter for my name.

 

[IEC]

If you want to see an example of this, see the THOUSANDS of threads on the Star Citizen forums complaining about X Y or Z unreleased game mechanic.

FFS people, grow up and let people do their jobs. Because they know better than 12 year olds and fat neckbeards.

 

[werepossum]

Wow, reading the posts my opinion has swayed back and forth, the only constant being this:

Vote with your dollars, otherwise leave it alone.

If you don't like it, don't buy it, period. Send a polite, short letter to the developer and the publisher explaining your decision if you wish, but for goodness' sake don't make it your Internet cause. Nobody owes you a remake of PixelHunter to your specifications.

Having said that, game developers & publishers are fairly unique in my experience in the way they criticize their actual customer base, so it's a two way street. Far too often PC games are crappy ports, yet we pay full price. An $80k UK Land Rover would not be an $80k US Land Rover if the conversion consisted of screwing a dummy steering wheel to the left side dash, wrapping a belt around the two wheels' hubs, and calling it a day. Yet far too often, PC gamers are presented with equivalent turd sandwiches and expected to like them. The same advice for gamers applies to game developers & publishers; if you don't want to spend the money to make a quality port, don't get all hurt bitch when gamers turn up our noses.

 

[gorcorps]

Wow, reading the posts my opinion has swayed back and forth, the only constant being this:

If you don't like it, don't buy it, period. Send a polite, short letter to the developer and the publisher explaining your decision if you wish, but for goodness' sake don't make it your Internet cause. Nobody owes you a remake of PixelHunter to your specifications.

Having said that, game developers & publishers are fairly unique in my experience in the way they criticize their actual customer base, so it's a two way street. Far too often PC games are crappy ports, yet we pay full price. An $80k UK Land Rover would not be an $80k US Land Rover if the conversion consisted of screwing a dummy steering wheel to the left side dash, wrapping a belt around the two wheels' hubs, and calling it a day. Yet far too often, PC gamers are presented with equivalent turd sandwiches and expected to like them. The same advice for gamers applies to game developers & publishers; if you don't want to spend the money to make a quality port, don't get all hurt bitch when gamers turn up our noses.

It's one thing to complain about a sloppy port, it's quite another to threaten the life of a developer when they gimp the stats of the gun you like to use in COD which I think is the bigger issue the article brings up. People have a right to bitch... people do NOT have the right to threaten. It seems like some of you are skipping over that part entirely.

 

[crownjules]

It's not just imaginary eliteness. If I'm playing a multiplayer match in say, Starcraft II or Copmpany of Heroes, I'm not relaxed like I might be playing a pick-up game of soccer. I'm intensely focused, highly invested and likely have been for over an hour, because that's what it takes to be competitive.

To exert all of that time/effort and to see it all go to shit because of 1 person who didn't know to block his entrance or tried charging Panthers with riflemen, it's infuriating. I know rationally that I did the same stupid shit starting out, and I don't get abusive, but that doesn't change the emotion.

Starcraft II's "leagues" were a great idea until they allowed people from different leagues to play with each other. I'd like to see a more rigid system based along those lines. Pure meritocracy based on record. Many games already have a casual system, where you'll see servers entitled "noobs welcome" and such.

This is really no different from rec leagues. Most sports are going to require an hour or more of time investment. Some of those games can come down to 1 or 2 people making big mistakes or just playing badly in general throughout the course of the game. You can run into the ultra competitive jerk who bitches out his fellow players (more so at higher levels of rec play, ie. the ex-college players). The thing is they are a lot less common because people maintain a level of sanity and decency when face to face. There's that threat of reprisal - whether it be physical or a hit to your reputation among peers - that is lacking in online games.

Everyone likes winning. No one says "Hey guys, who wants to lose this game?" People just need to accept the fact they are not pro and therefore are going to play with/against people of varying skill levels. Deal with it. A game isn't just about the end result.

 

[JTsyo]

If you decide to take up almost any other hobby in the world, you can find beginning classes teaching you how to do it. If you want to knit, you can go to a yarn store and meet fellow knitters who will help you get the basics. If you want to play basketball, you can join a rec center or community league at a beginner level. And generally, the people already involved in those hobbies are thrilled to have someone with whom they can share their passion. But if you want to get started as a gamer, you get told, 'go home noob,' because people in this hobby hate newcomers so much they turned the word itself into an insult.

This is not fully accurate. If you go to gaming forums, there are plenty of people being helpful and pointing out guides and tips to new players. What would those that do quilting do if someone showed up and started adding to their quilt but was horrible at it? Playing pickup basketball I've heard things like "God you're awful, why don't you go the f*&$ home?" said to those that were way below the level that the game was at. There's a time to teach and a time to play.

 

[Midwayman]

Actually the ones who just focus on a game with their vision, a game they would enjoy playing, potentially release the best games. The game doesn't get muddied. See a developer needs to approach it from the perspective of themselves being a gamer. When they enjoy the game there is a good chance someone else will too.

I've seen it go both ways. Devs who ignore fans will either give fans something awesome that they never knew they wanted, or a steaming pile of a game. Devs who listen too much to gamers tend to churn out bland rehashes that cater to the lowest common denominator.

 

[moonbogg]

The internet and the anonymity it provides gives us a rare and short lived opportunity to see people's true thoughts and unfiltered nature. The internet won't always be so anonymous and its already headed that way. When people treat each other with respect, most of the time its due to the fear of consequence to one's self and not due to their giving a damn about the other person. Remove the consequences and what you get is the true person behind the keyboard.
When people joke and troll about wanting people to just drop dead or get hit by a bus for doing even the slightest thing to annoy them, they are telling the truth. If that person could get hit by a bus with no consequences at all to the one wishing the harm on them, they would not stop the death from happening. People are hateful killers even when slightly annoyed. The reason they don't kill is because of consequences. Even if they wouldn't get caught, they would have to live with the guilt of killing, and that in itself is a consequence. But it doesn't mean that should someone get hit by a bus, some prick gamer behind an angry forum post wouldn't grin with delight.

 

[MrMeat]

I guess its finding the right balance of being a supportive fan and a soccer hooligan.

 

[disappoint]

The internet and the anonymity it provides gives us a rare and short lived opportunity to see people's true thoughts and unfiltered nature. The internet won't always be so anonymous and its already headed that way. When people treat each other with respect, most of the time its due to the fear of consequence to one's self and not due to their giving a damn about the other person. Remove the consequences and what you get is the true person behind the keyboard.
When people joke and troll about wanting people to just drop dead or get hit by a bus for doing even the slightest thing to annoy them, they are telling the truth. If that person could get hit by a bus with no consequences at all to the one wishing the harm on them, they would not stop the death from happening. People are hateful killers even when slightly annoyed. The reason they don't kill is because of consequences. Even if they wouldn't get caught, they would have to live with the guilt of killing, and that in itself is a consequence. But it doesn't mean that should someone get hit by a bus, some prick gamer behind an angry forum post wouldn't grin with delight.

Ethics should be a required course to graduate high school and any degree in institutions of higher learning.

 

[MichaelBarg]

Anonymity is a bit of a red herring. Didn't South Korea try to mandate real names online, with minimal impact on behavior? It seems that getting behind a keyboard or controller makes people feel like they can say things they'd never say person. That's a problem all over the internet for everyone.

The article is conflating several things though. SWATing is a serious problem that goes far beyond gaming. The police should take it a lot more seriously, even if it is juveniles doing it. Likewise just about any threats of violence are pretty outrageous. If it weren't for those, I bet we wouldn't even be seeing an article like this.

With specific games the problem is the form of criticism. Criticism of Mass Effect 3 for the ending is fundamentally the same as criticism filmmakers and authors (and anyone else who fancies themselves a story-teller) has always had to deal with. Likewise criticism for launching a broken product in Simcity (and 9 months later one that still doesn't really work, and at this point seems likely never will) - well, what can I say? The form of the criticism was clearly over top in some cases, but the game was pretty bad. And it was a much hyped re-launch of a much beloved franchise. But like I said above, if it was just criticism of the actual game we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. Its the threats of violence, dragging families into things, harassment, etc. that's the problem. It does seem to be especially bad in gaming, but it's certainly a widespread problem online.

Then the 'noob' thing. Well, two things. First if you're sitting at home playing online, you are part of the 'rec league'. No matter how good you are. So feel free to chill. But second lots of games do a piss-poor job of matching players of similar skill levels. It's no surprise people get annoyed, it makes for a bad game. Just because it's all some kind of recreational league doesn't mean there aren't tougher and easier basketball leagues that players sort themselves in to. This why I am a big fan of the Xbox One's new approach to managing bad behavior. What's the worst that happens, nothing? I can keep mute on 100% of the time if that's the case.

All this stuff really is bad for gaming though. It certainly shrinks the gaming community, which shrinks the market and the number of games made. Meanwhile politicians grandstand about violent games, and crazy-sounding gamer talk plays into their hands. And apparently it really is driving away some developers.