Ken Levine: Online Abuse Hurts Gamers In The Long Run

[fix-the-spade]

However, if you're doing a job you love, does it matter that you're getting hate for it if it's what you want to be doing?

Yes it does, it matters very much, a constant stream of abuse is about the fastest, most reliable way to end someone's love of a job.

The police isn't a good comparison, they gets months of training specifically designed to help them deal with the abuse that gets aimed at them, they also have an extremely direct set of abilities to strike back when abusers go too far. You don't get face full of pepper spray and arrested the moment you threaten a game developer on twitter after all.

Most people don't get to 'answer back' like that, in fact they live the complete opposite of that, if they answer back at all it's more or less guaranteed to put that job they 'love' in jeopardy. That's a horrible way to live no matter how much you love the rest of what you do.

 

[RicoADF]

I would be far more worried if there weren't dozens or hundreds of new artists chomping at the bit to enter the industry every. single. day.

So the ones who can't deal with pressure get weeded out. If you are doing what you really want to do, you find ways to deal with it like Ken has.

That's a rather disturbing way to look at it, so because they enjoy the job they are exempt from being treated with any sort of respect and can be abused and threatened for no reason at all? Frankly the people in the community that pull this crap are a disgrace and make us all look like them..... pathetic lowlives with no respect for others.

I agree it'd be practically impossible to stop it but having a view of "eh, deal with it since it's going to happen" is basically approval for dicks to act that way, when we should be opposed to it whenever it happens.

If anything, people in the game industry aren't critical enough and mostly sound like PR machines that don't seem to be able to analyze complex contexts or form an original thought of their own.

I agree the critics don't do their job well and more often than not are basically PR/marketing for the big publishers, however that's a different matter to abusing and threatening people which this article is referring to. Give feedback and criticise bad gameplay design sure, but threatening and abusing the devs is crossing the line.

 

[Calibanbutcher]

Just because he works on a creative work doesn't entitle him to be protected from criticism, if he or anyone else wishes to leave for whatever reason that is his prerogative and free choice, I'm sure someone more talented that might actually realize games shouldn't be produced the same way as Hollywood blockbusters will take his place in time and everyone will be better off in the end.

This new "boohoo, poor me, some people don't like me or my work so I'm gonna complain and throw a tantrum" trend seems wrong, self-serving and duplicitious to me in the same vein as the now played out "entitled gamer" meme.

I think that "criticism" had nothing to do with it.
Criticism is pointing out flaws one perceives in a game and how these flaws make for a worse experience.

This is not what got Fish and others to the point of quitting the game industry.

What he, and many other developers are barraged with has naught to do with criticism and is more of a constant stream of insults and threats, which have fuck-all to say about their product and are directed at them and their families respectively.

Let me give you an example for this difference:

Spoiler: Criticism

I did not very much enjoy Videogame: The Game: Revengeancurrection 3 GOTY-Platinum-Uber-Edition. It came packaged with a feral bobcat which proved not only hard to tame but also killed two of my fish before I finally managed to chase it away, which was not an enjoyable experience and the mustard-gas that was released upon first opening the game was not to my liking either.
The game itself is below average, which in part was due to the soundtrack being nothing but a collection of Britney-Spears-covers recorded by the South African Vuvuzela Orchestra with occasional hornet-swarm-solos thrown in to shake it up a bit, interspiced with mosquito sounds and high-frequency beeps, which literally, and I am using literally in the very sense of the word hear, caused my ears to bleed. The graphis were not much better to be honest, blurry and washed-ou, which, in combination with the interesting art-design choices to have everything decked in constantly changing, contrasting neon-colours and to rely soley on strobe-lights to illuminate the environment send me to the hospital 2 times with a seizure and made it very hard indeed to make out what was going on most of the time, which impaired the gameplay even more than the peculiar choice to have every single command be randomly reassigned to another button after going through a door, which made especially the door-land levels very hard to play indeed.
Overall I would not recommend Videogame: The Game Revengeanceurrection 3, seeing as all these interesting creative choices do not manage to distract from the boring story, which was entirely foreseeable despite having more twists than an endless spiral and the repetitive cover-shooty gameplay.

Spoiler: What makes people quit the business, aka internet-criticism.

Spoiler: Warning, strong language etc. Not meant to offend, but to amuse.

HOW DAER YOU CHANGE ANYTHING ON TEH GRAETESTEST GAEM EVA11!!???!!!!!11 I WILL RAGEF*CK YOU AND EVERYONE YOU LOVE INTO OBLIVION I WILL KILL EVERYTHING YOU EVER LIEKD AND BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN FOR CHANGING SHIT IN THE WRONG WAY YOU STUPID FUCKTARTRD; I'LL KILL YOU AND YOUR FAMILY AND THEN I WILL F+CK YOUR CORPSES AND BUILT A FORT FROM THEM AND LIVE IN THEM UNTIL YOU CHANGE BACK THAT THING YOU CHANGED AND PISS ON YOUR PORCH EVERYDAY; KILL YOURSELF YOU MISERABLE PILE OF SH!T YOU DESERVE TO DIE I HATE YOU AND EVERYTHING YOU EVER DID222221!!!!!11112

 

[Comocat]

The problem with "Abuse" is it generates page clicks. How many millions of copies of CoD have been sold? Then a few dickbags get on twitter and say something mean and suddenly it's front page news? Yeah I get it probably sucks to have people hate you but you cant have it both ways. Game developers and publishers have been standing up for trolls for years to increase sales and now, suddenly, when a developer gets ragged on, they get sad and change careers? How about this, spend some money moderating your games, permabanning assholes, and then get back to me on having your feelings hurt.

 

[Zachery Gaskins]

Seems to me if we prevented teenagers from using the internet until they turned 18, we might see a huge reduction in abuse.

But really, if we already prosecute juveniles differently because we acknowledge that they're hormonal, irrational, and not fully capable of sound judgment as far as social behavior is concerned, could we extend that principle to (figuratively) inhibit their influence until they've proven they can act like adults?

 

[alphamalet]

snip

This time a million!

This guy was a prick that couldn't take what he dished out. Now he is gone and I'm glad he is. It would be one thing if he had conducted himself professionally and couldn't take the abuse anymore, but that is not what happened.

 

[SonicWaffle]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.823115-Yet-another-Metacritic-User-Review-Bomb-Company-of-Heroes-2

Yeah, it got messy.

Wait for the Russians to show up, that's where it gets "good".

EDIT: Beaten to my own punch, heh. Oh well.

Aaaargh, fuck, my brain. Somehow I managed to struggle through that whole thing, and...Christ.

While I agree with your original assertion that this thread show a lack of perspective, the problem is more that it showed, from every side, an extremely tightly focused perspective and a refusal to abandon it. Everyone was arguing that the other sides' historians were wrong. I don't think that's necessarily a gamer issue any more than it is an everybody issue. The magical megaphone of the internet amplifies every stupid or badly-researched opinion and turns minor disagreements into pissing contests regardless of the content.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to lie down in a dark room until this headache goes away.

 

[Teoes]

snip

Your avatar is most appropriate at this point. More power to you for making it through the whole thing. I read the first and last pages, that was more than enough for me.

 

[Ishal]

I fully endorse this message.

Gamers, on the whole are a... perspectiveless lot. Wanna know how my Mom, friends and co-workers sees gamers? Go read our thread on the Company of Heroes review-bombing.

"On the whole" eh?

Enlighten me, what do your mum and co-workers think of gamers? Wouldn't be a sweeping generalization would it? Nah, couldn't be...

 

[LordLundar]

Ken makes a very good point. We lose very creative individuals because of this bull and it really needs to stop. What happened to David is horrible and if he decides to walk away I would not blame him in the slightest. The people who made those remarks do not and should not be representative of gaming and should never, EVER, call themselves as such. There was, and is no excuse for it. Disagree with what he has done all you want, but be respectful about it. The sooner those dregs of human society are removed from that representation status the better.

That said, it's a two way street and why I'm not as defensive of Fish. Granted, the bile and hate thrown at him from those same dregs is deplorable and everything I said about the attacks on David also apply to those wastes of humanity. However, when a developer can't even accept constructive criticism without lashing out like a 5 year old, s/he shouldn't be surprised when the reaction is that same bile s/he just threw out multiplied by ten thousand or more. Fish's problem is that he feels that he can do no wrong so he can be the innocent victim and the grand messiah while being at best no better than the dregs he so adamantly despises.

Ken is right, It hurts gaming, both in the long run and in the short run when the backlash is unwarranted. When the one provoking it walks away, regardless of how creative he is, I do wonder if the gaming industry and community were harmed or helped in that result.

 

[Griffolion]

-snip-

Seems to me like the whole thing devolved into an argument as to the extent of Soviet Russia's war crimes in the Second World War. I didn't realise stuff like that would still cause such an argument.

Oh well. One day gaming will be recognised as somewhat mature. One day...

 

[Jutaris]

SonicWaffle: Sorry about that, so many nested quotes I got goofed up.

Dexter111:
First thing, you don't have to convince me that Phil is abrasive and kind of an ass, I'm well aware. I don't care to argue on this too deeply, but what I will say is that I can respect where he's coming from.

Game development isn't an easy thing to do, especially for just one or two people. He's clearly heavily invested personally in his work, and being on the receiving of an endless torrent of BS is going to make anyone prickly. He didn't want to port his game to PC because he felt it should just be on consoles? That's fine, it's his work to do what he wants with it. Didn't want to pay $40,000 to fix a somewhat rare bug? Hell, I wouldn't either!

Is he an ass on the internet? Undoubtedly. But you know, given the level of UNPROVOKED shit that he gets to eat every day for working on a popular creative work... I dunno, I guess I can just empathize.

"Now he's suddenly the poor abused messiah that everyone will be missing? This is just self-serving industry-friendly spin that reminds me of a "don't criticize poor us" attitude and nothing more. I call bullshit."

WAT.

Criticism isn't the issue here! Please DO criticise ALL the creative works. These warrant-less personal attacks need to STOP. Poor abused messiah? No. Guy who's been fed a constant stream of shit for years and decided to pack it in. Would Fez 2 have been any good? We'll probably never know, and yeah, I'll call that a loss.

Off topic: Ad Captcha's now? Is that where we are internet?

 

[SonicWaffle]

However, if you're doing a job you love, does it matter that you're getting hate for it if it's what you want to be doing?

Yes it does, it matters very much, a constant stream of abuse is about the fastest, most reliable way to end someone's love of a job.

Equally matched, in this case, by a constant stream of praise and awards. Sure, we tend to focus more on the negative, but doubtless there was also a huge amount of response telling Fish what a good job he was doing. In my mind at least, the pairing of praise and doing something that I really, truly and genuinely wanted to do would be more than enough to overcome the abuse. And I say this as someone who is seriously concerned about complete strangers thinking badly of me; in my spare time I write about games for a small blog, without too wide of an audience, all of whom tend to be smart and fairly decent people. However, when one of my articles got picked up and shared around by the Penny Arcade Report, I went into spasms of panic and kept refreshing to see if anyone had left an abusive comment yet calling me a ****-flavoured lollipop.

From everything I've seen of the guy, Fish has a much, much thicker skin when it comes to taking and dealing out abuse than I do, so I guess my confusiong arises from the fact that he let the abuse get to him so badly.

The police isn't a good comparison, they gets months of training specifically designed to help them deal with the abuse that gets aimed at them, they also have an extremely direct set of abilities to strike back when abusers go too far. You don't get face full of pepper spray and arrested the moment you threaten a game developer on twitter after all.

OK, it was a bad example, but regardless of training or ability to strike back, the point is that some people will do a job that entails abuse because it is the job they want to do. Fish clearly wanted really badly to be a game developer, even if he was a bit of a douche about it, so I didn't really think that abuse would be enough to turn him off the life path he wanted so much.

[Most people don't get to 'answer back' like that, in fact they live the complete opposite of that, if they answer back at all it's more or less guaranteed to put that job they 'love' in jeopardy. That's a horrible way to live no matter how much you love the rest of what you do.

Phil Fish did answer back, though. He gave abuse in his turn. I'm not saying that justifies the abuse he received, just that he was hardly a shrinking violet throughout the affair. He's a very confrontational man, by all accounts.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

I'm pretty sure it hurts them in the short term too.

I mean, does anyone actually enjoy reading that stuff? I suppose it can be funny if you're sufficiently detached, but personally it mostly makes me grumpy.

What Zhukov said.
It can be amusing in small doses, like that one person who got mad about Bayonetta 2 being only on the Wii U, and said they wanted to kick a dolphin in the vagina.
However, I would imagine that getting thousands, or even just hundreds of hate mail a day would wear down almost anyone a good bit.

I may not like Fish that much, but I can understand him thinking it's not worth it. This abusive junk on the internet should never be accepted.
To everyone who goes; "Oh, that's just how it is on the internet.", don't just accept that crap. If this kind of junk "is what the Internet is like", then the internet is like shit, and NO, it doesn't have to be.

 

[lacktheknack]

I fully endorse this message.

Gamers, on the whole are a... perspectiveless lot. Wanna know how my Mom, friends and co-workers sees gamers? Go read our thread on the Company of Heroes review-bombing.

"On the whole" eh?

Enlighten me, what do your mum and co-workers think of gamers? Wouldn't be a sweeping generalization would it? Nah, couldn't be...

I mentioned the perfect thread to demonstrate what they think, go read that.

Also, the problem with sweeping generalizations is that they tend to be based on something true. Especially in this case, where I can point at dozens of examples on this site alone.

Besides, when the world views you with sweeping generalizations, that doesn't mean that they become ignorable. It means we have to work HARDER to fix our image.

 

[Ishal]

I fully endorse this message.

Gamers, on the whole are a... perspectiveless lot. Wanna know how my Mom, friends and co-workers sees gamers? Go read our thread on the Company of Heroes review-bombing.

"On the whole" eh?

Enlighten me, what do your mum and co-workers think of gamers? Wouldn't be a sweeping generalization would it? Nah, couldn't be...

I mentioned the perfect thread to demonstrate what they think, go read that.

Also, the problem with sweeping generalizations is that they tend to be based on something true. Especially in this case, where I can point at dozens of examples on this site alone.

Yes, but you when you say on the whole, that is what you mean is it not? The whole, or all? You could point at dozens of examples but dozens does not equal all.

From the way you word your earlier post, I'm guess you don't go around review bombing games, I don't either. I don't like being lumped in with the lot that actually do that sort of thing, do you?