Ken Levine: Online Abuse Hurts Gamers In The Long Run

[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.

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?

What I said: "On the whole, gamers are a perspectiveless lot."

What this means in my brain: "If you were to pick any random gamer, there's a very good chance he'd have little to no perspective on their actions and the effect it has on the gaming community and its image".

Also, if you actually read the thread, you'd see it's not actually about the Metacritic bombing... that topic got dropped fast. Although, the fact that I don't like being lumped in with a lot of gamers is incentive for me to encourage change.

 

[SonicWaffle]

The Gentlemen disembowels me every time he catches me making puns here, and you know what I do when I read his quotes? I LAUGH about it because it lets me know I'm doing it right.

You might say he was pun-ishing you.

[small]I hate myself[/small]

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.

A psychic assassin suffering a mental breakdown upon being read the secret 27th letter of the alphabet is appropriate for this situation? ;-)

-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...

I can understand the reasoning, honestly. I read a different and more in-depth article on the controversy a few days ago, and it seems that with much of Russia's recent history not being anything to be proud of, people have fallen back on the defeat of Nazism as their proudest moment. Helped along by Putin, naturally.

Therefore any suggestion that the Eastern Front was anything but a heroic victory for the stalwart and true Soviet soldiers is...badly received, to say the least, by some people. People need something to cling to, after all. The problem in that thread was that you had deniers of Soviet atrocity along with affirmers of it all shouting together and insisting that the other had biased sources. You're never going to settle anything that way, because everyone can shrug off everyone else's point as "fabricated history" and so nobody backs down or learns anything.

I always find that sort of thing particularly hard to sit through. "No, I don't care how many sources you've got, because you are clearly under the influence of LIES fed to you by your propagandist government about the war/evolution/gun control/the rules of Trivial Pursuit! So I don't have to listen to you and I'm right and you're wrong for ever and ever and ever!"

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

First Cliffy B, then Jim Sterling, now Ken Levine

There really is something rather beautiful in that. In one last public shout, Fish seems to be raising the support he never could before.

I've never minded Fish, at times his outspoken nature earned a great deal of my respect (in an industry that, let's admit, has few insiders that will make criticisms of the industry, for fear of backlash), & abrasive as he could be, he has the right to speak his mind without receiving threats of violence. Even if people disagree, even if he said it in a harsh manner. Basic human decency. It's sad that this even needs stated.

I've had jobs where I've been violently threatened. I didn't stick around in that environment long. I can't blame anyone else for making the same choice. That said, I miss Phil Fish already

Edit: before anyone tries to argue it, criticism & death threats are not the same thing

 

[J Tyran]

anyone want to hear my take on this ? no ? well you can't stop me muhahahhahaha

ahem anyway...PvP...that's the problem...that and "the traditional market" which E3 has shown the big bods in the industry can't seem to shift away from focusing on.

basically young men are naturally hyper competitive...it's a stage in life...you get to a certain point and you change from being a wide eyed child burdened with insatiable curiosity into...a new thing who thinks he knows everything and to whom every discussion is "an argument" that must be won...and you bounce around like that for a few decades, perhaps having a near breakdown at some point and/or realising "i knew fuck all" until you reach another later stage where your brain kinda stops caring quite so adamantly about things lest you have a heart attack/stroke...

as for PvP its become hyper prevalent because from a developers pov it takes far less work to make a PvP game than a single player one. all you really need to do is give players the gloves and shorts and put them in a ring and they will manufacture their own gameplay and "fun" without you having to do anything else...and ofc if the game was "fair" and "correctly balanced" people would win everytime...

imo add these two things together and you get a gaming scene that's predominately filled with...assholes.

but on both counts partial blame lies with the industry.

and if they want tweenage males to stop being "assholes" they are going to be waiting a very, very long time...

In all my years of playing MMOs its almost always the carebears that resort to insults, threats and death threats, I mean real carebears not the people that enjoy PvE. The kind that think any kind of PvP is evil and it ruins the game for people, even though people start playing a game knowing full well what kind of content it has.

The tell you to die in fires, die of cancer, make comments about your parents and all kinds of crap. All because another player rearranged their pixels into some slightly different pixels.

 

[SonicWaffle]

As near as I can figure it the popular representation of the Eastern front is exaggerated.

Well, certainly, but isn't that the same for every war? I very much doubt the Brits or the Americans were as heroic as we like to portray them. We just happen to produce a lot of the media about the war, at least the stuff that tends to be big in the West.

Like in Enemy at the Gates: one solder gets the ammo and the other gets the gun while the officers stay behind to machine gun anyone who tries to retreat. While there were almost certainly ammo shortages, I'm pretty sure every solder actually got a gun. The only contemporary source I've seen stating otherwise actually came from World War One (and even then the general complaining about it was probably making excuses for the catastrophic defeats Russia suffered early in the war.) There were actually units set-up block Russian units from fleeing the battlefield, but they would have been placed in the rear not shooting solders trying to make it back to their own lines. The officers and generals themselves were the ones who were in the most danger

Yeah, but that's not really the point in this case. You've got one group claiming either that it never happened (or was extremely rare) and one group claiming that it happened near-constantly, where - as usual - the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Nobody is willing to listen because they think the other side has been brainwashed by pro- or anti-Soviet propaganda, and thus we end up with a clusterfuck like that thread. Whether or not the Soviet army actually was that way very quickly takes a back seat to "lying foreign devils, you know nothing!"

Some of the excuses they make are rather pathetic. The guy at the top of page seven posted a picture of Stalin hugging a child to prove he didn't eat babies. The man was a paranoid charismatic thug with only the vaguest possible comprehension of how communism was supposed to work or how to implement it.

Even better, the guy claims he used that exact image as a "trap", hoping someone would come in and mention that Stalin had that girl's parents killed so that he could go "But no! Again your are brainwashed by your American propoganda! Here is what really happened!" and then proceed to give his own version of events.

 

[Micalas]

Good on you, Ken. Preach on!

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.

Got a linky? I'd quite like to have a shufti.

LTK will doubtless respond to you but I dug it up myself after he mentioned it; I left that thread alone initially without going into the comments.

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

Yeah, it got messy.

Lol, that Anton guy is so delusional.

 

[Erttheking]

Yeah, not gonna lie, once upon a time I actually entertained the thought of trying to get a job writing for video games one day. Then I kinda realized what that would entail and now I never EVER want that. Ken kinda really hit the nail on the head hear, rather have a job with a daily routine that doesn't involve homophobic insults and death threats being thrown at me. I mean, I can take the abuse that comes with what I do now, but it's a once in a blue moon kind of thing, if you're working on video games it's a daily thing. It's just not worth it.

Yeah Phil was a massive douche nozzle but frankly at this point trying to pick a side is to pick the lesser of two evils. And even if he was a massive prick, gamers STILL have a massive problem with this. Remember the death threats over the .1 second longer reload time in Call of Duty?

 

[GAunderrated]

Criticism isn't what's at issue here, abuse is. One doesn't criticise someone by telling them to die of cancer or in a car crash or what have you. Nobody deserves to be stomped into the ground because they decided to share a creative work that wasn't "Good" enough. Don't like it, sure. Criticise it, that's fine, but maybe? Don't be a dick.

You quoted the wrong guy.

Also I can't stand this circlejerking over "how bad the "gaming community"" is and what a dear national treasure gaming has lost with Phil Fish. He told the guy to go kill himself and there wasn't any shortness of opportunities that he didn't use to come over as a dick, a few being:

His appearance in Indie Game: The Movie: http://buy.indiegamethemovie.com/

Antagonizing PC gamers for no reason: http://www.nowgamer.com/features/950149/fez_interview_polytrons_phil_fish.html

?Fez is a console game, not a PC game,?
?It?s made to be played with a controller, on a couch, on a Saturday morning. To me, that matters; that?s part of the medium. I get so many comments shouting at me that I?m an idiot for not making a PC version. ?You?d make so much more money! Can?t you see? Meatboy sold more on Steam!? Good for them. But this matters more to me than sales or revenue. It?s a console game on a console. End of story.?

He didn't want to pay for a Patch after he broke his game and apparently caused Save corruption for a bunch of people because it would cost too much: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/358769/polytron-wont-pay-for-fez-patch/

There were various other micro-trolls over the years, like this: http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/24/an-indie-developers-strategy-to-sell-games-insult-fans-and-raise-prices/

The "indie gaming" crowd was also mad at him cause he subsequently won IGF (and a prize money) for a 2nd time after he had already won in 2008: http://www.shacknews.com/article/72777/fez-wins-igf-2012-grand-prize
http://nightmaremode.net/2012/03/opening-the-igfs-doors-17079/

Himself categorizing his game as gods gift to gaming:

According to Phil Fish, developer of Fez, the reason the IGF admitted the title for a second time was because it?s looking for legitimacy: it wants people to care about it. Fez, despite it?s near vaporware status, has been the biggest and the brightest indie hope for a number of years. It?s a title deserving of the grand prize; it?s why we weren?t surprised when it won. The thing is, legitimacy doesn?t come from the quality of the submitted materials. Or, rather, if Fez was submitted to prove the competition?s value to the wider world, it?s backfired: instead of ?These are the best games?, it?s become, ?We brought this game back down from the major leagues because we didn?t think anything else was good enough.?

He apparently won this by submitting his game after voting against Super Meat Boy being featured because it had an "XBLA Exclusive contract" even though his own game had the same contract:
http://www.formspring.me/Tommunism/q/307280112447925736
http://www.formspring.me/EdmundM/q/315327502144781236

He then continued to react smug:

Then there was the whole "Japanese games suck" thing, which I mainly agree with him on but still.

etc.

Here's some more: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=55037476

Just take some of the impressions of his amazing personality from right before he threw his latest hissy-fit:

Spoiler

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.

Only reason why I come to these threads is for posts like this. Well thought out and researched posts that make me want to pull a citizen kane gif asap.

I do think abuse is a problem with the gaming community but not for the reasons Ken Levine is stating. It is more toxicity within the community that I am referring too.

Fish has received A LOT of negative reactions for his comments. As you have pointed out, a lot of this is just karma coming back to bite Fish in the ass after he has projected so much negative energy to the gaming community.

Fish has basically become the Chris Brown of gaming. Any time he does something bad or stupid, it's a week long debate/gossip train.

Personally Fish is a grown man. If he wants to leave gaming that is his choice. I think gaming news sites and people on twitter are trying to make this a bigger story than it is for the drama and site hits.

 

[J Tyran]

anyone want to hear my take on this ? no ? well you can't stop me muhahahhahaha

ahem anyway...PvP...that's the problem...that and "the traditional market" which E3 has shown the big bods in the industry can't seem to shift away from focusing on.

basically young men are naturally hyper competitive...it's a stage in life...you get to a certain point and you change from being a wide eyed child burdened with insatiable curiosity into...a new thing who thinks he knows everything and to whom every discussion is "an argument" that must be won...and you bounce around like that for a few decades, perhaps having a near breakdown at some point and/or realising "i knew fuck all" until you reach another later stage where your brain kinda stops caring quite so adamantly about things lest you have a heart attack/stroke...

as for PvP its become hyper prevalent because from a developers pov it takes far less work to make a PvP game than a single player one. all you really need to do is give players the gloves and shorts and put them in a ring and they will manufacture their own gameplay and "fun" without you having to do anything else...and ofc if the game was "fair" and "correctly balanced" people would win everytime...

imo add these two things together and you get a gaming scene that's predominately filled with...assholes.

but on both counts partial blame lies with the industry.

and if they want tweenage males to stop being "assholes" they are going to be waiting a very, very long time...

In all my years of playing MMOs its almost always the carebears that resort to insults, threats and death threats, I mean real carebears not the people that enjoy PvE. The kind that think any kind of PvP is evil and it ruins the game for people, even though people start playing a game knowing full well what kind of content it has.

The tell you to die in fires, die of cancer, make comments about your parents and all kinds of crap. All because another player rearranged their pixels into some slightly different pixels.

i've played MMOs for over a decade at least and i still dunno what a "carebear" actually is beyond the supposed mortal enemy of the self styled "srs" pvper...

here's the truth (as i see it): the vast majority of the players of the worlds most popular MMO and the estimated 50 odd million players that have passed through it's gates and that could reasonably be considered as "in the market for an MMO" didn't come looking for a game where others fun is conducted at their expense. in wow (yes that's the game) "srs" pvp has ALWAYS been a minority activity.

the fact that game devs listen to a highly vocal minority and keep trying to make new games for them (which after the initial influx of MMO PK seeking locusts nearly always die a death in terms of player numbers and settle with only around 500k tops of a playerbase) is a major problem in the industry imo.

most people do not want to play a game where the stakes are as high as the "srs" pvpers want them to be.
they just want an engaging fantasy world that has something "fun" to do in it.
and being killed for someone else's amusement is generally "not fun".

Well the "truth as you see it" is patently false, people still play PvP games and choose to play on servers that have PvP of varying degrees. Its obvious your opinion must be out of step when people could choose to play a PvE server or a game with entirely co-op content but they obviously don't, so claiming its a vocal minority is also wrong.

The MMOs that died did so not because of PvP but for a bunch of other more diverse reasons.

 

[J Tyran]

The MMOs that died did so not because of PvP but for a bunch of other more diverse reasons.

no those games died because they were initially full of PK seeking locusts who found out a new game didn't make them unkillable teabagging gods and who blamed this on "other more diverse reasons" and then abandoned ship for the next game that tried to service them.

it's the same. every. single. time.

don't you get it ? "if the game was fair and balanced i'd win every match" (as i once read in WoT chat)

anyway OT and i'm off *scamper*

Right, I wont bother asking you to provide proof because there is none. For every dubious source you could provide there are probably three others listing the real reasons, PvP games die when the game is bad but thats not because "PK seeking locusts who found out a new game didn't make them unkillable teabagging gods" as you claim.

It should come as no surprise that people don't want to play bad games.

 

[tardcore]

Well I agree that it wouldn't hurt anyone to remind themselves that before they post that there is another living breathing person on the other side of the screen that will be affected by their post. And also that just being more polite in general isn't a bad thing.

However, what about the flip side of the argument? Game companies pushing for the competitiveness of player vs player E-sport gaming which has helped give rise to at least some of this angry and divisional behavior? What about the people in the industry that are just as abusive and confrontational as the internet trolls? The phrase "Fuck those losers" comes to mind. And most importantly why is it that everyone is only focusing on the negative members of the online community? Do the tons of supportive fan posts on the other side of the ledger not count? Is one hateful comment enough to trump thousands of positive ones? And isn't it rather rude to tar everyone with the same brush just because of a few bad apples?
Are there rude assholes on the internet? Yes. Are there rude assholes in everyone's day to day life? Again, yes. Does that mean we should all just assume EVERYONE is an asshole? No. Yet in this instance it really feels like what everyone is doing.

I just feel that the blame lies on more than one group. From personal experience I've found that there are just as many vitriolic and hateful fans as there are so called trolls. And that there are quite a few vocal personas in the gaming industry that have a bad case of "Rock Star Syndrome" where they feel they can do no wrong. Unless we are willing to admit and address the bad behavior present in all parties involved, we aren't going to solve anything.

 

[veloper]

Might aswell blame the wind.

Levine's appeal and Jim Sterling's piece before him are futile, because the gamers who read that stuff are not the same as the guys who are giving them the wedgies.

Trolls are forever and so are flamers and kids, especially on unmoderated social media. They are a given. You learn to deal with them, usually by ignoring them and sometimes by playing them, or you will die online.

When your audience is worldwide, there will be many internet tough guys, but to let them affect your business is to ignore your fans and customers, the guys who really matter, for no good reason.

 

[Rad Party God]

I completely agree with Mr. Levine here, although I still don't agree that Fish is "the victim"; He's a complete prick, an asshole and an attention whore, nothing more, nothing less. I simply DON'T sympathize with Fish. At all.

 

[theSteamSupported]

All the hostility. It all hurts so bad.