Slashdot Mirror
Reducing Pesky Fan Noise?
Thanks to FiringSquad for their editorial about how gamers and developers interact in public forums, inspired by Alex 'Marweas' Rodberg's public outburst in the HomeWorld 2 forums, which in turn inspired a Penny Arcade strip about the trials and tribulations of being a 'community manager'. The FiringSquad article suggests that "...there's an increasing divide between the people who make the games and the people who play them. And guess whose fault it is? It's yours, not theirs", and goes on to venture that "Online interaction is so impersonal, so fraught with assurances of anonymity, and so littered with the maladjusted and juvenile, that there are no social repercussions for acting like a jackass." What's to be done?
>What's to be done?
Well, with Slashdot so fraught with assurances of anonymity, and so littered with the maladjusted and juvenile, I guess I'll act like a jackass. Eeyore!
When I first read this, and the Penny Arcade strip, I honestly thought of all the user complaints /. editors have. (ie moaning about trolls, complaining about poor mods, etc) I am shocked at the arrogance many developers/site owners/moderators have toward their users! (I'm not trying to single out /. here, they are just a good example) In many cases, the users are the ones who made the editors who they are. Look at /., aintitcool, or even fark. Without the users, these sites would have little value. If all your value is derived from user submitted content, maybe users should be respected/rewarded/thanked occasionally, instead of the moaning.
-Sean
there are no social repercussions for acting like a jackass
There certainly are. You are labeled and branded as a jackass.
I remember in the days when I'd hit up rec.games.wotc.magic and read the posts. WOTC went through reps like water, due to beligerent people making the reps job a pain.
But the thing of it is, it's the reps fault for not being able to suck it up and do his job. Members of the public can often be belligerent, whether anonymous or otherwise.
If you work for a company tailoring to the public, (as all companies do) deal with it. Affixing blame to the public for this cat's inability to represent his company is ludicrous, particularly given that he himself was demonstrating a certain degree of belligerence himself, let alone making himself look like a jack-ass.
I'm sure the nature of gravity makes a pilots job more difficult, but I doubt pilots get all huffy, and write angry letters to sci.Newton.gravity.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
The only thing wrong with Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) are the other players. I have played Ultima Online for years now. Most of the people you see in the forums are the hardcore fans, not casual gamers. Most of them are, indeed, maladjusted trollish wastes of breath, cat-assing their lives away, going into jittery, spit-flinging caniption(sp?) fits over the latest class nerf or PvP change.
I myself am a maladjusted, trollish waste of breath...but I don't spend my time going into paroxysms of infatile, futile outbursts on the boards about it....any more, anyway. I avoid gaming/dev boards like the plague that they are.
I generally side with the devs on issues like this. I read that guy's response, and based on some of the feces I have seen thrown at devs on the UO boards in the past, I can guarantee that my response would have been less coherent, less polite, and have had a great deal more expletives in it.
On the other hand, I would not have been stupid enough to take a job holding bees in my mouth in the first place. I have already lost any expectations of decent behavior from the vast majority of humankind, most especially those who huddle in darkened rooms in front of their multi-headed gaming systems, even as I myself do...
Styrofoam IS biodegradable, you're just impatient!
"...there are no social repercussions for acting like a jackass." What's to be done?
Simple. Create social repercussions for being a jackass. Slashdot, strange as it may seem, is the ideal prototype for a message board, with a few modifications. Moderation by the users, but meta-moderation by the developers; a tangible penalty for low karma (ie restricted posting or eventual IP banning) and tangible rewards for good karma (seeing "news stories" or artwork or something ahead of time); and moderators/metamoderators with a clear and unambiguous set of guidelines by which one should moderate.
That's being nice. Being evil: the lower your karma goes, the more often your email address is signed up for gay animal porn spam. Trolls are "randomly selected" as winners to receive an exclusive "beta test" of the game, which turns out to be a warez'd copy of Daikatana with a photocopied picture of the game's logo as a CD sleeve... and somehow an anti-piracy group "happens" to come by a day later with a search warrant. Anyone who posts the latest form troll du jour (just read the last few stories at -1 for an example of what I mean) is immediately given a vicious sack beating and denied food and water until Duke Nukem Forever is released.
I would prefer to see the "nice" version implemented, but eh. Do what you gotta do.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
The solution? Discussion with gamers is going to be at its most helpful for the company during the early parts of game development, when ideas and features can be requested and demand can be built up in advance of a marketing campaign. As the project approaches beta testing, employees should cease discussion with the outside world and instead talk only with the beta testers, and interaction with gamers should be done with fancy advertisements in magazines and giveaways until the product hits the shelves. Afterwards, bug reports and patch requests should be handled privately, with the details of each report being filtered down to an exact set of problems for the patch team, relieving developers of the need to talk with disgruntled gamers. Obviously, neither camp can handle civilized discussion, so the only time they should talk is during the heady period before all the letdowns start occurring.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Look, I can understand how the users feel, and I understand how Rodberg and other developers feel, but there's a lot of people who are at fault...
:/
#1: Rodberg. As a PR representative, he has no business blowing up at the fans like that. Yeah, they may be jackasses at some times, but he has to deal with that. Flaming your potential customers isn't going to help.
#2: Sierra, for putting Rodberg in a position he obviously couldn't handle, in the PR dept.
#3: The fans. Some fans just can't understand that making games and running a business are very difficult. They accuse companies and developers of ignoring the fans, and they think they could do a better job at making a game or running the company than the pros do. Frankly, these people don't realize that each fan desires different things from a game. A developer needs to take all fans into account when developing a game, and while it is impossible to please everyone, they try their best to make a game that will satisfy their users. When there are complaints that conflict, they try and find a solution that will please as many gamers as possible. It's not just "Add feature A to make B number of people buy your game." It's more like this:
"Take into account suggestions A, B, C, D, and E, and using all their ideas, try to come up with an idea, F, that satisfies as much of suggestions A through E as possible, while retaining interest from as many current fans who plan to buy this game as possible, also taking into account costs (G), available resources (H), time schedule (I), hardware limits (kind of falls under H), size of production team (J), and other factors (K and on) in the making of such decision."
It's much more complicated to make games and run businesses than it seems. There are so many factors that the public has no need to care for, and, as a result, overlooks, resulting in this ignorant idea that developers can just add features that are requested. Making such modifications to the game/adding those features may make the product lose more users than it gains, or eat up the budget of the game, resulting in a loss of other features (dumbed down graphics/sound, shorter game, no tutorial mode, etc.), among other things. Frankly, these gamers who so aggressively bash companies need to grow up and learn the difficulties of these jobs (basically not possible), or, more realistically, need to just be ignored by the PR of the companies, because they just aren't worth their time.
By the way, I feel like a complete newbie asking this, but how do I indent on these forums? (face turns red in embarrassment)
I hate it when I see someone flaming or trolling a company employee in a forum. I see it as an incredibly weak and cowardly act as they are essentially picking a fight and taunting someone they know is restricted from responding in kind.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Forums in general ARE harsh. That is why the moderator is there, to try to focus the forum into something positive for the community.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham