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Biggest Headache For Game Developers: Abusive Fans
chicksdaddy writes "Haters keep buyin' — that appears to be the dynamic playing out in the ever-hot video game industry, where game developers say harassment and trolling from their rabid fans is turning them off of development completely, according to a report over at Polygon.com. 'Fans are invested in the stories and worlds that developers create, and certain design decisions can be seen by fans to threaten those stories and worlds,' said Nathan Fisk, lecturer at the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and co-author of the book Bullying in the Age of Social Media. 'Harassment silences and repositions content creators in ways that protect the interests of certain fan groups, which again is no justification for the kinds of abusive behavior and language seen online today.' The problem is widespread enough that it may even pose a threat to the future of the industry. Developers, both named and those who wish to remain anonymous, tell Polygon that harassment by gamers is becoming an alarmingly regular expected element of game development. Some developers say the problem was among the reasons they left the industry, others tell Polygon that the problem is so ubiquitous that it distracts them from making games or that they're considering leaving the industry."
Your mom, who never played them? I strongly suspect this is just a case of content creators expecting the "content consumers" to have an attention span of under 30s, similarly to what happens with "Lost" or "Star Trek" fans bashing the product for not being consistent with itself.
Just shut up and buy, damn it!
Fan groups can get pretty sensitive about sequels and be really unpleasant about it. (I used to follow Fallout forums back in the day before 3; you could do no right)
Perhaps this will push more developers, if not the executives, to push for doing more original games, where you're not "destroying" someones vision of an IP?
Couldn't have happened to nicer set of people... right? Wrong! Gaming industry is rotten inside-out, infamous for sweatshop-like working conditions (look up "EA widow"), end-of-project layoffs, and large studios buying and gutting creative studios on one side and 'designers' squeezing all kinds of shady profits (zero-day DLC, "free"-to-play micro-transaction games targeted at minors) while constantly failing to innovate (e.g. any sports game franchise).
Gaming industry deserves all the abuse it gets. Extreme cases of abuse aside, all criticism is they get is deserved.
I know that this may not grasp the problem entirely, but typically it's best to just not engage the haters. The worst way to deal with them is to flip out back. Often this causes a Streisand Effect and makes more people hate you. I won't say which developer, but after making a showing fit of leaving the industry on twitter, he went on 4chan with a picture of the tweet saying, "Weren't we being too rough on him?" You could see that the picture was from the same account that made the tweet as it had a delete option. That's one way to lose sympathy.
Just like car owners and sports fans, once you spend a certain amount of money on an industry you start getting rather passionate about the subject.
Yes, it is nice if you have the developers actively communicate with the fan base, but many times, those fans that post on forums the most end up making demands, and in many cases don't fully appropriate the fact that the game developers know what they are doing much more so than the fans do.
Blizzard has CMs (community managers) that act as a buffer between the developers and the fan base. They are trained and hired to deal with the various disagreeing opinions, while being able to recognize when there is a clear consensus that is sensible and something the devs should be aware of. Most people know 2 of the developers: Greg Street, who has taken it upon himself to meet this challenge, and Chris Metzen who primarily works on Art, voice, and lore, which people generally don't complain about too much (although it does happen).
I see way too many game companies let their developers just openly communicate with the fan base unbuffered, and they need to take a hint from Blizzard to let the professionals handle it.
So, if devs make horribly awful decisions, the customers are supposed to just take it up the ass? What utter rubbish!
What happened to actually listening to customer feedback? Sure, there are haters, but they can be easily dismissed. If you can't handle a few trolls and criticism, you shouldn't be working in any real job, let alone game development.
"Every time you insult me, Mario loses a finger. Why do you want me to hurt poor Mario?"
It sounds as if game developers are learning what sci-fi/fantasy writers already knew; fans can be rabid and irrational. For most authors this isn't a problem because they sell in the 5 or 6 digits and there may be just one crazy fan. But every AAA video game has millions of players, so the number of crazies can be much larger.
This is why Neil Gaiman was forced to tell people that 'George R. R. Martin is not your bitch.' Because rabid fans wanted GRR to be their bitch, and because he now has such a large audience their harassment was getting out of hand.
The solution to this is to grow a thick skin and/or to get a secretary that will read and filter your mail for you. Or you could make games that only sell 10k-100k units, so the fanbase doesn't reach a critical mass of craziness...but if your company is addicted to money then being a smaller part of the market isn't an option.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
You see stories like this on other topics. They tend to be hyped up. It's a crisis! Won't someone please think of the children!?
Yeah, it's probably a real issue. No, it's probably not a crisis.
Gamers shouldn't have an entitlement mentality. Game developers shouldn't have a victim mentality. People should be nicer to each other.
Can't imagine why when all they do is nerf instead of increasing disfavored classes.
Here is their non-sentient nerf-loop algorithm:
1. Datamine to see most played class/power.
2. Conk it on the head so it sucks more.
3. People start moving to something else in the game.
4. Find what that is and repeat.
Important: Repeat until every player is pissed off and disgusted with your product.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
STFU, n00bs!
In other words, ignore those kinds of fans: they'll yell and scream and complain, and in the end buy the next version of the game.
I am officially gone from
It's all part of the Eternal September playing a rush to the bottom.
Trolls have discovered there's very little (if any) consequence to them being as obnoxious as possible, and many have come to realise that if you troll and upset people, they can't let it go as well as a well reasoned argument.
Thus, it seems that if you Troll, you get a response, so more people troll, and the more abusive you are, the more attention is paid (and god forbid, someone deletes the abusive post, as that then ends up noted on all the tech blogs that the developer is censoring).
While things are stacked towards letting trolling pay off, I don't think anything's going to change..
Some gamers have moved from a perspective of critical approval before purchase, "If it's a good game then I'll get it" to a sense of entitlement, "they owe me a good game".
Run that up against the whole process of finding a game idea, fleshing it out, coding it, adding the art & sound, network support, testing, packaging, marketing and if you are in the business you wonder how you succeed at all.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A vocal minority without anything constructive to add should be ignored. I don't see the problem here.
This happens less than one-thousandth as often as whiners like you claim it does.
... from the F2P scam, DRM, and taking away peoples ability to own games by making everything F2P or online, where Diablo 3 introduced us to the DEFECT of SINGLE PLAYER LAG. The entire industry at present and the corrupt whiny little bastard game devs (those who are among the corrupt) deserve everything they get.
The Game industry is among the most corrupt on the planet:
-Taking the ability to own and mod games away from players
-Enclosing games by using MMO/F2P server chaining strategy
-F2P/MMO games are locked down and that makes a suffocating environment for fan creativity, mods, hacks, etc, to the original game and more and more games are being completely locked down and gamers being locked out.
Nanny corporation is trying to make people dependent on it in the exact same way as an overbearing totalitarian state would. They want to force a relationship where they continually draw money from people and you never own anything.
This is just more of a trend of game industry not aware of the industry wide corporate corruption that people are getting sick and tired of and the are too oblivious to the justified anger people have at price gouging, bank bailouts, and wars based on lies.
There are more games than World of Warcraft.
Everyone's a bullying victim these days. Le sigh.
We all know the real problem. It's the fact that while game budgets have SKYROCKETED over the last 20 years, game QUALITY has PLUMETTED over the last 20 years.
Today's video games are soulless, mcdonalds-esque all you can eat buffets of nastiness. In the '90s, if you picked up 5 random games, 4 of them would be great.
Today if you picked up 5 random games, there is a very real possibility that ZERO would be great.
Of course the fans are angry about this, they SHOULD BE. If the "Industry" cant handle it, maybe it should die. Then the Indies will take over and games will have a soul again.
Hyperbolic insults, rants, threats and bullying are commonplace in every type of communication over the internet. The anonymity and pseudo-anonymity enable a culture where there is rarely any significant penalty for even the worst insults.
Gabriel from Penny Arcade really summed it up nicely with his Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory
if you can't handle words after the age of 13 then you aren't an adult, you are an old child and don't deserve any of the privileges of adulthood
sticks and stones dudes, don't feed the trolls, post the best hate mail on your website for laughs
you have no right not to be offended
From the article:
"I could go on and on about this, but I'm just going to consider one example: the word 'noob.' [...] 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."
Around 13 years ago, I bought a cheap computer and monitor setup so I could install one of the Linux distributions (I forget which) and learn it while keeping it completely separate from my main, Windows computer (which I used partially for work). Everything went fine, except that I could not get the modem (I was still on dialup) to work while logged in as a user, but could while logged in as root. After a fruitless search of any online documentation, I went to three separate Linux communities (on IRC? I honestly don't remember precisely) to see if anyone could help or even point me in the right direction. In all three, I only got insults and mocking, and was based told to go fuck myself if I couldn't figure it out on my own.
So I wiped Linux from the system, sold the whole thing to a buddy who wanted a cheap box to slap Windows on for his kid to play games on, and I haven't touched Linux since. And never will.
no this is exactly how it works, and anybody who thinks otherwise is naive as hell
"Harassment silences and repositions content creators in ways that protect the interests of certain fan groups."
s/Harassment/Management/
the only difference being management butters the bread so content creators dont have a problem eviscerating a beloved storyline. There have been plenty of times when content creators have just sold the fuck out and decided their fans were worth less than gobs of cash. Im looking directly at you, Westwood studios. conversely, studios like 3drealms had no problem ignoring trolls and abusive fans while they spent through the cash and coasted into bankruptcy. What did we get? some studio standing at the auction block waiting to inheret and subsequently destroy a sizeable piece of our childhood.
We are hurt, angry, and have very little patience for anyone waiting in the wings to fuck up a good plot or storyline. Can you blame us? If given the opportunity most of us would have gone for the throats of the team that sandbagged the force unleashed 2. if the result is all to often we get storylines like Command and conquer 4, you can expect us to naturally be rabidly concerned youre trying or being forced to franchise and cashcow us.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The issue is that it's not the giants folding under this, it's the little people. Sure, there won't be a Fez 2, but the guy probably isn't going to make anything else either.
This does not just happen with games. I program audio devices for the High end audiophile market. I have the same issues with some members of our firums.
cd pub
more beer
MMO devs often take a fairly hands-off attitude about their community, don't do anything about harassment and griefing... then are confused that their community is dominated by toxic people.
Yes, it's a great thing to be thick-skinned, but it's not a moral virtue, it's just really useful. The people who are trying to offend other users and mock them for being sensitive are not really good for your community, and if you keep tacitly endorsing them, you end up with a community of people who have learned that abuse works, because the people it worked on mostly left. Then they do it to you too, and suddenly it's a problem...
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Or pays attention to the facts and knows to disregard hyperbole as the dishonest bullshit that it is.
Some gamers have moved from a perspective of critical approval before purchase, "If it's a good game then I'll get it" to a sense of entitlement, "they owe me a good game".
It would be interesting to see if there is any correlation between this entitlement and when a game is marketed as "teh bestest game ever!!11!!"
Once you have promised the customer a good game and you expect them to save their money and time for your game instead of the competitors then you can expect some flak if you don't live up to your promises.
There is still no excuse for death threats but expect people to be angry if you waste their time with hollow expectations.
Leave. ...
Twitter.
You welcome...
A-HOLE!
Oh wait!
If a user have more than 100 comments, it's a hardcore fan, and then must be ignored.
Along with several of the other gaming "journalism" sites out there, Polygon is a sham that exists only to sensationalize faux-social justice issues in game (so it's no wonder that Soulskill fast-tracked it on /., being the "social justice warrior" s/he is). There's a huge problem with gaming journalism today no longer serving the gaming population and instead serving the gaming publishers and developers. This is not how it should be.
However, they're probably right about this. Not that it's newsworthy, since this has always been the case, but it's certainly true. Fans are very loud and obnoxious about changing the direction of a game or game series, and for good reason: we continue to buy into a series or developer because we like what we've seen in the past. It's fine for a dev to try something new in a new title, but taking an ongoing series in a completely different direction is going to get you a lot of unhappy fans.
Look at the recent DmC reboot or SW:TOR as examples. These games royally pissed off fans of the series (the latter especially for me, since it retconned a lot that happened in KotOR 2, which is my single favorite game). Do you really expect me to sit by while the devs bastardize my favorite game? No! I'm going to complain! I'm going to be loud, I'm going to be obnoxious, and I'm going to be every bit as rude to them as they're being to their fans (including me) by bastardizing the series that we bought into, both literally and figuratively. If this makes me a "bully," so be it. I'd rather be a bully than a pussy who can't handle justified criticism and needs to be isolated in their own personal fucking hugbox at all times. Isolating yourself from and ignoring your userbase is the reason why projects like GNOME have failed so hard recently, and if they think I'm going to stand by and be polite and nice when they're doing this with my favorite games, they've got another thing coming.
Why are all those other people expected to change their behavior, but you're not to be expected to change yours?
This direct communication can actually do more harm than good. The most vocal in a community are not necessarily speaking for the majority and I think game developers make that mistake all too often. They attempt to appease the loud minority which ultimately pisses off the happy majority when the changes are put in. The reality is the unhappy minority will never be happy anyway. They hate their own lives and these developer forums are just a medium for them to express it. I've always had difficulty understanding people who spew their vitriol on developer forums. I wonder why they don't just simply stop playing if it's really as bad as they say it is. Star Wars Galaxies comes to mind where the complaining was so bad from the minority that they changed the game. The problem was the change was so bad it pissed off the majority. Everyone quit to go play WOW but the harassment continued. I think the lead developer of that re-write ended up killing himself years later. Really? Over a game? People need to lighten up. It's a game. Not your real life. Just because you waste your life away playing a video game doesn't give you any rights to demand anything. If you don't like it, quit. The bullying and harassment should be completely ignored. In fact, I would keep the developers away from hearing or interacting with the customer entirely. Allow them to fulfill their creative potential without the noise.
Alternatively, the most straightforward way to stop criticism from disaffected "fans" would be to give them what they want, rather than assuming that some designer somewhere knows better.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Just stop reading fan mail. Don't post your email account online. Don't have a blog with comments that people can post to. Don't go to sites dedicated to your game. You will not see all the hate if you don't go out of your way to read it!
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
I'm still mourning the loss of Fez II thanks to all the haters and trolls :(
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
The outright sociopathy i see in games used to be funny, conjuring up the image of some chubby raging on his/her keyboard.
Now a days it's a little scary, seriously the churning sickness I see on the Net, especially in violent games gets laughed off as "it's kids in a game" but based on some of the comments I've seen it looks more like budding psychopaths working out their final words to their victims.
It's a psych's wet dream for deviant and disturbed behaviour.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Some gamers have moved from a perspective of critical approval before purchase, "If it's a good game then I'll get it" to a sense of entitlement, "they owe me a good game".
It would be interesting to see if there is any correlation between this entitlement and when a game is marketed as "teh bestest game ever!!11!!"
Once you have promised the customer a good game and you expect them to save their money and time for your game instead of the competitors then you can expect some flak if you don't live up to your promises.
There is still no excuse for death threats but expect people to be angry if you waste their time with hollow expectations.
Advertising a game with a load of pictures and hyperbole is a waste of effort. The word gets around that it's good or bad and it sells or does not sell. All they need to do is email people who are registered for their last game there's a new one out and Word of Mouth will do the rest.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Fanfic content? RABID ATTACK DOGS! ATTACK! is the response from the companies.
Trying to use the frigging game? OUR WAY ONLY (see both the closure of Windows For Games and the move to "We are putting it as a Steam Exclusive, and STFU and buy it or don't" elsewhere) from the companies.
[quote] So everyone is deserving of abusive, sociopathic behavior? [/quote]
No.
However, the game companies continue to give abusive and sociopathic behaviour to not only their fans, the entire public as well (making courts pursue the civil case of copyright infringement by lobbying to make them criminal, and now the cases cost the public rather than the company, who can offshore their profits and not pay taxes to the court system).
I'd wonder as well how much of it is because of the distinct lack of demos, shareware, and trials.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Uhh... I'm paying money for it. They DO owe me a good game. Why would I give them money for a bad game?
Wanting a good game for you money is entitlement now, eh?
Uhh... I'm paying money for it. They DO owe me a good game. Why would I give them money for a bad game?
Vote with your dollars. If you don't like a game, don't buy it, go buy something else. Whinging about what a bad game or company it is if it doesn't meet your standards is sour grapes.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
As an extension of this, see if there's correlation between this entitlement and the increased ubiquity of pre-purchase offers in the industry. I can understand the demands given you paid $60 for the game 3 months ago.
Well that problem can be easily solved for most of those mentally ill kids .... hunt and hang. They have no right to abuse.
People have done this with every form of media ever. there really is just a few simple things you can do.
1. Stop focusing on the bad. Seriously, it's the internet. Responding to harsh comments is the equivalent to going to the "I hate company X fanclub" that's halfway across town.
The internet is huge, you can go anywhere else, but you chose to go there. Your own fault. There are some people that simply need to be ignored.
2. Don't be a douche, except for when it's a result of 1.
3. Reward people who support you, even if something small. How gearbox does the golden key thing with borderlands is a good example.
...simply stopped buying big name products. I have invested in some Kickstarter gamesand look forward to those.
Which version of the fable had the fox pay a good bit of money for the grapes, eat them, and then warn other potential customers not to throw away a good bit of money on sour grapes?
I've been on a lot of game dev forums and the thing is that they don't start out hostile.
What happens is that the devs will frequently ignore the fan base who are their customers... do stupid things that pretty much everyone hates... insult the fan base by either saying people really want the thing they don't want or say they don't care what people want and do it anyway.
In addition to that, you'll have bugs that won't get fixed for MONTHS to YEARS despite many updates... simple things... that just get ignored in patch after patch after patch.
So yeah, after awhile people can get hostile.
I was recently on the Hirez forum for a game called smite. The company shut the forum down it got so toxic. But it was their own fault. They pissed everyone off horribly and instead of listening to people they ignored them/told them they didn't care. SHOCKINGLY people were upset.
And instead of dealing with that situation from their CUSTOMERS they decided to shut the forum down and move everything to Reddit where its pretty much impossible to sustain a good righteous flame.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
If your BIGGEST headache is your fans, you're obviously not prioritizing correctly. Bigger headaches should be funding, staffing (hiring and retention), negotiating with publishers/distributors, quality, testing, advertising, and treating your labor with respect while still eeking out a profit. If you're paying attention to non-constructive whiners, you're doing it wrong. I felt the last season of The Guild was entirely unnecessary, but if this problem is as prevalent as this article makes it out to be, I'm now hoping that season was a therapeutic wake-up call.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Leaving an organisation because the clients/customers don't act in a respectable way is unfortunately normal. I guess since the bad behaviour is due to a fictional situation it is even harder for the employee to ignore the conduct.
I'd wonder as well how much of it is because of the distinct lack of demos, shareware, and trials.
Sometimes a lemon is a lemon, no matter how much decoration you put on it and a winner gets around like wildfire. There are only so many gullible n00bs each year, coming into their early learning years (or sufficiently practiced at wheedling to get mum or dad to pay for it) and once or twice burned on a sub-standard game and they're into the jaded majority.
Small wonder gaming company stocks are such a risky investment. Winners like Tetris or Angry Birds come along every now and then, but generally from completely unexpected directions.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If they stopped requiring constant internet access for the games I play, MAYBE I'd stop harassing them
No big loss. Fish is, to be blunt, a huge douchebag, and all the harassment he received was just a fraction of his own venom blowing back in his face. Of course he's not the only abrasive indie dev, but others like Edward MacMillan actually make (and this is key) *decent games*. Now if it were someone like Tarn Adams, that would be cause to give a damn.
any women that claim to be geeks are pretending, likely to try to seduce a "real geek."
Does it make be a bad person, or geek, that my first thought was 'Seduce Me!'?
On reflection there's the 'pretending to be somebody that you're not' problem though.
I don't read AC A human right
And they work there of their own free will. It's not like this is a hidden secret. He knew, you obviously knew otherwise you would have evinced some shock at the idea.
They can refuse to aid the abuse of the customers. No developers == nothing for the marketing to sell and no revenue to pay executive pay.
But they can do whatever they like in corporate because the developers won't decide not to help them fuck people over.
They're not solving it, they're part of the problem.
It is like yelling at the cashier at wal-mart because they don't sell monster truck tires.
1. You haven't even played the game, or haven't played it enough yet to understand why X feature is/isn't in the game.
2. You are directing your unjustified hate at the wrong person.
Instead of letting the hate flow through you and writing a stupid forum post to feel good from the endorphins it releases you should take some time to understand why the decision was made. It was probably made by people more informed and much smarter than you. You're still going to buy the game and what you're writing isn't going to change the game. At the most it is going to turn away other people from playing the game so you have less people to enjoy the game with and decreasing the chance of more content being produced for the game.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
Why not impose rules of civility and enforce them?
Cultivate good moderators and ban abusive and disruptive people. Frequently.
When you make civil behavior the norm and reward it, it becomes its own pattern.
Let the trolls start their own discussion boards and then ignore them. If somebody starts to attack devs on a personal level and those attacks manage to penetrate these basic rule walls, keep somebody on staff whose job it is to return the favor by exposing and laying charges if necessary.
I see very little of this practice on line, but where I do see it, it works well.
Big game companies have budgets, some of which needs to be devoted to public relations. This is that.
How will you know if you like it or not before you purchase it? Less and less games have demos anymore, most likely because demos provide a modest boost for a good game and kill a bad one. With a bad game, therefore, you get the people who are pissed because they bought the hype, the people who liked it and people in the middle. Gee, I wonder which group is the most vocal. (As an aside, I think most people who use the expression "sour grapes" need to actually look up the fable.)
So, I guess game development is pretty good preparation for a career in politics, after all.
The software is released with 0-day DLC, piss-poor support, and the default mode is that all customers are thieves. Is it any wonder as these things have increased, so has customer rage?
By no means do I advocate aggression or threats, but I *understand* it. The big software co's have been trying for the better part of a decade to screw their customers and have them coming back begging for more.
My 2c: I'm willing to bet the majority of these threats stem from players of MMO's and multiplayer games. When we pay for an 'ongoing service' we expect just that: service!
Lots of people have jobs where they have to deal with the loonies. Gaming tends to be a product a higher-than-average amount of people care passionately about. Don't like it? Seek employment elsewhere. You knew what you were getting into. Better yet, stop releasing crap and treating your customers like dirt, and you wouldn't get death threats. /end rant
I used to play Guild Wars for about 5 years, 2 of those 5 years I spent everyday customising my avatar, building up set of skills for specific situations.
I had a set of skills for running (when a player wants to go fast somewhere but is not strong enough, he pays a runner to bring it there very fast), that's one way to get money.
I had a set of skills for PvP (Player vs Player) and that's where I have spent months to perfectionize.
My set of skills was perfect and I was very proud of it. I was dueling people in 1v1 and 1v2. Until one day, the devs decided that a certain skill was too powerful for AvA (Alliance vs Alliance, a PvP sub-category, it's the ultimate place for professionnal gamers where you could win real money) and they changed its effects for all PvP. So, the set of skills I have built which was perfectly synced (each skill needed the other to make sense) did not make sense anymore with that change.
I then try to think about a new set, I spent months playing to perfectionnize the new set of skills and I got a good one, even better than the first. Then, they did it again, one of my skills was dumbed-down in all of PvP because it was the new skill that was abusive in AvA.
I was so angry I stopped playing, I hated them for that. 2 years of hard work wasted. For this reason, I deciced that will never put time and thoughts into an MMO again, when you don't have any control over anything and the rules can change anytime and you have to start over again.
"go threw a wall"?
It's "through a wall," YOU ILLITERATE ASS!
I will FIND you AND KILL YOU and ALL OF YOUR FAMILY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(There. You mean like that?)
It makes money for the game company. It is more along the lines of:
1: Release patch or expansion.
2: Players find that some changes make one class just tower above the others in PvP and raids in some combo that does DPS or whatnot.
3: To get onto raids, one needs to have a FoTM (flavor of the month) alt.
4: Blizz finally does a slight nerf.
5: Blizz finally kills what advantage the class has. If it is PvP, then the "rock/scissors/paper" class that is the class's prey gets a "get out of jail free" card (*cough Shadow Step*.)
6: Cycle begins again.
Blizz does profit from this. When MoP came out, virtually all non-monk healers were gkicked from raid guilds since monk healers were just plain better in every way. So, everyone had to roll and grind monks in order to see actual endgame (i.e. something other than the Raid Finder circus.) All the time people spend having to go back and do 1-95 content again is at least one month's sub, perhaps two, and multipled by all the people out there, that's a good turnout.
I got tired of that treadmill, hitting the top 10 PvE ladder in gear, only to find all healers of a class get gkicked because they are not the FoTM healer. Similar with tanking. A poor prot warrior just isn't going to get the guild MT slot these days unless they are just shining when it comes to gear.
There are other MMOs. Rift has no FOTM class [1]. In fact, 3.0 promises that all archetypes can tank/heal/DPS. EQ2 has so many ways to get gear, (raids, arenas versus the gods, PvP, crafting, solo dungeons) that one doesn't have to grind gear level after gear level in order to see endgame raids and actually be geared for it.
[1]: Rift does have its annoyances, as sometimes you have to have a custom talent build just for one mob/encounter. Rift PvP actually is fairly well thought out. I've run 1-60 in warfronts, and not really seen one archetype/class just dominate, unlike in WoW where you either play a certain class/spec, or you are that class/spec's HK.
Let's not blame gamers as a whole for the abuses of a few misanthropic nutjobs. Is it just me, or do others consider peeps whose whole world, or a substantial part of it, is a computer game to be froot loops? How can someone who is so disconnected from reality interact in an appropriate manner with game developers or anyone else? The solution is counseling and medication, not blaming the many for the misdeeds of the few.
The great majority of gamers are normal people who just happen to like video games, at least that I have seen. And I used to work for a video card company and be an ardent gamer myself, so I saw a lot of these folks. On the whole, they are pretty darned cool, and usually very technically adept to boot. There is a particular subset that are the stereotypical "computer dork", however (as opposed to geeks). Socially inept, weird, often hygenically challenged, this little grouping has a distinct lack of interpersonal skills. The anonymity of the Internet, and also the rather rowdy behavior on some online games, just makes their behavior worse by diminishing behavioral restraints. Not being able to interact well with people face-to-face, they are also not able to do so online. To make things worse, some of these folks are flat out mentally ill. It should therefore come as no surprise that the freak show acts deranged, obnoxious and abusive.
If your customers hate you, you probably have a problem with your product. Deal with it.
Until [lead] gamers stop referring to their profession to solving mankind's problems. This will continue.
If I pay for a game and it is riddled with bugs - not meager rendering glitches, but basic accountancy stuff - exactly how am I to get a refund? And, if I can't get a refund, why in hell should I not bitch about a shoddy product?
No.. Software is supposed to work - period. If it doesn't, it's a lemon.
I simply don't understand those who rail about programmers that don't know shit in the corporate world and then give game developers a bye on exactly the same practices.
Stop making shitty games stop making shitty goddamn design decisions and you won't get trolled
Because you bought a piece of art and it's kind of hard to determine if the art is good or not until you witness it. In this case it means playing the game. While "buyer beware" is a shitty term to throw in the face of dissatisfied customers, in the area of video games there are many different resources to see if the game is worth your money before buying it.
Yeah I've never played video games or anything so you must be right.
The problem also is that a lot of "fans" do not even know how to deal with a flaw in game mechanics and would happily tinker with the symptoms instead of dealing with a root cause. And also a lot of them do not understand how ugly it is to implement, test and roll out changes to a multi-million audience on a budget of propably nil after the game has been released. And dicontent usually is contagious with a nice mob forming behind ringleaders.
That being said a lot of devs actually deserve the stink they get. I still remember marveling at the degree to which they got Diablo 3 thing wrong. And I'm not talking about the shallow arguments like always-on and too colourful graphics. That game was unintuitive, bland and mechanically unsound from day one.
20 minutes into the future
Some game companys have done their best to make that happen.
Preordered any games lately to get the exclusive can't get any other way neato thing? Theres the problem.
Heck i can even point you to games that are being sold in an ALPHA state right now. You can't even be an alpha tester without PAYING them... They want you to pay to help them develop a good product.
What about hyping the hell out of games with totally fabricated images that have nothing to do with any gameplay? I'd call that outright lying. You go plunk down your money based on pure bullshit. Don't you expect some of what you saw in the fake images?
So yes. They do owe them a good game. they took their money long before it was ever completed and based it all on a lie. And its happening more and more.
The comments of Abusive Fans break upon my hardened exoskeleton and run from its glistening laser-proof hydrophobic exterior like water from a duck. Where some see the unintelligible rage irrational, I value even the most outrageous of critique. You see, the unrefined individuals are like apes: Not able to speak the evolved language of mechanic design, plot pacing, etc., they hoot, holler and sling excrement instead. Hidden within are kernels of truth, like corn. It is a vile deed to dissect the primitive outbursts and translate them into terms of creative construction, but if you can do this, then you will see at least why they are so revolting. To me it is valuable input -- Another disgusting part of how the sausage gets made.
My advice would be, if you're not already making games then you may not be cut out for making games. For instance: As a kid did you ever make your own board game? Eg: bend a paper clip in a T for a base and use paper cut-outs for custom table-top insurgency, or to add a new unit to an existing game... draw new levels for platformers and play them using strings to measure jump limits, or something similar? You see, it's easy to turn the desire to design games into actual games, but you must be committed enough to do so.
When I first saw an arcade game I was amazed: I too wanted to know how they did that! I had to harness that power. I got my first PC, there was no Internet or books on coding in my library (especially not game making), and still no one could keep me from teaching myself to program and make games while other kids were still learning their multiplication tables. Contrast this with the recent vocal ragequitter: Phil Fish. He loved designing games, but did not have the drive enough to learn how to make them without relying on others to do so. A very frustrating position to be in, especially if you are outwardly abrasive.
Nowadays there are free game engines, and hardware is so fast you don't have to do freaky things like execute assembly code in the frame buffer to pull off smooth scrolling... Nowadays every child has free tutorials, free instructions, free compilers (a C compiler cost me half a hundred mowed lawns), even free game assets.
It's not so much a career path as an inherent component of life, to most gamedevs I know -- Drop them in a wilderness for a few weeks and there will be a new stategy game in the sand made of sticks and stones; Their starved body will be guarding the charcoal rule set scratched on tree bark, and they'll refuse to be rescued unless they can take the game with them. The point is, they didn't just decide to try making games at some point in their college life, or after winning a government grant (like Fish) -- Instead, no one could ever stop them from making games.
So, unless you're TRULY, and I mean TRULY in love with making games, I would actually advise against it. It's hard thankless tedious work and it's only the love for game making that makes it seem rewarding. You'll make far more money coding in almost any other field, the hours will be better, the work will be easier too -- You can even do many things game devs do without making games, and it'll be a better job: I did acoustical engineering and noise abatement, got to play with mapping 3D stuff with microphones and real life shotgun-shell cannons for echo-location noise generators, overlay sound maps to spot noise problems in factories in real time with a ultra-portable PC and 3D augmented reality glasses. The tech was cool, way more pay, but left no time for making games, so I quit; Now that's sick!
Even the most capable, experienced and creative folks become empty burned out husks giving birth to a game. Only a severe mental-condition lets them brave harshest of criticism from everyone else in life, and makes them enjoy making games above almost all else; That perverse love of creati
If you're gonna be a rock star, you're gonna attract some crazy folks. If your game promotes fierce competition and cheaters abound, you're gonna get crazies that are used to breaking the rules and put in a unbalnaced number of hours into the system you've designed. If your marketing is over the top, the crazies will respond in kind. If your goal is to make a game so addictive that there will be an economic impact, your gonna get addict crazies.
Of course abuse isn't justified to the sane, but building a system that attracts or creates crazies, what do you expect? This isn't just a game problem, system designers typically are not interested in being responsible for what the system does to the actors. Financial institutions use this to produce an endless supply of employees they can fire in order to protect the company.
When I was making games, I didn't hear the fans. Not one time. I had my head down, programming. The upper-middle management was the bane of my existence, not fans. Who else can successfully jump from studio to studio, blaming failures on people who actually make the game, while simultaneously making ridiculous demands at impossible timeframes. Don't like it? You're not a team player and we're going to put you on a 'performance improvement plan.'
There's some truth to this but it comes with some logic behind it as well (all somewhat related and rarely will you likely find any one being the solo reason for any nerf):
1) Sampling bias. Most people don't complain when their class gets buffed. Most people DO complain when their class gets nerfed. So you tend to hear a LOT more about the nerfs than you do about the buffs.
2) Its easier to nerf 1 class than it is to buff 9 classes. These companies have a particular target in mind (whether it be time, # potions you use, minimum level to succeed, whatever) and if they raised all 9 to a new target it would require rebalancing the entire game, whereas bringing an outlier back into balance requires work on a single class.
3) Players are smart. There may be unforeseen interactions between skills or equipment that nobody (devs, QA or beta testers) realized prior to release that end up making specific characters far more powerful than expected when somebody discovers the magic button sequence. There are likely similar interactions that can make your character severely underpowered but those are self-compensating by the fact that nobody would bother using them except as a joke.
Class balance (or weapon balance or skill balance or whatever your game requires) is not an easy task. Unfortunately the people who bitch the loudest rarely have much concept of what the changes they're requesting would actually imply for the game beyond "I W4NTZ MOAR P0WARZ." At the very least, they generally forget that such buffs would just put pressure on everyone else to choose the same character makeup and they'd still be on a level playing field.
That said, nobody's perfect even when you've got the resources and (presumed) QA power of a juggernaut like Blizzard. They've fucked up before. They will again. Its human nature. They do have a tendency to make their new classes OP though (can't speak for other companies/games) and I'm not entirely convinced its by accident -- it could be partly in order to encourage a useful number of players to bother going to the hassle of class changing. Of course we've only got two sample points so far (DK, Monk) so take that suggestion with a gigantic grain of salt.
I work in the video game industry and have experienced this first hand.
A few years back we shipped the latest instalment of a popular game franchise. Our online publishing partner, who won't be named but their name rhymes with TONY borked the capacity planning for game servers based on their projected demand which was 10x less than what we saw on launch day.
Their servers crashed and the fans came down on us like the fist of an angry deity.
The online abuse was one thing -- being slagged in the forums and on YouTube was to be expected. What we didn't expect was how quickly certain fans escalated their abuse.
It began with complaints to the Better Business Bureau -- complaints that we'd ripped people off by selling them a game that was unplayable. This was annoying but not unexpected.
Then the calls started when one fan found our front desk number and hundreds of frustrated teenage boys began calling, threatening to rape and murder our receptionist and anyone else who was involved in the development if the game. To her credit, she handled them with aplomb but when someone posted our office address, the "fans" began to send "gift baskets." Boxes full of animal (we hope) feces, soiled XXL BVDs, and rotten food. One fan waited outside the office, then confronted her. That was the last straw and she understandably quit the next day.
The most unsettling instance happened when I was walking towards the front door, a police car pulled up and demanded to know if I was an employee of the studio. The officer got out of his cruiser and adopted an intimidating demeanour suggesting that we should fix the "god-dam" game and stop ripping off gamers. When cops start stalking you, you know it's time to find a new line of work.
People need to lighten up. It's a game. Not your real life.
Mostly I agree with you, but this attitude has got to go. This isn't a game of Risk when your little brother tosses the board after you sweep South America. These games are more than "just games" -- especially MMOs but aspects arise in any game with any sort of permanent tracking/image building.
They're hobbies that people dedicate hundreds or thousands of hours of their lives into. If you knew a model train enthusiast who sunk 5 years and a few thousand $ in an amazing train set, you'd probably sympathize with him if it got ruined. Why is it so hard to sympathize with someone who's sunk 5 years and a few thousand $ into building their game persona?
The "its just a game" attitude is one of the biggest roadblocks to gaming ever being seen as a mature industry. We won't have that as long as we implicitly assume gamers are in some way just being childish and that games wouldn't really matter to them if they "grew up." It might not be "real life" (whatever that's supposed to mean in our modern everything-online world) but its still their life.
From what I've seen, this is mostly because of the overwhelming number of sequels being developed. People played and loved the first game (or ten) in the series so they expect the sequel to be good.
Compare the amount of flak something like Star Wars: The Old Republic took in comparison to a standalone game like Bastion or Minecraft. When you have a winning set of mechanics and decide to change it up for the sequel, people expect it to be an improvement rather than a step backward.
I find nothing unreasonable there at all.
Oh, no, they do, therefore the actions of that person is not the action of the corporation. But then your diatribe against those beratinc corps with "They're made of people, they don;t actually exist" when saying corporations MUST be allowed to donate to political campaigns falls down: the people in there don't all have the same say in what the corporation does.
Do you think you could make your mind up about them?
That is all fine and well if money is the the only investment the customer does.
It is a bit like if you are planning to go on vacation on Bahamas. Then at the last moment you get to know that the flight isn't going to Bahamas at all but to Algeria.
You decide to not travel at all since you don't want to go to Algeria. No money spent so it's not really a big deal, is it?
The problem is that now you vacation plans are cancelled. The money isn't the issue, you were more than willing to spend those on the trip but now the trip you planned doesn't exist anymore.
Yep, a travel agency that tried to pull a stunt like that will likely get a fair amount of angry letters and death threats.
For the last 15 years I have been frustrated by what I have been seeing in games with a few exceptions most games I would describe as everquest clones heavy on simple single cell quest lines "go kill this and you get this" hack and slash heavy worlds with much of the budget spent on the graphics and not the content. even the brain of the mob/npc has changed little in 15 years perceive/advance/attack or simpleton/idiot AI. there have been more and more epic failures in recent years like star wars galaxies and star trek online and age of conan I use to be a game subscriber but ive gotten so frustrated and BORED with the game content that I ceased to subscribe to any game at all rather than that pay to the game that sucks the least.
I have no confidence in developers to be creative or innovative .
and it is just a fact that the loudest people get listened to I am an explorer/builder but the pvp and hack and slashers out for dumbed down arcade style content usually win out.
even EVERQUEST NEXT has some revolutionary ideas that have been on my personal bucket list for years it also has the look and feel of a Disney cartoon with ludicrous looking spell effects like ti was built for a 10 year old and not a gaming community that has grown up. a magic spell does not have to look like a stupid fireworks show you get mobs and several players going and your screen is just a blob of light and color.
And its just propaganda for online censorship of freedom of expression. Death threats aren't the main subject, nor are they even a problem as there is already framework in place to deal with such speech.
Pretty soon it will be illegal to "criticize" any works without an agreement in writing from a pair of lawyers and "speech insurance". At the rate people are loosing their shit.
Worse then that, in other industries when the product isn't up to quality, you return it and get your money back. In the game industry on the other side refunds are generally not only not given, the industry is also putting in all kinds of locks to prevent you from executing your right to sell the game used.
How much does this actually happen? Really?
Look at the Sim City 3 launch issues. I work in a store that sells PC games, and I still sold-out of it. People still bought it in droves, and it's presence in the news media made it sell more. This is sales beyond the pre-orders.
Part of the problem is that they can get away with it. The developers aren't held accountable for crappy products, where in any other industry, they would be. If i bought a car with a GPS that failed due to all the other GPS devices the manufacturer made connecting to the network at once, I think it's reasonable to expect a recall and a fix. Don't you? You'll have to come up with your own reason why I couldn't test the GPS during the test-drive, but i couldn't test-drive Sim City 3 either.
Yeah, the death threats and the barrage of anonymous coward fuckwads like myself don't help, but neither does preaching your bullspit about voting with your wallet.
Riot has just released the spell demo video of the new champion - Lucian, the Purifier. It shows the simple operation and skill collocation of Lucian in the video.
Watch the vidoe here: http://lol.gameguyz.com/news/news/champion-demo-lucian-the-purifier.html
gameguyz
not a developer problem, i could elaborate on this like say
.. bullshit (...)
...
you get abuse everywhere but
in fact you do so
its a community problem, if you want a weak game where government needs to interfere you can just live
here , in the streets or at home
really
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?