Agree or Disagree: How Gamers Are Killing The Gaming Industry
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MrCrookedLetter
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http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/gamers-killing-game-industry-195959860.html
There has been a rash of ugliness in the gaming world lately -- and it’s potentially more damaging than court battles or political posturing about game violence could ever be.
A small minority of players are threatening to drive some of the most talented people making games out of the industry with their bullying, harassment, and threats. Polygon's Brian Crecente has worked up the definitive piece on this subject, and it's absolutely a must-read for anyone who cares about video games.
Jerks have always been a part of the gaming culture. You don't have to look any further than an online game of Call of Duty to discover that. But that rancor has been spreading recently, as a minority of gamers emboldened by the anonymity of the Internet and upset over tweaks to games or the general direction of a title's narrative has turned their venom to the people making the very things they profess to love.
How bad is it? Here are a few examples Polygon cites:
- Call of Duty: Black Ops II
In July, Treyarch studio design director David Vonderhaar announced a patch to the game, which seemed fairly minor to most players. Before long, though, he was receiving death threats. Vonderhaar kept his calm, simply saying "Not sure these fractions of seconds are worth the threats of violence."
- Fez
After getting into a Twitter war with writer Marcus Beer, Phil Fish, creator of indie game sensation Fez, hit the boiling point, announcing the cancellation of the game's development and his immediate departure from the industry.
"i am done," he wrote. "i take the money and i run. this is as much as i can stomach. this is isn’t the result of any one thing, but the end of a long, ? campaign. you win."
- Dragon Age II
Jennifer Hepler was a writer on the role-playing game Dragon Age II. The game's ravenous fan base got so upset that she found herself receiving not only death threats aimed at her, but also threats against her family and children.
"I did my best to avoid actually reading any of it, so I'm not quite certain how bad it got," she said. "I was shown a sample of the forum posts by EA security and it included graphic threats to ? my children on their way out of school to show them that they should have been aborted at birth rather than have to have me as a mother."
Harassment aimed at developers isn’t necessarily new, but it's never been in the spotlight. The Polygon story starkly exposes how bad things are for game makers today, and hopefully will help usher along the process of correcting what’s an increasingly worrisome – and ultimately damaging -- problem.
There has been a rash of ugliness in the gaming world lately -- and it’s potentially more damaging than court battles or political posturing about game violence could ever be.
A small minority of players are threatening to drive some of the most talented people making games out of the industry with their bullying, harassment, and threats. Polygon's Brian Crecente has worked up the definitive piece on this subject, and it's absolutely a must-read for anyone who cares about video games.
Jerks have always been a part of the gaming culture. You don't have to look any further than an online game of Call of Duty to discover that. But that rancor has been spreading recently, as a minority of gamers emboldened by the anonymity of the Internet and upset over tweaks to games or the general direction of a title's narrative has turned their venom to the people making the very things they profess to love.
How bad is it? Here are a few examples Polygon cites:
- Call of Duty: Black Ops II
In July, Treyarch studio design director David Vonderhaar announced a patch to the game, which seemed fairly minor to most players. Before long, though, he was receiving death threats. Vonderhaar kept his calm, simply saying "Not sure these fractions of seconds are worth the threats of violence."
- Fez
After getting into a Twitter war with writer Marcus Beer, Phil Fish, creator of indie game sensation Fez, hit the boiling point, announcing the cancellation of the game's development and his immediate departure from the industry.
"i am done," he wrote. "i take the money and i run. this is as much as i can stomach. this is isn’t the result of any one thing, but the end of a long, ? campaign. you win."
- Dragon Age II
Jennifer Hepler was a writer on the role-playing game Dragon Age II. The game's ravenous fan base got so upset that she found herself receiving not only death threats aimed at her, but also threats against her family and children.
"I did my best to avoid actually reading any of it, so I'm not quite certain how bad it got," she said. "I was shown a sample of the forum posts by EA security and it included graphic threats to ? my children on their way out of school to show them that they should have been aborted at birth rather than have to have me as a mother."
Harassment aimed at developers isn’t necessarily new, but it's never been in the spotlight. The Polygon story starkly exposes how bad things are for game makers today, and hopefully will help usher along the process of correcting what’s an increasingly worrisome – and ultimately damaging -- problem.
Comments
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gotta take the good with the bad. the power of public whining can do pretty strong, positive things, like make MS reverse policies about their system, or help dictate who will be the next dc comics character you can fight as. but when youre threatening individuals and their families ur just being an ? .
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Gamers are such babies, though. One update sets off a wave of feelings. ? is wack. They want patches, patches are made and they still cry.
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Man the ? up...smh
"They hurt my feeliiinnnnnngs..."
Sensitive ass ? -
The user and all related content has been deleted.
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Shook ones
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Only casual gamers are killing the industry
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SMH at the others in here except me, you, and earth two superman not seeing this. I love how the article conveniently left out "exactly" what people be addressing(not complaining). I don't even be playing games as much as I used to like 8 years ago. But even as the casual gamer that I am now I can see what all trash talk is about.Notice the companies, these people work for, now think about this all in terms of silencing people.
1. It seems we(us gamers) have to constantly point out flaws in games that we damn near paying $100.00 for(add on's included). Even though they have testers test ? before the launch of the game. The testers often play with us too so they should patch up ? A.S.A.P It shouldn't take thousands of complaints over a month for well known problems to be patched.
2. When they "finally" patch something that could be patched easily it creates another problem. They hardly ever correct a problem and ? runs smooth. Whenever they do finally fix everything properly they add an update that causes another problem. What makes things worse is that they usually add some ? nobody really cares for that causes the new problem. Rinse, wash and repeat.
Hackers be patching ? up and adding better ? to the game. Better than the actual developers SMH. You are absolutely right about them trying to shut people up. I think people be losing they jobs when all of us start addressing their ? ups. I know for a fact people at microsoft was getting clapped and demoted. -
social media, of course, played a BIG part in this too. Imagine if it wouldve been around in the earlier days of video games.
then again, i dont think the game companies back in the day would think of getting away with some of the ? they attempted to get away with this and last generation. -
You aint never lied. ? back then was pretty solid. You would think that with all this new technology we got now ? should be damn near perfect. But nooooooooo, it seems ? is just getting worse. I was gonna make a topic about this ? awhile back but never did. I mean, really analyze all the problems and just flat out ? ups on all platforms and all games in the past year. Sad aint it, just sad SMH.earth two superman wrote: »social media, of course, played a BIG part in this too. Imagine if it wouldve been around in the earlier days of video games.
then again, i dont think the game companies back in the day would think of getting away with some of the ? they attempted to get away with this and last generation.
This is one of the main reasons why I don't ? with that many games anymore or buy on the 1st day. These other companies wonder why "rockstar" is kicking all their ? and is well respected. They may push their ? back a lot but they don't be having all these problems. When a problem does come up that ? gets fixed within a week. They also are easy to get a hold of and actually respond to us. They also keep us posted on everything. Remember most companies used to be this way.
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Nosign the last 2 posts. Some games back in the day didn't even make sense. Some were not even playable.
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Name some. And not the ones that were too tough for you.
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7_rolls_royces wrote: »
SMH at the others in here except me, you, and earth two superman not seeing this. I love how the article conveniently left out "exactly" what people be addressing(not complaining). I don't even be playing games as much as I used to like 8 years ago. But even as the casual gamer that I am now I can see what all trash talk is about.Notice the companies, these people work for, now think about this all in terms of silencing people.
1. It seems we(us gamers) have to constantly point out flaws in games that we damn near paying $100.00 for(add on's included). Even though they have testers test ? before the launch of the game. The testers often play with us too so they should patch up ? A.S.A.P It shouldn't take thousands of complaints over a month for well known problems to be patched.
2. When they "finally" patch something that could be patched easily it creates another problem. They hardly ever correct a problem and ? runs smooth. Whenever they do finally fix everything properly they add an update that causes another problem. What makes things worse is that they usually add some ? nobody really cares for that causes the new problem. Rinse, wash and repeat.
Hackers be patching ? up and adding better ? to the game. Better than the actual developers SMH. You are absolutely right about them trying to shut people up. I think people be losing they jobs when all of us start addressing their ? ups. I know for a fact people at microsoft was getting clapped and demoted.
couldnt of said it better sir. thats real ? . Im sick of payin money out the ass for a glitchy ? ass game thats stale within 2 months anyway. then not to mention the servers are always down, updates take up a ? load of space, prices are inflated like a ? , and they wanna get mad when we get on they ass? death threats are too much, but damn where does the ? stop? I know if I ? up that much at work I would get fired, damn. -
That Jennifer Hepler ? needed to go... terrible ? writer who said that the worst part of developing games was "playing the games" and that they should have a button that lets you skip the gameplay so you can listen to the dialogue. Not to mention this ? turns every male character she touches into a ? . The only thing more surprising than the people threatening to ? her kids is that somebody willingly impregnated that whale.
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7_rolls_royces wrote: »
You aint never lied. ? back then was pretty solid. You would think that with all this new technology we got now ? should be damn near perfect. But nooooooooo, it seems ? is just getting worse. I was gonna make a topic about this ? awhile back but never did. I mean, really analyze all the problems and just flat out ? ups on all platforms and all games in the past year. Sad aint it, just sad SMH.earth two superman wrote: »social media, of course, played a BIG part in this too. Imagine if it wouldve been around in the earlier days of video games.
then again, i dont think the game companies back in the day would think of getting away with some of the ? they attempted to get away with this and last generation.
This is one of the main reasons why I don't ? with that many games anymore or buy on the 1st day. These other companies wonder why "rockstar" is kicking all their ? and is well respected. They may push their ? back a lot but they don't be having all these problems. When a problem does come up that ? gets fixed within a week. They also are easy to get a hold of and actually respond to us. They also keep us posted on everything. Remember most companies used to be this way.
A prime example of this is Bethseda Studios. Fallout New Vegas was a train wreck of glitches, crashes, and freezes. Even Skyrim with it's PS3 problems and various other ? ups.
The PC mod communities for both games are filled with people, who are not compensated at all, fixing ? that the company should of fixed or done in the first place. It not just ? like infinite ammo, super powers, and bigger ? like most think. Them dudes make better animations, better graphics, better sounds, fix game bugs, make smoother interfaces, and fix game breaking glitches. Basic ? that should've been done in the first place.
In that aspect Gamers are doing the developers jobs when you think about it. -
ParallelRhymes wrote: »ParallelRhymes wrote: »Not even just social media though. It's the fact that literally anything that can be purchased can also be "reviewed" online and that will be seen by people.
Companies have to worry about how people accept their products a lot more now. Back in the day you could put out a ? game with a $10.98 production budget and hope to sell 1000 copies and make a profit, now that ? doesn't fly as much.
The downside of this though is that there is obvious bias in many of the reviews and companies paying for more favorable ratings on products.
I've played so many ? 9.5/10 games. -
You think the ? ups on those games were bad, play assassins creed 3. The game is (drake voice)soooooo good you will overlook the shitload of glitches. The amount of glitches in that game are close to "superman" on nintendo 64, no ? . I couldn't believe these cats were 4 games deep and this ? happens? Then they slowly added "updates" that fixed a lot of glitches. But by that time people had already beat the game SMH.(thank ? I only bought it $34.99 on black friday).7_rolls_royces wrote: »
You aint never lied. ? back then was pretty solid. You would think that with all this new technology we got now ? should be damn near perfect. But nooooooooo, it seems ? is just getting worse. I was gonna make a topic about this ? awhile back but never did. I mean, really analyze all the problems and just flat out ? ups on all platforms and all games in the past year. Sad aint it, just sad SMH.earth two superman wrote: »social media, of course, played a BIG part in this too. Imagine if it wouldve been around in the earlier days of video games.
then again, i dont think the game companies back in the day would think of getting away with some of the ? they attempted to get away with this and last generation.
This is one of the main reasons why I don't ? with that many games anymore or buy on the 1st day. These other companies wonder why "rockstar" is kicking all their ? and is well respected. They may push their ? back a lot but they don't be having all these problems. When a problem does come up that ? gets fixed within a week. They also are easy to get a hold of and actually respond to us. They also keep us posted on everything. Remember most companies used to be this way.
A prime example of this is Bethseda Studios. Fallout New Vegas was a train wreck of glitches, crashes, and freezes. Even Skyrim with it's PS3 problems and various other ? ups.
The PC mod communities for both games are filled with people, who are not compensated at all, fixing ? that the company should of fixed or done in the first place. It not just ? like infinite ammo, super powers, and bigger ? like most think. Them dudes make better animations, better graphics, better sounds, fix game bugs, make smoother interfaces, and fix game breaking glitches. Basic ? that should've been done in the first place.
In that aspect Gamers are doing the developers jobs when you think about it.
Bruh, it's lil ass teenagers in their parents basements rewriting code and running servers better than the actual developers. I played this game called phantasy star online years ago for the game cube. They said that you can only go on missions with a party of 4. But this hacker I knew made it so it could be 5. ? ran smooth and never had a problem
Ain't nothing worse than when you bout go somewhere and you have a little time left before you leave. You be like "let me get a few minutes of gaming in before I have to go". (turns on system)....... ..... ..."This game has an update, you can't play until you instal this update". No advances notice about the update or nothing SMH. Just pops up out of nowhere at anytime.smokelahoma wrote: »7_rolls_royces wrote: »
SMH at the others in here except me, you, and earth two superman not seeing this. I love how the article conveniently left out "exactly" what people be addressing(not complaining). I don't even be playing games as much as I used to like 8 years ago. But even as the casual gamer that I am now I can see what all trash talk is about.Notice the companies, these people work for, now think about this all in terms of silencing people.
1. It seems we(us gamers) have to constantly point out flaws in games that we damn near paying $100.00 for(add on's included). Even though they have testers test ? before the launch of the game. The testers often play with us too so they should patch up ? A.S.A.P It shouldn't take thousands of complaints over a month for well known problems to be patched.
2. When they "finally" patch something that could be patched easily it creates another problem. They hardly ever correct a problem and ? runs smooth. Whenever they do finally fix everything properly they add an update that causes another problem. What makes things worse is that they usually add some ? nobody really cares for that causes the new problem. Rinse, wash and repeat.
Hackers be patching ? up and adding better ? to the game. Better than the actual developers SMH. You are absolutely right about them trying to shut people up. I think people be losing they jobs when all of us start addressing their ? ups. I know for a fact people at microsoft was getting clapped and demoted.
updates take up a ? load of space,
SHOTS FIRED at the call of duty series post call of duty 4:modern warfareParallelRhymes wrote: »ParallelRhymes wrote: »Not even just social media though. It's the fact that literally anything that can be purchased can also be "reviewed" online and that will be seen by people.
Companies have to worry about how people accept their products a lot more now. Back in the day you could put out a ? game with a $10.98 production budget and hope to sell 1000 copies and make a profit, now that ? doesn't fly as much.
The downside of this though is that there is obvious bias in many of the reviews and companies paying for more favorable ratings on products.
I've played so many ? 9.5/10 games.
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