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"Sick of all the hatred from gamers" open letter from Anonymous game dev. via Kotaku

RolePlayer

Augur
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Portland, Oregon
Posting this here in its entirety (not giving Kotaku a link that will help their search engine ranking & their click through traffic). Anyway, supposedly, this is a letter to video game fans, written by an "AAA" game developer, and was published by Kotaku on their blog.

"Dear consumers and fans of video games,

You don't know me. But you might know some of the games I've helped create. And as I come to a close on another one of the AAA titles I have worked on, I begin to get excited for all of the people that will love our game, and I begin to loathe those who will hate it.

Out of the millions around the globe who will pick up our game and love it, only thousands will flock to the Internet and scream about how much it sucks—how it's broken, how it's buggy, how it stinks so much. Of course, there will always be critics. The world needs them. But I don't think there's ever justification for the personalized negative attacks, the hate speech, and the borderline cruelty to those who worked 12+ hours for days, weeks, months, and, in some cases, years, to get games in the best possible shape.

Granted, feedback is warranted. If we f***ed up and our game is broken, you should tell us. I don't ever want to ship a broken product. But stuff like "I hope the idiot people who made this just kill themselves after they kill their family" makes me want to quit my job and move to another industry. Seeing statements like that spread across the Internet—seeing insults hurled at hard-working developers who love the games they work on—just makes me lose hope in people.

I'm not Cliff Bleszinski. I'm not Ken Levine. I'm just a guy who has seen a lot of hatred that is undeserved for a medium that really is just a piece of entertainment. I'm relatively new to the field—I've been working in games for five years—but I have never seen this level of hatred in any other industry. Do thousands of people say they want to kill Tom Cruise if he plays a scene in a way they don't like? They might criticize it, but they don't tell him to go kill himself because they disliked what he did. Honestly, at times this hatred makes me not want to work in games anymore.

I come to work and put in 80 hours some weeks not because I have to, but because I love what I do. There are many out there like me. For some, yes, it is about the money, but I'm a salaried employee. I want my games to do well. I want people to love them.

And if someone were to come out and say something horrible, like the type of insults I see on message boards, or on social networks, or in colleagues' email inboxes... It just baffles me that this has become the norm. How is it acceptable? Most gamers have no idea what really goes into software development—or how difficult it is to get hundreds of people coordinated and working together on a project—and it sometimes drives me crazy to see their vitriolic comments.

It's not that I want anyone to censor themselves. I just want more people to think about what it is that they're saying, and maybe think twice about degrading the people who put their time and energy into making games—even when those games don't turn out so great.

It's important to remember that not every game is on the same playing field. Game developers that are not owned by first-party publishers like Sony and Microsoft tend to have fewer resources and smaller wallets, yet they are often asked to create games on par with the bigger guys, whose budgets tower over their competitors'. During the half-decade I've worked in gaming, I have had the opportunity to work for a publisher, a first-party developer, and an independent developer. In those five short years I have seen people turn their passion into products both good and bad, and what we've done together has been truly amazing. Let us not ever forget that games are made by people who love them.

Game developers don't just sit in front of their computers drawing doodles and typing out code—we create fun out of thin air. We take hundreds of hours of discussions, refinements, and debates, and we make them appear on screen. Game developers make art.

So before you send death threats to people, or give out zeroes on Metacritic, or write unnecessarily mean things about games you've spent just a few hours on, remember that what you're playing is the culmination of years of someone's life. Usually it's not just one life, but tens, or hundreds, or even thousands of people who wake up every day at the crack of dawn thinking about the experiences they're going to create.

The video game industry is dominated by introverts—creative, passionate people who might struggle with depression due to the nature of their jobs, the long hours, the harsh criticism, and the harsher fans. One comment that seems insignificant to you might cut a developer's mind like a razor blade.

So if we the developers give you the fans a broken product, let us know. If our game has issues, talk about them. But please be respectful. Be kind to the people who help make and produce the games that you love—and especially to the people who make the games you don't love. Nobody deserves to be treated like less than a human being.

Remember that your words—yes, your words—have an impact on the people who make video games. No matter who you are. Yours might be the one Internet comment that changes a developer's life."
 

DragoFireheart

all caps, rainbow colors, SOMETHING.
Joined
Jun 16, 2007
Messages
23,731
Remeber GamePro? Here's a protip for you:

Don't make a shitty game. Grow a thicker skin. If you work for EA or Activision, find a new job now.

EDIT:

I come to work and put in 80 hours some weeks not because I have to, but because I love what I do.

Stop letting the industry treat you like shit and grow a spine. No wonder your games are buggy as shit: you're burning yourself out.

The video game industry is dominated by introverts—creative, passionate people who might struggle with depression due to the nature of their jobs, the long hours, the harsh criticism, and the harsher fans. One comment that seems insignificant to you might cut a developer's mind like a razor blade.

Holy shit stop making excuses. No one asked you to make the game. If you can't handle it, do us a favor and please leave the industry.
 

Humanophage

Arcane
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Messages
5,032
It's this horrible type of person who is glad that the internet is no longer as anonymous any longer, because they think that "anonymity brings offensive and trolling behaviour" instead of letting people share their actual opinions.
 

Berekän

A life wasted
Patron
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Messages
3,097
Huh, welcome to the internet I guess? There's the same kind of criticism about music, films, books...






So, yeah, :butthurt:, not much more to say
 

Markman

da Blitz master
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We're not that mean on the codex tho. We say if the game is shit but we dont send death threats and plane tickets to devs.
 

DragoFireheart

all caps, rainbow colors, SOMETHING.
Joined
Jun 16, 2007
Messages
23,731
We're not that mean on the codex tho. We say if the game is shit but we dont send death threats and plane tickets to devs.

I typically wish for EA to burn to the ground but I don't e-mail them death threats.

Anyways, this dev is exactly why I decided against becoming a game developer/programmer/drone. The culture is extremely beta and these employees allow themselves to be used and abuse. 80 hour week for a VIDEO GAME!? That is utter insanity. They all must be masochistic or something.

RolePlayer: thank you for not posting the link.
 
Repressed Homosexual
Joined
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Messages
17,867
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Ottawa, Can.
Is there any other domain where there is as high a ratio of douchebags to normal humans than "gamers"? I think it's more a symptom of a whiny, entitled generation of horrid children, raised by parents who don't want to discipline them anymore, and transmit them horrible values, along with society. In the old Usenet or other older Internet environments you sure didn't have such an out of whack ratio of signal to noise, and while viciousness always existed, it wasn't always this gratuitous and this much of a relentless bombardment.
 

Crane

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I've heard that working in the gaming industry is pretty awful, a lot of late nights and such, just like this guy writes. He's taking his anger out on the wrong people, though.


:lol:

Is there any other domain where there is as high a ratio of douchebags to normal humans than "gamers"? I think it's more a symptom of a whiny, entitled generation of horrid children, raised by parents who don't want to discipline them anymore.

Are you sure you're on the right website?
 

Ranselknulf

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Solution is to not be a "AAA" game developer.

Also, what is with all these grown men developers on the internet who don't know how to ignore retards.
 

ColCol

Arcane
Joined
Jul 12, 2012
Messages
1,731
Is there any other domain where there is as high a ratio of douchebags to normal humans than "gamers"? I think it's more a symptom of a whiny, entitled generation of horrid children, raised by parents who don't want to discipline them anymore, and transmit them horrible values, along with society. In the old Usenet or other older Internet environments you sure didn't have such an out of whack ratio of signal to noise, and while viciousness always existed, it wasn't always this gratuitous and this much of a relentless bombardment.

Is there a difference between raising a child as whiny-entitled and raising a child as a christian?
 

DragoFireheart

all caps, rainbow colors, SOMETHING.
Joined
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Messages
23,731
Also, what is with all these grown men developers on the internet who don't know how to ignore retards.

I have no idea. The culture of gamers is pretty shitty, but the devs are just as bad, what with all the corruption in reviews, lying, scams, false advertising, and many other issues.

All over VIDEO GAMES. I can not stress this point enough.
 

Suicidal

Arcane
Joined
Apr 29, 2007
Messages
2,208
HHR is right that the 'gamer' crowd has an extremely high ratio of degenerates to normal people, but a "grown-up, hard working etc. etc." employee should have more important things to care about than what a bunch of random people on the internet he never knew and probably will never know call him, so yeah :butthurt:
 

Space Satan

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cartman-tears-o.gif
 

Ranselknulf

Arcane
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I can kind of understand his sentiments to an extent, I mean why would you want to develop a game for all the AAA retards to begin with.

The majority are overwhelming retarded and incapable of providing useful feedback to developers. On the other hand, developing a AAA game and complaining about the retards is like walking into a gay bath house and complaining about all the gay butt sex.
 

DragoFireheart

all caps, rainbow colors, SOMETHING.
Joined
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Messages
23,731

Wait wait wait look:

I come to work and put in 80 hours some weeks not because I have to, but because I love what I do. There are many out there like me. For some, yes, it is about the money, but I'm a salaried employee. I want my games to do well. I want people to love them.

And if someone were to come out and say something horrible, like the type of insults I see on message boards, or on social networks, or in colleagues' email inboxes... It just baffles me that this has become the norm. How is it acceptable? Most gamers have no idea what really goes into software development—or how difficult it is to get hundreds of people coordinated and working together on a project—and it sometimes drives me crazy to see their vitriolic comments.

It's not that I want anyone to censor themselves. I just want more people to think about what it is that they're saying, and maybe think twice about degrading the people who put their time and energy into making games—even when those games don't turn out so great.

Let us not ever forget that games are made by people who love them. I eat, sleep, and breathe video games, and they will always be a part of my life.

The red flags are all over this article. Check this out for perspective:

http://www.tlnt.com/2013/05/10/i-still-dont-think-that-you-work-80-hours-per-week/

A study published in the June 2011 Monthly Labor Reviewthat compared estimated work weeks with time diaries reported that people who claimed their “usual” work weeks were longer than 75 hours were off, on average, by about 25 hours. You can guess in which direction. Those who claimed that a “usual” work week was 65–74 hours were off by close to 20 hours. Those claiming a 55–64-hour work week were still about 10 hours north of the truth. Subtracting these errors, you can see that most people top out at fewer than 60 work hours per week.

Many professionals in so-called extreme jobs work about 45–55 hours a week. Those are numbers I can attest to from time logs I’ve seen over the years. I’ve given speeches at companies known for their sweatshop hours and had up-and-comers keep time logs for me. Their recorded weeks tend to hover around 60 hours – and that’s for focused, busy weeks with no half days, vacation days, or dentist appointments, and, most important, for weeks that people are willing to share with colleagues. We live in a competitive world, and boasting about the number of hours we work has become a way to demonstrate how devoted we are to our jobs.

That would be funny, except that numbers have consequences. If you think you’re working 80 hours per week, you’ll make different choices in your attempts to optimize them than if you know you usually work 55.”
 

sexbad?

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I read the first few paragraphs and found it reasonable, but then skimmed the rest and felt it was brought down. Personal threats and attacks are pretty much unacceptable, but then the person goes on this fruitless attempt to convince the columnar skanks that he's a human bean and all that, but that's not the center of the problem unless he just means the 8-year-olds who will buy Thi4f and complain that it's too complicated. 8-year-olds tend not to have much of a sense of perspective when it comes to telling people off, so a lesson in why people shouldn't say "kill yourself faget" to other human beings is applicable there. After about puberty, however, threatening to kill people who make something that you dislike becomes more a matter that you're likely just looking for a reason to feel superior. I would appreciate an article that tells off shits in an assertive manner for being shits, rather than just another one that tries to rationalize making ass games.
 

Haba

Harbinger of Decline
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You have to be seriously deranged to expect someone to shrug off death treats. Try to imagine that kind of a reality for yourself. Dozens of Rogueys and hivers stalking you, flaming your work everywhere. "But it is just the Internet!"

Well, I don't think I could grow a skin thick enough to handle that, and I've had death treats in real life. It is probably easier to get over a threat you get face to face than constant anonymous barrage.

I doubt any of the posters whose emotional capacity is limited to posting "butthurt detected" could handle it either themselves.
 

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