It’s always perplexing to me when people state how “obvious” it is when developers stop talking to their community, like it’s an inevitable thing to happen, and everyone has been doing it.
I can think of a few times I’ve ever been actually angry with people on any gaming forum, or reddit. And that includes interacting with people clearly angry themselves, and suffering from a severe lack of telling the truth, analytical thinking, and restraint.
I’ve also worked in customer service for the better part of a decade, and interacting with upset customers is pretty simple, and doesn’t need to be taken personally. Including the one’s that threaten bodily harm when they’re 3 feet from you, and not someone on the internet who doesn’t even know where Texas is on the map.
To say developers / customer service reps in games have thin skins is an understatement, but the biggest problem is they don’t feel like they should interact with people they don’t agree with or like. They want gross amounts of positivity, and absolutely zero negativity. Complaints are inherently negative, that doesn’t make them bad. What’s bad is seeing complaints and negativity as “the enemy”.
There’s a degree of celebrity that comes with having a company tag to your name, and spotlight in what you say or do, and that’s actually no different than being any other kind of employee at a job; especially so for retail / service work where you are interacting with people constantly. In person. It’s problematic that people take digital interactions as in the same light as if someone is standing in your home doing it, and especially so when there’s a degree of nuance lacking with interpreting mannerisms and etiquette through text. People jump to conclusions waaaay too easily and quickly online.
Ive watched online communities in a lot of games, and the amount of negativity / criticism only makes pace with the amount of things they have to criticize / be negative about with the game. This isn’t a global toxification of the space, it’s just the utter lack / refusal of businesses to interact with their community; which coincides with their utter lack and refusal to release games in a finished state compared to the years prior.
Ive never seen so many patches in my life, and so many bugs listed in each one. Things players have to figure out and show to the developers who had no idea it was a thing. The quality of gaming has gone down over the years, the reliance on hardware and patching to make up for poor design has gone way up. It’s understandable that discussion about problems will go up alongside it, and negativity will be mostly the way it’s perceived.
My mom has said frequently that she doesn’t want to have all her conversations with my brother be negative, because every interaction has to involve something he’s doing wrong. But you know, that’s not her fault . that his for messing up constantly and needing to be told it so it can be corrected. So what does she do? Not interact with him at all for the things that she should, and problems just keep increasing. They don’t get fixed, and there’s an air of “nothing is wrong” because of it.
Game development can’t survive with that, it’s toxic in and of itself for various reasons.
People need to buck up, and take criticism for what it is, rather than internalizing it all. And if you keep messing up, then maybe you are bad at your job, and deserve the criticism / negativity. Projecting / Deflecting that onto the other people as they’re the problem is not healthy, and horrible coping skills.
with Scoundrel’s Leathers
……well that’s what I’m here for anyway.
