Can anyone explain why anyone gets upset over death threats?
Can anyone explain why anyone gets upset over death threats?
Id say that to your face. Its the internet if you cant handle someone shit talking or trolling here i dont imagine how you handle the real world with any stability. Having a thick skin is paramount to surviving the modern day job. QQing and tattling on every little bad thing said to you is a great and fast way to get shuned and abandoned by your pears or friends.
IMO, it's not just that. It's that over the internet, you can never tell who is the one who would take it seriously and go through with it. In turn, that means that you have to take every single threat seriously, and in a lot of cases, even the authorities are weary about investigating online threats.
A lot of these developers getting threatened have no where to run to. No one takes the threats seriously. To quote the article, and the former XBL 'Sheriff':
Also, it seems the companies these developers work for can't even help protect their own.Originally Posted by Stephen Toulouse
When their lives are on the line people start to take any threat seriously, but when the proper authorities, be it within the company itself or external authorities, don't even lift a finger to help it can cause trepidation and panic.Originally Posted by Stephen Toulouse
I had a cool sig... then photobucket ate my pics and now its borked. :/ oh wells...
I think there's an easy solution for getting a lot of people to stop acting like asshats. Drop the anonymity. Sure it's easy to say for me who's using a fake name on a forum but my full name wouldn't fit anyways. Jean-Philippe is a fucking long ass first name...
People seem to fail to realize that being verbally attacked DOES harm game development.
Our Steam Greenlight campaign has been directly harmed by people flipping out on the internet. It's frustrating. Not because people are mad at you, but because these people want to be the loudest and will do or say anything just to slight your playerbase by consuming your attention -- even if it's only for a moment. It's not a huge setback directly, but it's still troublesome to have to take time away from real issues that effect paying customers. You cannot reason with these people and any attempts to do so only validates their stance in the eyes of people on the outside looking in.
People keep talking about companies like Blizzard where people getting mad at them doesn't realistically impact their business. Diablo III is considered a success despite massive fan backlash against it. But when you're a small indie group you are very, very vulnerable to attacks from anybody -- even if there is literally no credibility to the claims being made against you.
It IS a problem. And the people saying "game devs need to grow thicker skin" need to understand that it doesn't work that way if you want to have any sort of involvement in your game's community.
Currently playing Borderlands 1 remaster. Amped for Borderlands 3.
Add me on the PSN for jolly-cooperation @ PuppetShoJustice
This just in: professional sports teams can't find players because people are mean...
This whole thing is a big joke. Some lady gets trolled on the internet and now the sky is falling.
all im reading here is more power for the devs to shut out feedback, i can bet a lot of money, the harassment is asking the devs to get back on track in making full proper games again, also heres the catch, when 'designing' the last thing you need to hear is, omg good work, keep it up, no no no, thats not how you produce high quality work, it comes through reiteration and the bulk of that comes from criticism to make sure its right.
more and more devs even freakin bioware arent angels, taking more of the main content of a game and slicing that up in dlcs and creating ever more patronising games.
the devs need to hear the shit the customers give out, if they go the wrong path, of course people are gonna get pissed as they fear things are gonna get worse and ending up paying more for less.
You're taking a misguided stance on the subject at hand. This isn't about developers being able to 'write off' feedback from customers, this is about the type of feedback we're sending to these people.
You can send feedback that is constructive and well thought out with rational arguments with data to back it up; those are the types of forum posts, emails and letters that are looked towards when a developer looks towards it's fan base for guidance and judgement.
The "OMG DIE" crowd already gets immediately thrown out the window when it comes to feedback management. That, however, doesn't give people the right to say such rude and hurtful things. You can make feedback, and you can make extremely critical feedback without making yourself seem like a 10 year old caveman, and your voice will be taken more seriously and given more validity when you do!
Last edited by narzinor; 2013-08-21 at 01:08 AM. Reason: typos and sich
I had a cool sig... then photobucket ate my pics and now its borked. :/ oh wells...
im sorry but how is this an "interesting topic worthy of discussion?" I don't understand why the moderators openly PROMOTE these massive bash fests involving worldly politics and social issues that have little or nothing to do with gaming, yet openly banhammer anyone who posts anything religious
It is worthy of discussion because it's something that the gaming population should probably be aware of. Seeing how blatantly ignorant a ton of the posts in this thread are on the subject at hand, I welcome the conversation.
How on earth can you possibly dismiss game studio harassment as having "little or nothing to do with gaming"?
The people saying things like "Studios only do a good job if you harass them into it" are so out of touch it's frankly mind-blowing.
Currently playing Borderlands 1 remaster. Amped for Borderlands 3.
Add me on the PSN for jolly-cooperation @ PuppetShoJustice
Well, in this particular example, these social issues are decidedly created by video games, and more precisely, the people playing them. If we don't take the time to sit down and think and debate about social issues regarding the things we're all here on this website for, we'll never make any progress in getting them fixed.
If a discussion like this turns 1 person who does this vile behavior against it, this thread helped, and I believe that's why the moderators have chosen to keep it up.
Religion, however is innately bad for debate. There are no facts, only opinion and the fanaticism is considerably much greater. Threads like that will never remain civil. However, let's not drag this off topic too much.
I had a cool sig... then photobucket ate my pics and now its borked. :/ oh wells...
I see that as bullying because verbal bullying can be more damaging then physical bullying. You might get beaten up then you can move to other town if anything or start working on your self to punch back if anything happens while being verbally abused can cause problems to persons mental condition and such bullying you can't fight back with punching because most likely if you will try to answer him with same you will get his laugh plus more bullying.
That's the same, if your mom gives you slap for doing something bad will be most likely forgotten few mins later while if she will tell you she hates you for that then you will remember that for most of your life.
This thread seems to be populated by two primary groups:
1.) People who actually took the time to read and understand the article.
2.) People who are part of the problem discussed by the article.
I'm all for having a "thick skin," but honestly, this isn't a case of being trolled in WoW trade chat or something. It's a case of someone having information such as your real name, in addition to where you work or where you live and issuing threats against you. Not just harsh criticism about games, but actual threats that transcend the subject of games entirely. This is a whole different level. A lot of them may simply be idle threats, but that's almost not even the point. The point is the impact those threats have, and the fact that you can't take them lightly considering the circumstances.
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
Does it need to be explained? Like, I'm not sure what's mysterious or confusing about them. Having hundreds of people threaten you and your family with graphic acts of violence is kinda beyond the realm of not ok and into the realm of absolutely disgusting behavior.
I don't see what's unclear about being upset over harassment and death threats...
This isn't just one incident. This is essentially a boiling point for hundreds of instances of "gamers" harassing the hell out of developers. The whole thing isn't a joke, it's a serious issue that people are being harassed in such a way and should not be tolerated.
Pretty much this. I honestly can't believe anyone isn't upset and offended by the behavior of the harassers or is attacking the victims for being "whiny".
Ok, for once, I admit, I didn't initially read the article. That's my bad, I just thought the comments were too good to miss out on, so I started there. But even if you read the article and acknowledge that this is real, it's still only cyber bullying. You won't be able to stop it, so why get upset about it?
Do people really think they can change this fucked up world where people (recently; other forum) told me that they were happy my mother has cancer and my father recently died due to it (topic was in relation to medical mill/suffering), just because I disagreed with one of their points? Really? That's a 14 year old kid sitting behind his computer never having experienced life, which he no doubt will eventually, and just trolls the internet.
Or they are seriously mentally deranged people. They might be dangerous. No lies in there, but they're not in your face yet. So just report them, get them arrested and shrug it the fuck off, because you can't let that type of pressure hit you. Yes, it's still a matter of skin. The odds that a RL threat on the internet actually gets you dead is minimal. Less than a crashing airplane. People quitting their jobs apparently aren't good with that kind of pressure. And that is skin. No denying it.
So once more. I'm not saying "lolz it's just internet", but I am saying that we can't STOP the internet.
Cyber bullying is way overblown, in my opinion. I get yelled at, threatened, and sworn at on a reasonably regular basis at my job, and that's face to face interaction. At the end of the day, these people are all talk and it doesn't mean shit to me. Death threats aren't something you should fuck around with at all, that is one thing I do agree with. There are too many psychos in this world, and you don't want to take the chance thinking that somebody is just all bark and no bite and then end up in real danger. Other than that though, it's all just words. Words can only hurt you if you let them.