gamer trolls harming game development

[Seefer]

You seem to equate real life to a virtual medium. Nobody here is supporting death threats, be they online on in real life. Nobody here is encouraging any name calling, being a jerk online or any other general rudeness. It's just a call for common sense, and not blowing something out of proportions. The first reply to the OP sums up the best way to stop these trolls. Ignore them, grow a thicker skin. After all, 99% of these trolls will never carry their threats out, they are just trolling, or venting anger. Anonymity isn't the best thing, but it's far from the worst. It is very useful when expressing controversial opinions, or opinions which could get you thrown in jail in certain regimes. Trolling is a small price to pay for that, and it won't go away. That's why the best advice is to grow a thicker skin. See the trolls for what they are, pathetic people, and move on. It won't go away, unless you use Real IDs, which has been tried before, for example on the blizzard forums, ironically to stop this very problem, trolling.

What happened? Arguably the biggest outcry in the forum's history, because taking anonymity away causes so many more problems than it helps stop. Blizzard had to do a 180 and drop their Real ID policies.

So the developers being told they are going to get killed at the named gaming expo should just get thicker skin? Cuz you know, I mean, nobody is every psychotic enough to kill someone in public places especially over emotional kids right?

[vesseblah]

And many times for balance I might agree with you. Just not here and not that example.

It's a change cause you want to see if it makes a difference in game with only computer drive simulation data, not real world and they want to see what happens.

And you know that because....?

It's pretty well known fact that 0.1s differences in attack speeds makes huge difference in WoW which is why most of those are normalized now around some fixed point. Maybe CoD wasn't designed that way originally and are retroactively fixing same kind of problems Blizzard did five years ago?

[Abysal]

To those who say that this is a thing, you probably somehow went trough school with a cloak of invisibility, or you were lucky. Real bullying gets people to kill themselves each year. This is NOT real bullying. I repeat, this is not, real bullying. Some kid who is angry that you nerfed his gun in call of duty isn't going to do anything to you, except press a few keys and write some dumb shit. Like the LoL player who got thrown in jail for saying he's gonna shoot a school and eat children.

Except for the times when they do do something to the person they are trolling. 4chan trolls have been turning online harassment into irl harassment for years. If you know who someone is on the internet, it's easy enough to find out where they live and who their family and close friends are. Once you have that, it's not hard from there to do all sorts of nasty things that go beyond the internet. It's happened before and it's pure foolishness to think it will never happen again.

[DPA]

You didn't read the article then? Some of those devs are getting threatening mail and calls at home, not just over the internet. Some people are actually pretty fucked up IRL too, not just over the internet.

As soon as you go over to gettin threatening mail and phone calls, it's not really cyber-bullying anymore. It's serious harassment, and can most certainly be dealt with trough the police and court.

[Deleted]

Cyberbullying is a joke.

None can harsh you in the internet, they simply can't. You can do two things:

1_ turn off the screen.

2_ Change your usernames, emails and IP... Making a new ID in the internet is as easy as eating cookies really.


People who still have problems with this should seek the help of a professional, but those are really a few persons.

Oh great. I expected this kind of comment to arise sooner or later. Pity that is has arrived in company.

There is a stark difference between common internet trolling and using internet to intentionally destroy a person by ratting one out of his hideouts, forcing the victim to organise his online existence around constant identification/identity change- -each such change forcing him to make a new start in areas where he had already achieved a sense of established notoriety.

Common troll will cease his exploits after posting few 'lol kill urself plz' one liners.
The kind of online delinquent discussed here will return to his harmful exploits frequently, hardly letting down. A network of such charming individuals and you have Cyberbullying - where the victim lives with the thought that his opressors have all the time in the world at their hands to ruin him day in and day out.

Get yourself a sense of scale.
This 'sticks and stones....' -kind of attitude works only on the scale of minor, singular incidents.

[quras]

And you know that because....?

Because it's what I know as a tester (not video games though but I know it works about the same) but it really doesn't matter how cause you have no reason to believe it anyway. It's the internet. We're all MMA fighters and lawyers here.

It's pretty well known fact that 0.1s differences in attack speeds makes huge difference in WoW which is why most of those are normalized now around some fixed point. Maybe CoD wasn't designed that way originally and are retroactively fixing same kind of problems Blizzard did five years ago?

If they are retroactively making a change that is suppose to be innocuous then it's not really innocuous is it? That means it's a bigger change than was let on and it pissed off players.

In turn, you changed something players enjoyed, may have bought or just gotten accustomed to. A game developer deserve negative feedback for those changes made after the original purchase price is paid if it affects the gamer in a negative way.

Gamers don't care that developers say, "We'll it's our game, we'll do what we think is best." and that statement usually only pisses off more gamers than not from what I can tell. WHY? Cause it used to hide a change thats not game breaking or innovative or needed but done anyway. It's used to hide poor internal testing and allows the release and patch later mentality to flourish instead of getting it right the first time. After all, it is their job to get this stuff right before it's sold. As of right now, I can't honestly think of anything that is sold and expected it might not work 100% out of the box and the maker will just get to it later.

The release and patch later is also a terrible design that seems to have allowed developers to be lazy and release a less than spotless product, take the cash and then hope the gamer will just be understanding when shit doesn't work, game is bugged, balance is not there. It's means developers didn't do their job before released and released a sub-standard product.

I'm not a fan of it. It means to me they allowed crap to pass internal inspection and be sold under the statement, "Oh, well just get to it later."

Screw that kind of development and gamers should let them have it excluding the more than stupid death threats and over the top other nonsense of course.

[vesseblah]

In turn, you changed something players enjoyed, may have bought or just gotten accustomed to.

Most of game balance changes fall into that category. Things are so OP that it's broken and dipping balance heavily towards one end of the spectrum and players like to feel powerful, even overpowered. When those mistakes are corrected to make the game better as a whole the people who liked to roflstomp everybody can't do it anymore when all their wins came from bugs in the game instead of skill.

Even if players don't like it short term, balance fixes are best for the game in long term. Especially if you aim to have any eSports credibility it's a must.

A game developer deserve negative feedback for those changes made after the original purchase price is paid if it affects the gamer in a negative way.

So it's a bad thing now to admit you've made a mistake as a game developer and want to fix it? Sorry but I have no sympathy for that kind of stupidity from the gamers.

[Sierra85]

So it's a bad thing now to admit you've made a mistake as a game developer and want to fix it? Sorry but I have no sympathy for that kind of stupidity from the gamers.

i think it can be harmful to the point where it could effect someone psychologically. You don't have to go far to find examples of MMO / gaming communities lashing out at the developers.

Look at the thread on these forums about whether ghostcrawler should keep his job? i mean come on. He's doing his job. He's qualified to do it, just because a small vocal subset of the community dislikes it they raise hell and possibly put it out there into the ether that he should lose his job so he cant support his family.

sorry but that is b.s.

[MoanaLisa]

While an interesting topic and worthy of some discussion, I've moved this out of the World of Warcraft General Discussion forum because it really is more about video gaming generally and not really about World of Warcraft specifically.

[Antti]

In turn, you changed something players enjoyed, may have bought or just gotten accustomed to. A game developer deserve negative feedback for those changes made after the original purchase price is paid if it affects the gamer in a negative way.

Why can't it be just that?
Can you (collectively the community) give negative feedback with constructive criticisms?
If you get the response you don't like, take a step back, breathe, grow up, tell them you don't like the response and why.
You can even go as far as customer feedback and not even buying any subsequent products by the company.
I may be nuts, but constructive feedback and not buying their products will go further than name calling and personal threats.
Why does it have to escalate?

[Halicia]

Cyberbullying is a joke.

None can harsh you in the internet, they simply can't. You can do two things:

1_ turn off the screen.

2_ Change your usernames, emails and IP... Making a new ID in the internet is as easy as eating cookies really.


People who still have problems with this should seek the help of a professional, but those are really a few persons.

going by that advice noone can harsh you IRL... if someone threatens to kill you, and goes to your house with a gun... by your advice you bear the blame for not changing your identity and moving to an undisclosed location.

you shouldn't have to change who YOU are to dodge death threats from someone ELSE. online or otherwise.

[Cakka]

To those who say that this is a thing, you probably somehow went trough school with a cloak of invisibility, or you were lucky. Real bullying gets people to kill themselves each year. This is NOT real bullying. I repeat, this is not, real bullying. Some kid who is angry that you nerfed his gun in call of duty isn't going to do anything to you, except press a few keys and write some dumb shit. Like the LoL player who got thrown in jail for saying he's gonna shoot a school and eat children.

So you think it's ok to force someone to not use social media? Sure, walk away from the thing most people are using to communicate with these days. Definitely too much to ask for people not act like complete retards instead.

Also it's funny how you mention "real" bullying causing people to commit suicide when there are plenty of cases of internet bullying doing the exact same thing. Like eg. recent very prominent case in the UK that even got David Cameron to comment on it.

[Edge-]

The fact that there are people trying to say, "Just ignore it" etc. etc. in this thread is fucking disgusting.

Nobody should every have to put up with this kind of shit. Ever. These are people working hard on the games that we enjoy, and many of them are public faces for the companies that have to be on social media and out in the open. That's no fucking excuse.

Like, seriously. "Grow thicker skin." Really? Fucking really? Tell me how that's appropriate when people are threatening my children and the rest of my family. Tell me how that's appropriate when I make a post about some minor changes to weapons in a video game and am assaulted with thousands of abusive tweets and messages for the next few days.

It's shit like this that makes me ashamed to call myself a gamer.

[Mr. Smith]

What the hell, blocking or reporting the people who are cyber-bullying you is less of a priority than calling the police and filing a civil suit?

Changing your email address and social media account is considered a last resort, more of a last resort than calling the police and filing a civil suit?!

How many fresh starts does a victim of deliberate cyberbullying [NOT generic forum trolling] has to make to escape his/her oppressors? Monitoring ones online activity isn't too hard when someone makes it a life purpose to destroy someone.

I'm not arguing that it isn't easy to e-stalk, I'm just arguing that people should probably attempt to use the tools made available to them (Reporting, blocking, etc.) to deal with malefactors before getting the legal system involved.

[Deleted]

The fact that there are people trying to say, "Just ignore it" etc. etc. in this thread is fucking disgusting.

Nobody should every have to put up with this kind of shit. Ever. These are people working hard on the games that we enjoy, and many of them are public faces for the companies that have to be on social media and out in the open. That's no fucking excuse.

Like, seriously. "Grow thicker skin." Really? Fucking really? Tell me how that's appropriate when people are threatening my children and the rest of my family. Tell me how that's appropriate when I make a post about some minor changes to weapons in a video game and am assaulted with thousands of abusive tweets and messages for the next few days.

It's shit like this that makes me ashamed to call myself a gamer.

I don't find it surprising that this thread steered into this pitiful direction- -almost everything that is at least semi-important will become a cesspool of vitriol and arrogance if it grew as a World of Warcraft General-Discussions thread.

What the hell, blocking or reporting the people who are cyber-bullying you is less of a priority than calling the police and filing a civil suit?

Changing your email address and social media account is considered a last resort, more of a last resort than calling the police and filing a civil suit?!

How many fresh starts does a victim of deliberate cyberbullying [NOT generic forum trolling] has to make to escape his/her oppressors? Monitoring ones online activity isn't too hard when someone makes it a life purpose to destroy someone.

[Dasffion]

Turkskanaattori hits the nail on the head there.

Game developers should just ignore trolls, as they are trolls whatever they suggest is just a way of trolling so it's not even close to constructive feedback.

Said trolls will buy their games anyway, to keep on trolling...

I sure hope theydont take them too seriouse...

@Moon Blade; Maybe it's time to have internet police. Death threats should be taken as seriouse on the internet as in real life.

Yes they should be taken seriously. Why wouldn't they? Do you really think that just because it's on the internet it's not real, or something? I don't even understand this logic.

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/an...hot-him-120184

People are crazy. Threats should be taken seriously because they can be serious. If you're not serious don't be an idiot and make threats.

Also, not exactly related but still pretty crazy:http://kotaku.com/call-of-duty-blame...birt-491086348

[quras]

Most of game balance changes fall into that category. Things are so OP that it's broken and dipping balance heavily towards one end of the spectrum and players like to feel powerful, even overpowered. When those mistakes are corrected to make the game better as a whole the people who liked to roflstomp everybody can't do it anymore when all their wins came from bugs in the game instead of skill.

Then to be honest developers of the game failed right out of the gate. If those types of skills made it into the release product, then developers, designers, whatever have already done the gamers an injustice by letting it into a released produced.

They failed at what they were hired to do. Consequences comes with that kind of failing.

Even if players don't like it short term, balance fixes are best for the game in long term. Especially if you aim to have any eSports credibility it's a must.

So it's a bad thing now to admit you've made a mistake as a game developer and want to fix it? Sorry but I have no sympathy for that kind of stupidity from the gamers.

and I have no sympathy for game developers that let a mistake like what we're discussion above (an OP skill etc...) get into the game and then be relased. It should have never been released as an OP skill to start with.

Do mistakes happen? Sure they do but you will also suffer negativity on a large scale for it in the gaming world.

If developers want that lovely blanket of protection in the: Release a game and fix it later while still taking a gamers money all the while asking for FREE input, FREE ideas, FREE think tank of beta players and still release skills not balanced or a whole host of other problems gamers see in a released product, then they will also have to deal with the anonymity of the gamers who voice their great displeasure, ask for people to be fired and that "they are a cancer to the game development."

So beyond the stupid things like death threat and rape or hurting children, I'm good with a lot of it.

[Vespian]

To those who say that this is a thing, you probably somehow went trough school with a cloak of invisibility, or you were lucky. Real bullying gets people to kill themselves each year. This is NOT real bullying. I repeat, this is not, real bullying. Some kid who is angry that you nerfed his gun in call of duty isn't going to do anything to you, except press a few keys and write some dumb shit. Like the LoL player who got thrown in jail for saying he's gonna shoot a school and eat children.

hahaha This so much Thank you for that laugh. I just struggled through a few posts that apparently got the second poster banned, but it's true. People need to grow skins. I get reported a _lot_. I write a lot on the edge (no not you Edge) and occasionally tresspass, but I've still been infracted for things I absolutely did not commit or write. I've been banned for flaming, but didn't get it absolved, because they said it was racism and not flaming (WUT?) I just said that in my experience all LoL games where Mexican players let us know they were Mexican, they sucked without exception, trolled without exception and I might have gone as far as saying that all of them Rolled Annie, with the purpose of counterjungling and turret diving at level 1, while screaming jajajajaja. (But I lied, that was only once).

No I'm not in here to address that ridiculous infraction again, but rather how people need to learn to grow skins. Ask any mod in these boards. Ask them how many people I reported over the course of 4.5 years. I bet the amount that reported and still report me all the time for doing things that I didn't do, is much, much larger.(Mostly due to the fact that I don't like reporting people. I don't care about insults. See, that's called having [skin]) Which is exactly why people don't belong on the internet.

If you can only deal with people by ignoring them (also 0 on my ignore list btw) or reporting them, because they hurt your fragile little mind (Thank you Eric Cartman, for eternity, for bringing that to life), I would consider you (you as in the general public to whom it applies) utterly pathetic.

And yes, people that threaten others IRL or on the internet, with their lives, should be arrested and shot by a firingsquad. Just to make sure Darwin is properly appeased.

[Deleted]

ITT: People who haven't been cyberbullied. It's one thing to have a 12 year threaten you he's going to rape your mother, but this is not that. These are people who actively stalk you, digging through whatever personal information they can find and contact you aswell as people you love with death threats.

Also, to those negating the existence of cyberbullying; imagine you get a letter in the mail, filled with death threats to you and your wife. Would you just say "oh but that's just ink on a paper, he didn't actually threaten me." No, you inform the police immediately.

Take the ink from the paper, and turn it into pixels on a screen. The diffence? Depends. Was it a 12 year on Call of Duty? If so, you may have a point. The world isn't black and white. Some threats and the ways to recieve them are more severe than others. If many well respected and smart developers deemed some of these threats to have gone beyond mere annoyance, then I will thrust their judgements.

[Stevegasm]

There was a thread on this very story, but I guess it died 3 days ago.

This quote from the article was probably most interesting to me:

"It's important to listen to fans about what's important to them, but it's equally important to listen to people who are not currently gamers about why they aren't playing. Hardcore gamers want a product that is made specifically for them and is actively unfriendly to anyone new. They will beg and bully to get this product and then praise and wax nostalgic over any game that lives up to their standards even if the company that made it went bankrupt. They don't care about keeping companies in business or artists employed. Their only job as fans is to say what pleases them, and it would be foolish to expect them to think beyond that. But to cater to those desires without thinking about how to bring new audiences in and make them comfortable will ultimately result in a stagnant and money-losing industry.

"I could go on and on about this, but I'm just going to consider one example: the word 'noob.' If you decide to take up almost any other hobby in the world, you can find beginning classes teaching you how to do it. If you want to knit, you can go to a yarn store and meet fellow knitters who will help you get the basics. If you want to play basketball, you can join a rec center or community league at a beginner level. And generally, the people already involved in those hobbies are thrilled to have someone with whom they can share their passion. 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. How are we supposed to thrive as an industry if we are actively hostile to growing our audience?"

I really loved the comparison to other hobbies. Makes you think of LFR. Especially when a player says (probably to prepare the healers), "this is my first time tanking this raid". I've been in two runs with a new tank that didn't get kicked ASAP, the rest were people saying "I don't want to waste my time."