Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/09/25/gamer-culture-is-so-toxic-that.html
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we just can’t have nice things.
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I have always felt that the actual developers, as in the people who make games, as well as the customers to some extent, are the victims of marketing departments. There is no doubt that some game companies, especially the likes of Ubisoft, Activision, EA, Blizzard etc. are actually greedy and anti-customer in their marketing approach.
The problem ist that the developers seem to get most of the shit for it, when I’m pretty sure they would love to see their work being enjoyed without exploitative monetization schemes preying on addictive personalities and gameplay decisions being made not for the improvement of the game but for maximization of profits.
And of course, some people are just stupid antisocial assholes, especially in a demographic that consits mostly of young males.
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Consumer. n.
A customer who is always wrong.
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#LeaveTheRoom
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I think part of the problem might be angry teenagers being taken seriously.
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My husband has many many words on this topic, that he cannot say because … well, y’all read the article.
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I think the problem is more that public perception sees devs as representatives of the corporate entity, and all the flaws of corporate bureaucracy are projected onto them.
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The equivalence between “we are stuck a room where the dumbest, nastiest people are loudest” and “the culture is toxic” is troubling.
I’m sure many of the “people in the room” have no expectations whatsoever of working in the biz.
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Look how they treat women…
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Definitely first world problem.
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I despair of this thing. I want to refuse the idea that “gamer culture” is this shit.
Bloody hell, GAMER CULTURE, FOR REAL, would be that candid and open discussion BY DEVELOPERS, ARTIST, PRODUCERS, ETC… with FANS of the ins and out of our favorite things! Learning, understanding, sharing all that! Thats a vibrant culture I want to see and live in!
Instead we cant have that because some thugs have a “culture” of being loud twats. Well, I refuse to dignify them with that name.
They are the gamer KKK.
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Mind expanding on “they” a bit?
I’m asking because I consider myself a “gamer”, and I could give two scoots about other gamers’ and developers’ and commenters’ gender.
I assume, based on this, that you’re judging the loud, screamy, toxic super-minority with rage control problems, who are mostly very young, and are being actively pandered to by a predatory media sub-culture (not to mention the counterculture that feeds off of riling them up and saying “LOOK HOW EVIL THEY IS!”).
A lot of this is a platforming problem. YouTube is already taking steps to de-monetize these idiots, and that’s going a long way towards removing the financial incentive to keep whipping them up. Hopefully after that they’ll go after the inverse crowd that likes to poke them with a stick and play victim, because they’re almost as bad.
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Ugh, the comment about the $10K a month patreon guy is extremely disingenuous, Jim Sterling is someone who makes noise about bad industry practices and calls out developers who use these practices in their games. If you’re making your games to nickel and dime your customers after they’ve bought your product then why shouldn’t they be called out?, if you’re releasing an extremely buggy product and charging $30 for it why shouldn’t they be called out?
I fully agree that there is a massive amount of toxicity in the gaming “community”, they really are their own worst enemy but I also think comments like the one from this failnaut guy shows an ignorance or desire to paint things differently than they really are.
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Let’s hope the likes of thunderf00t goes with them. He is certainly one of the MRA/GG agent provocateurs.
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Sadly, the solution is the same as in any other line of work: Enjoy doing your job, and stay the fuck off social media. It has few, if any, redeeming qualities.
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I was reading a while ago that authors of young adult fiction are increasingly at risk of being targeted by vicious campaigns on social media.
Does this mean that “omg young adult literature culture is toxic!!1!1!eleven!” ?
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Here’s your positive parallel videogame culture chaser:
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As a part-time game dev, I can confirm the toxicity among gamers. My perception is that it’s a small percentage of the gamer population, though. That small percentage consists of sub-groups that I would like to refer to as ‘self-proclaimed beta testers’, the ‘I have a great idea for a new feature in your game’ gamers and ‘biggest fans turned total psychos’.
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I seem to recall in the early 90s sid meier giving the collective a “well, that’s enough of that” in the form of a line something very close to “have an idea for a feature? Grab a keyboard and learn some C…”
Armchairing has developed an intense air of self-endowed entitlement in the age of social media, but is definitely not new. Intensifying the phenomenon for game devs though, is at least in part the fact that it sits at the nexus of several media that have historocally drawn the most active armchairing (well, politics and parenting aside…) engineering, sports and art. Imagine a lovechild (hatechild?) of all the guys standing around saying “whoever designed this bridge was an idiot | my kids coulda painted that | where did this moron learn to throw a ball…”
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