Bioware-veteran: "Spelbranschen är förpestad av arga gamers"

Vi vet alla hur det ser ut online. Folk skriker, skäller och kallar varandra namn så otäcka att självaste Prussiluskan mår fysiskt illa. Och inte ser det ut att bli särskilt mycket bättre heller då online-hyfset i spel som League of Legends, Counter-Strike, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare samt Battlegrounds nått nya låg-nivåer under det senaste året. Detta är naturligtvis något som bekymrar diverse spelutvecklare och enligt en av veteranerna bakom spelserier som Assassin's Creed samt Mass Effect, Charles Randall, är det denna förpestade atmosfär som gjort att utvecklare slutat varit öppna och ärliga mot sin kundbas. Såhär skrev han på Twitter under gårdagen om det faktum att de inte längre kommunicerar på ett transparent och öppet vis med spelarna som avser att inhandla deras produkter:

"The other day a friend commented to me "I wish game developers were more candid about development." He was surprised when I said we are. The caveat is that we're only candid with other industry people. Because gamer culture is so toxic that being candid in public is dangerous. See that recent twitter thread about game design tricks to make games better, filled with gamers "angry" about "being lied to."

Forums and comment sections are full of dunning-kruger specialists who are just waiting for any reason to descend on actual developers. See any thread where some dumbass comments how "easy" it would be to, say, add multiplayer or change engines. Any dev who talks candidly about the difficulty of something like that just triggers a wave of people questioning their entire resumé. "Questioning" here being an absurd euphemism for "becoming a target of an entire faction of gamers for harassment or worse."

There are still topics I can't touch because I was candid once and it resulted in dumb headlines, misunderstandings, and harassment. So while I'd talk candidly about certain big topics right now — I know doing so would lead to another wave of assholes throwing shit at me. (And of course I face almost nothing compared to women/PoC/lgtbq+ folk).

But here's the rub: all the stuff you ever wanted to know about game development would be out there if not for the toxic gaming community. We *love* to talk about development, the challenges we face, the problems we solve, the shortcuts we take. But it's almost never worth it. I did a public talk a couple weeks ago to a room full of all ages kids, and afterwards, a kid came up to me and was talking about stuff. And I shit you not, this kid (somewhere between 13-16 I'd guess) starts talking about how bad devs are because of a youtuber he watches. He nailed all the points, "bad engines", "being greedy", you name it. I was appalled.

I did my best to tell him that all those things people freak out about are normal and have justifications. I hope I got through a bit. But I expect he went back to consuming toxic culture via youtube personalities, and one day he'll probably harass a dev over nonsense." Link!

Vad tycker du, ligger det något i det som Randall skriver?