Polygon Article - Developer Harassment
polycounter lvl 9
Apologies if someone posted this already, I tried to do a quick search but didn't see it.
I was wondering if you guys got to read this article and what you thought of it? Our company has experienced a bit of this, and it's just shocking to me the amount of vitriol gamers will send a studio's way when they don't agree with something. It's really sad that something like this has made developers quit the industry. This topic came up a little bit in that thread about Phil Fish and the necessity of having a thick skin, but things like this (from the article) are really extreme:
"I did my best to avoid actually reading any of it, so I'm not quite certain how bad it got," Hepler said. "I was shown a sample of the forum posts by EA security and it included graphic threats to kill my children on their way out of school to show them that they should have been aborted at birth rather than have to have me as a mother."
Have any of you guys experienced this before? How do you deal with it? How do we deal with it as an industry? Criticism of our work goes with the territory, but clearly this kind of thing is not okay.
I was wondering if you guys got to read this article and what you thought of it? Our company has experienced a bit of this, and it's just shocking to me the amount of vitriol gamers will send a studio's way when they don't agree with something. It's really sad that something like this has made developers quit the industry. This topic came up a little bit in that thread about Phil Fish and the necessity of having a thick skin, but things like this (from the article) are really extreme:
"I did my best to avoid actually reading any of it, so I'm not quite certain how bad it got," Hepler said. "I was shown a sample of the forum posts by EA security and it included graphic threats to kill my children on their way out of school to show them that they should have been aborted at birth rather than have to have me as a mother."
Have any of you guys experienced this before? How do you deal with it? How do we deal with it as an industry? Criticism of our work goes with the territory, but clearly this kind of thing is not okay.
Replies
This doesn't just apply to game developers, but anyone online. There are lots of people being harassed regularly, and it is in part due to the perceived anonymity.
I believe anonymity and privacy is important, and being quickly eroded. There are places on the web that SHOULD remain anonymous, and we deserve our privacy as citizens. We need to draw some lines between what stays anonymous, and what is public. There are a lot of blurry lines out there.
If, as a developer, I could choose to engage in public/private correspondence and block anonymous correspondence, I would probably opt to do that...often. If you can't stand behind your words - why should I care about what you have to say?
Hell, we had a 2039480923 page long thread about the kid who was/is going to jail for saying literally the same type of thing. It is different context - his was a "threat" to a school & kids, and these are direct threats to creators, but the the same general idea of some kid posting something dumb in a social forum that to them - may have been a harmless joke, but to the rest of the world, outside of their underdeveloped heads, it is definitely not ok.
also:
[ame="
maybe instead of fast cars and houses that developers buy from success we should just buy plane tickets!
maybe because you will be put in jail (try outing yourself as gay in russia,or as christian in some fucked up countrys)
also, do you want to be associated with every dumb shit you once said (like when you were 15) ?
in real life nobody would remember that one time you said something stupid 20 years ago,
today, your future employer will most likely check facebook or whatever they search nowadays and will see the dumb shit you posted
also anonymity seems to work just fine here
maybe because its moderated, maybe because polycount somehow managed to attract all the right people
but, if it works here, the problem most likely isnt anonymity itself, but more the people posting there (wherever that is)
iam not saying anonymity doesnt do its part, but anonymity doesn't turn normal people into douches
i am wondering why the authorities didnt do anything ?
even if you are anonymous, you are still liable for breaking the laws, which he did
i mean, they arrested the league of legends kid for saying stupid stuff, so its possible.
I'm pretty sure it's something like this:
[ame="
Jokes aside, they probably get thousands of reports like that a day without any concrete evidence leading to someone.
it was from his facebook
http://www.vg247.com/2013/07/12/league-of-legends-player-jailed-in-texas-over-facebook-rant-released-on-bond/
also
this is one of the example how anonymity facilitate douchebag, because they think its all just exactly like in video game, there is no way most of them have balls to talk like that in real life.
[ame="
This doesn't even register to me compared to a lot of the shit I heard/said as a teenager to people in real life. No one in this video even makes a threat, they're just saying stupid bullshit.
I guess the polite Canadian stereotype is real?
whoops sorry if the video i posted it is not directly related , but the fact still nobody dare to make silly death threat/harassment even followed by lol without thinking the consequences in real life.
aand I d feel bad if it happen to someone. really.
I am not Canadian btw. but thanks for the stereotype tho ..
( but of course you will hear it from real criminals)
Edit: Also, if he had said it in real life he probably would have never been arrested.
sounds like you came from a rough neighborhood. I had one fan at a convention kind of meekly mumble that Warhammer was just a wow clone, but she got scared and ran away when my girlfriend gave here the "I will kill you for criticizing my boyfriend" look.
And yes I did, but the thing about that kids case is that he wasn't really making much of a threat or harassing anyone, he made a vulgar and offensive joke, which I think is pretty normal for teenagers of all backgrounds. You guys never said offensive things as teenagers that you would cringe in shame at as adults?
I think his problem wasn't that the internet gave him the courage to say something stupid, rather that he said it publicly assuming everyone would understand he was joking where most people have the sense to keep their crude jokes among people they know are comfortable with them.
Death threats are pretty foolish, I would rather see both publishers denounce the concept of player entitlement while having gamers push for more constructive means to push for changes they deem important. Better to boycot and tear apart a game with a strong argument, than to send death threats to individuals.
That said, I felt the article was mostly biased and not in any good way. Some things should be expected, especially from an international audience. Games are not just local products anymore, they hit a large number of cultures and their people.
A good example of this is Helper and her role in Dragon Age 2. I admit, I personally was pissed off at her too. Never met her, but seeing the comments she made about games and the fact she doesnt like to play them really hit a nerve (more or less why someone was given that kind of influence for a known AAA franchise and studio). It was worse though when I played Dragon Age 2 and for the first time in my life felt alienated and uncomfortable (from a game). Why? Because there was no way to get around the fact that one of the characters keeps pushing to put "his man part in my man butt". There was no way I could make choices prior to that interaction that said, hey not interested... and so it really alienated me as a player that it was forced on me, not once but a few times throughout the game. This is both due to it being a controversial aspect of our politics but also culture and the stimuli based on my environment. After doing a bit of research on why that design choice was made... I found out that Helper also had her own agenda and reminded me of someone who was perhaps too extreme in her views and desires. It felt like..."hey this person doesnt belong in the game dev business". I couldnt shake that feeling, it felt like it cheapened the game and alienated me as a user.
Now when you look at the game article, it said she received support from a lot of gay fans. And theres nothing wrong with that, but it helps highlight a very important part of game development... knowing your target audience and playing to the strengths of that audience. Obviously internationally, the controversial areas she pushed didnt mesh well with a wider international audience. This of this in the same way a game made in the US might demonize the chinese and take the role of the american soldier killing off the said chinese...and then wonder why it didnt sell well in China.
I think for the most part, the biggest desire for games is to be an escape, a coping mechanism and one free of the political sludge of every day life. When people like Helper come across as a type of person that injects agenda into a franchise some would consider "holy" (in part because of D&D rpgs which many of use remember fondly, and what Dragon Age was sold as), its no wonder there is a negative response.
So negative responses are fine, constructive actions to push or maintain change are fine, voting with your wallet, fine, but never targeting individuals, their kids, or any one they may love with physical harm.
-2cents
EA were quick to assume everyone was homophobic when voting the company as the worst of the year.
Death threats and mindless raging will not only be ruining peoples lives, they'll ruin the very criticism the people had in the first place.
There were for example a fantastic amount of valid complaints against Casey Hudson regarding the ME3 debacle once you had filtered through the frothing pointless posts.
That would be and have been an entirely different thread here on pc.