Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes Cassandra, NaNoWriMoExpert, is hosting an awesome panel on novel writing Sunday AM, and I'm on it. Hope to see you there, writer folks!
Cassandra joe_da_bucket Hey, @patrickweekes, got anything going on at 10:45 tomorrow morning?
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes I BELIEVE that I am scheduled to hang out with you and some other awesome folks to talk about writing novels!
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah Did you know Patrick that there is an author with the same name as you? Maybe you'll meet him!
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Mark Darrah Retweeted ᴍ ᴏ ʟ ʟ ʏ @hibirds @patrickweekes @biomarkdarrah @mike_Laidlaw @bioware So I created my own variation of a map of Thedas in photoshop.
Mike Laidlaw @mike_Laidlaw I'll be heading in to the @edmontonexpo in a bit and around the BioWare base for a goodly bit. Stop by and say hello, if you get a chance.
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes On my way to #EdmontonExpo and, assuming I get a new wristband, a 10:45 panel on novel writing for NaNoWriMo!
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Extra Life Edmonton @yegextralife Take yourself & 4 guests on a tour of @bioware studios by winning the bid at yegextralife.org/auction ! All proceeds goes to @stollerykids Take a VIP tour of the studios and get a glimpse of the inner workings of your favorite gaming studio, BioWare!
Bendubs McCarthy @bendubsmac Spotted at Tokyo Game Show today. I don't wanna say they ripped of @bioware but it looks a lot like the Inquisition cover. #DAI
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes Yyyyyyup. A thread on transparency and toxic gamer culture.
John Epler @eplerjc Folks would be -staggered- by how much we share about our development with fellow devs.
Fernando Melo DiscoBabaloo Really good thread on why devs aren't as open about things as we wish we could be
Charles Randall @charlesrandall 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. I worry about what other topical hatred he's picking up on at the same time. I guess this leads into a bigger point. When you attack developers for "being political", that's a facet of the bullshit that forces us to keep things hidden from public view. The elements that contribute to harassing developers over perceived technical slights are the same elements as all the other hate out there. Next time you don't like a game, maybe consider just... moving on? What is the value of helping spread hate and toxicity? If more people accepted that it's okay to dislike a game and move on, rather than doubling down on harassment, things would be more open. If you are posting extremely negative things about a game you don't like, even with good intentions, you are contributing to this ethos. Being critical and explaining why you don't like something is fine. Dwelling on it, calling out the dev, or just talking shit is not. Let's be honest: dwelling on something you don't like also isn't healthy. Spend your time on what matters instead. Also: there's this idea that developers are secretive of what they are doing with respect to sharing with other devs: this is false. There's no real competition between developers. We love to talk and share, and so at best, a lot of stuff is "FrieNDA'd." Most developers know what their other developer friends are working on, even between AAA studios. Open secret. You know why we have to keep what we're doing secret from the public? Because of the toxic culture surrounding it. (Some people will say marketing and they are not wrong but that's the difference between secrecy and WIDE knowledge.) God help you if you let any amount of the public know what you are working on before it's set in stone. Games change during development, this is a universal constant no developer would argue with, but toxic culture can't handle that. If you think I'm wrong on any points in this thread, please compare the movie industry to the games industry. Sometimes we know about movies that are "in development" years and years before anyone even starts working on them. That wouldn't fly here. Shout out to all my friends who do community management for games. They deal with a lot of bullshit they should never have had to.
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John Epler @eplerjc Folks would be -staggered- by how much we share about our development with fellow devs.
Jane Ng @thatjaneng There are even whole conferences dedicated to sharing development called Game Development Conference 🙃
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes ...where we often say very little because someone is standing next to us ready to blast whatever we do say out online with no context.
Jane Ng @thatjaneng True, the real talk sharing is outside them halls at chill hangouts
Staff Mini-Profile Theme: DragonKingReborn Games: Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Mass Effect Andromeda, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Dragon Age The Veilguard Prime Posts: 887 Prime Likes: 590 Posts: 21,622 Likes: 44,636
Bendubs McCarthy @bendubsmac Spotted at Tokyo Game Show today. I don't wanna say they ripped of @bioware but it looks a lot like the Inquisition cover. #DAI
"Kneel before the Lord Dragon, or you will be knelt." 21 Feb 2019 at 6:59am - It has not been forgotten. It will not be forgiven. We've now met seven times... Revenge is ice cream - Serza, April 2020 Also known as Mike, David, Scott or Bruce
I can totally understand what says on how toxic a community can be and their opinions on devs. Totally unjustified most of the time. What makes it even worse is that most don't even get this (see message from Charles Randall) at all. We barely know what goes on their day to day lives, yet so many treat them like they are machines that run 24/7. They forget they are human beings like we all are . And whenever you say to this to said community, almost every single one of them points fingers at you, like they do at devs, that you are the enemy or something. Makes me wonder where it all went wrong along the way and maybe more importantly, how to get rid of it?
John Epler @eplerjc Folks would be -staggered- by how much we share about our development with fellow devs.
Jane Ng @thatjaneng There are even whole conferences dedicated to sharing development called Game Development Conference 🙃
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes ...where we often say very little because someone is standing next to us ready to blast whatever we do say out online with no context.
Jane Ng @thatjaneng True, the real talk sharing is outside them halls at chill hangouts
John Epler @eplerjc My talks have two passes, and one is 'how can I make this hard to take out of context'.
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes John Epler ( @eplerjc) on romances: "How can I make this hard..."
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I can totally understand what says on how toxic a community can be and their opinions on devs. Totally unjustified most of the time. What makes it even worse is that most don't even get this (see message from Charles Randall) at all. We barely know what goes on their day to day lives, yet so many treat them like they are machines that run 24/7. They forget they are human beings like we all are . And whenever you say to this to said community, almost every single one of them points fingers at you, like they do at devs, that you are the enemy or something. Makes me wonder where it all went wrong along the way and maybe more importantly, how to get rid of it?
Some ideas for the player side of things:
Understand what constitutes abusive and toxic behavior; make certain you are not participating in what you claim to abhor.
Make an effort to call out your friends if they are being toxic and abusive, and distance yourself from groups that condone abuse.
Stop rewarding people with attention when they are abusive or misbehave - block and ban and freeze with impunity, if necessary w/o warning.
For devs, don't make games that reward the sort of personalities that thrive on abuse and toxicity; don't play to those players.
Be the sort of person in public, that you want see reflected in your community; lead by example.
Protect the vulnerable people on your team or in your community who receive disproportionate abuse from the most toxic parts of the community.
Building on the previous thought, take people seriously when they say they are being hurt, and give them the tools to protect themselves.
Make an effort to diagnose and deal with major internal problems, before they become a monolith that "fans" can use for ammunition; Andromeda really seemed to suffer greatly from this, though I've only watched from the outside.
I can totally understand what says on how toxic a community can be and their opinions on devs. Totally unjustified most of the time. What makes it even worse is that most don't even get this (see message from Charles Randall) at all. We barely know what goes on their day to day lives, yet so many treat them like they are machines that run 24/7. They forget they are human beings like we all are . And whenever you say to this to said community, almost every single one of them points fingers at you, like they do at devs, that you are the enemy or something. Makes me wonder where it all went wrong along the way and maybe more importantly, how to get rid of it?
Some ideas for the player side of things:
Understand what constitutes abusive and toxic behavior; make certain you are not participating in what you claim to abhor.
Make an effort to call out your friends if they are being toxic and abusive, and distance yourself from groups that condone abuse.
Stop rewarding people with attention when they are abusive or misbehave - block and ban and freeze with impunity, if necessary w/o warning.
For devs, don't make games that reward the sort of personalities that thrive on abuse and toxicity; don't play to those players.
Be the sort of person in public, that you want see reflected in your community; lead by example.
Protect the vulnerable people on your team or in your community who receive disproportionate abuse from the most toxic parts of the community.
Building on the previous thought, take people seriously when they say they are being hurt, and give them the tools to protect themselves.
Make an effort to diagnose and deal with major internal problems, before they become a monolith that "fans" can use for ammunition; Andromeda really seemed to suffer greatly from this, though I've only watched from the outside.
Importantly, there are also system-level problems with how people interact online. A good analogy* is when people mass-migrated to cities at the start of the industrial revolution. They weren't trying to give each other diseases, but diseases spread like wildfire - cholera, plague, flu. Since humans had only just begun living in dense cities, they didn't know how to build sanitation systems, how to keep sewage away from drinking water, how to isolate epidemics. If individual people had changed their hygiene, it wouldn't have done much good. The wider infrastructure would still be unsanitary.
Toxic behaviors spread like diseases. They experience their own natural selection - behaviors that are better at spreading survive and become more virulent, with little regard to whether they're beneficial to their human hosts. The internet clumps human brains closer than they've ever been, making it much, much easier for good and bad behaviors to spread rapidly.
We don't yet understand how to build proper "sanitation" systems for the internet. Just like the people at the start of the industrial revolution, we've got (digital) sewage mixing with our (digital) drinking water. Websites are gradually learning how to build out their sanitation infrastructure (How is blocking supported? What's the right level of moderation? How do auto-filtering tools factor in? Ways to subtly encourage nicer behavior? How to protect people's addresses and financial info from highly-motivated hate mobs?), but it's still in its infancy.
--- *which I'm lifting directly from The Internet of Garbage
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes Yyyyyyup. A thread on transparency and toxic gamer culture.
John Epler @eplerjc Folks would be -staggered- by how much we share about our development with fellow devs.
Fernando Melo DiscoBabaloo Really good thread on why devs aren't as open about things as we wish we could be
Charles Randall @charlesrandall 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.
*snip*
Culture is pretty toxic these days all the way around. Make no mistake about that. Shit is real out here. People are getting killed out here. This is not just gaming. Gaming does not live in a vacuum.
But to bring this back to gaming: I vehemently disagree with personal harassment and all that bullshit going on. There is a viciousness. A rabid nature to it. To the point that the tin foil mad hatter in me feels like there is something much deeper going on than the clickbaiters making a living off your demise and your run of the mill trolls.
I do feel like this is going to be used against people that have anything critical to say about a developer or game someone else likes. It already is. Other fans get pissy with you if you if criticize their favorite developer or game. They try to belittle you. It would be nice if they could state their love for a game or dev and..move on. Let others dissent.
What I'm talking about, though, and what this guy is talking about is really two different things. He's talking about when criticism becomes abuse. Although, this guy sounds more like he's angry and lashing out right now. I'm not actually surprised that they talk to each other about what they're developing. That's what people in the same industry do. They talk shop.
From this side of the Eluvian I must say I, too, feel like gaming is becoming more toxic. The industry. Publishers have become increasingly sleazy and deeply intrusive with their microtransactions; too many games on launch are glitchy, constantly crash, crash your system, servers aren't ready. And it keeps happening. I don't need to be a game dev to know when I've gotten the short end of the stick with a crap product. Again. But I don't feel like they "hear me", though, because it keeps happening. Or maybe they glance and roll their eyes.
Except for the vicious and persistent abusers, I think some of these issues come down to a lack of trust. I think gamers don't trust the industry anymore. They have their reasons, too. And it's not only from one company. It's this one over here, then that one there. It adds up to the point where it seems like you're all just full of shit.
Again, it's sad that I have to repeat this, but even that does not warrant an effort to completely grind another human being into the ground. I don;t understand that. I don;t have that kind of patience to keep it at like that, either. I mean, yeah, my bright crystal has flared with fiery flame from time to time. But even then. I say what I gotta say, maybe a follow up then I'm done. I'm not chasing you across the damn internet. Ack.
I don't herd Lord Woolsey's, either. Or that giant Druffalo. Or the Golden Halla. Yeeah, I said it. I don't fetch the golden halla. I'll close the rifts, kill the demons, then you go find that little fvkr yourself.
From this side of the Eluvian I must say I, too, feel like gaming is becoming more toxic. The industry. Publishers have become increasingly sleazy and deeply intrusive with their microtransactions; too many games on launch are glitchy, constantly crash, crash your system, servers aren't ready. And it keeps happening. I don't need to be a game dev to know when I've gotten the short end of the stick with a crap product. Again. But I don't feel like they "hear me", though, because it keeps happening. Or maybe they glance and roll their eyes.
Except for the vicious and persistent abusers, I think some of these issues come down to a lack of trust. I think gamers don't trust the industry anymore. They have their reasons, too. And it's not only from one company. It's this one over here, then that one there. It adds up to the point where it seems like you're all just full of shit.
(This entire post isn't directed at you rapscallioness; I'm mainly using it as a jumping-off point for my own views.)
The problem with this is that the gamers take it out on the wrong people. The devs themselves don't want to release a buggy product. They have creator/worker pride, as well as being gamers themselves. But there are deadlines. Sometimes those deadlines can get pushed back, and sometimes they can't. The blame for that goes to the corporate overlords. The artists and coders and all of those sorts have no say over any of those decisions.
But... other times it's mismanagement from the top down, as happened with MEA, which was so bad that they only really got a couple of years' worth of straight development, perhaps less, out of the five years they had available (if that Kotaku expose is to be believed, at any rate).
And while I don't agree with abuse either, MEA development is the perfect example of everything going wrong, particularly when it comes to the appearance of developers intentionally misleading the players on things like romances, more specifically LGB romances. Their behavior surrounding that was absolutely shameful. I know many LGB players who will never forgive Bioware for that, and that sentiment is bleeding over into their feelings for the entire studio, regardless of the fact that the ME and DA teams are separate (which I've said on numerous occasions, in several threads, to players that are completely demoralized). They felt devalued, they felt used (for their dollars), and they felt lied to. Even with the patching of Jaal as bi, there are some players for whom the damage is done. They have no faith left in Bioware. NOT to give them what they want, but to treat them as valued customers, like they matter.
It's incredibly sad, but Bioware did that to themselves.
So yeah, while again I don't believe that abuse is EVER appropriate, I think it's important to separate that from player anger that comes from a legitimate place. It's not imaginary, based on false perceptions, it's based on real things that developers have said.
I for one would prefer complete silence from the devs over what happened with MEA. But then, during the aftermath, they made it worse with their spare communication. Even though they made Jaal bi, they failed to present any evidence, in their words, to show that they understood the core of the problem. It wasn't about the raw numbers of romance options, it was about the quality of romance options a particular segment of their players received on release.
In light of all that, it's pretty difficult for me to drum up sympathy, even as I don't agree with heaping abuse on people. For many things, I am usually the one in a thread to try to talk players down, using logic and practicality, because I do understand the limitations of resources, and I know that I know next to nothing about game development. But there is really no excuse for what happened with MEA's romances, and I say that as a person who liked most of the game, even as I acknowledge its problems.
(Yes, I realize that continual focus on romances seems silly, but they are important to a great many people. These characters and their romances aren't notches on a bedpost, but a validation of a player's self. That is why the LGB romances are so important.)
Mountains. Cold. "Let's bring Dorian!" It's good to be Champion!
I'm not gonna lie, this thing where creators more and more often turn around and mention toxic fandom makes me feel bad. Because I'm a fan and while I know I don't participate in the actions that gets labelled toxic it still feels like this wide brush applies to me. And it just feels really weird and alienating to see the creator of this thing you so enjoy consuming turn around and say "Yeah a large part of my fans are toxic/disgusting/gross." Now, when I was younger, I used to get really triggered when people didn't add "Not all men" when they were complaining about something men did, I outgrew that and maybe I'll outgrow this too because I know this culture exists and I also know (mostly) that I don't contribute to it.
OTOH the cynic in me wants some clearer lines drawn first, because if I look at something like Mr Randall posts I get kiiinda concerned. Would me contributing to a forum and as a side effect me relatively frequently mentioning that I think MEA was a bad game count as contributing to this toxic culture? One wonders whether there's an avenue of objection or counterargument that he would not qualify as falling into one of those three perspectives he's automatically blocking. If that's what happening, if it's a move to close a conversation rather than find a way to do something respectfully the future of gaming is gonna be a fracture between dev endorsed "real fans" that praise anything and everything and everyone else who should either say nothing and just move on and those who have legitimate gripes but still like the game enough to have gripes.
. 
