Developer abuse (BioWare and other studios)

The title of this thread, and its content, is still amusing.

What a load of horseshit!

For centuries, there have been entertainers. Sometimes, they get pasted by rotten fruit and vegetables until they leave the stage. This is the price for publicly performing poorly.

Abuse.... We have really learned to stretch words and their meaning to fit a narrative. Child abuse, spouse abuse, dev abuse. Are you fucking kidding me?

Fuck David Gaider with a woman's hoo ha, that guy is pitiful.

If you act like a useless piece of shit hardcore gamer troll then don't act surprised if the devs and the rest of the world treat like an useless piece of shit hardcore gamer troll.

Plus death threats are NOT helpful (if the dev thinks it's serious then you can be in serious legal trouble and the First Amendment does NOT protect death threats) in any way and just shows that makes the devs more resistant to talking to the players about concerns and problems on both sides.

I can see elements of several recent posts that have merit, even if apparently conflicting.

Would appreciate if the sharing of those views doesn't develop into a fight.

Thanks.

Is there any point to this discussion? Some of y'all would argue if water is wet.

First of all, I'm going to ignore the whole death threat thing. Those people are nutters and need to have their heads examined, and there's nothing any dev can do about that, sadly.
I don't think we can generalize the relationship between all video game developers as a whole and all video game fans as a whole. I'm pretty sure that dev-fan relationships vary from studio to studio, so the answer depends on the individual studio in question. Aside from BioWare, there is a handful of other dev studios I follow with enough interest to have a general idea about their relationship with their fan base, these being Cloud Imperium Games, CD Projekt RED, Digital Extremes, Fatshark and Neocore Games. Of all those, BioWare clearly has the worst relationship and communication with their fans. They are the only ones who use so much corp speak that many of their statements seem to be more meant to obfuscate than to clarify, they are the worst at handling criticism, and they have made the most statements that turned out to be untrue (often not that much) later. So, in BioWare's case, my advice would be this (regardless of how realistic it would be for any of this to ever happen):
- be open and honest with your fanbase
- don't bullshit us, we aren't idiots (mostly)
- don't tell us you're going to do X and then do Y or nothing at all
- don't brush away our criticism with BS like "you can't handle change", especially not after you charged a premium price for a rush job

The other studios I mentioned certainly also get their share of bitching, but their relationships with their respective fan bases seem mostly positive and free of abuse. They don't need to wonder about a way back, they're already there.


They should ponder about the following question: why do other devs have a better relationship with their fans than we do and what are they doing differently? Observe and learn.


I think that comes down to expectation management, also a part of the communication between devs and fans. Devs, be open about your product! Show it off! The more people see, the more they can manage their expectations, and the less room for unwarranted entitlement. As far as the fans go, well - if we don't like what we see, we should respectfully suggest changes, if it's not too late, or simply not buy the product. Hurling insults or even threats over it is not helpful at all. It should go without saying that threats are never acceptable regardless of circumstances.


As soon as it contains insults, I'd say.


People should be able to say what they like, but not necessarily how they like. Criticism should never be policed, but insults are unproductive - maybe they shouldn't be outright deleted, but moved to a specially designated "troll pen" section of a forum. That said, of all the fan communities I know (see above), the BioWare fan base seems to be the most volatile, probably due to a rather high presence of disgruntled (ex-)fans, a phenomenon I haven't experienced with any of the other dev studios I follow. This, combined with BioWare's poor communication, is what led to the current bad relationship.

In my opinion, BioWare's problems with their fanbase in particular started with the "you can't handle change" reaction to valid DA2 criticism, making it clear for the first time how much they care about our opinions. But they made so many communication blunders that it isn't even funny anymore.

A big "bazaar" announcement, only for people to find out that it was limited to 5 countries.
A mysterious release date leaflet in the DAO box that everyone expected to refer to DA2, and when that got delayed, they claimed that it had always been about their silly facebook game.
"DA2 wasn't rushed."
"ME3 won't have 3 bespoke endings."
"DAI will have PC controls you'll be super super pleased with." (by PC gamers for PC gamers!)
"We will polish this game until it is taken from out cold dead hands."

As long as it goes on like this, their relationship with their fan base won't ever improve.

This response is false. You are lying.

Words have never killed a person. A person killed a person at someone's command, at best. This is a logical leap, and is simply an untruth. No one speaks a Word of Power and strikes anybody down, unless I have missed something from the tabloids lately?

The bullying part may be true, but it absolutely makes no sense. The "fights" I had with a couple neighborhood bullies were hardly fights at all, and I was not Chuck Norris. I never became friends with any of them, but that was also the end of them messing with me and my friends.

So, SofaJockey, you are technically correct on the personal experience part. It just doesn't make sense, unless we are talking about gangs of bullies... Never encountered that myself, so ok.

I have read and heard countless times how a kid was bullied online and/or offline via spoken words and written words so badly that they killed themselves because of WORDS not physical attacks or threats but constantly calling names and telling them that "they deserve to die" because they're of different race, religion, sexual orientation, skin color, over weight, and etc and the only advice they can get from parents, teachers, and others is: "Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you" or "grow a thicker skin" which before the internet was bullshit and now of days it is just more bullshit.

I've seen people leave this very forum because they felt harassed or bullied or just got so angry with people's words that they left and/or were banned.

Should I also mention military orders, execution orders, politics, or various Holy texts that people died because some read and/or spoke.

Now please stop pestering me.  

Some people with mouths use guns to kill people.

(and no we're not going to solve 'gun control' in this thread...  )

Back to developer abuse:

In my view, companies are entitled to receive harsh feedback (merited or not) as free speech.

Individuals should not be liable to abuse unless they act as a 'mouthpiece' for the organization, and even then I think there are distinctions between being abuse to a company (fair game) and an individual (not).

And if someone does go too far using 'free speech' principles, that doesn't prevent them being called out as an asshole by others or prevent their 'free speech' being removed or punished under whatever rules apply on the platform where it is shared.

Yes, 'pointed' criticism got the job done with BFII, though there's a line to draw even there (ME3 endings the same).
A line we must all draw for ourselves.

^This^