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I don’t understand what forces devs to participate directly in this public discourse. Barring those so small they can’t hire someone to run interference, why pr

I don’t understand what forces devs to participate directly in this public discourse. Barring those so small they can’t hire someone to run interference, why precisely are you publicly interacting with your customers? Anyone who works with the mass public, be they cashiers or physicians, knows damn well that the Public is terrible. Don’t give them a hotline into your head.

vvanders 9y ago
Did you read the article? He laid it out pretty clearly: > All of this is hardest on indies for two reasons. Firstly, because they are generally at the coal face of their games. They don’t have a marketing person standing between the hostile feedback and their work — it all comes in direct and unfiltered. Secondly most indies don’t make mass market games that appeal to the broadest cross section of players, and that include every feature under the sun. Lots of book authors and other artists who have to "promote" themselves on social media run into similar issues.
- arkades 9y ago
  Did you read my comment? “Barring those so small they can’t hire someone to run interference,” Let’s both appreciate the moment.
  - vvanders 9y ago
    You're assuming that game developers want to live in some sort of isolated ivory tower. Everyone I knew who got into the industry did it to share the joy that gaming brought them to other people. It's an explicitly social industry in that respect. Also, I don't know of a single place that can afford to run interference for every single dev. Even on the large AAA stuff I worked on we were lucky to have 1 or 2 marketing people who were even aware the dev team existed.
    - arkades 9y ago
      I’m assuming no such thing. I’m saying this is a “have your cake and eat it too” issue. Either you’re accessible to millions or you arent, and that choice comes with benefits and drawbacks. If one can’t handle the drawbacks of being publicly accessible to millions, one should go to great pains to prevent that, rather than lamenting the inevitable - and I do mean inevitable - long tail of jerks. And when I say “run interference,” I mean “handle all public interactions for the product, which your devs shouldn’t be involved in at all, because they’re devs, not marketers.”
      - yannyu 9y ago
        While what you're saying may be true, maybe we should be questioning why this kind of communication is considered acceptable and without consequence in the gaming community.
        arkades 9y ago
        Whether it’s acceptable isn’t the point. If 70% of people do it, it’s acceptable. If .1% of people do it, it’s not - but if you’re taking .1% of a very large number, the result is untenable for those on the receiving end. This is a problem -without- requiring it to be acceptable behavior.
      - mattmanser 9y ago
        It's ok to be an asshole because it's over the internet? These people wouldn't say what they're saying to others in real life. It's a serious problem with online interactions, especially in the gaming field where people get unreasonably passionate and there's a lot of sexually frustrated young men needing to vent their anger. Hell, I've been an asshole here on HN, I know I have been, it's so much easier to be without seeing someone's face. It doesn't make it ok or acceptable though, and unfortunately I feel I have to downvote and speak against you because what you're doing is defending hate and evil. It shouldn't have to be a cost of business, it's not business, it's an unfortunate side effect of the free and open and anonymous internet. It doesn't mean we should accept it though.
  - dang 9y ago
    Can you please not engage in flamewars on Hacker News? You've arguably crossed the line in this thread, and it's quite unnecessary. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Pfhreak 9y ago
Games have credits. Developers have Twitter accounts. Devs are excited about their work, share what they are working on. The devs are not seeking these interactions at all.
- arkades 9y ago
  All of my patients know my name. It’s on a badge, with a picture ID and all. This includes drug seekers, people looking for a suit, a handout, and just a general smattering of crazy folks. Yet they don’t manage to find my fb, my Twitter, my LinkedIn. Part of this is that devs plug deeply into social media, personally and professionally, and have few (or no) firewalls between the two. Unless you -have- to be the public face of a product, your professional media interactions shouldn’t be accessible to the masses. Your private definitely shouldn’t be. They need to be heavily firewalled. If I can trivially message the lead dev of my favorite game, he’s done something wrong. If I can reach him on a private account he can’t just burn or ignore, he’s done a lot wrong. The internet hosts the majority of people on earth: it’s a very, very long tail of crazy, poorly socialized, immature, etc. There is no changing that if you are accessible to seven billion people, some tiny percent of that will amount to an overwhelming amount of shit. The answer is jealously guarding your privacy and communications channels, which isn’t something I’ve seen in these discussions. Im not trying to victim blame here. I just don’t see as fruitful lamenting something that boils down to “dealing with the public en masse sucks.” It does, and it will:
  - Pfhreak 9y ago
    Think about scale. A good indie game might have hundreds of thousands or millions of players. Is that the same order of magnitude of patients you see?
    - arkades 9y ago
      No, of course it isn’t. But then, I’m pseudonymous or anonymous everywhere, and do my level best to keep my pseudonyms unrelated to one another across multiple platforms. As opposed to letting my patients trivially connect my real name to my various social media channels.
ericmcer 9y ago
Promotion is vital to an indie game-dev. If they don't spread information about their game via the usual social media channels it will sit untouched and unknown. It is a super necessary part of modern entrepreneurship.
swivelmaster 9y ago
Unless you have unlimited time or financial resources, you can't make a great game without having a dialog with your audience. Game developers' instincts are not infallible and they need to be able to get feedback and suggestions from their audience. Unfortunately, some of that feedback might be 'die in a fire.' edit: And there's also the matter of games with live service components, where you're in a state of constantly tweaking the game based on feedback, potentially for years.
m3mnoch 9y ago
let me introduce you to mobygames: http://www.mobygames.com/game/xbox-one/disney-infinity-30-edition-starter-pack/credits http://www.mobygames.com/game/xbox-one/disney-infinity-30-ed... like movies, games have credits. entertainment products (movies, games, music, books, etc.) have traditionally been about following talent around to find more work by them. we're all basically entertainers. that, and angry gamers can chase down people to yell at. especially the higher you are in the responsibility chain, the easier you are to find. linkedin makes sure of that. resumes and all that. because, you know, game devs want jobs, too. this often means game developers don't have the choice to not be derided in public. not unless step one to joining a game team is the switch your entire life to "private". delist your home address. everything. and, i know plenty of devs who've had to. we all shrug and say, "man, that sucks." because the difference between making games and making boring, insurance middleware? nobody really cares about enterprise middleware as craft. nobody wants to do it, much less thinks they can do it better. EVERYONE passionately thinks/hopes/wishes/wants to make better games than you. (. . . well, maybe not everyone, but certainly a whole lotta folks)

vvanders 9y ago

Did you read the article? He laid it out pretty clearly: > All of this is hardest on indies for two reasons. Firstly, because they are generally at the coal face of their games. They don’t have a marketing person standing between the hostile feedback and their work — it all comes in direct and unfiltered. Secondly most indies don’t make mass market games that appeal to the broadest cross section of players, and that include every feature under the sun. Lots of book authors and other artists who have to "promote" themselves on social media run into similar issues.

arkades 9y ago
Did you read my comment? “Barring those so small they can’t hire someone to run interference,” Let’s both appreciate the moment.
- vvanders 9y ago
  You're assuming that game developers want to live in some sort of isolated ivory tower. Everyone I knew who got into the industry did it to share the joy that gaming brought them to other people. It's an explicitly social industry in that respect. Also, I don't know of a single place that can afford to run interference for every single dev. Even on the large AAA stuff I worked on we were lucky to have 1 or 2 marketing people who were even aware the dev team existed.
  - arkades 9y ago
    I’m assuming no such thing. I’m saying this is a “have your cake and eat it too” issue. Either you’re accessible to millions or you arent, and that choice comes with benefits and drawbacks. If one can’t handle the drawbacks of being publicly accessible to millions, one should go to great pains to prevent that, rather than lamenting the inevitable - and I do mean inevitable - long tail of jerks. And when I say “run interference,” I mean “handle all public interactions for the product, which your devs shouldn’t be involved in at all, because they’re devs, not marketers.”
    - yannyu 9y ago
      While what you're saying may be true, maybe we should be questioning why this kind of communication is considered acceptable and without consequence in the gaming community.
      - arkades 9y ago
        Whether it’s acceptable isn’t the point. If 70% of people do it, it’s acceptable. If .1% of people do it, it’s not - but if you’re taking .1% of a very large number, the result is untenable for those on the receiving end. This is a problem -without- requiring it to be acceptable behavior.
    - mattmanser 9y ago
      It's ok to be an asshole because it's over the internet? These people wouldn't say what they're saying to others in real life. It's a serious problem with online interactions, especially in the gaming field where people get unreasonably passionate and there's a lot of sexually frustrated young men needing to vent their anger. Hell, I've been an asshole here on HN, I know I have been, it's so much easier to be without seeing someone's face. It doesn't make it ok or acceptable though, and unfortunately I feel I have to downvote and speak against you because what you're doing is defending hate and evil. It shouldn't have to be a cost of business, it's not business, it's an unfortunate side effect of the free and open and anonymous internet. It doesn't mean we should accept it though.
- dang 9y ago
  Can you please not engage in flamewars on Hacker News? You've arguably crossed the line in this thread, and it's quite unnecessary. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Pfhreak 9y ago

Games have credits. Developers have Twitter accounts. Devs are excited about their work, share what they are working on. The devs are not seeking these interactions at all.

arkades 9y ago
All of my patients know my name. It’s on a badge, with a picture ID and all. This includes drug seekers, people looking for a suit, a handout, and just a general smattering of crazy folks. Yet they don’t manage to find my fb, my Twitter, my LinkedIn. Part of this is that devs plug deeply into social media, personally and professionally, and have few (or no) firewalls between the two. Unless you -have- to be the public face of a product, your professional media interactions shouldn’t be accessible to the masses. Your private definitely shouldn’t be. They need to be heavily firewalled. If I can trivially message the lead dev of my favorite game, he’s done something wrong. If I can reach him on a private account he can’t just burn or ignore, he’s done a lot wrong. The internet hosts the majority of people on earth: it’s a very, very long tail of crazy, poorly socialized, immature, etc. There is no changing that if you are accessible to seven billion people, some tiny percent of that will amount to an overwhelming amount of shit. The answer is jealously guarding your privacy and communications channels, which isn’t something I’ve seen in these discussions. Im not trying to victim blame here. I just don’t see as fruitful lamenting something that boils down to “dealing with the public en masse sucks.” It does, and it will:
- Pfhreak 9y ago
  Think about scale. A good indie game might have hundreds of thousands or millions of players. Is that the same order of magnitude of patients you see?
  - arkades 9y ago
    No, of course it isn’t. But then, I’m pseudonymous or anonymous everywhere, and do my level best to keep my pseudonyms unrelated to one another across multiple platforms. As opposed to letting my patients trivially connect my real name to my various social media channels.

ericmcer 9y ago

Promotion is vital to an indie game-dev. If they don't spread information about their game via the usual social media channels it will sit untouched and unknown. It is a super necessary part of modern entrepreneurship.

swivelmaster 9y ago

Unless you have unlimited time or financial resources, you can't make a great game without having a dialog with your audience. Game developers' instincts are not infallible and they need to be able to get feedback and suggestions from their audience. Unfortunately, some of that feedback might be 'die in a fire.' edit: And there's also the matter of games with live service components, where you're in a state of constantly tweaking the game based on feedback, potentially for years.

m3mnoch 9y ago

let me introduce you to mobygames: http://www.mobygames.com/game/xbox-one/disney-infinity-30-edition-starter-pack/credits http://www.mobygames.com/game/xbox-one/disney-infinity-30-ed... like movies, games have credits. entertainment products (movies, games, music, books, etc.) have traditionally been about following talent around to find more work by them. we're all basically entertainers. that, and angry gamers can chase down people to yell at. especially the higher you are in the responsibility chain, the easier you are to find. linkedin makes sure of that. resumes and all that. because, you know, game devs want jobs, too. this often means game developers don't have the choice to not be derided in public. not unless step one to joining a game team is the switch your entire life to "private". delist your home address. everything. and, i know plenty of devs who've had to. we all shrug and say, "man, that sucks." because the difference between making games and making boring, insurance middleware? nobody really cares about enterprise middleware as craft. nobody wants to do it, much less thinks they can do it better. EVERYONE passionately thinks/hopes/wishes/wants to make better games than you. (. . . well, maybe not everyone, but certainly a whole lotta folks)