4 ms·

Can you expand on this thought?

by eogas 15y ago

patio11 15y ago
Gamers don't know that projects fail all the time even with millions invested in them, that 2,000 donations of $10 each is not a large amount of money, that amateur artists do not on average have habits which resemble teams at megacorps, etc. Devs don't understand that gamers are the worst customers on the face of the earth, that for the price of an expresso they think you have an obligation to listen to their entitled whining for years, that the community they participate in and value belonging to is frequently a toxic cesspool of humanity, and that being an indie developer is approximately ~10% or so about making video games. (The other 90% is marketing, customer support, community management, marketing, accounting, marketing, taxes, marketing, hiring, marketing, etc. Quite similar to selling bingo cards to elementary schoolteachers.)
- frio 15y ago
  I like your point about gamers being the worst customers on the face of the earth - much as I'm a gamer myself and love the community, as an ISP employee, I can only testify to the truth of that statement. To the first, however, as a qualified software engineer and just general computer user - any dev worth his chops should absolutely be running backups more resilient than copying between two boxes in the same residence (with the likes of CrashPlan, it's so easy!), and at the very least using some form of off-site VCS. $20,000 easily covers a (decent) yearly github subscription, for instance, which would absolutely cover this instance.
- ismarc 15y ago
  I'm not sure about the feeling of entitlement. I think it's actually the opposite. Until very recently, the video gaming scene was a game was done, gold pressed, shipped and never touched again. No feedback, no updates, no changes, so gamers would quite prominently voice their opinions. This had no chance at all of affecting the current game but provided feedback on how to do the NEXT game. This same method of voicing opinions has been carried over into an environment where you can react to them and improve the game without a change in tone. It also strongly falls into the fact that if people are complaining about it, it means they care and you have customers.
- vacri 15y ago
  I find that almost all non-technical users have absolutely no idea what it takes to make software, but that gamers really take it personally and are incredibly vocal about it. For this, you get the shortest attention span - games don't live long in general, and a lot of whining about price, which has some merit as a consumer - if your office software was only useful for 6-15 hours, you wouldn't want to pay much to keep repurchasing it either. But yeah, I've never seen such a self-entitled client base as computer gamers.

Can you expand on this thought?

by eogas 15y ago

Can you expand on this thought?

Gamers don't know that projects fail all the time even with millions invested in them, that 2,000 donations of $10 each is not a large amount of money, that amateur artists do not on average have habits which resemble teams at megacorps, etc. Devs don't understand that gamers are the worst customers on the face of the earth, that for the price of an expresso they think you have an obligation to listen to their entitled whining for years, that the community they participate in and value belonging to is frequently a toxic cesspool of humanity, and that being an indie developer is approximately ~10% or so about making video games. (The other 90% is marketing, customer support, community management, marketing, accounting, marketing, taxes, marketing, hiring, marketing, etc. Quite similar to selling bingo cards to elementary schoolteachers.)

frio 15y ago
I like your point about gamers being the worst customers on the face of the earth - much as I'm a gamer myself and love the community, as an ISP employee, I can only testify to the truth of that statement. To the first, however, as a qualified software engineer and just general computer user - any dev worth his chops should absolutely be running backups more resilient than copying between two boxes in the same residence (with the likes of CrashPlan, it's so easy!), and at the very least using some form of off-site VCS. $20,000 easily covers a (decent) yearly github subscription, for instance, which would absolutely cover this instance.
ismarc 15y ago
I'm not sure about the feeling of entitlement. I think it's actually the opposite. Until very recently, the video gaming scene was a game was done, gold pressed, shipped and never touched again. No feedback, no updates, no changes, so gamers would quite prominently voice their opinions. This had no chance at all of affecting the current game but provided feedback on how to do the NEXT game. This same method of voicing opinions has been carried over into an environment where you can react to them and improve the game without a change in tone. It also strongly falls into the fact that if people are complaining about it, it means they care and you have customers.
vacri 15y ago
I find that almost all non-technical users have absolutely no idea what it takes to make software, but that gamers really take it personally and are incredibly vocal about it. For this, you get the shortest attention span - games don't live long in general, and a lot of whining about price, which has some merit as a consumer - if your office software was only useful for 6-15 hours, you wouldn't want to pay much to keep repurchasing it either. But yeah, I've never seen such a self-entitled client base as computer gamers.