Dear Player: I love you, let's talk

HappyElephant

Most of you have probably read this article posted a couple of months ago now https://www.polygon.com/2019/12/26/20976550/developers-players-video-games-empathy

Thokri

Cool propaganda posters.

Sadly reality is that modern gaming industry development is for most strickly business.
It varies greatly on genre and platform (Mobile being worst, irl not met anyone who did that for purely for passion) and I know couple who simply switched careers because they could not bear anymore how certain practises cheapen games. (Also because as coder you get better paycheck elsewhere on most cases)
Although my experiences limit mostly people on indie-scale and school world on subject, on other industry I can say that spark dies fast after school and couple first years of working and I don't expect gaming indudstry be different on modern day.(What I know from irl friend, it is worse)

I truly wish it wasn't so but life has funny way of always disapponting you.

snoozy

no one at zos ever wrote:

Dear Player: I love you, let's talk

Rake

no

SpiderCultist

Dear player: I want your money, let's talk (about our amazing loot boxes)

barney2525

Dear Player : let's talk

signed

Ben Dover

HappyElephant

snoozy wrote: »

no one at zos ever wrote:

Dear Player: I love you, let's talk

LOL!

StormeReigns

Thokri wrote: »

Cool propaganda posters.

Sadly reality is that modern gaming industry development is for most strickly business.
It varies greatly on genre and platform (Mobile being worst, irl not met anyone who did that for purely for passion) and I know couple who simply switched careers because they could not bear anymore how certain practises cheapen games. (Also because as coder you get better paycheck elsewhere on most cases)
Although my experiences limit mostly people on indie-scale and school world on subject, on other industry I can say that spark dies fast after school and couple first years of working and I don't expect gaming indudstry be different on modern day.(What I know from irl friend, it is worse)

I truly wish it wasn't so but life has funny way of always disapponting you.

Did they happen to work at Supercell: San Francisco studios?

Cause I got some horror stories to share about that place.

Lybal

SpiderCultist wrote: »

Dear player: I want your money, let's talk (about our amazing loot boxes)

Loot boxes ? Do you mean surprise mechanics ?

Browiseth

it's quite a long article and i doubt many will bother to read through it, but the sentiment present in the article has some truth to it.

game developers are just that; game developers. they care about making the best game they want to make, and, for all intents and purposes aren't responsible for some of the reprehensible monetization practices we see in games. that blame can often be placed on the publisher, or the higher ups for lack of a better term

it's sad that many of us, the consumers, choose to put blame on whoever has a face we can point at; and that often ends up being the developers in marketing videos, who ironically have real passion for their work...

Ohtimbar

It’s a worthy read and I generally agree. There are plenty of immature and maladjusted people spitting venom in ways that would earn a punch in real life. Speech without consequence often brings out the worst in humanity.

There are other facets to these issues, such as devious business practices, crunch, lack of union representation etc etc. but attacking programmers or community managers over loot boxes is ignorant and churlish. Personal attacks of any sort should be off limits for all but the prime exploiters at the very top, in my opinion.

bmnoble

Maybe its just me after reading that article I could not help but think "this guy must have been good at meeting the word limits in essays during high school"

So much of it was an utter waste of time to read, if your doing a news article trying to inform an audience of something get to the point, it should not be behind paragraphs of platitudes, that kind of writing is going to result in a lot of potential readers losing interest and leaving the site before finishing the article.

daemonios

I have no doubt that many game developers are passionate about their jobs. But the linked article is very problematic. If you're permanently crunching, not because your boss makes you, but because you want to get things just right, you are a workaholic and need to find balance in your life.

The author also expects sympathy from players while ignoring that said players' experience includes being milked for every last penny by way of predatory and often dishonest practices, or enduring several years of stability and performance issues the publisher is slow to acknowledge end even slower to fix.

Sorry, mate. You work in a company. Players will judge the product, not your individual contribution. Which does suck, I get it, but it can hardly be any different, can it?