[Florin_Andrei]

As things move away from the real world and towards increased virtualization of everything, it's a lot easier for people to fall prey to "road rage" type of reactions - folks who are otherwise well-behaved and respectable turn into assholes behind the wheel.

Same with the virtual world.

[QAPereo]

It’s also a bunch of young people, who tend to assume that turning the rhetorical volume up to 11 does something more than inspire disgust. Chan “culture” has not helped. people with the most time to burn are asymmetrically advantaged in this, as are the enraged. Can any of us really compete in terms of obsessive devotion, with a 1-issue poster? An angry, lonely person, a mentally ill person, or a teen with attitude? They’ll burn more cycles screaming than anyone else can or will reasoning, and they’re happy to just be a nuisance, or be heard.

Then you have the hyperfans, who can finally stalk and abuse from an anonymous distance. They don’t need to even leave their hovels to do it, or look someone in the eye. The drunk, the drugged, and the stupid get the same force multiplier from the internet as everyone else, but they have the numbers and the free time.

[Viliam1234]

> An angry, lonely person, a mentally ill person, or a teen with attitude? They’ll burn more cycles screaming than anyone else can or will reasoning, and they’re happy to just be a nuisance, or be heard.

Many years ago, a small country where I live was dominated online by a single mentally ill person. In our country, those day the internet was new and quite slow. This person, originally from our country, was living somewhere in USA or Canada, with full disability for their mental illness, and a very fast internet connection. And they spent the whole day browsing our websites (the dozen major websites we had back then), participating in almost every discussion that contained some of their favorite keywords. And because of the difference in free time available and speed of internet connection, most admins were completely helpless. This person could create a new account and post hundred comments faster than the admins could use their slow modems to ban the account; and the avalanche continued for 16 hours a day, every day.

Yes, insane people have an asymmetrical advantage at online debates, because they spend less time reading and thinking. (In real life, too, but there at least they cannot teleport from one place to another.)

[lagadu]

We live in an age of outrage culture, what does anyone expect? The cultural norm nowadays is to get vocally outraged whenever anyone does anything that you even slightly dislike, of course this kind of abuse is the result, it doesn't happen just in the games industry, it happens in society at large too, about most social issues.

[cam_l]

I think this is not even the case.

I think these people are arseholes IRL. I think they are just as abusive and prone to road rage type reactions.

I don't think people are reasonable and respectable and suddenly road rage when they jump in the car. They are arseholes all the time, they just can't hide it as well when they drive.

I think they are more visible online only because they just impact less people IRL.

[sasas]

> I think these people are arseholes IRL. I think they are just as abusive and prone to road rage type reactions.

Not sure about "just as abusive". The example abusive messages in that article if delivered in person, face to face, would be met with conflict and increased risk (i.e. physical or emotionally charged confrontation). These trolls are spineless and weak.

[angersock]

Virtual road rage is certainly a large part of this--I always use the analogy that if you have 1000 twitter followers, and they are wonderful people all the time but each one only says one nasty thing a year to you, if they all do it at the same week or whatever it's gonna be brutal.

That said, I think there is also a lot of justified anger.

In a world that is increasingly terrible and hostile in a lot of ways it's really important to have a safe place, a place to unwind and settle down, place where people can tune in and drop out. Video games are really great for this purpose.

But a lot of devs don't seem to recognize that this is an important purpose of their product, either going low-brow capitalist (say, EA or Zynga or Bethesda) or high-brow artiste (Phil Fish, Jonathon Blow) and alienating their playerbase by breaking games in order to create higher profits, by patching games endlessly in the name of "gameplay" (Darkest Dungeon is a great example of this, ditto a lot of Blizzard's stuff), or by taking very public stands against various sacred cows of their customers--that is when they're not actively saying nasty things about their customers. As a gamer, why wouldn't you voice your displeasure at the people who are screwing up your ability to calm down and relax?

Similarly, even on the art angle, a lot of publishers and devs make compromises to push a message or sell a product. Like, can you imagine the backlash at a Holy Bible 3.0: HD Edition 2018, with DLC psalms? Game devs and publishers do this all the time. Imagine you heard they were making Rent 2.0, but everybody was straight and monogamous and only had the flu and were upper-middle class. Even if it was done well, even if it was a good story, it wouldn't be Rent. That's even assuming the change was done expertly--in video games it's usually a studio or a publisher chasing some market demographic or "industry trend" causing that violation of the IP and seldom is it even done well! So, if you're a gamer, why be nice to people that are willingly violating an IP that you love?

Further, on the PR front, gamers have gotten used to being fed thinly veiled bullshit as the industry has "matured". The same flaccid attempts to gloss over bugs or mistakes, the same lame attempts to use identity to sell a game, the same boring controversies and plant articles used to increase air time...it's insulting. So, why have empathy for (some random indie dev) when the industry as a whole is not behaving in good faith? Why not treat every dev communication as a weakly-spun PR gambit? Why show any charity at all?

~

I agree that this is bad behavior, and I agree that drive-by virtual road rage accounts for a lot of it...but not all of it.

[QAPereo]

So, if you're a gamer, why be nice to people that are willingly violating an IP that you love?

Why? Because it is devoutly to be wished that you’re a human being with a brain, conscience, and at least a scrap of both empathy and perspective. If you’re so antisocial that you honestly believe that what you described merits abuse, threats, doxxing, etc... you shouldn’t be allowed online by your guardian.

Messing with your beloved IP is not cause to abuse people. An over-dependence on a given entertainment format to calm you is not their problem. Games are, and have been for a long dammed time, mass market entertainment. Mass market. That your particular gospel isn’t being played as constantly as you require it should be, is no one else’s problem, neither should your entitlement be their problem, nor is it license to be rude, cruel, or threatening to people you don’t even really know.

Besides, and this is the main point... your options are not the false dichotomy of “be nice” or “be abusive.” Try ignoring stuff you dislike, or expressing your concerns in constructive ways when it’s not hurting people. Try to remember that being a consumer of something doesn’t mean that anyone owes you more of the same. If your local decides to go vegan and alcohol free, that may suck for you, but they still didn’t owe you anything.

I’d be with you on one point: the endless lines from AAA publishers which amount to, “We released half of a broken game, haha, we already have your money and future updates will only be planned DLC and mometization...” but you’re using it to excuse inexcusable behavior.

[angersock]

I mean, they had the same choice--not to work on fucking up the IP. And they have the potential to create suffering and annoyance to hundreds of thousands of people, instead of just a few people receiving grumpiness on the net.

This is a dynamic that has always existed in art and performance.

And for what it's worth, I don't think the option is "be nice" or "hurl abuse"...there is a distribution of behaviors and I'm suggesting that the more negative ones have their own reasons.

[gambiting]

>>I mean, they had the same choice--not to work on fucking up the IP.

This argument always strikes me as something said by a child or a person who never had a job and never had to feed their family ever in their life. I work as a C++ programmer in a games company - I really don't care what you think of the changes that I make, I have a Jira list of tasks to get through and have to pay my bills at the end of the month. If you want to send hate mail to someone, there's a PR email you can contact - normal programmers working 9 to 5 have zero say in design decisions that upset people, nor do they have the time to follow the community - we have PR people for that.

[EgoIncarnate]

Fine, be angry. Even if the reason for anger was justified, the abuse isn't. Write a scathing blog post, rant on youtube, don't buy future products, organize a boycott. Fine. Death threats, calling people at all hours, swatting them, harassing their employer, egging people on to do these things. That's abuse, and nothing that should ever happen because in your opinion someone "fucked up [their own] ip".

[TheGrumpyBrit]

If you feel that somebody "fucked up" a product, don't use that product. It's really that simple, and it can be applied to every aspect of your life, not just games.