Losing the blame game

The guys in the industry are neither doormats nor saints. Like the rest of us, they are somewhere in between. But unlike the rest of us, they deserve -- by default -- to be treated graciously. They've earned that right by slogging through a competitive and often thankless business that requires long hours, middling pay, and frequent frustration. Few people understand this because the popular image of a successful developer is John Carmack/Romero in a Ferrari. We’re just dilettantes who pay a reasonable price for the fruits of their labor.

Furthermore, few people online understand how to disagree without being disagreeable. Online interaction is so impersonal, so fraught with assurances of anonymity, and so littered with the maladjusted and juvenile, that there are no social repercussions for acting like a jackass. I fully support requiring not only registration for participating in official forums, but also the use of your actual name and a visible email address. This is no guarantee that someone won't be a jerk, but it's a start. If you want to participate in discussions on an official forum, you don't get to role play. They're there as themselves, you should be there as yourself.

But the biggest problem is the nature of a fan base. You hardcore fans can be bad news. You are often idiots with no perspective. You live with an exaggerated sense of self-importance, mistaking your own dedication for commercial significance. You don't know what's best for a game, because you rarely represent an accurate cross-section of the people buying the game. You don't understand that you rarely drive sales in any statistically significant sense. You’re just the guys with the loudest mouths. You might think the conventional wisdom is that your mouths drive the word of mouth. And they do. Among hardcore gamers. For everyone else, the word of mouth is driven by friends, the press, and the guys at EB who ask if you’d like the strategy guide for 30% off when you buy the game.

And here's a bit of irony that flies in the face of the presence of guys like Rodberg: you hardcore fans will buy a sequel no matter what. If someone from the developer or publisher is on a game forum, mixing it up with you, it’s not because you’ll decide the success of future titles. They aren’t sucking up to you to ensure their game does well. They’re there because they have the decency to honor your eagerness for attention and interaction. The least you can do is drop your self-important sense of entitlement and conduct yourself with a modicum of courtesy.