WTFBBQ: Devs vs. Players

WTFBBQ

I have a list of stuff to address, but after crap hit the fan with Blizzard, I figured the best thing I could do with it, was toss it right on the fire and see what we can fish out, and hopefully not get too singed in the process. Welcome to WTFBBQ!

In the wake of the Blizzard Blitzchung mess, we’re having a resurgence of the devs vs players attitude. Where players are pissed at studios for PR messes, promises broken and philosophies that turn out to be little more than pithy buzzwords. Honestly, I think that it’s not really so much a dev vs players problem, but bad devs vs. players and bad players vs. devs. This follows in with the last column about toxic players (somewhat) but also looks at what the industry calls disruptive players.

Disruptive players are players who, for any reason, disrupt someone else’s gameplay. After looking into it, it’s confirmed that almost every single player has been reported at least once for disruptive play. For example, I’ve probably been reported for telling someone off when I thought they were being mean or offensive unnecessarily (no, me? Who would have thought? :P). Pretty sure I also got counter reported when I reported the guy for killing off the quest NPCs in a newbie zone that kept one of the new players I knew from actually playing.

The fair play alliance actually provided me with some stats and info on disruptive play-they specifically research and look into ways to fight it in games and online communities related to games.

Those kinds of reports however are whatever. Almost everyone, as noted above, has been reported for something. Now, truly disruptive players, those who get reported for major infractions repeatedly are actually much rarer, but still, have a huge impact on game sales. Game behavior and community modification is actually a big deal in dev circles because of this-and probably because of more noble reasons too, but I’m too cynical to not think the major push is because disruptive players and bad communities cost money.

A lot of money.

The problem is, these, being your loudest and most abusive players are also the loudest and most abusive towards devs and studios and can cause even more bad feelings, fanning the minor irritations into full-on bonfires of fireworks and drama. Ugh, drama.

Conversely, we have devs who manhandle their audience. In the bad old days, we had Verant with “you’re in our world now” and they reflected that mindset. Players were frequently told that server issues, programming problems were their fault, even when confronted with evidence to the contrary, devs persisted. This hasn’t gone away as we’ve gotten into a larger audience, though with more competitors, you can now avoid those kinds of studios if you’re up on the news.

Why be up on the news? Because companies change. New people take the reins, new admins, new investors and new boards all affect what policies get implemented and what gets turfed. Also, there seems to be a disturbing trend that once companies get big enough, they just don’t care anymore. I think that’s more likely due to a change in hands as a property become more hotly contested, but I have no evidence to support it, and I’m not likely to, since I doubt any private studio wants to share their financials with me, let alone let me examine it publicly where their competitors can read it. Fair enough.

Some of those who are seen as the biggest offenders (whether they are or not) are always big companies. This is probably because with more people playing, there are more people to notice. It’s a reasonable assumption and I’m sure there are some small studios out there who are pretty crap to their players too (though I don’t expect they last terribly long).

The problem is, often “crap” gets mistaken for “different monetary structure”-when games go deep into microtrans, people get ticked (at least in North America). This is NOT a studio being crap, it’s just a switch in how they make money. “Crap” also gets mistaken by players who, for some reason, I cannot fathom seem to think games should be tailored to their individual desires (that’s not how business works, guys).

A studio being crap is, rather, when they lie to players when they abuse players or mistreat them in other ways. We’ve had studios promise no microtrans, but later add them in. We’ve had studios with CMs who have actively insulted the community and CS reps who have been absolute garbage to people.

Should we make other players aware of studios that are crap? Absolutely. A studio that won’t respect their player base and treat them well is prone to all kinds of bad things-like coding issues that never get resolved, misrepresentation of products, and egregious charges to your account. A complaint filed or made public is an asset to a company-it’s not complaining, it’s making them aware of something that hits their bottom line. Now, cursing and swearing and aLtErNaTe CaPs is not a complaint, it’s harassment, so keep that in mind.

This isn’t a useful complaint. It’s pointless and says nothing about why you’re ticked. Sure it’s snigger-y and meme ish, but ultimately, useless to the studios. Remember to use your words, folks.

All of that being said, studios can change for the better as much for the worst. Sadly, not as often, but it can happen. This is why you need to be up on your news. Studios aren’t static. They change. That jerk dev who twit posted transphobic stuff? That studio that overcharged you and won’t refund? That CM who called you every name in the book because you dared to have an opinion? Yeah, studios don’t like those because they cost them money. Keep an eye on your news.

While, for legal reasons, studios typically won’t directly apologize (some will anyways despite lawyers screaming the background), they do publish widely when they try to fix something. Hell, it gets published widely when they screw up, so it should be no surprise they will go running to the media with whatever fixes they can get as soon as they can to stem the bleeding.

okay this was, admittedly the best I could find online for game studio apologies, the rest were kind of non-apologies, but hey, it does happen!

Regardless, either way, the argument goes, the truth is, the battle between devs and players is really about a select group of people that in a social situation, no one would have anything to do with anyways.

Sure studios with mad cash flow get away with crap employees easier, but they also get lambasted for it more because of their client base, whereas bad players can just fade into the background and pop up somewhere else. It’s still a minority of all of the available devs and players out there. Neither is inherently bad or awful, as much as we complain. And thankfully, unlike my other topics, I think this is more easily understood. It takes more than one dev to make a game, and if you haven’t realized that by now…well now you know.

When it comes down to it, studios need to not only keep an eye on how disruptive players ruin a game, but also have better accountability for disruptive staff who give studios a bad name. And for all that you find sacred, stop letting the desk jocks in front of a microphone!

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