You're assuming that game developers want to live in some sort of isolated ivory tower.
Everyone I knew who got into the industry did it to share the joy that gaming brought them to other people. It's an explicitly social industry in that respect.
Also, I don't know of a single place that can afford to run interference for every single dev. Even on the large AAA stuff I worked on we were lucky to have 1 or 2 marketing people who were even aware the dev team existed.
I’m assuming no such thing. I’m saying this is a “have your cake and eat it too” issue. Either you’re accessible to millions or you arent, and that choice comes with benefits and drawbacks. If one can’t handle the drawbacks of being publicly accessible to millions, one should go to great pains to prevent that, rather than lamenting the inevitable - and I do mean inevitable - long tail of jerks.
And when I say “run interference,” I mean “handle all public interactions for the product, which your devs shouldn’t be involved in at all, because they’re devs, not marketers.”
While what you're saying may be true, maybe we should be questioning why this kind of communication is considered acceptable and without consequence in the gaming community.
Whether it’s acceptable isn’t the point. If 70% of people do it, it’s acceptable. If .1% of people do it, it’s not - but if you’re taking .1% of a very large number, the result is untenable for those on the receiving end.
This is a problem -without- requiring it to be acceptable behavior.
It's ok to be an asshole because it's over the internet? These people wouldn't say what they're saying to others in real life.
It's a serious problem with online interactions, especially in the gaming field where people get unreasonably passionate and there's a lot of sexually frustrated young men needing to vent their anger.
Hell, I've been an asshole here on HN, I know I have been, it's so much easier to be without seeing someone's face.
It doesn't make it ok or acceptable though, and unfortunately I feel I have to downvote and speak against you because what you're doing is defending hate and evil. It shouldn't have to be a cost of business, it's not business, it's an unfortunate side effect of the free and open and anonymous internet. It doesn't mean we should accept it though.
No, it’s not OK to be an ass because it’s on the Internet. Since I didn’t say that, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t take a jab at straw men. In fact, I didn’t say a word about the people being jerks - but about the practicalities of being, in effect, a celebrity.
When you’re on a platform serving an arbitrarily large number of people, even a vanishingly small percentage of them amount to more toxicity than a single recipient can handle. That’s the asymmetry of celebrity, and has nothing at all to do with whether the toxic behavior is acceptable or not. It’s a large numbers issue.
Dealing with toxic people is a guaranteed consequence of opening yourself up to communication with millions. Yes, it -is- the cost of celebrity, and always has been. It’s just the weird nature of the internet that the nature of “celebrity” has changed.
“Barring those so small they can’t hire someone to run interference,”
Let’s both appreciate the moment.