10 Things Video Game Developers Wish You Understood Better
1. We're Also Gamers... And More Importantly, Human Beings
It's sad that this is both number one, but also necessary to write.
Most gamers are rad guys, cool gals and awesome everything in-between - the vast majority. But like a few drops of Marmite in your tea, just a tiny bit of something foul can really taint something amazing.
In recent years, the vitriol towards game developers has become way more ubiquitous... most likely, due to the methods of connection growing. We're interconnected, we're always on, we're all online. We visit all the same sites as you, and play on all the same platforms you do, because we're you.
We're just gamers, we're just people, like you.
Yet increasingly, with every YouTuber controversy, with every game leak, with every tiny hole in the sofa being picked repeatedly until it's a crater, developers are treated as some alien race that don't try, that don't understand, that don't even care.
And this alienation, this demonisation, it makes us easy to hate. Easy to attack. Why wouldn't you hate us? Ostensibly, we're the ones ruining this thing you love, right?
It's nonsense. We're just people, just gamers, who happen to work on videogames. And that's it. We're not some mythical race; not some hostile foreign nation.
If you wouldn't say it to someone on the street, don't say it online.
And if you wouldn't say it to a fellow gamer you've never met, why would you say it to me... a fellow gamer you've never met?