If you're a major gaming news outlet and you're STILL writing articles with headlines that say things like "XYZ game looks like shit", maybe re-evaluate your values and how you're contributing to toxic gaming culture and the harassment of game developers.
It's not good enough.
No I'm not linking to it because no I'm not driving more traffic to it.
Do better.
Man, it's really easy to feel defeated by all of this sometimes....
It literally makes me wanna quit. It makes me completely and utterly sad for days. it's SO easy not to trash games in your big gaming outlet. It costs you nothing to just have some basic respect.
Bye. Going to go lie down and be sad now that nothing ever changes and we are just punching bags for people's random edgy moods and they get paid to insult us to millions of people...
PS: This is not an invitation to go harass individuals over this - there are plenty of good folks at Kotaku. But I am very sad about this.
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The poll from yesterday has ended and it has generated so much ruckus that I feel like I need to say a few words about it.
Over 10k people have voted, leading me to believe that a lot of people who voted were not gamedevs and next time I’d like folks to respect the assignment.
But about the topic, I want to stress that neither answer is wrong here, despite the slant being very very clearly towards working with the right team. There seems to be a lot of tension between the two camps and while neither are wrong, I can see why that would be the case.
Like in any social settings, people can want different things out of it and that’s okay. It can mean that it makes you incompatible to be part of the same social group, at least temporarily, because the goals you have could be different or even contradictory.
It's fucking unbelievable that making games under capitalism means people can just buy the right to abuse us for 20-60 dollars just because they play our games.
I don't know why I thought I could tweet this and walk away and expect to not come back to my mentions full of abuse...
Everyone in the replies to this - well meaning or not - who is "well actually"-ing me about how that's not unique to games: Get the hell away from me.
The scale of the abuse we face, how our families get threatened and how it does not stop at 5 pm - THAT is the difference.
Game design does not talk enough about a principle that is core to so so so many experiences. I’d even say it might be at the core of most games, but it sounds a little esoteric. You know when we say immersion, wanting impact on the game world etc?
It’s a desire to be witnessed.
The desire to be witnessed is a fundamental human desire. A longing for being acknowledged in our actions, our existence and our humanity. We crave to be represented. We crave to see things we can relate to. We crave things we can project ourselves upon.
I actually believe that what we often call escapism in fact shows up in design as a manifestation of the desire to be witnessed. A world where we matter and feel like we have control and can’t be truly hurt, all often opposite to our lived experience.
As this is going minor viral, so many people have replied that they found reading this thread validating and it really shows how there is a deep desire to come to some kind of resolution, to not have the pandemic be without an acknowledgement of what we’ve been through.
And my acknowledgment is not enough for that. This was a global event and we all crave a large-scale resolution and I wish officials would see that.
What are you going to do to prevent this from happening again?
How will you protect us next time around?
Why are there no consequences for people who have broken the rules and literally caused people to die?
Who’s going to help us heal the emotional and financial damages?
What are you going to do for the frontline workers who have risked their lives for us?