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"The Dangers of Gamer Entitlement "

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
edited February 2012 in Ten Forward
Gamespot.com posted a very interesting article, I believe people should read about the vicious verbal attack at the hands of gamers.
Warning: May contain strong language.
"The Dangers of Gamer Entitlement "
Props to StormShade for posting this on Twitter.
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I can't help but see the relevance towards our own community here considering events that happened not so long ago.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    just a sad reflection on the mindset of some people. i wonder if these people are like that in real life or if they just save their venom up for the internet when they are protected the anonymity it provides?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    just a sad reflection on the mindset of some people. i wonder if these people are like that in real life or if they just save their venom up for the internet when they are protected the anonymity it provides?

    I'd go with the latter
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    I'd go with the latter

    Yeah. I'd imagine most of those spewing this type of venom are stay-at-home basement dwellers. The rest of us with real lives have more important things to get enraged over.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Its so true, STO is the first game I've ever played and the lack of courtesy, manners, civilized behaviour among the addicted gamers is unbeleivable, like taking crack from a crackhead. We should all admit that games, like a lot of things, are addictive, and the real effect is a simple chemical cascade in the brain, specifically, seratonin in the pre-frontal areas. Seeing this has taught me to put things in sharper perspective, I would rather spend time with my family or just go outside, anything but being a slave to the game. And we all have to remember, most of these elitist are immature kids playing and it is their life. My two sons are gamers and I have had to constantly tell them that moderation is the key, even too much oxygen or water will kill. We will see in years to come as the young gamers grow old and adult responsibilities catch up with them. They have very few social skills in real life.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    I wrote a really long post... and then realized that it made very little sence and was actually just a wall of text... So I decided to write this instead:

    Not OK...

    just a sad reflection on the mindset of some people. i wonder if these people are like that in real life or if they just save their venom up for the internet when they are protected the anonymity it provides?

    I can't speak for thoose people... But a rule of thumb for me is: if you can't do it in real life, don't do it on the interwebs either...

    I am just as much a provokative a***ole off the net as I am in here... But at least I am the same guy anywhere I go.

    But in the end, I am pretty sure they are just some poor loosers living in their moms basement who need a way to channel their lack of personal self respect.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    just a sad reflection on the mindset of some people. i wonder if these people are like that in real life or if they just save their venom up for the internet when they are protected the anonymity it provides?

    It's real life. They just can't express it there without getting the TRIBBLE kicked out of them.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    I might have a somewhat different perspective on this article, especially if you read the replies to after the article. I think the author’s premise is flawed; this isn’t only a gaming issue. This happens any time a customer feels alienated by the product or service they are purchasing. Look at Netflix. Or BoA. Or the airlines charging baggage fees. You could insert hundreds of other examples of this same thing occurring in other industries over the past year alone.

    No, this behaviour is true for any consumer market, not just games. The writer may just be ignorant of this because she is a gaming magazine journalist. Anyone who has worked in a customer support role knows what I’m talking about. I’m pretty sure the author had a predetermined conclusion which is why her conclusion, gamer entitlement, is completely misleading and quite frankly wrong.

    The truth is this article doesn’t speak to anything we see here on the STO forums. The fighting that is going on here is of a completely different type. Prior to the late 2011 F2P ruckus I never saw any massive hate for this game. To say that this sudden surge in anger puts the STO fans in a special group labelled as “dangerous due to entitlement” is a grave mistake, both for Cryptic and the gaming community.

    Sorry, but this article is just unproductive. The event is unfortunate for Mrs. Helper, I definitely agree with that. But this is a classic example of a journalist not doing her homework and predetermining the conclusion before it was written. There are no experts in this article, no out-side the industry analysts, no data, just an article about Bioware, twitter feeds, and some fan-made comments. Don’t blindly follow the author’s conclusion before doing your own research.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Sorry, but this article is just unproductive.

    ^^^ THIS.

    There are already rules in place to deal with the extreme violations of posting regarding the name-calling that Bioware employees have to endure on Reddit and Twitter. But this article tries to take that and lump it in with valid criticism, valid negative feedback, and essentially suggest that the company has every right to ignore and antagonize their customers.

    They absolutely do. But that is unproductive for the company and the customers.

    Bad customer service will bite you in the butt in the end. Customers have entitlement for a reason. They paid for goods and services. If they feel they received bad service, they react.

    If that reaction involves curse words and threats, there's already rules in place to deal with and filter that out. But that doesn't change the rest of the feedback.

    In short, yes people feel entitled to the products they purchase.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    If you want to see that type of gamer first hand, then go right over to SWTOR...the PvP community there is comprised of nothing but "gimme gimme" everything elietists and Internet bullies...you should have seen my TOR exit survey...they couldnt pay me to play that game now...

    I got so irritated with it, I posted a thread on the PvP forums and someone replied that when I hit the "submit" button for my post, I definetly was awarded dark side points...ROFL...

    So glad to be back here in STO where players treat others nicely for the most part...

    Anyone ever see the end of Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back movie where they hunt down the screen name ppl talking smack on their website...heh heh...:)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    I used to be a very productive member of an RTS game modding community until such things happened to me and I said, no longer. That was in 2003.

    Between then and now I rarely dared open my mouth in gaming communities until STO came along and I found the forums were somewhat comfortable.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    I remember during headstart with most of the initial playerbase how near-utopian the community was. Everyone was kind, and wanted to help eachother, everyone trading items to eachother for no cost, just for the sake of being helpful....then after the first month or so it started to turn into today's community... :(

    Still a nice amount of good players out there...but wow...did most of our community, an now with the addition of f2p, go down hill.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Hmmm.. maybe it's just different 'sections' of the community. Most of the new players I meet daily are very nice.

    Well... maybe because they are new so they are nice xD
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    I remember during headstart with most of the initial playerbase how near-utopian the community was. Everyone was kind, and wanted to help eachother, everyone trading items to eachother for no cost, just for the sake of being helpful....then after the first month or so it started to turn into today's community... :(

    Still a nice amount of good players out there...but wow...did most of our community, an now with the addition of f2p, go down hill.

    I've mainly seen drive-by trolls. Even the threadnaughts end up being the same three or four people going in circles. I wouldn't say it is community-wide.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Still a nice amount of good players out there...but wow...did most of our community, an now with the addition of f2p, go down hill.

    There's a lot of players who were in the beta and around at launch that no longer play the game. Or no longer have access to the forums for whatever reason.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    I don't think it's just gamers.
    There is a very pertinent Penny Arcade comic that I won't link to due to strong language.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Tumerboy wrote: »
    I don't think it's just gamers.
    There is a very pertinent Penny Arcade comic that I won't link to due to strong language.

    It is not just gamers. It is a social issue as a whole.

    Consider how folks would of responded say 10 years ago, and then go back 10 years into that. Society itself is doing the "teaching" of what is acceptable. Its that very fabric that molds folks into the behaviors they exhibit.

    I can show you many instances of this in other products.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    It was hard to find facts in that story. Not saying that such behavior is to be allowed to go unpunished. It should certainly be dealt with in no uncertain terms. But the author uses some broad brush strokes to paint the gaming community as a whole and makes arguments that really have outlived their usefulness or are not pertinent to the issue of the relationship between gamers, developers, and the games themselves.

    Here's a fact from the article.

    "This week, a small subset of the gaming community"

    KK thanks for the info. We don't even have any input from Jennifer. Just some stuff Laura makes up for her. So thanks for tossing some gasoline on the fire. Very helpful.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Just to buck the trend and go off on a tangent...

    Speaking of skippable cutscenes, how come Cryptic has forgotten to do that ever since the first Featured Episode series that has them? And hasn't fixed the episodes they've released without them?

    It's not so much that I don't care about the story, but since we're funneled into replaying them on all our characters in a short period of time to get that "bonus" reward at the end....lengthy, inskippable cutscenes are kind of a downer.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    I remember during headstart with most of the initial playerbase how near-utopian the community was. Everyone was kind, and wanted to help eachother, everyone trading items to eachother for no cost, just for the sake of being helpful....then after the first month or so it started to turn into today's community... :(

    Still a nice amount of good players out there...but wow...did most of our community, an now with the addition of f2p, go down hill.

    Sorry, I've been around since 2 weeks after the original 2009 closed beta launched, through open beta, etc - and sorry, the forum comminity was just as volitile as it us today (Hell, more than one person was taking shots at Kestrel's writing ability; calling for her firing, etc - and again, this was in 2009 closed beta.)

    Overall, though the STO ciommunity has been overall more literate overall, and in general FAR less combative then most other MMO communities. (Yes, there are alwats exceptions and a few who go off th deep end at the reading of something they don't like/agree with; but that's less common here.

    Still, after some of the threads and doomsayer comments in 2009 closed bet and STO headstart, I myself wouldn't classify it as 'near-utopian' by any stretch. YMMV.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Eh, I don't think this is about entitlement nor about Internet anonymity. I just see this as fallout of living in the Information Age. We are constantly bombarded by the media... mass, social, broadcast, digital, print... it's impossible to escape it. As a result people have fallen into a mindset where they believe that only the loudest, most inflammatory rhetoric will be noticed in that sea of information which, thanks to overload, has simply become white noise. Sadly, I'm not sure there isn't merit to that notion. Take a look at the political scene; The rabble-rousers get heard while calmer heads get ignored or victimized until they respond in kind.

    As bad as that is, what makes things worse is the fallout for those who propose reasonable arguments with merit. Human beings already have a staggering propensity toward confirmation bias, dismissing data which runs contrary to their beliefs instead of examining it and weighing it accordingly. When the voices being heard are usually the ones that scream the most inflammatory rhetoric the loudest it just makes it so much easier to tune out everyone who disagrees with you. Any opposition becomes quickly viewed as invalid and simply filed away as more of "those people."
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Mongoson wrote: »
    It is not just gamers. It is a social issue as a whole.

    Consider how folks would of responded say 10 years ago, and then go back 10 years into that. Society itself is doing the "teaching" of what is acceptable. Its that very fabric that molds folks into the behaviors they exhibit.

    I can show you many instances of this in other products.

    Here's one to try on for size. Think about how folks dissatisfied with their customer service would have responded to a female sales rep in 1952 or 1962 or 1972. I mean, if we're using a wayback machine, let's use it.

    Some of the offensive language would have been different, but the sexism and offensiveness would have been ramped up a bit due to the way society was back then.

    Food for thought.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Eh, I don't think this is about entitlement nor about Internet anonymity. I just see this as fallout of living in the Information Age. We are constantly bombarded by the media... mass, social, broadcast, digital, print... it's impossible to escape it. As a result people have fallen into a mindset where they believe that only the loudest, most inflammatory rhetoric will be noticed in that sea of information which, thanks to overload, has simply become white noise. Sadly, I'm not sure there isn't merit to that notion. Take a look at the political scene; The rabble-rousers get heard while calmer heads get ignored or victimized until they respond in kind.

    As bad as that is, what makes things worse is the fallout for those who propose reasonable arguments with merit. Human beings already have a staggering propensity toward confirmation bias, dismissing data which runs contrary to their beliefs instead of examining it and weighing it accordingly. When the voices being heard are usually the ones that scream the most inflammatory rhetoric the loudest it just makes it so much easier to tune out everyone who disagrees with you. Any opposition becomes quickly viewed as invalid and simply filed away as more of "those people."

    Wow. I think you just described how Gozer's commentary about the content drought went, and how Geko's twitter comments went. That's quite a powerful point you make since it sheds some light on the whole two-way street that communication can be.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Ouch!

    I don't post much, due to peoples personal issues getting vented out on-line at anyone. Back when I played SWG it happened a lot. Players get a little too ahead of themselves and start dictating instructions to Devs and Community Reps.

    I agree though, it's not just on-line that this happens. Without getting into the ugly details of it all, this happens at my work alot. See I work for a customer serivce based company so the idea of "The Customer is Always Right" is a statement I get told alot. Truth is the customers are not always right, they may have good ideas, but it's outside of what can be done. Explaining this to them is a no-no, since a few customer complaints can cost you your job.

    I have "learned" the art of gental debate inorder to allow a customer to tell me that "It's Easy", while not hurting their feelings when I explain the truth to them. It's hard and if you take it too personally it can hurt. Sometimes though you'll get a person that for whatever reason just wants to be a pain. It's a little different in-person then on-line, but not by much (at least from what I've seen and delt with)

    I often read the forums (not just this one) and think, "wow I can't believe this person is acting like they own the company or something". This article really shows the bad side of this behavior, but it's just "Cyber Bullying" by a powerless group towards a captive person (the community reps) I never understood this in real-life, nor on-line.

    Yeah I know alot to read (you should have read some of me posts on SGW, TOR, or even STO back when Pep was doing it).
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    superchum wrote: »
    Here's one to try on for size. Think about how folks dissatisfied with their customer service would have responded to a female sales rep in 1952 or 1962 or 1972. I mean, if we're using a wayback machine, let's use it.

    Some of the offensive language would have been different, but the sexism and offensiveness would have been ramped up a bit due to the way society was back then.

    Food for thought.

    I am in my 40's and I can assure you that in the 70's you were still expected to be polite in commercial discourse. You couldn't usually get away with the overt rudeness you see today. The article is correct and unfortunately it's not just online (although it is worse there) it's been seeping into culture for at least 20 years.

    "The customer is always right" may be a useful business policy but it's a poison in our culture.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    I just read this and can sum up my attitude as thus:

    People who claim to be fans of a genre or medium and police a genre or medium for standards tend to actlike obscene jerks.

    A lot of this boils down to "what constitutes a game." I've seen the exact thing with "what makes a good movie", "what makes a good horror/action/children's movie", "what makes a good comic book" etc.

    Nothing good can come of classify the essential parts of what a product must have. This goes for developers and it goes for fans.

    Stop trying to pigeonhole things with features X, Y, and Z.

    This is a bunch of label bashing. I've seen academics do it. And the folks doing it, on both sides, on Twitter are just engaged in a vulgar version of it.

    What happened is:

    BioWare employee challenged the definition of games and suggested that story can be more important than skill. Which is a valid, if extreme, position to occupy in game design. That isn't to say ALL games need to be like that but all she suggested was that some games could be that way.

    Enter a cavalcade of people insisting "games must be X" and using lots of vulgarity to get attention.

    I think it's very easy to focus on the gender issues or the abuse but I think you're burying the lead there by doing that. Ever since the inception of the FPS, really since the inception of competitive gameplay, people have behaved badly to one another in their discussion of games. I'm more interested in what that discussion is than the tone it's taken.

    This whole thing echoes the ludologists crying fowl and claiming that the narratologists are colonizing their media while in turn many ludologists started insisting their game/symbolic interaction focus should replace traditional literary analysis. It's the same set of arguments except the crassness and accusations of discrimination are a bit reversed here. Here, it's the crude ludologists accusing the "feminist" narratologist of invading their game whereas in academia, the narrative focused people are accused of being patriarchs invading the feminine world of symbolic social interaction and conflict.

    In essence, here you have gamers saying story over combat is girly. In academia, you have more people suggesting that combat/sandbox play is refreshingly girly and that a focus on story is the patriarchy coming in to oppress the triumph of feminine bloodsport.

    The flaw, I think, lies in attempting to define and defend cultural products such as games as one thing more than another. A choose your own adventure movie is a game. Tetris is also a game. Being a game shouldn't involve excluding things that aren't gamelike in their focus nor should it require the embrace of things that are gamelike. Products should have integrity to what they do and illustrate a model of self-consistent excellence.

    Don't set out to define what a game must be. Or what a good movie must be. That's fundamentalism. It will make you look bad and do bad things if you cling to that kind of thinking ahead of things like civility and respect for diversity of opinions, products, and artistic works.

    Where the entitlement comes in is the assumption that every game that comes out with a brand you like is intended for you or that you should have a right to some kind of revenge if it turns out not to be.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    I've been arguing for some time now that the community needs to decide on its social "identity" and take actions to make offenders aware when they go extremely out of the lines of that identity. People not only know an MMORPG for the quality of the content, but also the quality of the players. There are people who are outright rude in this game, and when I have said something about it, I have on several occasions been told to "play 'Hello Kitty Online'".

    The questions I pose are:

    What is our "indentity"?

    What do we want our "identity" to be?

    What can we do to make the two become one?

    These are the questions that all communities have been thrust upon themselves since the begining of civilization. It's time that we (in STO) answer them for ourselves.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    I am in my 40's and I can assure you that in the 70's you were still expected to be polite in commercial discourse. You couldn't usually get away with the overt rudeness you see today. The article is correct and unfortunately it's not just online (although it is worse there) it's been seeping into culture for at least 20 years.

    "The customer is always right" may be a useful business policy but it's a poison in our culture.

    There's nothing wrong with the customer always being right. People just get confused about to what extent they're the customer and whether they're being courted as the customer.

    If you don't feel like you're being courted as a customer based on a company's actions, you're probably not being courted... and you're probably not right anymore.

    You have to be the customer to be "always right" and however much you've spent, your customer status is always up for renegotiation.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    whamhammer wrote: »
    I have on several occasions been told to "play 'Hello Kitty Online'".

    no, thats just because of your avatar. :p
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    One of the comments summed up these individuals quite nicely. "Internet tough guys that pee themselves at the thought of speaking to a flesh and blood woman."
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    I am in my 40's and I can assure you that in the 70's you were still expected to be polite in commercial discourse. You couldn't usually get away with the overt rudeness you see today. The article is correct and unfortunately it's not just online (although it is worse there) it's been seeping into culture for at least 20 years.

    "The customer is always right" may be a useful business policy but it's a poison in our culture.

    I'm pretty sure sexism and rudeness existed in the 1970s. Granted I was still very very young back then. But I'm pretty sure those things did happen.
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