Alarming article from Polygon (let's be good to our devs, okay?)

[roosterr]

I hugged myself, thanks. (E: I'm wrapping my head around a generic paginator right now, so I needed the hug)

With a name like "regex" I knew you were a dev. Nice one. I used to go by the handle "Chronjob" which some people got. Others though it had something to do with "Chronic" as in pot head. LOL

[Bothersome]

KSP was the first paid alpha release I've ever bought into. Since then I've bought into two other games.

KSP is not the best example of a typical experience for an alpha release from what I've read and what little I've seen of the three so far. KSP seems to be an exception on the positive side of the scale. I don't think I will buy any more alpha release games. KSP worked out nicely, so I bought two more. Those two gave me the taste of what alpha really means.

I don't let Squad off the hook when I find something wrong in the program though. We need to keep pushing them until KSP is next to perfect because it has so much potential that it would be a shame if it were to never come to fruition. I don't want Squad to get comfortable. I want them to keep the development going as long as possible. I'm not interested in their bottom line, I'm interested in KSP being all that it can be.

I come from the old school of computer programming and game writing. You didn't get to update it later. The program usually came on a floppy disk or a cassette tape. You had to have it fully playable and damn near bug free THE FIRST release. Now I understand that games are WAY more complex nowadays. So the old ways no longer apply. But the old mentality is still with me and I expect excellence for my dollar. And some of these bugs we see are simple bugs and settings that shouldn't take more than a few minutes to fix. Why have they not already fixed them? Do they not play their own game?

[roosterr]

KSP seems to be an exception on the positive side of the scale. I don't think I will buy any more alpha release games. KSP worked out nicely, so I bought two more. Those two gave me the taste of what alpha really means.

Absolutely true.

[karolus10]

Harassing is "not cool"... both Devs and other members of the community.

This was present in our community(fortunately it's not common behavior here ) few times, when people are getting extremely angry and spit with hatred if something get wrong (in their opinion) with Dev-streams, planned features, delays and bugs...

This can be very frustrating and not improve relations with dev's and made life more miserable for everybody.

It's especially dangerous for communities around smaller projects and all "early access" products like KSP, because players often had expectations like with complete AAA titles when game isn't even done yet.

[PDCWolf]

Problem here is the blurred out definition of toxic people. I'm not proud at all with the userbase I share space with in these forums, as the majority tends to hide any possible criticism to the devs or to the game under the excuse of critics being toxic, the game being an alpha (The game being an alpha means we should criticize it as much as we need to for it to become a good final product), the game being "cheap", or any other kind of ridiculous crap. Devs should really get their pants up and learn to take criticism even if it comes in the form of insults.

Who is really toxic? The users that hide and battle criticism, as they hurt the game with such attitude. Just look at minecraft and it's wasted potential, and the mess that Aces of Spades is now.

[SkyRender]

Ah, an article about Penny Arcade's GIFT (Greater Internet *you can probably guess what this word is* Theory; anonymity + audience = total *let's just say "jerk"*) as it applies to game developers. It does seem like the shield of anonymity has made many of the worst sorts on the internet even bolder of late, but what's surprising is how many of them are bold without good reason. A lot of the worst offenders are in fact posting from accounts that can easily be traced back to their source IP address, and thus to the computer they're posting from.

EDIT: I actually wrote a short article once on toxic fans, back in 2009. It's about 3/4ths of the way down my main page. Man I need to clean up my site's main page again...

[The Jedi Master]

Remember the DLC thing? This is the perfect example of this sort of thing happening in the KSP community. Damion left the team, and even stopped playing KSP altogether. But, hey, you got what you wanted!

[SpaceHole]

Why is this even news?

Gaming has gone mainstream - this has advantages and disadvantages - one of them is that you can sell to more potential consumers yet you also have to deal with way more of them and potentially more that will be "odd".

I understand that those threats are to be taken seriously yet one also has to realize that sadly the internet has become a "playground" for small kids doing stuff kids do online - which is a big problem and something parents should be more aware of.

Also from my point of view the main reason why this developer-consumer interaction becomes so emotional is also sometimes the fault of devleopers. Especially with developers abusing crowd-sourcing and community interaction. You cant integrate fans directly into your funding by getting their money for a "promise" and not get a backlash when things dont work out.

I think this is one of the biggest problems right now. People "invest" in "promises" - once those promises are not fulfilled people will get emotional.

Also what i dont understand - why wont developers just act with their fans with aliases?

Yet dont get me wrong - death-threats etc. are still messed up. On the other hand i dont consider things like a consumer-uproar because of lies harassment (like with the new Alien Colonial Marines game). Yet it is harassment when it concentrates on specific persons that probably are not to blame.

Also as sad as this is - once you decide to become a public-figure you will have to deal with new problems. - or conceal your identity from the very start.

Yet the no pentalty thing is stupid - there is no difference between a death-threat online and a death-threat offline. Both will be purued and i am pretty sure that 90% of ppl doing such things are not hiding their identity. Not to mention that most of them will probably be rather young ...

And btw. in most countries police cant legaly refuse to persecute such things for obvious reasons.

Edited August 22, 2013 by SpaceHole

[regex]

With a name like "regex" I knew you were a dev. Nice one. I used to go by the handle "Chronjob" which some people got. Others though it had something to do with "Chronic" as in pot head. LOL

I always wondered if the guys who wrote that deliberately took out the "h"; makes me think of "cro magnon" for some reason, and then I wonder why they put a cro magnon in charge of my system scheduler.

I did open source work for about three years before getting burnt out on it (not the programming, but the project itself). The community I was involved with was fairly "meh", and had its ups and downs but no outright idiotic threats. I even worked on a Minecraft mod for a while before giving that up (around the time I started programming professionally, IIRC) and the Minecraft community was surprisingly supportive around the time I was involved in it. Maybe the mod just attracted cool people, I don't know, but I also hung out in a few texture pack threads and it wasn't ever as bad as some people make it out to be. I did find the modding community around that time to be very xenophobic and full of themselves...

All that was at least three years ago and times have definitely changed on the internet.

[regex]

Also what i dont understand - why wont developers just act with their fans with aliases?

A little thing called "copyright". Also just doing business in general.

[SpaceHole]

Its not that hard to conceal your idenity within a company. Most of the time you will act in the name of a company and not with your own name not to mention that by "conceal" i mean in public. Even if you use your real name for contracts etc. its not like the info will get out that easily.

As a rather good example take a look at "Daft Punk". Or almost any bigger firm - you will probably find names of their public-speakers yet most other names will not be shown.

And what is most important you dont have to link real names to pseudonyms you use to provide infos - updates etc. so when somebody does not like something he actually wont have a single target he can fixate on.

Btw. i think it is only a matter of time until these things will get way worse - just wait for the first big crowd-funding projects failing - or even worse get abused by criminals

Also the Polygon-Article-Harassment-Guide is actually pretty good.

Edited August 22, 2013 by SpaceHole

[Eric S]

Yeah, even while I might think our community is capable of overreaction on occasion, I've still seen worse elsewhere. Once saw a post where a player was deliberately trying to stir up hate towards a specific dev to get him fired, and said as much in his posts. Someone told him to keep the criticism constructive, as per the rules of that forum. User responded with "If he gets fired, the game will be better, so this is constructive criticism." Here's a hint. Even if I agree with you on what changes were good or bad, you'll never get my support if that's your attitude.

[roosterr]

I always wondered if the guys who wrote that deliberately took out the "h"; makes me think of "cro magnon" for some reason, and then I wonder why they put a cro magnon in charge of my system scheduler.

I did open source work for about three years before getting burnt out on it (not the programming, but the project itself). The community I was involved with was fairly "meh", and had its ups and downs but no outright idiotic threats. I even worked on a Minecraft mod for a while before giving that up (around the time I started programming professionally, IIRC) and the Minecraft community was surprisingly supportive around the time I was involved in it. Maybe the mod just attracted cool people, I don't know, but I also hung out in a few texture pack threads and it wasn't ever as bad as some people make it out to be. I did find the modding community around that time to be very xenophobic and full of themselves...

All that was at least three years ago and times have definitely changed on the internet.

Times have changed, the money in programming has dried up and you have to be an uber gawd to make a higher salary in software development. I still do it making small apps for a corporate intranet mostly, but found more money in selling ads on my privately owned WordPress site. With WordPress and its community, who needs to write code any more?

[TouhouTorpedo]

The nice thing about the Internet is that it makes it so easy to find and contact and communicate with people.

The problem with the Internet is that it makes it so easy to find and contact and communicate with people.

Plague of game dev harassment erodes industry, spurs support groups

We've got an awesome game here, and a great team of developers. While constructive and precise criticism is always in order--we are all alpha/beta testers after all--we should also make an effort to be supportive, to be good to HarvesteR & co.

Because toxic communities (even smallish bands of toxic users within communities) do kill games and drive developers out of the industry.

You hit on a key point though, communication. Which has in recent times, been an issue in KSP development. Someone mentioned the DLC saga previously but you can't blame the users for reacting how they did. The games sales policy at the time was known to the users and they felt alienated by the sudden statement they had heard, which rightly so blew out of proportion.

People did complain the KSP devs weren't interacting enough, and KSP weekly started to show us how the game was being developed. but, this still hasn't solved the key issue unfortunately.

Although we get to hear what they are doing, we hardly ever get Dev responses to questions, more importantly, questions about when certain fun killing bugs and features are finally going to get fixed.

imo, "the add more and calmly ignore the problems" attitude is the greatest risk to KSP development. I've got several friends who have expressed interest in this game. Theres a reason none of them have bought it, and it'd be the tedious gameplay due to features which are long due fixes... several of which would be doable in a very short space of time as a developer who can access the source. (options for old and new ASAS parts, crewable seats, 2.5m tanks have multiple links between rigidbodies reducing wobble like struts would, single shortcut key flight recovery or end in the tracking station)

The lack of updating previous updates despite there being requests to do something about it is what I think is a serious problem.

[roosterr]

You hit on a key point though, communication. Which has in recent times, been an issue in KSP development. Someone mentioned the DLC saga previously but you can't blame the users for reacting how they did. The games sales policy at the time was known to the users and they felt alienated by the sudden statement they had heard, which rightly so blew out of proportion.

People did complain the KSP devs weren't interacting enough, and KSP weekly started to show us how the game was being developed. but, this still hasn't solved the key issue unfortunately.

Although we get to hear what they are doing, we hardly ever get Dev responses to questions, more importantly, questions about when certain fun killing bugs and features are finally going to get fixed.

imo, "the add more and calmly ignore the problems" attitude is the greatest risk to KSP development. I've got several friends who have expressed interest in this game. Theres a reason none of them have bought it, and it'd be the tedious gameplay due to features which are long due fixes... several of which would be doable in a very short space of time as a developer who can access the source. (options for old and new ASAS parts, crewable seats, 2.5m tanks have multiple links between rigidbodies reducing wobble like struts would, single shortcut key flight recovery or end in the tracking station)

The lack of updating previous updates despite there being requests to do something about it is what I think is a serious problem.

An occasional "we hear your cries.." from the developer is nice, but going into details about what they are doing and their priorities just generates too much negative dialogue, too many armchair quarterbacks, and everyone becomes and "expert".

As people and Alpha Testers, we should just sit back and let them do what they need to do and patiently wait for what they roll out. If they fail us, then they fail themselves. I am sure they are reading many if not all of the negative comments. Responding to them just creates more spent time and frustrations that take away from their goals.

[TouhouTorpedo]

As people and Alpha Testers, we should just sit back and let them do what they need to do and patiently wait for what they roll out. If they fail us, then they fail themselves. I am sure they are reading many if not all of the negative comments. Responding to them just creates more spent time and frustrations that take away from their goals.

Absolutely no. This Alpha testers thing is far from the truth. Alpha testing is what the Q&A team do. We're in the "Playerbase" and with this type of business model we are the end and release customer who expects updates over time. The "Crowdfunded Alpha" is misnomer as they are an endless development cycle. The game is a final release version only at the point continued development is considered unprofitable, and the final release would be hyped enough to start an expansion of the lifecycle in purchases to start the next project.

We absolutely aren't Alpha testers. We're users. They have a fairly large Development team and I am aware that members of their Dev team have been informed of these problems, directly in some cases. What we have not received is any kind of response to if they will ever be resolved.

[esinohio]

The man, Harvester, has over 3000+ posts in these forums. Not sure if that is just from the wipe forward or total but anyway you look at that, that is great interaction with a community. I mean all those posts can't just be "This is what is happening" fluff posts, they are responses to questions, ideas, suggestions, bugs, etc.. etc.. etc.. That to me equals great communication. Not all of it may be what you were expecting or wanting to hear for sure but excellent communication none the less.

[TouhouTorpedo]

Hes the lead Dev who has been here since the game was conceived. of course he'd have loads of posts irrespective of how much he posts now. The post count isn't what I'm talking about here and I'm not even talking about Harvester specifically, either.

[DChurchill]

Ah, an article about Penny Arcade's GIFT (Greater Internet *you can probably guess what this word is* Theory; anonymity + audience = total *let's just say "jerk"*) as it applies to game developers. It does seem like the shield of anonymity has made many of the worst sorts on the internet even bolder of late, but what's surprising is how many of them are bold without good reason. A lot of the worst offenders are in fact posting from accounts that can easily be traced back to their source IP address, and thus to the computer they're posting from.

QFT. Many times I need to reign myself in from posting, and obviously I don't always succeed, from a position of anonymity. "Would you say this to that guys face?" is a pretty good filter to use. Sorry all and sundry if I don't always use it.

[roosterr]

Absolutely no. This Alpha testers thing is far from the truth. Alpha testing is what the Q&A team do. We're in the "Playerbase" and with this type of business model we are the end and release customer who expects updates over time. The "Crowdfunded Alpha" is misnomer as they are an endless development cycle. The game is a final release version only at the point continued development is considered unprofitable, and the final release would be hyped enough to start an expansion of the lifecycle in purchases to start the next project.

We absolutely aren't Alpha testers. We're users. They have a fairly large Development team and I am aware that members of their Dev team have been informed of these problems, directly in some cases. What we have not received is any kind of response to if they will ever be resolved.

They do not have a fairly large development team, they are Indie/small. And it would be irresponsible to let tell us if an issue will be resolved, because they dont know. Likely issues will be resolved, but it could take a month or a year, they dont know until they start digging and bat around solutions internally. The layman would not understand to the technical solutions if offered anyway.

You can call us "User's" or "X-Testers", or any label you feel comfortable with. But it does not change the fact that we all paid a very small amount of money for a product that was "under heavy development". The payment model is worthwhile for us and the developers alike. If something really gets under your skin, you have every right to quit using the product that you well knew was not completed and had inherent risks of bugs.

[regex]

They do not have a fairly large development team, they are Indie/small. And it would be irresponsible to let tell us if an issue will be resolved, because they dont know. Likely issues will be resolved, but it could take a month or a year, they dont know until they start digging and bat around solutions internally. The layman would not understand to the technical solutions if offered anyway.

This is very true. Setting expectations before you even know how to fix something is just shooting yourself in the foot.

On a side note, I personally haven't had any problem with communication on the dev side, especially if I've gone through the proper channels on bug reporting. They're very responsive and friendly.

[el_coyoto]

Ah, an article about Penny Arcade's GIFT (Greater Internet *you can probably guess what this word is* Theory; anonymity + audience = total *let's just say "jerk"*) as it applies to game developers.

I think this is the problem in fact. We have a great game, we have a great developer team and a great userbase. The problem is this Internet mechanic that allows a very small subset of users to act as bullies AND be very audible.

KSP amazed me on several degrees when I started playing (~0.16), one of them being the friendly and globally nice community, even more than DF community. I was so pleasantly surprised by the community that for the first time in my life, I created a forum account and started posting a bit.

Of course, we may have a few issues and subjects better avoided on this forum, but in my limited experience, these are unavoidable and are OK as long as they are kept at a reasonably low noise level. I also think that a strong forum moderation is the key to keep things civil, but as I've said, I'm not a big forum user.

I develop C++ business apps for a living, and it can be very tough, technically and emotionally. But developing games is way tougher, because it seems that for some reason people agree to pay ridiculous amount of money for a badly designed entreprisey app at work, but can turn stark raving mad about a 20-ish$ (or free!) game they play to relax.

Indie game developers need a very strong will and an ability to ignore bullies and focus on people actually helping them building a better game through constructive criticism. Sadly, this sound easier said than done and I know that it can be hard to invest a lot of your time on a project without investing a piece of your heart as well, especially if you care about the project, and this can make you quite vulnerable to people reactions (not even mentioning the down right lunatics discussed in the article).

Maybe the solution would be hiring Jeb to track and "deliver" free unused SRBs to these bullies...

Let's just hope that we won't need such extreme (although fun) measures and that the community and moderators will continue making these forums a cool place to hang out and show their support to the developers and their hard work.

[roosterr]

I develop C++ business apps for a living, and it can be very tough, technically and emotionally. But developing games is way tougher, because it seems that for some reason people agree to pay ridiculous amount of money for a badly designed entreprisey app at work, but can turn stark raving mad about a 20-ish$ (or free!) game they play to relax.

Indie game developers need a very strong will and an ability to ignore bullies and focus on people actually helping them building a better game through constructive criticism. Sadly, this sound easier said than done and I know that it can be hard to invest a lot of your time on a project without investing a piece of your heart as well, especially if you care about the project, and this can make you quite vulnerable to people reactions (not even mentioning the down right lunatics discussed in the article).

This sound a lot like my rant a few pages back on this thread (I develop with C# BTW ). You get it!

I get tired of people that paid their $23 or less and now believe that SQUAD owes them a lifetime of flawless entertainment bliss.

[TouhouTorpedo]

They do not have a fairly large development team, they are Indie/small. And it would be irresponsible to let tell us if an issue will be resolved, because they dont know. Likely issues will be resolved, but it could take a month or a year, they dont know until they start digging and bat around solutions internally. The layman would not understand to the technical solutions if offered anyway.

You can call us "User's" or "X-Testers", or any label you feel comfortable with. But it does not change the fact that we all paid a very small amount of money for a product that was "under heavy development". The payment model is worthwhile for us and the developers alike. If something really gets under your skin, you have every right to quit using the product that you well knew was not completed and had inherent risks of bugs.

You're mostly right here. I almost have quit using the game. I barely play it anymore because I know exactly what's going to happen. I'll get frustrated by incomplete features that have been incomplete for a very long time, with multiple requests over that time period to actually sort them out that haven't been heeded. - Rocket wobble is a great example, and Unity engine and Development Asymptotes a poor excuse. 2.5m parts have been around for a long time and still are very poor. Extra rigidbody connections, which are placed at a spacing determined by the difference in mass of the two parts could solve this. See? A possible solution!

Or how about a lot of talk about how we could stick a Kerbal on SRB, even an endorsed comic showing it so - when in actuality we can't without having some way of spawning the Kerbal first, as apparently seats aren't crewable! Look at it this way - Assign Kerbal to seat, seat starts with the Kerbal's data (this can be done with ANY part at all, I have made seats able to do this part) and then the seat during physics loading spawns a new part, which is the Kerbal. They should have all the code they need available to do that in their hands, very quickly - same with the previous suggestion.

Both have had quite a few requests floating around to be done and I know Devs have had contact with both. Why has there not even been acknowledgement of these and other problems? Its always about the next big feature. I've only heard of "fixing ASAS" for updates on previous updates, but that isn't the best solution. people are asking for options to have BOTH the old ASAS and new SAS. Listening to that would save time they can put into solving more issues.

[esinohio]

Sorry, wasn't trying to Troll you or anything. Just wanting to point out that there is an excess of communication going on. Again, maybe not to what you feel is important. I'm not neck deep in the code, thank freaking god, as a current developer type as you are. Hehe, I gave that up most likely before you were born. I hope that passion is maybe being poured into a mod or something we can use? hint hint, nudge nudge... Maybe a mod or workaround for the perceived problems you are having with the game?

You never know... you could be brought on to the team along with past mod developers and then we can deluge you with friendly... suggestions lol.