Jeff Vogel has a great blog about how creators should never read their forums. It’s definitely worth a read.
Now, as you guys know, I do read our forums. A lot. Why? Because I’m dumb. As in, dangerously dumb. I have to consciously remember not to swallow my tongue dumb.
But there’s probably a bit of karmic retribution in there too. I got into making games because I was one of those nerd ragers on Usenet back in the day. Greedy bastardly idiotic game developers who put out games before they’re finished. I’ll show them how it’s done. Only a total moron can’t see when their game isn’t ready for prime time. Cough.
Truth be told though, the Stardock communities are pretty different than most. I hang out on a lot of Internet communities and I think I can safely say that our forums are pretty good. Good enough to the point that someone joining them would likely notice the difference pretty quickly.
We have some advantages there in terms of the type of products we make. No MMORPGs, no FPS’s helps. We have a different demographic. We also rarely but definitely kick out chronic nerd ragers. You can find them on other forums screaming a fit about how they were kicked off because we couldn’t handle a little constructive criticism. Constructive criticism being “You asshats should be disemboweled for your idiocy!” Everyone knows that it’s ass hat. Not asshat. So of course they got kicked off.
Jeff Vogel is right in what he says. If you read forums, you’ll inevitably get aggravated and say something you shouldn’t. And nowadays, with game journalism reduced to combing “the nets” for something spicy to get page views, saying things when you’re aggravated carries a lot of risk.
But the question that inevitably comes up over and over is this: Why are we here in the first place? The money? Making niche PC games is not the fast track to money. “It barely pays for my jet fuel™”. No, the reason, at least for me, is to hang out and talk with other gamers about this stuff. Not to get all mushy but we’re here because we love you guys. In a manly way that is. Of course. So don’t expect us to disappear any time soon.
Not that’ll stop me from saying horribly inappropriate things from time to time. You bloody basement dwelling troglites. And yes, I’ll be over on Friday to debate the nature of the dark side of the force following the next Clone Wars episode.
