TO bad it didn't work for politicians. 

and no, not all people that are anonymous, like me, are idiots online.

This is what happens when your consumer base learns to blame others and point the finger at a scapegoat.  With most games being a team effort. you cannot say with any certainty where the fault lies unless you have detailed knowledge of the game's development process and the persons involved.

There is no personal injury from playing a defective or substandard game.  There's certainly no reason why you are compelled to run out and buy a game on release day without reading a single review, without first deciding if it's really what you're looking for, without asking your friends what they think about it.

All this uncivilised behaviour accomplishes is giving game developers more stress which in turn affects future game quality. That's what is known as a vicious circle.

And yeah, I know, preaching to the choir here, but it needed saying.

This is basic PR.  When you plaster your face and name on things, you get the shit when people aren't happy in an equally personal way.  The game market isn't the most mature user base to begin with.  When you put yourself out there and do something stupid, you've earned the flack you went after.  Wilson in particular stepped in shit when he made a disparaging comment about a former Blizzard employee.  One should be smart enough to know whether a posting is public or private before saying something the rabid fans of Diablo 2 will hate you for.

It says something about the maturity of the victim when they're chased away from their life by a few trolls on the internet too.  Worst case scenario, you buy a gun and get good with it.  Something responsible citizens should do anyway.

I might have more pity for people working in the games industry these days, but the shaft they keep trying to shove up my ass is a little large.  Demos are a rarity, often coming months after release when they come at all.  DRM causes frequent hassles, some of it being downright absurd.  Games are regularly released in a downright broken and unfinished state, and usually left that way when they sell poorly.

Most of the grief is earned.  Perhaps misdirected, but earned.  They hype the shit out of a game, getting favorable reviews from people that make a living off being in their good graces, release their product with no way of checking it out before buying it, make returning it as big a hassle as they can, and then expect people to be nice to them when things go wrong.

I just stop buying things from them, some need to rage.

Quoted for truth!

Especially when most of the targets are children/teens.

Have you ever tried telling a teenager to wait, or to read up on something? 

I think of all the idiotic things I see people on forums say all the time without realizing that they're demanding others live up to standards that they themselves are incapable of maintaining.

Nobody deserves to have hate thrown at them. These are fucking video games. If you don't like them, don't buy them. But your purchase doesn't give you the right to shit on other people.

Sorry to be so harsh on this. It just really ticks me off to see any sort of rationalization for hating on other people. It's never ok.

Wow, really?  

This just after 

then I am assuming you are agreeing.

then you go off on a hate rant 

When I talk about hating gamers, trust me, I am not making myself an exception.  As I have said many times, I am an asshole. Gamers, we, are a problem.

Mental Retardation isn't the acceptable terminology for people with mental disabilities any more, IDD is, Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.  Retard has gone the way of older terms, like Moron, Idiot, Cretin and Imbecile.  Those were the old technical terms for people with mental disabilities, and now have moved on into general language for a stupid person.  The change will be reflected in the DSM-V soon.  Please don't get all high and mightily with me over a word like "fucktard". That was a real stretch.  I've dedicated my life to helping people with mental disabilities and illness, what have you done?   

And your rant about the business of games I'm not even going to touch, it seems off base to me, but I'm sure someone smarter than I can respond better to it.

Now, I've been following the Mass Effect controversy very loosely and the D3 one not at all, but I haven't seen any evidence (produced anywhere, not just from the OP) that Internet hostility was the direct cause of either individual's departure. From what I've seen of the haters (mostly the YouTube idiot variety, unsure if they are representative of other idiots and flamers elsewhere) most of the anger seems to be directed at EA for "not letting Bioware make the game they wanted to make" (civility and spelling added by me). I don't know what reasons they departed for, but I'm guessing based on the idiot consensus (they all seem to be saying the same thing, which is weird for flamers), that it had to do with disgruntlement and "creative differences" than with hostility from the community.

Guys, 

I don't think many of you are getting the level of hate that gets directed at people these days.

I get called "retard", "moron", "fucktard", "douchebag", etc. pretty regularly. That's nothing.

What people don't realize is that there are people out there who will put serious effort into antagonizing the people who make their games (if they're accessible). I've had people PM me saying that my kids (who they name in the email) should be "anal raped".  I've had people post my home address and hope someone "blows my brains out". I've had numerous people make reference to my wife (by name) and hope terrible things happen to her.

And mind you, I'm a little guy compared to what the guys at Bioware and elsewhere put up with. I can't even imagine the kind of insanity they deal with.

On a given day, I could list a dozen threads on various forums online that are actively discussing what a terrible human being I personally am.  And given that my day to day life is about as normal as it gets (I run a small studio where everyone gets along) one can only imagine what the guys at these big places get.  In 20 years, I've had *one* bad employee who ripped us in the media and that was enough for people to refer to me as a "rapist" in various places.

The net result is you're going to get a new generation of developers/content providers who will be savvy to this stuff and will never be foolish enough to interact directly with people. It'll all be pseudonyms where you'll have no direct access to the person behind the handle. Dummies like me come from the 90s (like the Dr's) where we talked directly, as ourselves, to our players.  That day is coming to an end.

TAO, thank you for being a great example of an internet asshole.  You are arguing against the use of a word I didn't use and attacking my "defense" of it, which I also didn't use.  Get off your high horse, you don't know shit.  Reading a few books and taking a few classes at the community college doesn't make you a civil rights leader.  All you are proving is your desperate need to feel important and righteous.  You are so desperate to make this argument, and show your moral superiority, that you stretched calling a gamer a "fucktard" into an attack on the Intellectually disabled community.  It's as asinine as calling someone racist for using the word "niggardly".   Grow up.  Want to help people who are suffering with disabilities?  Get your hands dirty and do it.  You have to be a real person.  The people I work with would roll their eyes at you and see you as the gilded farce you really are.  I may come across as a loud mouthed and opinionated asshole, and that's often the case, but I've also worked with adults and children with IDD and mental illness for almost 11 years.  And I don't mean spending a weekend here and there volunteering, I mean working with those people no one else has the heart, stomach or courage to work with.  You talk big, but have you ever held a child as he cried because the other kids have called him a retard?  I have.  Have you ever worked with adults so severely disabled they need 24 hour care to even survive?  I have.  Have you ever seen a man break down in tears because someone refused to sell him a car, just assuming it was "illegal for the retarded to drive"? I've been there.  That's just the surface, the stories get a lot darker when we bring mental illness into it.

Mindfulness.  Really look at why you felt so compelled to make this argument.  If all you get is that you are a righteous crusader, than you have missed a good opportunity to learn who you really are and make a change for the better.

I have seen three YouTube videos in the past few weeks that were song dedications in memoriam for the posters' departed spouse or child.

On each post there was one and on one, several, replies that questioned the "truthfulness" of the the OP and degenerated to insults directed at them over a long period of time--in one case going on for six months.

This goes beyond, "bad behavior" and reflects a high level of social dysfunction.

Kids today demand that they be "tough" and name calling and criticism on very personal levels is often the norm.  Kids are expected to "take it" from their friends and peers.  You're "strong" if you can handle it and "weak" if you let on it bothers you.

I think the internet is a mirror of this.

There is an alleged legend that in medieval Japan mothers who had no husband and wealth and had an infant they could not support would take their child to the ninjas.  In return, the ninjas would pay the mother and take the child.

The legend say the ninjas took each child and threw them in a well.  The ones who swam and kept above water were saved--the rest were left to drown

I think in a lot of ways, this is the world we are heading towards creating.  There is no patriotism or ethic or belief we hold "above others".  The self is al--so why bother with not saying whatever "I" think?  And if you can't handle it, then you are weak and it is only survival of the fittest that matters.

...it's all about me.