Ubisoft Artist Explains Why Launching a Game Can Be a "Horrid Experience"
Ubisoft's lead prop artist Joe Hobbs shared that launching games is often "a horrid experience" for developers due to backlash from many players on social media.
Relationships between players and developers can often be tense, for a variety of reasons. And if some companies try to maintain an open dialogue with the audience, others prefer to avoid contacting the gamers due to the levels of toxicity they may get in response.
Recently, Ubisoft's lead prop artist Joe Hobbs took to Twitter to discuss why many game developers are drifting away from their audience. He spoke about how people, and precisely gamers, sometimes behave online expressing his regret regarding the toxicity of some representatives of the gaming community, when it comes to launching a game.
According to Hobbs, players often treat developers with hatred on social networks without even realizing that they interact with real people making a game's launch a "horrid experience" for game developers.
"I've received death threats in the past over Division 2. It's unacceptable," Hobbs wrote. "The harassment that game developers receive is utterly disgusting and I see it in the comments of most devs who say pretty much anything."
Hobbs shared that he understands why players don't like it when developers ignore the community. Although he noted that if the creators of the game are open to dialogue, the players immediately start to annoy the artists with requests like "fix the game" and "fix matchmaking", even if this has nothing to do with their duties.
What's even worse, many people continue to violate developers' boundaries even when they talk about their personal stories. As an example, Hobbs cited a case of a developer who shared that his mother was sick so they could not work on a game, and still received responses like "go back to work" and "fix the game".
The artist reiterated that most developers and other employees of game companies simply do not want to communicate with players online following such a negative experience, especially if they are not paid to do so. He also noted that many industry workers don't even say what exactly they're working on to avoid backlash for just being a part of a specific team or working on a certain project.
Hobbs acknowledged that the reason for such behavior often lies in the fact that people often do not understand how games are made, however, judging by his tone, he does not think that it justifies gamers.
"The sad fact is, most game devs go on complete social media blackout for weeks following the launch of whatever they've worked on, and I'd heavily advise it," Hobbs said. "Get some rest, recharge after the push to shipping the game."
"People will say toxic stuff no matter what you do," he concluded.
