Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street (WoW, LoL) shares how he experienced death threats and FBI investigations – because players were not satisfied.
A few days ago, Ben Brode, one of the lead developers of Hearthstone, sparked a discussion about the community’s behavior towards game designers. After Brode explained that not all developers can handle the pressure, massive criticism, or even extreme hostilities, there were many reactions from the community.
The statements ranged from “You have my sympathy, no one should endure this” to “Don’t be so dramatic, it’s just your job, you have to deal with it” – a polarizing topic.
Now Greg Street has also spoken out, many might know him as “Ghostcrawler”. He was formerly involved with Ensemble on the “Age of Empires” series, then worked for Blizzard on World of Warcraft and StarCraft 2, and now for Riot on League of Legends. In his blog, he explains what he thinks about this topic.
“I don’t think you can be a good game developer if you are thin-skinned. You have to put your ideas to the test of reviews, which happens either internally or when players get to see the design.
I believe that you can be a good developer if you have thick skin, but not enough to open yourself up to direct communication with players. Some of my favorite games were made by people who could hardly start a conversation with others – not to mention the public of the internet.”
Later, Street also addresses his own experiences with this topic because he has also felt the consequences:
“I received strange phone calls in the middle of the night. I received death threats. During my time at Blizzard, my house was monitored by security. I had some developers who had to work with the FBI because of threats.”
Street also hints that he is actually in a good “baseline position” and others have it much harder:
“I belong to the upper class and am a white, heterosexual guy and know developers who are not and have had much, much worse things done to them by players. There is no reason for it. We all love games. Just because of that, we already have a lot in common.”
Cortyn says: No matter how much anger, emotions, and negative energy one has bottled up, everyone should think a little more about their actions and not forget that there is also a person on the other side. I don’t want to come across as preachy, but the principle that everyone should have learned as a child should perhaps come back into consciousness a bit more: Do not do unto others what you do not want done to you.
Hatred and incitement on the internet has been a topic for us before.
