Gamenamexxxx
FE ATURE
MAX DOWNTON
Senior brand
manager at Splash
Damage.due to cowardice, this is a gross PROFILE
oversimplification that entirely
bypasses the psychology that is at
play. If you meet (for example) a
member of a videogame development
team for the first time, you have a
real human person in front of you,
and you act accordingly. If you’re
replying to some text on-screen, or if
you’re typing out something to an
avatar on Twitter or a forum, you’re
not talking with someone. You’re
talking at some thing. At best, you’re
directing your thoughts to a construct
in your head, a construct with no
available evidence to prove or
disprove its accuracy.
The opaque nature of game
development was often cited to me as
exacerbating existing problems,inflating grievances because
communities don’t understand how
games are made. And how could they,
if nobody is telling them? One
example of a negative community
reaction cited to me by just about
everybody I spoke to, including Dr
Lamont, was Hello Games’ No Man’s
Sky, and the ferocious backlash it
suffered when the finished product
didn’t match the initial reveal. Game
development is iterative, with
multiple changes along the way par
for the course. With none of this
visible between announcement and
launch, many people had been
expecting a game that matched the
very first trailer precisely.
There’s anecdotal evidence that
being transparent aboutdevelopment, and putting names and
faces to individual members of a
development team, can minimise
toxicity within a community. Max
Downton is senior brand manager at
Splash Damage. While he’s no
stranger to negative behaviour in
communities, his experience has
largely been a positive one,
something he attributes in part to
encouraging transparency in the
development process.GIT GUD BEHAVIOUR
“One of the things that I was really
pushing the company to do is to
actually put names and faces out into
the public,” Max tells me. “I’ve
always believed that by putting out
names and faces you can undercut