companies staying away from rpg gamers

Vyvyan Basterd · Jun 23, 2010

mudbunny said:
There are several billion people who believe in one sort of <thing> or another that would disagree with you there.

pawsplay said:
What?

People of one group perceive that a being exists, this is a reality for them. Others perceive that said being does not exist, this is reality for them. Both groups perceive their own reality. Just like the producer of a product might perceive all TTRPGers as the Comic Book Guy, this is reality to him and his business decisions. Even if our reality as TTRPGers has a completely different perception.

howandwhy99 · Jun 23, 2010

pawsplay said:
So either you are wrong, or there is no such thing as reality at all, and you should consider using a different word in order to be more clear.

This is central to the belief system of a large portion of RPG designers in the hobby already. I would be careful not to tread to close into religion on this board however.

billd91 · Jun 23, 2010

pawsplay said:
Well, I don't accept your radical subjectivism. In my reality, the perceptions of a completely insane person are not reality. Since I have just proven your reality and my reality are not compatible, I have just demonstrated that both our "realities" cannot exist simultaneously in all reality.

So either you are wrong, or there is no such thing as reality at all, and you should consider using a different word in order to be more clear.

Personally, I think of reality as reality. Perceptions of reality mainly serve to put a scope to our ability to interact with reality. So it's not that perceptions determine reality, if particularly limited, they put particular limits on how we interact with reality. They may, in fact, be delusional leading to actions that are a poor fit with reality.

So, if a company perceives tabletop gamers as toxic and behaves accordingly, they aren't determining reality. They aren't even determining their own reality. They're just limiting the way they deal with reality. Reality may deal with them in surprising ways as a result.

pawsplay · Jun 23, 2010

Vyvyan Basterd said:
People of one group perceive that a being exists, this is a reality for them. Others perceive that said being does not exist, this is reality for them. Both groups perceive their own reality. Just like the producer of a product might perceive all TTRPGers as the Comic Book Guy, this is reality to him and his business decisions. Even if our reality as TTRPGers has a completely different perception.

So what are they perceiving? And now for a chance to use the word "homonculous."

Homunculus argument - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And thus endeth the philosophical tangent.

pawsplay · Jun 23, 2010

howandwhy99 said:
This is central to the belief system of a large portion of RPG designers in the hobby already. I would be careful not to tread to close into religion on this board however.

I am not getting within a mile of any religious topic. I don't know what people are reading into my post, but I am paraphrasing William James, the American philosopher.

Vyvyan Basterd · Jun 23, 2010

billd91 said:
So, if a company perceives tabletop gamers as toxic and behaves accordingly, they aren't determining reality. They aren't even determining their own reality. They're just limiting the way they deal with reality. Reality may deal with them in surprising ways as a result.

I agree that if a company believes TTRPGers are toxic it does not make us all toxic, they don't create the reality they are perceiving in us.

But, their perceptions shape the reality of the products we receive.

Pour · Jun 23, 2010

We don't have the human connection here, the physical exchanges. All we have are direct feeds of opinion to one another and, unfortunately, direct feeds to many designers. No filter, no consequence, and no perceived responsibility. There is a point where the consumer goes too far, I think, becomes too discerning, too negative, too demanding, and I think they are the real problem here.

Luckily, I think most companies involved in this industry take the overwhelming feedback from the internet with a grain of salt, and instead conduct their own research of in-the-flesh players and GMs at hobby stores, libraries, bookstores, comic shops, conventions and the like. I think that is where they draw their inspiration from, as they always have. It feels altogether a different sort of research pool when people are live around a table, playing or discussing or designing. There's a lot of positive, constructive undertones. That isn't to say coddling or easily-pleased, but certainly not adversarial or venomous like so much of this digital feedback. Yes there's plenty of positive responses mixed in, plenty of amazing threads, but a fair portion of the online rpg community is not ready to participate in the larger discussion. I imagine that's frustrating, though, to those who demand to be read.

My only fear is that all this sort of discussion is taken too seriously.

thecasualoblivion · Jun 23, 2010

After the last 2 or so years of internet RPG commentary, are people trying to argue that the RPG community doesn't have toxic elements?

ggroy · Jun 23, 2010

Vyvyan Basterd said:
Just like the producer of a product might perceive all TTRPGers as the Comic Book Guy, this is reality to him and his business decisions. Even if our reality as TTRPGers has a completely different perception.

The original Malcolm Sheppard article in the OP, seems to be alluding to the "perceived reality" of the people who are calling the shots when it comes to business decisions. If the decision makers have been turned off previously by "toxic" TTRPGers and have a "Comic Book Guy" perception of TTRPGers, they may think twice about embracing TTRPGers in the future. This may be a classic case of "once burned, twice shy".

As much as I disagree with the notion of TTRPGers resembling the "Comic Book Guy", it's this very perception which may be turning off some business decision makers, who believe that TTRPGers are more trouble than they are worth.

MrMyth · Jun 23, 2010

pawsplay said:
I read the whole article twice. Why are you saying people only read one or two lines? Are you spying on my computer or something?

There are certainly some claims being made in this thread that really feel like people read the first few paragraphs, and then pretty much stopped - specifically, right up to "They weren’t the gamers he remembered having fun with. They were

s."

I get this sense, because when I first read the article, I got to that point and started to be offended. What was this guy saying? Was this an attack on the gaming community?

And then I read the rest of the article, and... no, it wasn't. But there are people in this thread who seem very, very convinced that it is. That having said those words - having shared the genuine feelings of his client, based on the man's actual experiences - the rest of the article is irrelevant or unforgiveable.

But I wasn't saying that was true of everyone in this thread, and haven't particularly noticed in your own posts. Indeed, the sort of discussion points you've been raising, I've actually found to be rather good ones - on how this all ties into perception vs reality, and on the possibility that even if some gamers are jerks, there might be nothing we can do about.

I don't necessarily agree with on the points you've made in those topics, but I think that is the sort of useful reflection on the subject matter that is worth discussing. It actually involves the issues raised by the article itself. I think the discussion of "What can we do about this?" is exactly the sort of talk we should be having.

But a lot of other posts have simply been focused on objecting to and attacking an opinion that doesn't exist. They've been about how this is an attack on gamers, or how stereotyping gamers is bad, or how businesses within the industry are glad to cater to their fanbases and don't need to take lessons from outside sources, or things along those lines. And these aren't even all bad opinions to have - they just aren't relevant ones.

I don't even think that most of these objections have arisen maliciously. Like I said, I think some people read the first few paragraphs, saw gamers being dissed, and took insult, and their posts here captured that very honest sense of being offended. Even though the blog wasn't talking about them at all. It was offering one man's observations about a situation, and the genuine feelings of his client in that situation after his interaction with a segment of the gaming populace, and thoughts about what this could mean for the industry and what we could do about it.

I mean, I don't even totally agree with what he is saying. Some of his bullet points in that blog post are good ones, others are not. In my view. But the core of what he is saying - the same philosophy behind Penny Arcade's "Don't Be Dicks" motto - is a good one, and it is a shame to see it lost, and even undercut, by some of the responses in this thread.