I suggest you challenge those inaccuracies directly, if you feel the article has been misrepresented. Complaining about the responses in general just looks, to me, like an unsubstantiated attack on several people.
In the post I was responding to, Shazman said, "No. His advice is 'You gamers should shut up and drink the corporate kool-aid like everyone else.'"
I felt that was a vast mischaracterization of the article, and I was responding to it. I'm not sure what the issue is here. As I said - and as Shazman's edit seems to indicate - I don't think he was deliberately distorting the blog post... I think he was offended by part of it, and acted on that offense rather than what it actually said.
Some people seem to be saying that it doesn't matter what the rest of the article says - that if even part of it is offensive, of course he should be responded to in kind!
But my point wasn't that he is mean in one part and nice in another. My point is that considering any part of it as an attack on gamers is a misreading.
Look, at no point is the author actually saying that all gamers are bad people, or that they have to 'drink the cool-aid' or that companies will embrace them only if they avoid criticism.
What he does is share a true story (unless you think he is lying.) The experience of someone he knows - a client. And that man ran into a bunch of gamers and felt that they were jerks.
I could understand if some people felt like the problem was that they weren't getting both sides of the story. Do we actually know if those gamers behaved badly enough to merit such condemnation? Well, no, we don't.
But I think we do all know that some people, especially on the internet, do indeed act like that. I think there is little reason not to take him at his word.
If someone came to Enworld and shared a story about going into his local shop, and running into some gamers who wouldn't let him play, and made fun of him for wearing a WoW shirt, or acted like jerks to him for whatever reason...
...would we really respond by castigating this poster for 'attacking the gaming community'?
I don't think so. The man ran into some gamers who didn't play well with others.
He has the right to consider them jerks. Doing so isn't a condemnation of gamers as a whole, as the author of the blog post made very clear a single paragraph after sharing that story.
Yes, we want to stick up for our hobby. This isn't a bad thing, by its own nature. But by placing jerks within the hobby ahead of good people outside of it - especially good people trying to connect to the game - we only become more insular and unwelcoming.
All I'm saying, for those who really are upset by his article, is to try and get what he is actually saying. Which is four things:
1) Here is a story of something that happened to a client of his. He had a bad experience trying to attract gamers. He remembers the gamers he used to play with and had fun with, but those he ran into among the online crowd were hostile and difficult to handle, it was a better direction for the company to try and move entirely away from them.
2) His experience is not unique. There is a perception from the outside that the RPG demographic is, in many ways, toxic.
3) Those who have caused these perceptions are not the majority of gamers, but they are the most visible, and their behavior undermines the appeal of the gaming community to the outside world.
4) It would be really cool if we could change this. How can gamers be nicer people? Here are some ideas.
What part of this is an attack? The actual experience of a man he knows? The recognition that certain gamers have created a bad perception for the community through their behavior online? The ideas on how to act to avoid contributing to this perception?
There are certainly elements to disagree with. Whether this behavior really is abnormally worse amongst gamers than other demographics. Whether the elements pinpointed as bad behavior are universally unacceptable ways to act. Whether the presence of these gamers is really the biggest factor in keeping us disconnected from other media.
But those other complaints - those who feel this is an attack on gamers, or is telling gamers to just shut up and stop offering criticism, or that he is trying to tell companies already within the industry how to do their jobs - they all seem to be responses to a completely different article, and ones I simply can't agree with.