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.