When did We Stop Trusting Game Designers?

[El Mahdi]

Seth Godin has some interesting thoughts on that. Essentially, he believes people should post with their real names and stand by their words for just the kind of reasons described above.

I know some people on Yoggie have requested their username changed to their real names. It can be easy to see that people would attach more weight to posts attributed to real names than pseudonyms.

I understand, and agree to a point, but in todays world, anonymity is protection against some very real threats. However, it is an abuse when people hide behind that anonymity and say or do things that they wouldn't if their name was known. In a perfect society, people would do what is right, simply because it's right. But, we don't live in a perfect society. Everyone has probably been guilty of this at one time or another. God knows I have also.

Knowing someones real name can open a person up to some very real problems, anything from harrasment to full identity theft. It's almost like our modern day is starting to mirror medieval fantasy, where knowing a creatures true name can give you power over them. For example, I don't mind stating in my profile section that I'm retired USAF, even though there are those who may want to single me out for verbal harrasment because of my background (although that has never happened to me here at ENWorld). If it did though, I can handle it. But if those same people had my real name, and linked it to where I live or a phone number, then my family could become a target of that harrasment, or worse. That's something I'm not willing to open myself up to.

But you're absolutely right, people do abuse this anonymity. Fortunately, the forum rules provide a level of accountability, without which people would go completely off the leash. But people will take those rules to their limit, and then bend the hell out of them, all because they are anonymous.

But, pseudonyms are just too cool. One of the things I enjoy most about ENWorld (and other forums) is the vast range of interesting names and the creativity behind them (and sometimes the humor behind them).



Anyways, back to the OP, I think there are a lot of good reasons listed so far on this thread, and all of them are probably true to one extent or another. For me personally, I don't distrust game designers or think they are somehow scum. However, I don't take any game designers ideas, or any systems rules, as gospel either. They're people just like the rest of us. If I feel anything about designers, it's a certain amount of respect for the talent they have (even the ones who've made things I don't necessarily like) and probably a fair amount of envy that they make a living (more or less) doing something I find so much fun.

 

[catsclaw227]

"What, do you imagine that I would take so much trouble and so much pleasure in writing, do you think that I would keep so persistently to my task, if I were not preparing--with a rather shaky hand--a labyrinth into which I can venture, in which I can move my discourse, opening up underground passages, forcing it to go far from itself, finding overhangs that reduce and deform its itinerary, in which I can lose myself and appear at last to eyes that I will never have to meet again? I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write." -M.F.

Internet anonymity on message boards (and they way posters hide behind it) are not the same thing, philosophically, as the message that Michel Foucault was trying to get across when he wrote this in The Archaeology of Knowledge. His statement was in response to a question from a group in Brazil while on a speaking tour.
[/tangent]

 

[El Mahdi]

... but I don't think that Gygax got enormous trust from the general gamer (from the young gamers, sure, but young people are perhaps more inclined to trust the people making the rules).

Heh heh, since WHEN!? Maybe from 0-12 yrs old, but from there to about 25, not a chance. (Okay maybe only about 13 through 18/19).

 

[El Mahdi]

I am also now putting my name in my sig. Between that, and my location, I am now putting up DEFCON 3 defenses outside my home.

I hear that ninja pirates mounted on dinosaurs with lasers makes the best defensive perimeter.

 

[Spinachcat]

Yet, EGG flat out dictates your world to you and no one raises an eyebrow. Zeb Cook does the same thing and is lauded by some for maintaining the mystery of magic items.

Go read the editorials and letters from 1970s and 1980s gaming magazines, particularly non-TSR mags but even Dragon had lots of discussion. Lotsa eyebrows were raised over many things.

At what point did game designers go from "Guys who want to make my game better" to "Those bastards who are trying to ruin MY game!"?

Mature gamers have always understood the game rules are malleable and immature people have always acted immature. The internet just gives immature people a safe place to whine where they can't be slapped repeatedly by the rest of us.

 

[Ourph]

this disparagement by suggesting their icky or putting "professional" in quotes like they don't deserve it just strikes me as rude.

I put the word professionals in quotes to indicate that some designers appear to believe the word professional indicates something other than "I get paid to do this". People who get paid to design games absolutely deserve to refer to themselves as professionals, but not necessarily as "professionals" (where the quotes indicate a special, added meaning attached to the word). IMHO.

 

[Jack7]

Perhaps this isn't the direct expression of an opinion on the original post by Hussar, but it strikes me that the implications of the question(s) goes to the facts of determining exactly what a Game Designer is, and what is he responsible for?

What does he (a GD) do exactly, what is he responsible for, where does his authority or influence end (especially in something like an RPG, or maybe later into interactive games where the player can "refocus the environment, characters, etc. - as well as in fields like Virtual Reality, and RPGs are a form of non-technological, imagination-based Virtual Reality if you think about it), where begin, what cover, and so forth and so on?

Does he shape or create a game genre, modify it, redefine it, if so how? Does he just operate according to pre-determined rules? Does history and prior development dictate how he should or must operate? To what degree is he free to innovate or invent? What should be the theories or principles governing design? Why is one design successful, or at least useful, and one not?

I think it would probably be easier to answer your question(s) if there was an agreed upon definition, or at least an greed upon set of principles regarding what a designer is exactly, what his real functions are, what is none of his business, how he should operate and things like that.

I have my own opinions on the matter but I reckon most everyone else does too.

Still, it would be kinda interesting to see what people think or feel on the issue and if there were any real agreement on what exactly the job of a designer is, and if there is agreement, to what degree people do actually agree about what is a game designer and his real function(s)?

 

[NN]

I 'distrust' game designers in the sense that over the years I have acquired some products so bad (but yet professionally produced) that they can not have possibly been published in good faith.

Necromantic edit test

 

[BryonD]

Now, a thought hit me. What would happen if Mike Mearls had written either of these two bits in a recent Dragon magazine? There would be a mad rush of vitriol being spilled all over the forums. How dare he dictate my campaign world to me, would be the rallying cry.

When I was a teenager my parents could tell me when I was to come home and whether or not I could drive the car.
Now that I'm adult they don't have this authority.
I still love, respect and trust them and this very fundamental change does not undermine those facts in the least.

Once upon a time, RPGs were new and Gary, amongst a very few others, led us wide-eyed youngsters into the wonders of HIS WORLD and HIS GAME. But now I've grown up on that front as well. I greatly respect Gary's rules for his world. But based on many *other* things he said I think it would be crazy to claim he would presume other DMs wouldn't make there own worlds and rules to fit their own personal visions. His world - His Rules, but if you don't eventually grow up and get a place of your own, then I see Gary saying "tsk tsk".

When did (WotC) game designers stop trusting us to leave the nest?

 

[Scribble]

When I was a teenager my parents could tell me when I was to come home and whether or not I could drive the car.
Now that I'm adult they don't have this authority.
I still love, respect and trust them and this very fundamental change does not undermine those facts in the least.

I also find that the older I get, the more I tend to realize that mom and dad were generaly right. They don't have the ability to "tell me what to do" anymore, but I find that their ideas and advice are usually based on experience.

This is kind of how I view game designers. (Not all of them.)

When I was younger I would read something like that and think: Man don't tell me how to play my game.

Now that I'm older, I see it less as them telling me how to play, and more of an experienced player passing on what they've found works. If I'm changing a rule these days, it's usually only after I've at least tried using the "official" rule and found it honestly doesn't mesh with our playstyle.