Phil Spencer Thinks Gamers Should Treat Developers with More Dignity and Respect

[Tsing]

Image: Xbox



Xbox head Phil Spencer received a Lifetime Achievement Award at DICE 2022 last week, and there was something particular that he wanted to get off his chest: developers should be treated better.



Speaking to IGN after his acceptance speech, Spencer urged gamers to respect creators, some of whom are apparently no stranger to receiving threats for all sorts of first-world problems, such as gameplay quirks and graphical downgrades to something as innocent as concluding a story in a way that doesn’t satisfy fans. The Xbox CEO sees developers as brave people who should be celebrated for what they’re doing.



“[K]eep playing, keep using your voice, understand the power of creativity, the power of community,” Spencer said. “And the other thing I would just say is, let’s respect creators. I think it’s very often that creations can be kind of...

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[Brian_B]

He’s not wrong - gamers tend to be a bunch of whiny biatches

 

[Denpepe]

He's not wrong, but it goes both ways, developers should finish their games b4 releasing them, less reasons to take flack.

 

[Grimlakin]

Threats are over the top. Stop pre ordering games from untested sources or only pre order what you're willing to loose. Otherwise if you're experiencing harm by ordering these items you're doing it to yourself.

 

[Ditchinit]

Does this mean that the developers for XBox games will get a raise (or otherwise shown appreciation from higher ups), or is this just lip service to lash out at an overly broad non-specific target?

As a creator myself (completely different industry), I've often said, "creating is hard; criticizing is easy." It is incredibly difficult to satisfy everyone within the constraints given, but it is incredibly easy to find fault, or come up with an unrecognized arbitrary constraint that was not met.

 

[MadMummy76]

And developers should stop treating gamers as a monolithic group. They always take the worst examples and paint the entire community based on that. Like somehow we are all collectively responsible for what a few individuals say or do.

And also respect is earned, not granted.

 

[Ditchinit]

And developers should stop treating gamers as a monolithic group. They always take the worst examples and paint the entire community based on that. Like somehow we are all collectively responsible for what a few individuals say or do.

And also respect is earned, not granted.

It kind of goes both ways, don't you think? Neither group is homogeneous nor monolithic. Not all gamers are whiny bitches, and not all developers are incompetent.

 

[Riccochet]

How many games are released that are complete trash. Then they never fix the issues and the devs complain that the gamers ruined their trash by pooping all over it.

Stop releasing trash, buggy, unfinished games.

 

[Uvilla]

Its funny, as the culture of unfinished games and endless patches arose, so did the culture of whining. Causality ?. If a game was released finished, no more updates, then it would be a ' bad' game, end of story. But since so much is never really finished, complaints can have an effect, you know for the next 50gb " patch".
As far as threatening, those sound like people with problems, mental, anger issues things like these. I would hope its a very thin minority, and they don't get many of these.

 

[MadMummy76]

It kind of goes both ways, don't you think? Neither group is homogeneous nor monolithic. Not all gamers are whiny bitches, and not all developers are incompetent.

Except nobody in the history of gaming has ever said all developers are incompetent.
Meanwhile "gamers are toxic" and worse statements are thrown around by some developers without consequence almost daily now.

And now this guy tries to demand respect for them. No, dude, developers can earn respect by making good games.

 

[Brian_B]

Meanwhile "gamers are toxic" and worse statements are thrown around by some developers without consequence almost daily now.

You make a very valid point - but go onto any popular game message forum, listen in any in-game chat, or peek on game reviews or reddit -- and you'd be really hard pressed to come to any different conclusion.

Anonymity enables asshats, and they tend to be the loudest voices in the room.

 

[MadMummy76]

You make a very valid point - but go onto any popular game message forum, listen in any in-game chat, or peek on game reviews or reddit -- and you'd be really hard pressed to come to any different conclusion.

Anonymity enables asshats, and they tend to be the loudest voices in the room.

Yes there are sometimes idiots in public lobbies, nobody is questioning that. There is a reason why I don't bother playing multiplayer.
The problem is with extrapolating that behavior to the entirety of gamers.

 

[Brian_B]

Yes there are sometimes idiots in public lobbies, nobody is questioning that. There is a reason why I don't bother playing multiplayer.
The problem is with extrapolating that behavior to the entirety of gamers.

Think that can be applied to just about any group of people that get stereotyped, who often get lumped in with the behavior of their loudest or most egregious members.

 

[MadMummy76]

Think that can be applied to just about any group of people that get stereotyped, who often get lumped in with the behavior of their loudest or most egregious members.

Which is called identity politics, not judging individuals by their merit, but by their group affiliations. I think in a way even thie statement by Phil Spencer is a result of identity politics. When some poorly made game is called out, they feel that it is an attack on all developers not just that product. Most of the time we don't even call out developers like that, it is the publisher who gets blamed when a game is released with issues, unless the company is self publishing like CDPR.