Indie Studio Vents: “Gamers Aren’t Very Nice People”

Indie Studio Vents: “Gamers Aren’t Very Nice People”

British indie studio Puppy Games, who are going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment, have posted a long and heartfelt essay/rant on their site about the people who buy (or don’t buy) their video games. Don’t let its aggressive leads fool you. It’s a very good read.

Mostly because it does exactly what it says it’s going to do, throwing caution to the wind and saying things like “Firstly, gamers aren’t very nice people. Yes, you. You are not a very nice person. Statistically speaking”.

It gets better/worse:

Customers all think they’re worth everything in the entire world to us. The funny thing is, you are. Without customers, we’re dead in the water, homeless and living in a cardboard box outside Berko sewage plant. But individually, you’re like ants. And all of developers secretly know it and don’t talk about it. You’re not worth supporting. It’s far, far better to completely, totally ignore support, if you want to make a living. Developers don’t like to talk about it, and they certainly don’t want to make customers aware of it. Some developers right now are bristling with public-relation-inflating indignation, waiting to burst into my castle in shining white armour championing the cause of their customers, and how they treat their customers like royalty still. But I know, and they know, they’re only doing that because it’s actually yet more Dark Side of Public Relations. It’s a lie. The numbers do not add up. I’ll show you where they do add up — on Steam, on the App Store, on Big Fish, on Google Play. That’s where all of the money is going these days, great sucking, black holes, spewing out tat on their event horizons and hoovering up pennies from wallets worldwide. You can yell about how important you are into the black hole if you like. No-one cares. You can “take your money elsewhere” and “never buy another product from you again, EVER”, and the black hole will continue to treat you exactly as you deserve — with impassive, voracious, inexorable silence, and still ever-growing. Because you’re worthless.

If you’re going to take it all on face value and get offended, you’re more than welcome to, but I think you’re missing the point, at least in terms of why you should be reading this.

Whether what Puppy Games are saying is “true”, or even representative, is up for debate. There are plenty of indie devs who will reply to even the most inane and offensive tweet or email. But I think what’s worth seeing here is just the emotion on show, regardless of how incendiary it is.

You can read pleasant, clean, PR-driven quotes from video game developers anywhere you look. Literally: the entire games industry, from AAA to the smallest indie, is so intent on sales pitches that almost every comment you ever read about a video game (outside perhaps a live interview or actual criticism) has been sanitised beyond any genuine sense of meaning or importance.

The stuff Puppy Games are venting about here might not be the nicest thing to read, but the truth – even if it’s only the truth from Puppy’s perspective – isn’t always nice.

BECAUSE YOU’RE WORTHLESS: THE DARK SIDE OF INDIE PR [Puppy Games]


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