Yes, I understand you made a statement. I disagreed with that statement and gave supporting arguments as to why development people, like any other people, can be affected by such things. I also mentioned that Brad is sometimes annoyed and angered by the negativity, saying such things as "that makes my blood boil". You did not address those points, and that's your choice if you don't want to.

You on the other hand give no support to your statement that the staff cannot be affected by all the negative comments.

 

Here again you have disregarded the arguments I gave to support my statement. I did say clearly and more than once that it wouldn't be just "I am mad because of all the negativity and unhelpful complaints on the internet.", but rather those things would more likely be a contributing factor.

As to the basis of your second point, I have to say firstly that the way you stated some of it is quite vague. Still, regardless of how you put it, telling someone not to be annoyed, upset or angry because of personal responsibility is, to say the least, not likely to be effective. Imagine someone telling you not to feel the way you feel. The fact is, once a person is in a poor mood, it is going to affect what they do to some degree whether they like it or not. Hence my view about addressing the cause, and going for prevention rather than cure.

Regarding what sort of person an unhelpful complainer is, I think it's unfair and unrealistic to group them all into a single type. Some of them may agree, others may disagree. Some may see that they stand to possibly benefit from a simple thing, others may not really care. All I was really doing was raising awareness for a well intentioned cause, and that didn't need stepping on, even if you are right.

I have actually been quite calm, even if the tone didn't come across that way. As for clarity, the only thing that can be surely said is that it wasn't clear to you, with the jury still out on the why of it.

You said that it would be unprofessional or immature for any of the staff at Stardock to allow themselves to be affected by all the negativity. Seeing as it was clear from the beginning that I am of the opinion that they can be affected, your statement means that I must view them as unprofessional and immature if I believe that negativity affects them. That is an inherant implication in your statement. Whether you meant to say that is another story.

 

What is ineffectual does not matter. You say that the unhelpful complaints won't affect the staff, making those complaints ineffectual in your opinion.

If you give the impression that unhelpful complaints have no negative effect, you play a part in encouraging those unhelpful complainers who might be inclined to agree with you.

I think after all this discussion, I've read enough of your reasoning to conclude that you have a comprehension problem. You can't seem to grasp how things connect or flow, causes and effects, and multi-faceted points. At any rate, you ignore the majority of statements that support what you are disagreeing with and refuse to address them, and in this way you force the argument to go nowhere, as I am forced to frequently repeat and refer to what I've already stated.

 

I've been ignoring this following quote's topic because it's irrelevant, but I'll address it now since you've brought it up 354545 times...

You made a number of statements, I picked out one and responded with 2 points (for brevity let's refer to said statement of yours as X).

You said X.  You also said other things -- let's call them not-X.  From X I made 2 points.  Said points are based upon my correct understanding of X, and don't rely on not-X.  Unless not-X changes X, they are irrelevant.  You said X stands and I correctly understood it, so your not-X is doesn't change X and so not-X is irrelevant, and your arguing against my points using not-X is the fallacious argument Red Herring.

 

What I said is "It would be unprofessional at the least [if they let unhelpful complaints adversely affect them], and not adult."

From that you claim "...why you would think that I viewed them [SDers] as immature or not very professional."

I shall illustrate your mistake:

-I think SDers are too professional to let unhelpful blah blah blah...

-you think SDers might let unhelpful blah blah blah

-you therefore assume I am accusing you of thinking SDers are unprofessional.

Your reasons for why you think SDers might blah blah blah can be myriad.  I do not assume what they are.  Your reasons do not have to include thinking SDers are unprofessional.  I never even hinted at what I think your reasons are.  Heck, I never even thought about what they might be.

I would say that you infer what I did not imply, but that's being too generous.  I accept you see that boogie man hiding under you bed, but I didn't put him there.  Your imagination did.  It's as if you expected insults, and thus saw them. 

And you didn't phrase your false statement with a qualifier like 'your statement suggests you think' -- you accused me of outright saying it.

When I pointed out your mistake, instead of accepting it, you double-down saying "...your statement means that I must view them as unprofessional and immature..." 

No Sir, it does not "must" mean that at all.

You falsely claimed "What you are trying to get across here is that all the negativity really doesn't matter...".  I explained it's a false claim because what I said was that SDers wouldn't let the negativity adversely affect their work - not that the negativity doesn't matter.  The former does not preclude the latter, and you're saying it does is the fallacious False Choice.

Instead of accepting that, you argue your statement was correct.  You're clearly wrong and unable and/or unwilling to admit it.

So I repeat, drop the umbrage, mischaracterizations, fallacious arguments, and all the crap, and give a simple and concise response to my 2 simple and concise points.

Pretend this is twitter, and we can both limit ourselves to twitter-sized posts, starting with my first point, then if necessary, for my second.

I'll start:

My first point is: I think your concern regarding SDers allowing unhelpful criticism to adversely affect their work is so unlikely that it's not even worth considering.

 

 

Ok, let's do this your way and pretend I haven't already addressed both points and provided statements that you could have analysed and either agreed with or refuted.

 

Point 1: Brad has already admitted on more than one occasion that he gets upset, annoyed and even angry as a result of negative comments and unhelpful complaints. As Brad is one of the developers as well as CEO, it is no longer in question whether or not people at Stardock can be affected. As to whether this has an adverse affect on their work, I put it to you that any person in a bad mood is less likely to perform as well as someone with better morale.

Point 2: (Copied & Pasted) As to the basis of your second point, I have to say firstly that the way you stated some of it is quite vague. Still, regardless of how you put it, telling someone not to be annoyed, upset or angry because of personal responsibility is, to say the least, not likely to be effective. Imagine someone telling you not to feel the way you feel. The fact is, once a person is in a poor mood, it is going to affect what they do to some degree whether they like it or not. Hence my view about addressing the cause, and going for prevention rather than cure.

Regarding what sort of person an unhelpful complainer is, I think it's unfair and unrealistic to group them all into a single type. Some of them may agree, others may disagree. Some may see that they stand to possibly benefit from a simple thing, others may not really care. All I was really doing was raising awareness for a well intentioned cause, and that didn't need stepping on, even if you are right.

In summary, it is easier to convince someone to do nothing and benefit than it is to make someone not feel what they feel and not have their feelings influence their actions in any way, or cloud their thoughts or distract their minds.

Lastly, even if the people at Stardock behaved as emotionless robots, the developers are still allocating time to review and respond to much of the negativity, and that is time that could be better spent.

I am amazed at hearing this.  The only thing I've ever seen remotely similar (and I've followed things here fairly closely) is what I quoted in my first reply to you (reply 77 in this thread) where he said "The only thing that really frustrates us (and honestly is making my team less interested in reading the forums) [emphasis mine] are reading posts by people who don't have any idea what is involved in game development and thus have no concept of the kinds of things that take time or not."

I accept that your quote is true, as I have no reason to doubt you.  It is, however, hard for me to comprehend that someone in that position and with that many years in this business and at his age (or what I imagine his age to be) would react to unhelpful comments as you describe.

Given your statement, and as brad is part of "SDers", I accept I was wrong regarding my point 1.

I'll try again -- it describes the best way to address things should SDers let unhelpful criticisms adversely affect their work.  My suggestion is predicated upon the concept of 1) personal responsibility, and 2) what my dad used to say.

For the former -- personal responsibility is exemplified by saying "I got mad because of X" instead of saying "X made me mad".  The former asserts that I am in charge of my emotions, not X.  It affirms I am the one responsible for me, not X.

It applies because it's not the unhelpful criticizers that make brad mad, brad is the one who lets himself get mad.

Personal responsibility is a good thing because it means that when we have a problem, the solution is in our hands, not someone else's.

As to 2), as dad used to say "the less you expect from others the happier you'll be".  Your trying to get unhelpful complainers to muzzle themselves is expecting something from them, violating the saying.

And yeah, addressing the SDers involves an expectation, but if an expectation is to be made, at least make it of the responsible party.

I'm not approaching the issue from a hypothetical point, but a real world point.  The above is real world advice.  As dad taught me, I don't expect you to take or, or to leave it.

Another thing dad taught me is that you can't tell folks anything.  Best that can be done is set an example and let them figure it out or not, or just back off and do nothing and let them learn the School of Hard Knocks way.

Still, even tho it's "not likely to be effective" at least it addresses the responsible party (the one who's in charge of their emotions).  That's significantly better than addressing the not-responsible parties as you do.

Agreed.  And that is why I used qualifiers in recognition of that, such as when I said "the unhelpful criticizers are unlikely to cooperate with your request" instead of stating it as an absolute (such as "the unhelpful criticizers won't cooperate with your request").

I disagree with several things here.

First you're not trying to convince them to do nothing, you're trying to convince them to muzzle themselves.   Muzzling themselves is an action -- expecting them to resist what they'd otherwise do.

Second, the benefit most of them seek is the cathartic release from complaining, getting it off their chests.  That benefit is real and immediate.  Your benefit is only a possibility not a certainty, and distant.  Immediate and real > possible and distant.

Third, as I believe there's more unhelpful complainers than SDers working on Elemental (if I'm wrong then ignore this point) you're trying to get a relatively large number of people to change their behavior instead of relatively small number of people.

Fourth, is the personal responsibility point -- you're addressing the people who aren't responsible for the SDers letting the unhelpful criticism adversely affect them, instead of the people who are responsible (the SDers).

Fifth, I'm old.  I'm not of the 'touchy-feely generation".  If someone has a feeling that's harming them, they need to get rid of it, to face it and conquer it.  Your attempt to get others to not trigger said harmful feelings only treats the symptom of the problem.  Allowing unhelpful criticism to adversely affect one is the cause.

If they're doing that then they need to stop letting themselves get distracted by the unimportant and get on with fixing the game. 

Talk is cheap, actions count.  The best way to silence unhelpful complainers is fix Elemental ASAP.  The time for talk is past.  Only results can now save the day.

All of the above is IMO, of course, and said from a position of incomplete knowledge, and subject to change if/when more info comes to light.

Ack, I think I may have exceeded the twitter limit...

@Nick Danger.

I think most of what you said there is quite fair.

I do disagree on one technicality and two small points.

Firstly, while people are responsible for trying to manage how they are affected, there are still causes for these effects, and other people to whom responsibility still applies. i.e. said management would be less of a concern without the causes. Like you and your father, I don't expect everything I wish for, but I will still make an effort to put a good word in when I can.

Secondly, while I agree that there is the cathartic element to complaining, I still think it fair to assume that some of the unhelpful complainers might favour the possible benefit (once realised), and vent their frustrations elsewise. The reasoning there being that a more complete game arriving sooner as a result would also have some soothing qualities. I do concede though that it is probably an off chance.

Lastly, PR and damage control is important from a company reputation and sales perspective. For this reason, the unhelpful complaints and negativity need to be addressed to some extent, and the customer base needs to be reassured. So, it is a necessary distraction, which is why, ideally, those people really should muzzle themselves.

Agreed.

When someone attempts to insult me and I accept responsibility for my reaction, that does not relieve the insulter from responsibility for their behavior.

I agree some will.  I guess I tend more to the pessimistic side, and you to the optimistic side on this issue.  Generally optimism is better.

There are also good arguments to be made regarding treating folks as you hope they'll act (kinda what you advocate) instead of treating them as they do act (kinda as I advocate).  Yours is the more hopeful/positive strategy.

Agreed.  The response just needs to not be at the expense of work quality in other areas.  A company the size of SD needs a PR person for this (at least I imagine its size is that large -- it was ~60 people before the ~15% layoffs?, tho I could be wrong of course), and not have programmers/etc. get diverted by it.

Thank you for your intelligent and well-reasoned replies!

Another pleasant surprise! Damn.

Finally a TRUTHFUL review and one that Stardock and Brad an Elemental deserves. It has all the elements of that review. Great review. Happy for all at Stardock and Brad and the game itself. It just shows a GOOD reviewer knows how to look past the insignificant things that only pests and trolls try to find in every game.