David Gaider on Exposing (His) Personal Opinions
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Here's a snip from it:
Insofar as expressing my opinion on other games out there, that's a little dicier. Why? Professional courtesy, for the most part. I may not know the trials and tribulations that another developer specifically went through to make their game, but I have a better idea than most. so why would I post some rant about how awful their game is and what I hated about it? Even if that were true, it's going to be taken as much more than just my personal opinion. Many fans love the idea of developer rivals. If a company even makes an implication that they disagree with BioWare's approach suddenly they hate us and we're up in arms in rage at whatever they said!
That's never the case. Developers are generally on friendly terms, and supportive of other teams trying new things. It's great that there are other types of RPG's out there, for instance. Not every RPG should be the same, should take BioWare's approach or even care what we do. If they're competition, we're going to be paying attention to each other. but there's room for many RPG's to co-exist in the same market. Imagine that.
But I made a recent comment about the sex-card minigame in the first Witcher game, for instance a game that I said I otherwise enjoyed a great deal and I had angry emails from fans enraged that I'd dared to criticize CD Projekt, and who clearly didn't take the time to parse what I'd written beyond the fact it was perceived as a criticism for a game they liked. How unfair it was, how I clearly didn't see BioWare's games do the same thing, how CD Projekt should be offended, etc. etc.
See what I mean? In my position, people like to read into what I've said and then treat it as if I actually said those things. as if I'd said that BioWare was above criticism, or that the good folks of CD Projekt were sexist jerks and should go suck an egg for offending me so badly. Which I did not. I can only imagine what would happen if I ever posted a list of criticisms of a game like the Witcher, the sort that I might have for any game I play. Would people take that as just my thoughts? Would they see that I enjoyed the game despite those things? Or would it be seen as a condemnation, with every point that someone thought was done equally poorly in a BioWare game being massively unfair as I cannot be allowed to dislike something our games have also done (even if it was done differently), or far worse criticism from BioWare itself?
Gosh. Like another developer needs that added to their plate, in addition to the fan-wrangling they already contend with?
