Games want to be treated as art. I agree that they should be considered art. However, in art, you open yourselves to all levels of criticism--from polite and constructive to "toxic" and unhelpful. This is only magnified in a culture steeped in internet socialization.
The difference here, however, is that developers earn themselves an hourly salary in a highly competitive field that makes billions as an industry (revenue, mind you). Gamers are constantly being told how the costs of development are rising, but gamers see a decline in quality and product integrity. We see the implementation of insidious gambling boxes and microtransactions in single-player AAA titles. We see forced parity affecting the PC market and paid mods affecting the console market. It seems there is no end to the number of ways developers and publishers are cynically trying to separate us from our money despite the industry doing very well while stagnating in quality and concept. All we can do as consumers is turn to critics (like the ones the twitter thread laments) to help us sort through the chaff. We have to find developers and publishers who treat us fairly and not as dolphins or whales to be harvested. This is becoming increasingly difficult to do.
So Mr. Randall will have to excuse me when I express no sympathy for him or developers like him who condemn gamers and excuse the behavior of his employers (and others like them) who treat interaction with their customers as a battlefield. His industry has grown complacent, entitled, secretive, and corrupt as it seeks to capture an ever-dwindling share of the market. And even if there's a small minority of "toxic" people in the crowd, that doesn't excuse the very broad brush he's using to paint his fans and customers. And I'd ask what he's doing to constructively change the situation. Hint: that twitter rant is not going to help.
More to the point, I am incredibly frustrated and disappointed in Frontier. Elite Dangerous began with so much promise (not literal), but has fallen far short in every meaningful metric. If there's an abundance of criticism--both helpful and unhelpful--then perhaps instead of suggesting there's something wrong with the audience, developers should look inward and figure out where they went wrong.
