Yeah, there was a bit too much hostility there. I remember tweeting something about people who petitioned for a new ending being entitled. In retrospect, I definitely regret that tweet now. I should have done a better job of respecting peoples' passion.
Look, it's not often that you get to engage with gamers in a thread like this - I typically don't even bother
reading threads about that shit because I don't care about it. It's a waste of my time. Which is the same 'hardline' stance I have about bullshit on gaming websites - I don't want to read it, or even really look at it.
If you're wondering why you don't get a more reasoned response more often, perhaps thats why - I typically don't even visit threads/tweets/articles about stuff like that, much less bother to spend the time to write up a reasoned response. As time has gone by, I've found myself posting less and deleting replies before I ever hit post far more often. Someone with less self control (read: angry emotional OMG 8.8?! reader) is not going to do that. They'll fire off that zinger and move on without a second thought (and I'll do that myself occasionally as well - sometimes the lol ____ response is the right one!).
You have to learn to recognize when you're dealing with the raving masses, and when you're speaking with people who are sharing their honest opinion. In some cases, the two may well even be the same message, just delivered very differently.
Also, Twitter is a fucking plague on real communication. If you take peoples tweets (and article comments) at face value, you're asking for trouble. A minute of talking to someone who sounds like a raving lunatic from a tweet in person will probably get you a more honest and direct response, but you're not going to get that from a five word snarky retort to something you said or did.
If you wall yourself off from
all criticism, no mater how vitriolic, you're going to harden yourself from outside influence to the point that you can't even recognize reasonable criticism.
How you respond to it is entirely up to you - like I've said before, I'm still not convinced that there are enough people out there who
care about 'vidya game writer ethics' to significantly influence website traffic, and if that's what pays the bills, why does it matter how you handle it? TMZ and the New York Times are both in business, yes? (who wants to place bets on the revenue streams from schlock reporting vs real reporting?)
And if it makes you feel any better, the mainstream 'real' press isn't much better at times, I have to visit three or four different 'biased' news sites to get some sort of clear picture about certain events and draw my own conclusions from multiple articles.
