Originally posted by replicashooter
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Case in point, Sony, the PS3 and ports. Sony were obviously aware that some of their games were 360 ports, and this was a source of great displeasure for them. It was like some sort of poorly kept secret. Everyone knew it, but it isn't the kind of thing a dev casually tells Eurogamer. That kind of talk could lose someone their job, because the PS3/360 fanboy keyboard warriors would pounce on that kind of comment.
I worked with a guy who was a social media expert who used to talk about "the conversation". "The conversation", in this context, is what a community is buzzing with at any particular moment, and it drifts and morphs over time from one topic to another.
A few years ago, the devs of Assassin's Creed became "the conversation" in gaming over a casual comment that there were no female playable characters in one of their upcoming games, because they would be "more difficult to animate". It was taken out of context and for a week, whether Assassin's Creed had a problem with sexism was the order of the day.
Now side-stepping that whole issue (as it's more complicated than it seems), it happened because of a stray comment made by an animator, which in context was somewhat reasonable, but sounds ridiculous outside of that context.
Back in the days of the PS2, a developer only had to guard their words if they were being interviewed by EDGE or something, whereas now so many people live their entire lives online.
That specific incident is often mentioned when you see these sorts of discussions. It has certainly been said that many developers simply decided, after that, to never discuss any aspect of their work outside of work, unless in a specifically sanctioned situation - and even then, they stick very rigidly to script.
Now of course, this is to expected. Videogames are bigger than movies now; a greater degree of scrutiny comes with that. You take the positive with the negative.
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