I think your first and third points about PMG’s reporting are great, but what’s going on with the second point (“none of us are flattered by pressure”). While I don’t think anyone should assume bad faith to claim without evidence that the abusive behavior PMG reported on was endemic to those individuals’ entire careers, your second point seems wrongheadedly charitable in the opposite direction and way too equivocating. You imply that the abusive behavior didn’t happen during development of these studios’ reputation-making games (qualifying it with “as far as we know…not that I’m aware of”) but why even make these unsupported claims to begin with?
Aside from the usual “absence of evidence shouldn’t be taken as evidence of absence” there’s the fact that many more reports have since come out this week about Hunicke (from Leigh Alexander and others) from nearly a decade ago, which suggests her abusive behavior isn’t limited to a single difficult project. Similar reports of abuse have also come out in recent days about the team behind the widely celebrated Ori games, which again would suggest there’s no reason to assume correlation between project success and abuse during development.
Again, I’m not saying anyone should claim without sourced reporting that these people have always acted this way, but why do the opposite unless you have the interest and resources to actually interview a range of people from the dev teams you’re making claims about?
Hey Nathan,
I think your first and third points about PMG’s reporting are great, but what’s going on with the second point (“none of us are flattered by pressure”). While I don’t think anyone should assume bad faith to claim without evidence that the abusive behavior PMG reported on was endemic to those individuals’ entire careers, your second point seems wrongheadedly charitable in the opposite direction and way too equivocating. You imply that the abusive behavior didn’t happen during development of these studios’ reputation-making games (qualifying it with “as far as we know…not that I’m aware of”) but why even make these unsupported claims to begin with?
Aside from the usual “absence of evidence shouldn’t be taken as evidence of absence” there’s the fact that many more reports have since come out this week about Hunicke (from Leigh Alexander and others) from nearly a decade ago, which suggests her abusive behavior isn’t limited to a single difficult project. Similar reports of abuse have also come out in recent days about the team behind the widely celebrated Ori games, which again would suggest there’s no reason to assume correlation between project success and abuse during development.
Again, I’m not saying anyone should claim without sourced reporting that these people have always acted this way, but why do the opposite unless you have the interest and resources to actually interview a range of people from the dev teams you’re making claims about?
That's a fair point, actually, and well made. Thanks for the thoughtful comment.