Originally Posted by Falstaff
It's not money or anything so dramatic. I've thought about this a bit in the past 18 months and I think, where the 'usual suspects' hardcore are concerned it is:
1. Habit, and limited social life. Many seem to revolve around this forum/online gaming. Remove it or threaten it, and you get a sort of defensive aggression. They feel personally threatened. If you question aspects of the game, ditto. Hence the visceral personal attacks.
2. Lack of perspective. See above. It means a lot to them, to the point of blurring their objective faculties.
3. Limited experience of competent code. They accept the marginal or think of it as routine/normal. Hence endless benefit of the doubt/future optimism.
4. Irrational fear that their hobby is dying out/under threat.
5. Self-loathing and extreme bitterness, perpetuated by the above.
6. The simple need for community, at any cost. See 2 and 3 and 4.
7. Sport. At some level they know large swatches of the code-base are at best poor, at worst, incompetent. The sport is derived from goading perceived opposition in spite of this.
8. The plain idiotic. They spent more time hunting enemy dots online, than enemy aircraft.
9. Don't know any better, in terms of prior/previous gaming.
10. Have no idea of the technical steps, and project management required for this sort of endeavor. Mistakenly assume it is a black art revealed only to the very few, aka a mystical process. Have not yet realised it is not. Project management is routinely mundane and forensic, as are the testing and revision processes. This is not ignorance, they are simply unaware of the processes that lie behind it, and perhaps willing to turn a blind eye for the various reasons given above.
11. Perhaps, above all, loneliness. The game is perhaps one of their main links to the outside world. Hence the weight and pressure brought to bear on believing it to be sacred and/or under attack. Many seem to have found a home on this forum, for reasons best known to themselves. Once that pattern is established, it is hard to break, and provides a feeling of normality for those who might otherwise feel marginalised. They are the 'sad cases'. They pick up on the criticism, but not the reasons for it, and do not recognise the situation that lead to and from it. The emperor's new clothes, and all that.
12. Those who think the developers are their friends and/or deserving of their encouragement. A good emotion and motive, even if misplaced. There are worse causes to attach yourself to. This is the ace-in-the-hole. Gaming does not really come into it. If not here, they would back something else in similar fashion, be it frozen pea production or leasing properties on Mars. See 6.
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