Basically there was a lot of shouting and the occasional nasty message, but those 'nasty messages' are still messages, argues Nardone. Studios just need to figure out "what they're really saying".
If abuse is getting hurled it's usually because the person behind it is 'impassioned about a particular issue'.
"As a studio we have a collective knowledge as we release things, collect feedback, see how things are done," says Nardone. "So one of the important things we say is, 'hey! We’ve got a very compelling single player offline experience', and we know that’s important for our sims fans. We’re going to deliver a fantastic single player title for them."
Developers have to prepare themselves to wade through the muck of abuse.
"I just like having discussion with them because I think it really informs a lot of the decisions that we can make internally and we should be so lucky to have that kind of feedback that’s just given to us," Nardone explains.
"We don’t have to go out and run a focus test because we’ve got this huge fanbase across the world that want to connect with us, they want to talk to us and they know what they want. They’ve been with our franchise 15 years, they know what they want to see in the next iteration of The Sims."
"You do see those conversations in the industry, developers getting abused by people on Twitter and all the nasty comments thrown back and forth and I think as creators we have to understand people are going to throw out vitriol about things that they don’t like," continued the associate producer.
"But we need to be able to see what their message is and what they’re really saying and then execute on what it is that they’re really trying to get across."
"Somebody might frame it in a nasty message, but what they’re really saying is, 'I’d like this game to work this way', and what can we do to come to a middle ground and give them something that they want?"
The Sims 4 releases on PC in 2014 with the DRM Fun Stuff Pack due in Q3 2014. Humour!
