Positive tweets for game developers

Social media can be incredibly toxic. In the world of video games this is especially true, with game developers sometimes enduring torrents of abuse from people who either have an axe to grind or just find harassment to be a fun pastime. Recently Colin Moriarty, a former senior editor at IGN and cofounder of Kinda Funny, put out a video detailing some of the cyber bullying experienced by a game developer, a games journalist, and himself. It’s a great insight into what some people in the games industry experience and if you have about 19 minutes to spare it’s definitely worth your time. I’ve embedded the video below.

After watching Colin’s video I was thinking about what, if anything, I could do to help combat the tide of online abuse. At first I was drawing a blank since I’m just one person with zero online influence, but then I got an idea. What I could do is use my Twitter account, which currently is used mostly to observe the tweets of others, and start sending out some encouraging tweets. After finishing each game that I play for Late to the Party I’m going to send a positive tweet to the game’s developer. Even if I end up not liking a game I’ll still send a tweet to thank the developer for making the game. One tweet at time, I’m going to try to put a little positivity out into the online world.

Oh, and if for some reason your curious, my Twitter profile is @ricardopedia.