I was the front man for a HL2 mod called Dystopia. We never made it big, but we did have a decent sized, vocal and opinionated playerbase. I'd done my best to promote a positive community and for the most part all the feedback we received was fairly civil. I'm not trying to say that my experience was anything like what Fish and the guy from Treyarch have had to deal with.
With those caveats out of the way; when I did have to deal with abusive feedback, I focused on two things:
1) I could easily separate my real life person from the "Fuzzy" persona I cultivated on the internet.
2) If our little game had prompted someone to get so worked up that they were going to rape and kill my kittens because we were making changes to a weapon, then we'd done something right.
I'd been a hardcore, vocal gamer before I had to deal with hardcore vocal gamers. I wasn't abusive, but I had felt that passion from both sides. I didn't like, tolerate or condone people who were abusive, but I tried to understand where the passion was coming from.
The electronic hordes are much crazier now than in the past. That "Scooby" bodybuilder guy got doxed by 4chan the other week. In addition to the usual relentless stream of obscene online hate comments, they sent minions over to photograph his house, and call up his employer to let them know what they thought of his sexual orientation. He pretty much had the opposite online disposition of Phil Fish, too. It would be pretty hard to argue that he "deserved" any of that treatment.
I think this attitude is a healthy one to view the abuse from. It's very unfortunate that this is necessary, though. It's great that you've made a game that people can get passionate about, but it's very depressing to me that people can't find an avenue to express that passion without resorting to violent threats.
When the threats start talking about in person interactions (looking for your address, etc), I think the situation gets even more serious.
As a side note, I played and loved Dystopia. It's a fantastic mod, and really fun to play. Well done, there!
With those caveats out of the way; when I did have to deal with abusive feedback, I focused on two things:
1) I could easily separate my real life person from the "Fuzzy" persona I cultivated on the internet.
2) If our little game had prompted someone to get so worked up that they were going to rape and kill my kittens because we were making changes to a weapon, then we'd done something right.
I'd been a hardcore, vocal gamer before I had to deal with hardcore vocal gamers. I wasn't abusive, but I had felt that passion from both sides. I didn't like, tolerate or condone people who were abusive, but I tried to understand where the passion was coming from.