What's the point in the secrecy and being so restrictive?

To take it to a further extreme, imagine this scenario:

At (an anonomys member I will randomly call Murguluck) Murgulucks company there's just been a review where his work was put way down. Then after the meeting, somebody spilt coffee on his favourite shirt. As if that's not enough, his PC bluescreened only ten minutes later (he didn't save...).

Now, poor Murguluck logs on to TCE to calm down. In there he sees somebody has posted in the thread concering the company he works at. A fellow artists wonders what the conditions there are like.

Since Murguluck is pissed as hell, before he thinks better of it, he posts a angerfilled post stating that it's a shithole with no future and the management is retarded.

Since TCE is now an open forum full of industry professionals, the good people at Kotaku will get a notification about this update. They take it at face value and writes up an article about how Murgulucks company is crumbling. This article spreads and eventually ends up with stakeholders of the company. They get nervous and all of a sudden the company might Actually be crumbling...

 

TCE != Science papers/publications. The fact that we even have to spell it out for you is astounding.

Since forever (not joking)

Or morgolocks boss/bosses boss sees his disgruntled post (before/after Kotaku) and gets hauled in to a "meeting" where he/she gets grilled over derogatory comments made about the company. Or there's no meeting, just a general turn for the worse at work; no promotion, less enjoyable tasks, cold shoulder by managers. Sure it's hypothetical but there's a reason people want to protect their anonymity.

 

There was the guy who took loads of comments and released it as a self-published book......

 

I dunno, I quite like the idea of the Animated Gifs thread being peer reviewed.

 

This one looks like a trouble-causer already

 

Hey, I'm glad to see so many answers to my post!

I like asking questions when I don't understand things. That's a good way to learn; provided you ask the right questions and not stupid things

I don't agree with some of the generalizations that have been written here about game journalists. Come on! Replace "game journalists" by any other group and you will be playing a very dangerous game. Frankly, I don't see journalists as a solid argument against openness.

I think openness is a good idea, particularly when we speak about software development and regardless whether your are professional or not.

 

Generalisations are not the issue; it happens, and all it takes is for one to report something they think is juicy/dirty, and bam it's news for others to report. Not just news, but TCE is then a 'source'.

Objections to the wish to avoid such things are going to be ignored.

You realise that you are fighting a losing battle. You lose 3 stamina points.
>

 

hmmm.. What happened to said book?

 

IIRC we complained to Lulu.com or whoever was publishing it and they pulled it from sale.

The guy who made it? I think he's now wearing concrete wellies at the bottom of the canal near Prof Shminky's flat.

...allegedly.

 

Nothing stopping you from having an open discussion about software development in the public section and you'll definitely get replies from people whether they are professional or not. Win win?

 

Indeed, like a lot of people on this forum I tend to use the 'new posts' function to see what's happening and don't pay much heed as to whether it's in the public or private sections.. unless I'm...to pick an example purely at random... nosing around for a new job or something.

 

The rest of us, who have seen the results of openness, respectfully disagree. The fact that so many developers are participating here, despite the application requirements that you complain are so onerous, should tell you that they produce results that more than offset the hassle.

This forum is about game development, an entirely different beast from software development. I don't know what you imagine is discussed in the private forums, but I suspect you are misapprehending the sort of discussion that goes on.

As has been pointed out, we're not talking about abstract facts or scientific opinions. We talk about the real day-to-day stuff that goes on in games development, often in a way that would either cause unpleasant results if done in public. Or, it would mean that we were inundated with questions from non-professionals. And while those questions would I'm sure help the non-professionals, they wouldn't help us at all. We're not here to educate or inform, we're not a learning resource for people who want to get into the games industry; there are plenty of sites out there that do that already, and devs can participate in them if they want to. We're here to talk shop (and stuff that's not shop-talk) with other people that are in the industry already. That's a valuable thing, but to achieve that there needs to be controls on who is involved in that discussion.

The real question is, would you still be asking "why isn't this place more open," if your application had been accepted / declined within a week?

 

I'm impressed (if a little surprised) by the patience shown here by so many people in explaining the same common sense points to you again and again.

Your analogies constantly go from ridiculous to even more ridiculous. Your analogies are stupid. What you are saying is stupid. OK, I said it. It's very stupid. I don't know if you're stupid, but you seem to be working hard on creating that impression.

Like this:

Yeah, like Jews or gays. What if you post a picture of yourself at Pax and some gay guy ends up wanking to it? First they came for the game journos etc.

Dude, this is what it is. You are welcome to start your own industry forum that is open to the public, but it's just so rude to continuously bang on about it here, telling people how to do stuff after they provided perfectly clear and sensible answers.

Furthermore you smell like poo.

 

I dont like this "morolock" guy.. He moans too much - can we ban him?

 

I'm starting to get the feeling that this thread is not leading towards an expedited pass into our super-secret, ultra-exclusive, all-VIP club.

 

I'm getting scared of his protests, and i wonder if he is a games journo (or WORSE marketing man!).

I guess he's desperate to find out which members of the forum partake in bag-piping...

 

Someone frisk this guy if he gets to the door. He might be wearing a wire.

 

I think I might speak for everyone here when I say: if you're a journalist/persona non grata then f*ck off, otherwise wait your turn like everyone else has and stop f*cking bleating...

Actual people in the games industry can get in *very* quickly if they know *anyone* on here...

/drunk