Rassmusseum said:
To the above poster, you make it sound like Susan herself is an executive at EA and that she's telling people not to buy Mass Effect 3. It's not her product, so it's she doesn't have to not "tell a consumer who's legitimately losing faith in your product to shut up or get out," she has no stake in it.
I do totally agree with you that Susan can sometimes be a bit abrasive and over the top though.
I get what you're saying, Rassmusseum, but I wasn't really trying to make the point that she was professionally responsible for Mass Effect 3 in any way... what I was more trying to convey was that the reaction she had in the podcast is really bad for video games and the gaming community. It promotes hostility and confrontationalism, alienates listeners from her podcast and gamers from their game developers, and it was clearly trying to pander to the game developer side of the market.
As someone whose simple mind is trying to ape the trappings of journalism, Susan should try to realise that her loyalties should always lie with the consumer, not the producer, no matter how desperately she wants "insider" access. So she should make a bit more effort trying to empathise with the concerns of gamers rather than telling them to "shut up or get out". I don't think I've ever heard Susan Arendt side with consumer concerns on any issue that wasn't outrageously black and white already.
It's a worrying trend in the gaming community that those in ostensible positions of authority, be it journalists or members of the industry, regularly show sneering condescension and even open contempt for their audience, bandying around terms like "trolls", "fanboys", etc. They seem to be forgetting that gamers, even the loud, obnoxious ones, are what pay all their bills and ultimately feed their ravenous egos. For god's sake, you wouldn't see professionals in any other industry talk to their constituency in the same way that games journalists and game developers do. It's like they're all ashamed of being in the games industry and are desperately afraid that someone will associate them with those mom-hating basement-dwellers.
It's good to know that someone else shares my opinion of Susan, even in part. I am genuinely baffled as to why she has been made senior editor. She's a mediocre writer with no good ideas (really, you're going to write an article about how Skyrim was good, Dragon Age was good, wouldn't it be great IFYOUPUTTHEMTOGETHER??! Please.) and her spoken manner would aggravate the Buddha. Maybe she's a hard worker and she puts time in behind the scenes, and that's fine, but for heaven's sake keep her out of the public eye.