Treyarch dev says "negative" gamers the biggest problem facing the games industry

The community manager for Call of Duty: Black Ops has spoken out against what he says is a "negative" culture among gamers, labelling it as one of the biggest problems facing the game industry.

Community Manager Josh Olin made the comments in an interview with NowGamer . When asked what the biggest problem facing the games industry today was, he said "as a community manager who lives in the media or social media world every day, I think the social culture of video games is moving in a more negative direction as technology and social media continues to grow. Rather than growing with it, the trend seems to be devolving."

"More and more gamers seem to forget what this industry is all about," he adds, saying "It's a creative industry – the most creative form of entertainment in existence. Too many developers who try new things are getting burned by “pundits” and angry entitled fans who look to be contrarian, sometimes simply for the sake of being contrarian. The only thing this attitude aims to achieve is stunt that creativity and innovation even further, which is something that no rational gamer looking to be entertained would want to do."

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.