This is true for a lot of people but unfortunately there very much are some targeting the people losing their jobs. I’ve seen plenty of people, even some on Lemmy in the past, who hate individual devs because the game they were looking forward to wasn’t good.

Is it a loud minority? Probably. That doesn’t make it OK, though, and it doesn’t reduce the mental hit to these devs in an already bad moment of their lives.

Yeah and I thought taking whatever you need to train AIs was fine, right AI companies?

I think one thing that would help the discussion is acknowledging that there are now multiple kinds of interactive media, and not all of them are games.

The terms i personally use are:

Game: an interactive experience with rules, challenges, and the possibility of winning and losing.

Toy: an interactive experience where you are given tools and a space to play in, but which lacks a structured goal. Paper doll falls into this category.

Interactive Story: an interactive experience where you go through a linear or branching narrative, but which avoids mechanical or mental challenges and can’t be lost. Many visual novels would fall into this category.

I think a lot of tension between people who enjoy these different categories would be lessened if we talked about them as equally valid, but different, forms of interactive entertainment.

The boundaries can be blurred of course. There are many examples of mixed experiences that combined all of the above, but i think it’s still a helpful way to look at for me at least. Some people really enjoy toys but don’t like games, and that’s not just OK, it’s a good thing. It broadens the media pool and lets more people in.