What is the best credit card processing setup for startups? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I've researched both paypal and authorize.net pretty thoroughly. For starters, I ended up with authorize.net. To first compare features though: Paypal offers what I believe they call the "paylink" feature. This is where the user is redirected to a paypal site (off of your own website) to make their purchase. The good thing about this for retail driven commerce is that it will interface well with a shopping cart system. I believe it either has no monthly charge or a very minimal one (also you won't need your own SSL). Above this, both companies have an API (or an application programming interface). To use Paypal's API you need to subscribe to their "payflow pro" program. This is about $40-50 mo. Authorize.net has API integration for about $30 I think. But then you need a merchant bank account which you can get through them for another $10. For those who aren't familiar, through an API you can set up a payment system that is built into your own site, which relays the data to the payment gateway. This is obviously the best option for serious merchants of any kind.

When accepting credit cards you'll also need a SSL (Secure Socket Layer) or in other words a secure connection (https://). I think they will actually allow you to use their api without that but it's definitely a horrible idea. There are a few major providers of this service, and they range in price significantly. www.InstantSSL.com or "Comodo" as they call themselves, has a pretty decent mid range SSL encryption package for about $100 a year. Godaddy.com has one that's like 19.99 or something ridiculous. The issue with SSL providers is simple. You can bet that they are all perfectly secure. The issue is really in browser recognition. The worst thing ever for an online merchant is to loose credibility, and what's the fastest way to appear disreputable - ""this site may not be secure, internet explorer recommends that you leave it immediately" or what ever that error says. This happens when a browser doesn't recognize the security certificate. To be safe, go with a provider that you can guarantee is trusted by all the major browsers (even old versions).

Also - one last piece of advice. When subscribing for a SSL certificate make SURE to turn your domain anonymity off temporairly while you subscribe. Otherwise they'll put you through an endless "verification" process that involves multiple faxes and endless bureaucracy!!!

</comment><comment><USER3> PayPal is good if you don't want the hassle of dealing with credit card numbers and the real meat of the credit card processing business because PayPal does it for you. All you have to worry about is giving a link to your customers to pay you via PayPal and you have the cash. The big disadvantage of PayPal is lack of control; they can hold your cash at anytime and big as they are it can be a while before you get it sorted out. Additionally you are very limited as far as how much you can customize the payment page. Now with the paypal api I think you have more control than when I used em.

Now lets talk about the real cc processing setup. It involves three parties: merchant, gateway, signing bank. Usually, when you signup with a merchant they will set you up with the bank they have a deal with so you can accept credit cards. The gateway is authorize.net. Authorize.net will be the interface between your customer's CC info and the bank that actually does the transaction.

Ideally for long-term you'd want to use a real merchant. But for starters, paypal should be a good option for you.

<comment><USER4> PayPal accepts credit cards from a very limited number of countries. It is West-centric, in other words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> PayPal or Google Checkout are both good ways to start out with. But depending on the volume of transactions and the amount of control you want you may want to go with your own merchant account. They are not hard at all to set up. Talk to your current bank to see if they have an arm that deals with merchant accounts. Most banks that offer business accounts either have their own or partner with a third party to provide the services to customers. Note that you will need an SSL certificate if you go with a merchant account. I'd recommend VeriSign ( they will also most likely end up being your Payment Gateway if you do decide to set up your own merchant account). Their SSL certificates are a bit pricy, but the most trusted name in the business. You want to make sure you get a low processing fee (percent of the transaction that the bank ends up taking – shoot for under 2% and a low per transaction fee (shoot for 20 cents or lower – hard to find). After a lot of shopping around, we ended up going with Bank of America. Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> Google checkout currently has a deal where all credit card processing is FREE for the rest of the year!

https://checkout.google.com/sell

<comment><USER7> Don't forget to check the content policy,

<http://checkout.google.com/seller/content_policies.html>

Google's looks straight-forward, but sometimes providers have uncommon restrictions in there. eg, the "Travel packages and offers" wouldn't be immediately obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google Checkout and/or PayPal until you handle enough volume to justify the hassle of something else. Authorize.net makes you go through a reseller, and the resellers are less competent than a poorly trained chimp. It took me two months to get through the process:

"The merchant account provider needs to see your website."

"OK, here it is."

"No, they need to see the shopping cart."

"What!? We don't have merchant services yet. We're not going to put up a shopping cart that people can't order from!"

"They won't set it up until they see the shopping cart."

"OK, fine. Here's the link."

"They said they went to your site and didn't see a shopping cart."

"I sent you a link to the shopping cart. It isn't visible on the index page yet, because we can't take orders."

"Oh. It has to be the real website."

"Huh? It is the real website. I just haven't linked it from the front page...we already have users, I'm not going to confuse them with a shopping cart that doesn't work."

"It has to be a real website."

"You're kidding, right? Just send them to this link. I'm certain they'll be able to figure things out."

"OK. They said there is no terms of service or refund policy clearly linked from your front page."

"We don't sell anything yet. Why would we have those things on our front page? They're linked off of the store link I sent you." (This is the second time I've setup merchant services, and I knew they would need to see those things. It's not like they give a shit what they contain...they just insist they exist.)

"They have to be on the front page."

And so on. I won't bother to type in the exchange we had over the resellers first attempt to actually setup the username and password, or the fact that all payment information had to be faxed in. (Yes, you read that right. The reseller for Authorize.net that we went through would not accept payment online. And the form that was online was just a ruse...they made us fill out the exact same form again and fax it in.)

Next time I build a shopping cart, I'll spend that time writing a payment backend for a payment processor that isn't operated by the functionally retarded. Or maybe I'll just use Google Checkout instead, and let them worry about the banking industry monkeys.

<comment><USER3> You can't really complain about the fax. Getting a merchant account is a sensitive thing so I totally understand each time I have to fax my id with the application. Just part of the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> PaySimple is another good one for Startups. They have a great API, can handle recurring billing, stores the CC info and are good about letting you take the data with you if you wanted to go to another service. Wufoo is probably going to move over to them from Authorize.net (which is also a decent service that just implemented recurring billing).

</comment><comment><USER10> Costco has very cheap rates, not sure how good they are as far as integrating with web services. ~$50 a year for the Costco membership, then 1.99% + $0.27 per transaction plus a $20 minimum monthly charge.

<http://www.novainfo.com/costco/index.asp>

<comment><USER6> Google Checkout has rates of 2% + $.2 per transaction with no extra/hidden fees.

<comment><USER11> The rates start in 2008. It's free 'till the end of the year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If your startup is looking for an Asian market, you can try PayDollar. I used PayDollar at Fleur.hk <http://fleur.hk/> , which is a WebObjects site I made for a flower shop.

They offer Paypal style redirection but the meat is their API which does not cost extra. The trick part is, you have to ask and you have to implement your own POST routines if you are not using Java. Wouldn't be hard if you are a STARTUP right?

Most Asian based cc gateway only needs CC number, name and expiration date for transaction, which is a "plus" to get you paid. You have to be careful about potential fraud though.

<comment><USER13> I am using another Asia Payment Gateway comapny called <A href="<http://www.paymentasia.com>">PaymentAsia </A> and they have the 3D secure with Visa/ MasterCard. Is it good or not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Paypal has a service called Website Payments Pro. I used it on a past venture and it was great. It was cheap to setup and maintain.

It is a transparent solution too, so you don't redirect users to the Paypal site unless they are paying by Paypal. Credit card payments are done from your site via a webservice.

</comment><comment><USER15> what do people recommend for handling subscriptions/automatic recurring billing that can change over time?

</comment><comment><USER16> I decided to use RightCart. Its not a perfect solution, but its cheap and easy and I am going with it for now. I have disccussed it here before <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=8060>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have been researching this for a while, and have been mostly confused. The obvious answers I have seen are authorize.net or paypal's services. But what is the ideal setup for a new company with not too much money in the bank?

</comment><comment><USER17> For my summer startup, I'm going with Google Checkout. My alternative was PayPal Payments Pro, but the documentation is horrible which makes integrating difficult.

</comment><comment><USER18> Go with a merchant account if you're going to be doing any regular commerce/membership, but don't neglect paypal/google checkout as some people may prefer them.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm using authorize.net at the recommendation of board member/successful business owner.

PayPal can be great as well because it is so easy.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Are there any limitations with Google Checkout? Such as accepting credit cards only in US? Heard a rumor about that...

</comment><comment><USER20> authorize.net - its not that hard. I was actually surprised at how easy it was to set up. If you are doing a consumer site paypal looks sort of amateur - remember the people who are coming to your site don't necessarily need to kmow that its 2 guys in a spare bedroom.</comment>


The Magic Thread - <AUTHOR> http://blog.geoffralston.com/the-magic-thread

<comment><USER2> I've found that I can get excited about almost any project, because they're all challenging in interesting ways. But there's something markedly different about working on a project that you would choose to work on even if you were a billionaire or had six months left to live.

Jobs believed in personal computers, Gates believed in software, Musk believed in making humans multi-planetary, Zuck believed in social networking, Page believed in web search, Luckey believed in VR.

<comment><USER3> No belief necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The attached video is a gem.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNwg8FvfuuU&start=497](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNwg8FvfuuU&start=497)</comment>


US Military Will 'Be Left Behind' If It Doesn't Embrace Open-Source Software - <AUTHOR> http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/08/us-military-will-be-left-behind-if-it-doesnt-embrace-open-source-software-report-says/131141/ <comment><AUTHOR> The actual report is worth looking at for more detail, and at least for its cover page:

[http://www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications- pdf/CNA...](http://www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications- pdf/CNASReport-OpenSourceSoftware-Final_0.pdf)</comment>


I guess Thrillist is running on Drupal - <AUTHOR> http://www.thrillist.com/nation/thoora

<comment><USER2> I think I'm missing something; why is this interesting?

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the giveaway that it's Drupal?

<comment><USER4> Lots to give it away if you look at the page source. Drupal.extend for one in the js. But I don't see anything that makes me think drupal on first glance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> the site part is fine to run on it. is the email back-end? I doubt it.</comment>


Phil Fish and the Internet's war against creatives - <AUTHOR> http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/swimming-in-a-sea-of-shit-the-internets-war-against-creatives <comment><USER2> I think this is a good article, but it was a mistake to start out by citing Fish's situation. Fish is absolutely not an innocent player in this scenario. He would fill his twitter feed with rage-filled comments in reply to people who would criticize his game. By giving trolls exactly what they wanted (a reaction), more of them jumped on the bandwagon to harass him.

Combine that with Fish regularly telling people to go suck a dick, kill themselves, and all sorts of disgusting garbage littering his twitter feed, and you have a character who is extremely easy to vilify and incite others to harass. Of course, more people harassing him means that he replies with even more caustic comments, making him even easier to vilify and dislike. I've seen firsthand people trying to start hate machines on boards like 4chan's video game board where they make collages of all the disgusting things phil fish says in order to get more people to harass him.

Anyone who has ever dealt with bullying in their life can tell you that the absolute worst thing you can do is react to it. If every ugly comment someone made went into a black box and was ignored, it's very unlikely that they would continue to post.

<comment><USER3> Fish responding to trolls in no way excuses the trolls harassing him. That's textbook victim blaming, and it's disgusting for it to come up here.

<comment><USER4> Ok, here's Phil responding to a polite and honest question (in person, and not over the safety of the internet!):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMPIcV6zsPw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMPIcV6zsPw)

You can argue that no one ever deserves to be harassed online, but I think you'd have to be utterly oblivious to continually act that way in public and not expect to be hated.

<comment><USER3> Yes, Fish has said some shitty things. Back when that happened, I was one of the people who argued against him and said he was a huge dick. But that doesn't mean he deserves a flurry of abusive and hateful speech; it means people should tell him to shut up and learn some manners.

Surely you agree there's a difference between "being disliked" and "being on the receiving end of a torrent of abuse"?

<comment><USER5> I think, in many ways, Fish's situation is a combination of the "perfect storm" of abrasive personality put into a situation where trolls can take advantage of that personality.

I don't think anyone will say that Fish is a saint; he's certainly no Notch, or Gaben, or Tim Schafer. And I worry that a large portion of the hate that is directed at him is /because/ he's not someone who can take things in stride.

I think what a lot of people who get accused of "victim blaming" are insinuating is that, if Fish could have taken criticism more in stride -- or, you know, been respectful of other people when they ask him legitimate questions -- when they were more innocuous and less extreme, then it might not have gotten this far. It's like he threw gasoline on a small fire and is bewildered at why his house is now burning down around him.

Does he deserve it? Not at all; /nobody/ does. But perhaps we shouldn't all be so surprised at it when you try putting out a fire with gasoline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I should syndicate my 4chan inbox somewhere. 10 years of "FAK U FAGET" has left me with a mountain of wonderful e-mail.

<comment><USER7> Then I'll try and be a little more civilized here: Along with some nice things, 4chan is also a notorious breeding ground for some of the worst and most noxious media and hateful activity (e.g. harassment campaigns) on the internet. This has continued to be the case for many years. It doesn't seem much has changed.

Don't you feel any responsibility for the behavior of your users?

[http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of- assh...](http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of-assholes-its- your-fault.html)

<comment><USER8> I think it would be a mistake to equate the worst of /b with 4chan as a whole. What would _you_ do to control /b in this situation (short of shutting the whole site down)? Maybe providing a dedicated outlet for the destructive elements of a community is a good idea overall, kind of like hellbanning on HN if you think about it, except that hell-banned people can interact with each other and voluntarily retreat to their own forum.

<comment><USER9> Shut the subsite down is an effective option. Let the people know they aren't welcome at 4chan.

GameFAQs had their LUE exodus, 4Chan can have their /b/ exodus. In the case of GameFAQs, the rest of the site was able to focus more on gaming and it was better as a result. On the other hand, if 4Chan wants to be home to that element of the internet, they are welcome to do so. But I think at this point, it is fair to judge 4Chan on their acceptance of /b/, much like how I judge Reddit on their handling of clopclop and jailbait.

Nonetheless, companies built on top of community discussions have to face the facts, people will come, they will be assholes. Its a problem that any discussion-based company has to solve.

I understand protecting "Freedom of Speech", but lines have to be drawn at some point.

<comment><USER2> There's a not-so-well known secret about 4chan that can't be glossed over when considering these kinds of things.

On 4chan, there's 5-10 boards that are implicit "cancer filter" boards. These boards are used to curate the community and prevent undesirable users from leaking into higher quality boards. The cancer filter boards serve as the public face of 4chan; /b/, /v/, /mlp/, and a handful of other boards are used to divert the attention of the unwashed masses to prevent contamination of higher quality boards. Desirable users will start their 4chan experience on one of these cancer boards, come to the conclusion that they're low quality, and move on to a different, usually non-cancer filter board.

Because of this filtering process, the demographics on each board vary wildly. Recently someone ran a statistical survey on several boards (n=~100/board) and found that the average age of users on cancer-filter boards was around 17-19, with the age increasing as you got to other boards. IIRC the average age on the niche hobbyist boards was between 23 and 25.

What this means is that if you were to just remove /b/ tomorrow, all those angry violent users are just going to leak into the other boards, and turn them into another /b/. Now instead of one "problem" board, you have a dozen.

The tldr here is that while most forum websites have a unified demographic across sub-forums, 4chan does not. Nuking the board won't get rid of problematic users, it will just displace them to another board.

<comment><USER9> Indeed, and this is the same strategy that Reddit uses to "contain" clopclop and jailbait.

And yet, we look at other communities such as StackOverflow or Gaia Online, and while there are some issues... none of them are quite as bad as how the worst of 4Chan or the worst of Reddit can get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's what we get for breeding a society of consumers. If you don't have a meaningful way to express yourself productively, you pour all that tension into the wrong things. You become a buly, a stalker, a heckler, you name it. You get worked up about your experiences with other people's creative output, instead of channeling all that energy into your own endeavours.

I think the world would be much better off if we encouraged everyone of all ages to develop creative hobbies, instead of spending all their leisure time passively consuming the work of others. Then they would all gain a better perspective on the whole creative process and feel more accomplished all around - and happier for it!

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure that the responsibility lies with people or society at large.

Do you believe people on Twitter do not have the resources available to attempt creative works?

Furthermore, do you believe that, without being creative, it is not possible for a person to refrain from telling a game designer to kill himself?

I believe that individuals making death threats or rape threats on the internet are generally making individual choices with full knowledge of the repercussions. I do not believe they have any reasonable excuse justifying their actions. The responsibility for understanding and identifying how deeply they can damage another human is solely theirs.

<comment><USER10> _" Do you believe people on Twitter do not have the resources available to attempt creative works?"_

They do, but they're overwhelmed by the vast amount of empty content ready for consumption. It's so damn easy to chill out clicking this and that, and fall in a rut where that's all you do in the leisure time you spend at your desk. We should try to find a way to actively encourage people to pick up a creative hobby (or more than one!) as a form of therapy, even.

 _" Furthermore, do you believe that, without being creative, it is not possible for a person to refrain from telling a game designer to kill himself?"_

I think outbursts like that come from immature, intellectually under-developed people who would grow immensely from pursuing a creative hobby.

<comment><USER11> My greater point was that I don't think "we should actively encourage people to pick up a creative hobby" in response to those people making death threats.

There are already people who are choosing to pick up creative hobbies. Those people make games. People that make games get crucified by gamers who do not like their decisions. Those gamers make death threats.

The people who make death threats can easily enough make something creative. Certainly there is no larger barrier for them when compared to someone like Phil Fish. I do not think we need to make it easier to expect better behavior from someone who is making a death threat.

We need to prioritize the people who made the extra effort to actually get up and make something over the people who chose to directly threaten the lives of the creator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 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.

<comment><USER13> 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!

<comment><USER12> Shucks :)

As an aside, my best buddy, lead Dys programmer and co-project manager Teddy is now hacking around with Oculus Rift things:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSoj9EU7pWs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSoj9EU7pWs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> FEZ is among my favorite video games of all time. I believe that it is a perfect expression of a 20-something's love of video games, a game mechanical representation of spiritual enlightenment, and a fiendish hedge maze of fractally spiraling content all at once. I played the _hell_ out of that game, all the way to the end with every secret (rare for me), and devoted many pages of a notebook to walking that hedge maze. Truly a great work of art.

I have tremendous respect for Phil Fish, but I would never want to work with him. His kind of passion, devotion, and energy would probably chew me up and spit me out so fast I wouldn't know what hit me. And, yeah, he gives as good as he gets in the Land of the Trolls.

But, _man_ , he made a helluva game. Right now I'm selfishly hoping that the need to create overwhelms the desire to heal and we'll see another few games out of him before too long.

</comment><comment><USER15> This needs to be paralleled with the story of Caroline Criado-Perez, who campaigned to get a woman to replace Winston Churchill on the ten-pound note. After it was announced that Jane Austen will be on the ten-pound note, Criado- Perez received "about 50 abusive tweets an hour for about 12 hours."

This sort of abuse isn't limited to creative people. It's endemic. Make a stand on something, anything, and you run the risk of having people say they're going to rape you, your family, and your dog. It's really quite horrible. Luckily for Criado-Perez Manchester police arrested a 21-year old man on "about 50 abusive tweets an hour for about 12 hours." Lucky for her, but unfortunately there's an entire sea of horrible people out there to sling the shit.

<comment><USER16> Did that actually pass? People actually believe that Jane Austin is more worthy then Winston Churchill? I love her books but come on....

<comment><USER17> There's an informal tradition of rotating through people about every ten years.

<comment><USER16> That makes more sense then. Who is on our notes does not change often so I guess I was predisposed that this was a bigger deal then it really was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I expected this to be a piece about on-line piracy. In reality, it is about something that can be much worse.

It's profoundly disturbing that so many people have such a lack of perspective that they can seriously threaten violence against someone and their family just because that person did their job and tweaked some game mechanics.

Sure, most of the abusive people are probably kids, but that's no excuse. What kind of kid is old enough to be allowed unsupervised access to the Internet and yet so out of control that they can think this kind of behaviour is acceptable?

Some of the things described in this piece are surely criminal, but somehow I get the feeling that sending the cops round would just be a badge of honour to people who've gone that far off the rails already. I'm not sure how you fix this without change on a society-wide scale, and I'm not sure how you could even start to effect that change if you're in the the kind of position described in the article.

<comment><USER19> Phil Fish _also_ told one of the YouTube personalities to go kill himself. I think he's part of the problem.

<comment><USER20> He was quoting Futurama (which he did _not_ note).

Either way, responding to hate with more hate doesn't mean it's OK to continue the death threats.

<comment><USER21> I fail to see how this is a defense in this context. Given the rest of the tweets, it doesn't seem that Fish was joking in any way, shape, or form.

<comment><USER22> The Futurama line is satirical: pompous robot says obviously cruel and pompous thing. Quoting it, assuming the other party recognizes that it's a quote, keeps some of the original humour and makes it into more of a sassy put-down than a literal "you should kill yourself".

For instance, if I say "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" I'm not ACTUALLY saying we should nuke anything. I'm actually quite against the use of nuclear weapons.

<comment><USER21> Except there's no humor, implied, or otherwise, there. Just malice.

And honestly, the phrase "nuke it from orbit" is a rather exaggerated phrase. Unless the speaker is Barrack Obama or Vladamir Putin, it's a pretty good assumption that they are incapable of performing such an act.

However, "look at my life and go kill yourself" is much less exaggerated. Bender gets a pass when he says it because it's used in a comedic context. In real life, there is just about no point where that is a socially acceptable thing to say, except, perhaps, in a Futurama quote competition.

<comment><USER23> >> However, "look at my life and go kill yourself" is much less exaggerated

I believe Fish actually used the full quote too "compare your life to mine and then kill yourself" [1] .

Also, have you seen the abusive rant that Fish was responding to? It was this GameTrailers panel clip, 1min 50 [2]. I was appalled, it _was_ a character assassination.

Beer called Fish a "fucking hipster," a "tosspot," a "wanker", a "fucking arsehole" and was dismissive of his game [2]. For some reason it's _fucking hipster_ that gets my goat the most as that is just a _pathetically lazy_ insult to throw at someone creative.

[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/27/4563738/fez-ii-abruptly- ca...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/27/4563738/fez-ii-abruptly-canceled- after-developer-phil-fish-explodes-in-rage)

[2] [http://www.gametrailers.com/full- episodes/roj70m/invisible-w...](http://www.gametrailers.com/full- episodes/roj70m/invisible-walls-everything-and-the-kitchen-sink)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It strikes a note of insanity: someone makes something, and another tries to bully them. There can't be a goal in mind, since there doesn't seem to be any pay-off. Fez was a hugely fun game, with layers of secrets and depth. And now we'll likely not see another... Because of what? The game guy's a jerk? We're surrounded by jerks that do nothing, and we tolerate them. I wonder if this is just an extension of GIFT [1], but instead of general online abuse, it's now aimed at the people building that entertainment infrastructure.

[1] [http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19](http://penny- arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19)

</comment><comment><USER25> I think it's just what happens when you're exposing yourself to potentially hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. From that sample size, there will always be a lot of abusive idiots, even though they might reflect a tiny fraction of the total audience. That small percentage can end up dominating the conversation because of the nature of (most) electronic communication.

Unfortunately the medium itself is such that someone who is an abusive idiot is a gazillion times more likely to go out of their way to contact you or post something than someone who actually has something meaningful to say. The same goes for online forums and mailing lists. There's just a natural bias towards people posting extremely negative/inflammatory/abusive things. There's also a natural bias towards the people who have the least to contribute being the most likely to hop in with a comment, because they're the ones most likely to have strong kneejerk responses that they just have to share with the world right away.

To make matters worse, there's some sort of signal:noise entropy dynamic. Anyone who was into Usenet in the 90's or has followed the same online community over the course of many years has probably seen this. Online forums tend to get worse over time, and never ever ever get better, aside from attempts to impose moderation which always meet with strong resistance. It seems like one lousy comment (or commenter) breeds two more, which drive away the good commenters (meaning, people who actually try and don't just post knee-jerk responses to things). This is how things like YouTube happen.

<comment><USER26> I think it's incumbent on reasonable people to occasionally leave a positive comment, or send a short thank-you email to developers or creatives who have made something you've found enjoyable, useful or helpful.

I do.

"Do unto others, as you would have them do to you" is sage advice that's often forgotten.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> In a way it's unfortunate that Phil Fish is becoming the poster child for this issue given his controversial public persona. I am not sure if people can dis- entagle his reputation from this real issue.

<comment><USER13> In a legal setting, it's often true that to protect civil liberties you end up defending...less popular characters. Protecting first amendment rights often means protecting people whose speech you strongly disagree with.

Perhaps the same is true of a social setting. In order to argue and campaign for more civility, you will necessarily be defending people most likely to fail to earn that civility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Part of making anything and telling the world about it is sticking your neck out. The absolute worst thing is making something that ends up having no impact.

When you do make something that garners some attention you need to realize that a lot of people will be jealous. Their only valid rebuttal would be to make something that is better than your thing.

People don't say these things to your face because on top of being jealous, they are also cowards. The fear that drives their life is the reason why they never make anything in the first place.

If you make things that are a bit more intelligent and refined you won't attract the kind of idiots who are gonna post a bunch of mindless crap on Internet message boards... but then you might have to deal with a very intelligent and refined review from a noted critic. But no worries, as Frank Zappa summed up brilliantly:

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

Just make stuff. Haters gonna hate.

<comment><USER29> I totally agree. But I think the main reason people don't admit that they're jealous is because they don't even realize it themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I am confused; why do you, as the creative person, _need_ to tell the world about the death of a family person or if you are getting married (Looking at you, Neil Gaiman)? Why has this become a thing? Why can't you STFU, get off twitter/facebook/whatever social network and go do your creative thing?

<comment><USER13> Yes. How dare you use social media in a way that other humans do! If you contribute anything in the public space, social media should be nothing more than a marketing tool.

I am, like you, infuriated that a public / marginally public figure would use social media to communicate a personal message. These marginally public figures should only be allowed to talk about their creative output in a public space.

/s

Edit: I guess the general point my unnecessary sarcasm was trying to make was this: Creative people are _people_ first and foremost. They have the same drives and desires for using social media, AND they need to use it as a marketing tool. I think one of the major problems is it's super easy to dehumanize people when you're interacting with them over the internet. They aren't _just_ content creation machines.

Apologies for the unnecessary sarcasm.

<comment><USER30> I am not clear what your point is. Are you saying that it is a normal human instinct to broadcast all your shit to the world? Just because a few people think that cultural consumption should work like that, doesn't mean that everyone does think the same way.

<comment><USER13> > "Are you saying that it is a normal human instinct to broadcast all your > shit to the world?"

To some extent, yes. Death in the family and informing people about an upcoming marriages are things that I frequently see people post on social media. Really any very important event in someone's life often gets posted on social media.

I'm just saying, it's easy to think of people on the internet as _abstract things_ , and not realize that you're saying: "Hey, _actual person_ shut about about that major event in your life, no one cares, get back to work".

Let me ask you this: if your friend posted a message about a death in their family on twitter would your response be "Why can't you STFU, get off twitter, and get back to work"?

<comment><USER30> > easy to think of people on the internet as abstract things,

Right. You mean it then becomes easier to be a major sarcastic dick to someone who voiced an opinion quite contrary to yours?

<comment><USER13> I do. And I'm sorry for my sarcasm. It was inappropriate. Hence the earlier edit to my comment calling it unnecessary and apologizing for it.

It was a knee-jerk comment, and it was indeed a pretty dick thing to say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The Internet has a way of returning negative behavior ten or even a hundred or a thousand fold. Phil Fish has a decently long history of negativity and insults and that's what he received back in spades.

I find a lot of people who are dismissive, arrogant, condescending, and insulting often can't take that same behavior directed back at them. Fish seems to fit that mold.

I certainly wouldn't equate Phil Fish's situation to that of David Vonderhaar. Vonderhaar got harassed for merely doing his job. Fish got harassed because he crafted a persona of jerkiness.

</comment><comment><USER32> This doesn't have anything to do with anyone's "war on creatives" (ugh, I hate that word). _Anybody_ who rises to even minor prominence on the internet is going to get abuse. Sure, it's game creators, but it's also cat bloggers and people who make instructional language videos. It's athletes and politicians. It's anyone who whose name has bubbled to the top of a news cycle.

</comment><comment><USER33> You people are amazingly irritating. Why do you believe that whenever a person disagrees with you it's "trolling"? Fez was a truly terrible game, and Phil Fish a terrible influence on videogames. He, and many people like him, are transforming videogames into something truly horrifying. I can elaborate as to why if you wish.

</comment><comment><USER34> I make games, and the few "abusive" comments I received were obviously from astroturfed competitors.

Maybe because although I am a caustic person, I never go around telling people to kill themselves, or suck my dick, or other "wonderful" things that some people like to do.

Also my games usually don't feature violence.

</comment><comment><USER35> I have a hard time considering "bullying" on the internet or "smear campaign" a real issue. I just think "just ignore the suckers". As long as you do have people behind you as well as opposing you, it should be alright.

Maybe the problem is that, having never been in the situation, I don't really understand how it feels. It really makes me wonder how I'd hold up in the situation.

<comment><USER36> You're 22 and you think you know anything you piece of shit. Just fucking kill yourself you fat french fuck, you deserve to die so just do it or else I'm gonna find you wherever in france you are and I'm gonna rape your family and make you watch, then kill you slowly.

How's that? That's pretty difficult for me to write, but about sums it up what these people have to deal with several times a day. I do not blame Phil Fish for lashing out, if people weren't on him like flies in the first place he probably be less agitated.

<comment><USER35> Too obvious, made me smile :)

There might be a bit of desensitization involved, think 4chan culture.

Still, a stranger or the internet, or simply a stranger, does not mean anything to me if I don't know him beforehand.

I also would like to clarify that I do not doubt that this kind of abuse it is hard to deal with or anything. Just saying that it is pretty hard for me to relate, and that's probably the reason why not everyone is immediately siding with Phil Fish and other abuse victims.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Where have all the grown-ups gone?

</comment><comment><USER38> this isn't a war on creatives. this is a war on phil fish, who's probably been the most annoying, condescending, gopher-hybrid moron-baby in recent history. phil fish and his ilk can get fucked and go be forgotten as if he ever did anything of note. calling this a "war on creatives" is patently ridiculous, and only those who suck his dick because he's some kind of over-hyped indie messiah would make this overgrown child's "take my ball and go home" stunt into some horrible crime of undeserved victimization.

<comment><USER39> Exactly. The video game industry needs to take a hard look at itself as to why they are trying to justify victimization and criticize "cyberbullying" when Fish has acted exactly like the trolls they criticize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMPIcV6zsPw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMPIcV6zsPw)

It's not like Phil fish never asked for it.

</comment><comment><USER41> Obviously people on HN aren't quite aware of who Phil Fish is. Try reading the forums over at TIGsource where you'll see that the general sentiment (in the indie community) is that he's a pompous douche and general asshole who probably should not have been even featured in the indie game documentary that came out 2 years ago.

What's happening to him is shitty, true. He also has done shitty things to people in the past. One does not justify the other. However, my only point is only that the indie community (talking about devs/designers/artists) as a whole would rather have him gone.

</comment><comment><USER42> What a terribly example for an article about bullying to lead with. Bullying is bad, but Fish _bullied others_ and contributed in the vitriol.

</comment><comment><USER43> What a fucktard

</comment><comment><USER44> Phil wasn't just "swimming in a sea of shit", he was shitting in the sea of shit and splashing it at other swimmers. He is not some innocent victim, he has consistently been an abusive asshole. The fact that people responded in kind isn't wonderful, but it also isn't shocking.

<comment><USER45> I find it interesting that his twitter icon is Andy Kaufman. An artistic troll if there ever was one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> First world problems...right now the US is arming Syrian rebels so more Syrians can get blown to bits. You're surprised that the culture perpetrating atrocities around the world like that would also hurt the feelings of some upper middle class white "creative type"? Let me break out my violin. What happened, you opened up the window of your ivory tower and didn't like what wafted in? Take off your rose-colored glasses and take a look around you.

<comment><USER39> You have the right idea. Really puts it into perspective, when these people act like their on a moral crusade defending a upper middle class assholes because he got mean comments from other middle class assholes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Haha bullshit. I submitted this hours before and it got nothing. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6122743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6122743)

<comment><USER48> This isn't Reddit. (Thankfully.)</comment></comment>