I remember when gearbox released a video about working on ROR2 after they acquired the IP. The CEO or creative director or whoever was talking about understanding people’s expectations, and called them “users”. Not players, not fans, just “users”. I thought this was a good enough warning that they had no idea what they were doing.
I think it was this video but I don’t remember the timestamp : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzD3jWETeW4 the fact that this is barely a documentary on the history of the game and itself a disguised and for their upcoming (at the time) dlc was another forewarning sign…
As a dev I would refer to the people running my software as users all the time, a user runs software under a user profile with their limited user privileges, we might write the user data to the user home directory, identity them on the backend by some user id but probably want to use the user display name on the UI.
Its not derogatory but when your implementing the software the user holds a distinct role and is perfectly valid terminology for the person using the software.
User to me falls in a similar category to “client” or “customer”, none are derogatory, but they’re all very transactional. “Fan” or “gamer” feel more familiar, like a hotel “guest”. It’s a minor distinction, but it implies more of a two way relationship, and from personal experience, the language used by leadership tends to closely tie to how employees treat their customers.
I remember when gearbox released a video about working on ROR2 after they acquired the IP. The CEO or creative director or whoever was talking about understanding people’s expectations, and called them “users”. Not players, not fans, just “users”. I thought this was a good enough warning that they had no idea what they were doing.
I think it was this video but I don’t remember the timestamp : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzD3jWETeW4 the fact that this is barely a documentary on the history of the game and itself a disguised and for their upcoming (at the time) dlc was another forewarning sign…
As a dev I would refer to the people running my software as users all the time, a user runs software under a user profile with their limited user privileges, we might write the user data to the user home directory, identity them on the backend by some user id but probably want to use the user display name on the UI.
Its not derogatory but when your implementing the software the user holds a distinct role and is perfectly valid terminology for the person using the software.
User to me falls in a similar category to “client” or “customer”, none are derogatory, but they’re all very transactional. “Fan” or “gamer” feel more familiar, like a hotel “guest”. It’s a minor distinction, but it implies more of a two way relationship, and from personal experience, the language used by leadership tends to closely tie to how employees treat their customers.