We've had all kinds of bug reports over the years at Failbetter. Friendly ones, daft ones, hyper-detailed error reports from QA testers, reports of historical errors from period specialists. Bugs written by people who are quite palpably delightedly high. An awful lot of bugs written in-character

Sometimes we get reports from people who are angry and frustrated. Today someone suggested we'd deliberately left a bug in our action candle to confuse players, and I responded a little impatiently. He got upset and complained on Twitter, then blogged about it. (He added the actual transcript at my request.)

I think he was wrong, and the commenters seem to agree. But, actually, I was wrong too. The right thing for me to do would have been to put the ticket in the queue and say 'fixed!' when it was fixed. The guy sent a silly mail, but he's obviously frustrated by a bug that means he's not getting actions he wants to play, and he's obviously reacting emotionally. Picking holes in his statement helps no-one.

Was it 'unprofessional' of me to respond like that? Big shrug. When I was a small cog in a company of 60,000, my perk was healthcare. When I run a tiny indie studio, my perk is I get to cut loose slightly and occasionally. I've probably succumbed to the temptation to snark a half-dozen times in four years and about (checks Zendesk) eight thousand tickets. People are people. And I've never, you know, told anyone to fuck off.

But pragmatically, it was at best a bit stupid of me. I waste my time writing a snarky response, he wastes his shouting about it on Twitter, I feel compelled to reply. Net loss, an hour of everyone's time and a few hundred milliSantas of love and peace. Net gain, the hollow feeling of having won an Internet argument.

One of the most beautiful, brilliant, amazing things about the indie game movement is that players get to have real conversations with developers without having to go through tech support or PR. Of course this happens with big game companies too, but it can happen more with people at our level. I love that. I love that when I mailed lapsed Fallen London players and asked them why they'd stopped playing, I got thirty-six personal responses. It makes me happy when players remember that they're emailing real people, and it makes me happy when devs remember that people get crossest when they're most enthusiastic. I think we should sit in a circle and hold hands while we sing 'Puff the Magic Dragon'. I look forward to convincing my team of that.

And I'm not going to send any more snarky bug responses. Unless you're really mean to me.

Here's David Foster Wallace to play us out.