I feel like the real secret of "why are some game developers so hostile to criticism and the press" is that when placed into a work environment where you are forced to destroy your life for the sake of a commercial product you have to believe there's something worth it at the end of the tunnel
everyone copes with this differently. Some people merely try to survive. Others look for stepping stones upward.
some people - often the ones who are most bought-in to the game industry's cultural ideals - choose to believe their light is that the Art will be Good and Successful beyond all doubt. Maybe that's because they really believe in the game. Maybe it's because they've been promised bonuses. Maybe they really do believe the HR person when they say the studio is a Family. Either way.
and when a press person (accurately) describes the end result as a commercial product that may or may not have failed for reasons individual devs will never have control over, the dev's reaction is "you're trying to ruin my life" because the alternative would be to acknowledge that the corporate edifice that did this to them was never doing so for any reason other than because it's convenient and cost-effective to a senior producer who sees them as numbers on a sheet. That the struggle they went through wasn't worth it and wasn't necessary to begin with. That their "family" is merely a PR op to try and convince them to burn themselves at the stake so that the CEO can take home a few extra million dollars as a bonus this year.
You see this a lot in jobs that are high-pressure. Especially sales. There's an almost psychological need to drink your own kool-aid as a coping mechanism. In games, which burns people out at such a fast rate, it's unsurprising that many of the long-time remainers are the ones who've built those psychological walls the highest.
