136 replies to this topic

[s5134195]

I am constantly annoyed when I see self-proclaimed "veteran" gamers whine and complain when a game does not turn out the way they envisioned it would. They misinterpret genuine developer excitement and hype as personal promises and gospel truth. They make the most derogatory remarks, under the guise of "loyal playerbase" and "paying customer", and then wax completely offended when a developer calls them on it, or makes a snippy comment in return.

Gals and guys... How long have you actually been a part of the gaming medium?

Seriously, you get Peter Molyneuxed once, shame on him; you get get Paul Barnetted twice, shame the f__k on you, gamer. I have no sympathy for you or the money you continue to spend on things that have no guarantee attached to them. Learn that already.

My gaming graveyard over the past few years looks like this:

1) Warhammer Online. RIP.
2) Tribes Ascend. Hang in there, buddy.
3) Age of Empires Online. RIP.

All of those games I have spent money on. Maybe too much. They were IPs I was extremely passionate about, and I invested significant time and money into their latest ventures. I don't feel miffed at their shortened lives, I have no delusions about the F2P model, Kickstarter, and the gaming industry in general. There was a time when the best games were made by gamers for gamers. A handful of big thinkers that could translate their ideas and worlds to be shared with others. The freaks and geeks. There was no large-scale money to be made, but the passion and personal investment of hardcore followers kept them (barely) afloat. Gaming has since become a highly lucrative industry (GTA V anyone?), and the quality and depth of games released nowadays reflect that. Every bro and his bros play. Every release day of CoD is a national call-in-sick day. The genius amounts of lore and numbers and immersion have receded back into the shadows of geekdom. As they should. There are a lot of beautiful, if flawed, masterfully crafted works of gaming art out there, underneath the bloated scope of technology, budget, and team size, there are small gems and nuggets of pure gold. Games that don't outgrow their developers' capacity. Dig deep, my friends, and you will find them. Appreciate what they accomplish, assist them financially, and keep your expectations in check.

Phew.. I've wanted to say that for a while.

[Heffay]

s5134195, on 05 October 2013 - 10:25 AM, said:

Phew.. I've wanted to say that for a while.

You take your well thought out, reasoned and articulate.... STUFF out of the forums! This is no place for smrt people!

[Navy Sixes]

Good article.

Another problem I've seen within this community (and in other online game communities, as well) is the delusion that if you were one of the first people to play closed beta, you should somehow have special access to some kind of special pipeline of information/communication/even free stuff from the developers for the history of the game.

Somewhere I saw someone grieving about how bad MWO was, then say they had just "gotten in on the ground floor" over at SC. And I thought, "Oh, you poor, delusional ******. When will you learn?"

So, to be clear: if you want "in on the ground floor," buy stock. If you buy a founder's package, you are nothing but one of the first customers. That's it. The game in question may offer little features and gimmicks to make you feel like you are forever going to be recognized as a special member of the community if you buy early. That's called advertising, not a business model.

And when there aren't a lot of customers (in the very beginning) you may very well be special. It's easy to be heard when you're one voice in 200... even 2000. But if the game is to succeed (which is what you wanted, right?... right?... ) more and more customers must buy the product, so your voice diminishes (being one of the first doesn't make you any more than someone who just made their first MWO real-money purchase.) I've been wearing Vans since the mid-seventies. I don't expect a special voice within the Vans business model. I don't expect them to think my ideas on quality foot-wear are any better than some kid who just bought his first pair yesterday; dafuq I know about shoes except I like to wear them? Dafuq you know about games except you like to play them?

So, to recap. People should remember that they are getting exactly what they paid for when they purchase: You paid for a founder mech and you got one. You wanted a little chevron do hickey for your avatar and you got one. When we buy things, we get exactly that and nothing more. We're customers. Somehow being in 'closed beta' or 'open beta' makes people fantasize they're elite play-testers or something.

PGI has put together a game. if you want to play with giant stompy robots, quit grieving about PGI and get out there and stomp! If you want to have a special relationship with people who will take into account your opinions and ideas over all others, quit buying ones-and-zeros spaceships and cameo- skins and start buying stock. Or get married and have kids.

Which ever you choose, good hunting.

[MischiefSC]

A very good article and it communicates some things that probably should have been shared here much sooner - like what timeline 'soon' equates to as well as reinforcing that ideally you have a trained community management group instead of taking coders and artists and having them talk to customers.

I'm not going to rehash prior complaints I've shared here, just say that I'm still frustrated with how communication has been handled. I'm excited about some of the discussed future plans on MWO but prior events make it hard for me to trust that they'll come to fruition. I am happy with the recent spurt of communication on many topics though, from the Mercs stuff to UI development to just more frequent posts from moderators.

Sometimes it's not even so much about getting an answer to your question or concern but just affirmation that someone is there listening even if they don't agree.

[Wilhelm Fraek]

I wouldnt call founder/hero mechs p2w so much as a P2P, if you buy these mechs it only makes it easier to earn new mechs throught cbills,parts, and so on. So i guess it is slightly p2w when you think about it, you earn everything easier then your f2p counter part.

[Farpenoodle]

Niko Snow, on 05 October 2013 - 09:21 AM, said:

Hmm it does have a picture of an Atlas...News Team! ASSEMBLE!

Man I missed out on my opportunity to scream "CENSORSHIP!!!!111one"

[GoManGo]

Tycho said--->>>PGI has put together a game. if you want to play with giant stompy robots, quit grieving about PGI and get out there and stomp! ------------> My reply it would be nice to have Big Stompy Robots that would maneuver properly take some damage and look more like BattleTech mechs? ---> is this you driving your mech in FPV and getting stuck on walls?---->>

[Navy Sixes]

GoManGo, on 05 October 2013 - 12:07 PM, said:

Tycho said--->>>PGI has put together a game. if you want to play with giant stompy robots, quit grieving about PGI and get out there and stomp! ------------> My reply it would be nice to have Big Stompy Robots that would maneuver properly take some damage and look more like BattleTech mechs? ---> is this you driving your mech in FPV and getting stuck on walls?---->>

Nope, I just learned how to navigate around walls, call out bogus hit-box-crutch-mech drivers, and don't pay for mechs that I don't look good in.

Cute dog, though.

[Corvus Antaka]

yup.

Simply human nature at work.

[MCXL]

Huh, that's odd he says it will never happen but Riot, Digital Extremes, Blizzard (arguably),RSI, and for that matter the vast majority of kickstater teams, big and small, seem to disprove the writer. The requests that communities make often are asking companies to open up because the other ones they are used to dealing with do it.
The problem with the writer talking about how 'developer's aren't trained to interact' is that the developers DO post here, and in fact I think community team members have drummed up more dust (Garth has said some pretty incendiary things in the past, though I think he has learned not to tell people, 'make your own game, if you;re so great.' when they bash MWO
I certainly don't expect Paul to post all the time, because that isn't his job, but more interaction from developers, and a LOT MORE from community team members would be nice.

[MustrumRidcully]

Veranova, on 05 October 2013 - 09:56 AM, said:

Great article.
Into my signature it goes!



The part where he talked about a developer who was a maths genius, but set a forum in to uproar.
I'd say that's pretty covered.

I don't know. Bryan, Russ and Garth are math geniuses?

I am pretty sure the 3 second Jenner and the 6 MG Spider or the Island comment where not from Paul or Thomas.

[Alois Hammer]

MustrumRidcully, on 06 October 2013 - 01:31 AM, said:

I don't know. Bryan, Russ and Garth are math geniuses?

Hope so...at least then they'd be good for something, which would be a nice change of pace.

-shrug-

[Helmer]

Loved this article.





Cheers.

[DirePhoenix]

DragonsFire, on 02 October 2013 - 08:57 PM, said:

http://www.tentonham...cation-requests

Pretty solid article on the difficulties of player communication in the course of any game development. Thought it would be applicable here given that there is a MWO screenshot in the article and it might indeed help some folks around the forums gain a bit more perspective.

Mods, please feel free to move this however if you feel it inappropriate for this forum.

Surprisingly good article from the same guy that thinks that coolant flush is the way "skilled" players manage heat.

[Riptor]

Random blog article that agrees with you = GREAT FIND! 10 / 10 WELL ARTICULATED **** **** ****

Random blog article that disagrees with you = Complete *****! Poorly researched! Biased! **** **** ****

This goes for both sides of the argument.

Fact is alot of smaller projects have their devs talking with the community on a regular basis and interact with them alot. That is because they dont have a publisher looking over their shoulder censoring every little thing they say or do.

They have the freedom to do it.

If the publisher however doesnt like that the developers hes paying talk to the crowd then there is nothing the developers can do to change that.

You see publishers are real control freaks and feel very uncomfortable if they dont controll every little thing in the first place. This also includes PR. Sadly IGP doesnt seem interested in positive PR or they would invest more money for that.

Thats it... thats the big mystery why Dev teams of bigger projects with publisher involvment usually also dont get involved with the community directly. Because the publisher stands inbetween them and the crowd, telling the Devs what, when and how to say.

Now dont get me wrong, its not because the Publisher is evil or anything. Its because they want to protect their investments and legal butts. After all they are footing the bill of the project so they have to make sure that only infos that they approve of are getting out on the street. You will find this kind of behaviour in any other creative media too. From comic books to the movie industry.

We have gotten alot of infos lately and even some screenshots of the locust smuggled out of the fortress that is IGP but one has to wonder when IGP will drop the second iron curtain infront of the Devs and we will be back to status quo.

Edited by Riptor, 07 October 2013 - 10:56 PM.

[Jakob Knight]

While the article was informative in several areas, it does fail to address when a game developer outright lies to its community (not just information that leads to accusations, but provable, undeniable lies) and remains unrepetant that they have done so. Instead, the author seems to assume such actions are merely misinterpretations of developers words on the part of the playerbase. I have to put this down to simply myopia on the other side of the fence seperating game developers from their communities ("You don't know what it's like over here because you are over there"), the same sort of thing cited in reverse in the article for many of the problems in communicating with the community.

That aside, it is hard to believe a company of any sort can not have someone set aside 30 mins a day just to make one or two comments to their customers/community, if only to let them know they are interested in communicating. And, if it becomes clear the team does not have anyone skilled enough in communicating with other people, that it would not hire someone to interface in this capacity (most companies call this sort of thing 'Customer Service' or 'Client Communications'). I realize it can happen, mainly through a company being so determined that it knows how to do business that it can't possibly be at fault or a simply lack of any kind of commerce understanding (i.e. the basic concepts of doing business with others, and in managing any kind of company), but it's not the sort of thing you can really accept from a company that is in any way a global producer (one that produces a product for sale beyond local consumption).

In any event, it is true that gaming communities include a wide range of people, some of which are going to do their best to take any shred of info and expand it beyond reason (either through misunderstanding of language or in seeing what they want/fear to see in any words printed), but it is also true that saying any game company with more than two people in it can't take a few minutes at the end of the day to just connect in even a small way with their community is extremely difficult to believe (unless the company feels the community is not a concern to their business model). Perhaps the community needs to do more to give developers due consideration (when the developers are not outright liars), but the reverse is also true. Many players in video game communities have regular jobs and still find time to spend with the Developers and their product. It isn't too much to expect the same in return.

[Shumabot]

An overly entitled community is bad, and one that pretends it has softpower in the development cycle can be destructive.. But a game 'releasing' with a fraction of 'expected' content, and major netcode, performance, and stability issues goes beyond an over entitled and impatient player base. This article would have been pertinent six months ago, at this point the fish tank is clear enough that the problems are pretty visible without having to resort of dev trackers for "you lied to us!". People are consistently in a bad mood here, I suspect, for good though poorly stated reasons.

That said, people making threats or specifically trying to contact individual members of the development community of a videogame in order to express derogatory opinions are either manchildren with more time then sense or actual children.

[Heffay]

Jakob Knight, on 08 October 2013 - 08:36 AM, said:

While the article was informative in several areas, it does fail to address when a game developer outright lies to its community (not just information that leads to accusations, but provable, undeniable lies) and remains unrepetant that they have done so.

Hahah! That's funny. People still believe this.

What a world we live in! Then again, there are still flat earthers, Birthers, and 9/11 Truthers, so maybe it's more sad than funny.

[Sandpit]

Heffay, on 08 October 2013 - 05:42 PM, said:

Hahah! That's funny. People still believe this.

What a world we live in! Then again, there are still flat earthers, Birthers, and 9/11 Truthers, so maybe it's more sad than funny.

Regardless of your opinion of it, this particular customer feels that way. The only thing you do is mock people for their opinions. I don't see how you justify it. You personally attack anyone that states their opinion on something if it doesn't happen to coincide with yours. Do you just feel the need to mock people?

[Heffay]

Sandpit, on 08 October 2013 - 05:51 PM, said:

Regardless of your opinion of it, this particular customer feels that way. The only thing you do is mock people for their opinions. I don't see how you justify it. You personally attack anyone that states their opinion on something if it doesn't happen to coincide with yours. Do you just feel the need to mock people?

He didn't state an opinion. He stated it as if it was a fact.