Chronojam, on 17 April 2014 - 08:38 AM, said:
... eye-rolling you'll see whenever NGNG comes up.
As a fan and follower of any information source for MWO (other than twitter ... I don't tweet), I appreciate what Sean and Daeron have done and are trying to do, as representatives of the casual community. I've been listening to them from almost the start, and even after they took the contract with IGP, their tone hasn't changed that much. They voice their opinion without making it personal and remain generally positive, sometimes to a fault.
The biggest differences between NGNG and other sources are the tone and the target audience ...
- Re: tone: I miss VCRS and Kong Kast for the humor and pointed wit, but they occasionally reminded me of a MSNBC or FOX News commentary show ... echo chambers ... I can understand why people who are amateurs at PR would avoid the harsh criticism in these venues.
- Re: audience: The only other regular source (other than articles on themittani and other sites) I know of right now is ROFLwaffle and Siriothrax's War Room, which is focused almost exclusively on the competitive community. While NGNG has apparently been reaching out to the competitive players, they appear to be trying to appeal to the broadest audience possible.
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... VOIP integration, "Just use the NGNG TeamSpeak" has been presented as a viable alternative.
The only partnerships that I can see that have made PGI and IGP's jobs easier are nVidia and NGNG. CryEngine appears to have created more problems and delays than it has solved. C3 was apparently an ugly baby that was (appropriately or not) smothered in the crib.
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... launch event tournament had to rely on the NGNG TeamSpeak server due to a lack of integrated VOIP, and the actual casting/presentation was similarly cringeworthy at times. ...
Yeah ... as much fun as it was watching the launch event with my team mates (via twitch and TS3), it was pretty clear that PGI and IGP were learning as they muddled through it.
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... softball questions and fail to pursue satisfying answers to important questions.
Sean strikes me as someone who is pretty good at building and maintaining relationships. He seems to avoid burning bridges over disagreements, which makes sense. Unfortunately, respects "soon", "can't talk about it", or "we're working on it" as satisfactory answers too often.
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... treated them like the only game in town; tying back to communication problems, this exclusivity can be a problem especially as it was compounded historically by the lack of transcript availability.
Re: only game in town - see PR amateurs above. Also, Sean has worked hard to build and maintain his relationship with IGP and PGI ... I have no idea if any others have done so. WOL's reputation as trolls, alleged links/overlaps with Goon Swarm, etc. probably didn't help VCRS get any exclusive interviews with the Devs.
Re: transcripts - As Peiper has learned over the past months, putting together an accurate transcript is a lot of work (I don't remember seeing a transcript of the VCRS podcasts, but I could be wrong).
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... "NGNG Presents: NGNG Asks The Devs" ...
I like Daeron, but when I heard his voice in the first VLOG, I knew this would be an issue. While the information that comes out in these VLOGs is really what's most important, they really should have gotten someone else to intro / narrate. I think PGI and IGP just see him as a guy who has a smooth voice and some video / sound editing skills (and they're right), but some in the community sees things differently. They see him as a "shill" for PGI and IGP, which I think is only half true ... as far as I know, he is being paid for his work, but he has (and voices) his own opinions.
The Devs need to be much more open about where the VLOG topics and questions come from. While ATD posts had their flaws, at least we knew they were reading the questions we submitted.