99 replies to this topic

[Rebas Kradd]

Our community manager has not made a forum post in over a month. Nothing relevant on his Twitter account. Are personal circumstances keeping Garth Erlam out?

The only real difference between MWO and Star Citizen right now, and the real reason to the discontent of this community (behind the delays of CW), is good communication. Honest SC players acknowledge that the game is still in progress and they haven't gotten all that much more than MWO has offered them yet. But it FEELS like they're getting more, because Chris Roberts gives the impression that he spends his nights sitting in front of his computer just waiting for a bug report to pop up. He talks to people...a lot. It's above and beyond the call. The community over there feels valued, listened to, and rewarded for their participation in the game's development, even as they have to wait just like we do. And they're willing to wait for a decade if they must.

PGI has lost a lot of consumer confidence - not really because of CW delays or the marginal balance issues or any of that, but because there's no communication. They give the impression of guys who spend three months in a cave, pay no attention to the community, and emerge only every three months to announce their decisions. Now, of course, none of this is true and we both know that. But the impression is still there and it's still hurting. Consumer confidence needs to be won back. Communication skill will play a huge role in the game's success in 2014 and afterwards. So much could be fixed with that.

PGI...you guys need a wizard. You need a guru. You need a community liaison with a constant presence and a velvet keyboard, who understands the difference between transparency and excuses, who can spin enough honesty and feedback into the usual practices of the industry (i.e. "Don't talk about anything until it's done") to give people the impression that there's someone on the other end of the keyboard other than Niko. We don't need to know every detail, even if a few haters want to. But we do need someone with their pulse on the community. I'm sorry, Mr. Russ Bullock, sir, but you don't give us that impression when you respond to frustrations over yearlong CW delays by touting "end-of-round screen improvements" as a major positive for 2013. It's like Obama responding to health care problems with an announcement that they just fixed a light bulb in the White House.

I don't know what it is. I don't know whether Garth Erlam is just having personal issues or a nice, long Canadian vacation right now, or whether PGI is so far behind that they can't talk about much practically, or whether their morale and enthusiasm is in the toilet from falling a year behind (very common thing for programmers), or whether you're just sick of the vitriol (and death threats) and don't want to face the community, or what. I'd certainly like to believe those things rather than the impression that you've spent the holidays packing up the offices and moving the furniture out. But we need a little something to help us with that. We'd like a little more than a three paragraphs of corporatespeak once a month and endless bubbling over Cicadas. We'd like someone who gets that paying customers are mad, is willing to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty with people, and has the talent to explain the big picture instead of relying on statistics that are conveniently hidden from us, whether they're true or not. A personal touch goes a long ways.

If Garth is still your man for that, great, let's get him back. But regardless, there's a lot of money to be made for you guys in moving back towards the balance between transparent and opaque. You guys have been steadily shifting towards the latter extreme for all of 2013.

[Fabe]

I think it might be too late and no amount of communication will be enough. That could give us massive updates every day and would still not please many of the people here. Lets face it the only reason some are still here is to post about how 'evil' PGI is and that they only made the game to 'steal' our money. We could wake up tomorrow with everything we were promised and we would get a dozen post about how horrible it and how PGI failed at everything about it.

[ArchMage Sparrowhawk]

Fabe, on 05 January 2014 - 07:27 PM, said:

I think it might be too late and no amount of communication will be enough. That could give us massive updates every day and would still not please many of the people here. Lets face it the only reason some are still here is to post about how 'evil' PGI is and that they only made the game to 'steal' our money. We could wake up tomorrow with everything we were promised and we would get a dozen post about how horrible it and how PGI failed at everything about it.

you said it. At this point everyone who is complaining is a bellyacher without a real cause for complaint because the game is free! In fact, not one of us should care about anything at all, because the game is free! And if we suddenly got a complete Community Warfare module that added an entire new dimension to the game, a new interface that promoted integrated team play, and balanced tactical gameplay instead of kill and respawn for reasons and maybe points, there would still be people coming here to ***** about how much they hate PGI because they're just jealous.

That's right. They're jealous.

[Rebas Kradd]

Fabe, on 05 January 2014 - 07:27 PM, said:

I think it might be too late and no amount of communication will be enough. That could give us massive updates every day and would still not please many of the people here. Lets face it the only reason some are still here is to post about how 'evil' PGI is and that they only made the game to 'steal' our money. We could wake up tomorrow with everything we were promised and we would get a dozen post about how horrible it and how PGI failed at everything about it.

A few are trolls. A lot more are reasonable people who can withstand a lot of hard decisions from PGI if they just have the sense that PGI is going through the journey with them. It's too hard to get a handle on them at the moment.

[Tekadept]

Garth now has Piranha Games listed as a Previoius employer on his linked in, is that true?

[Hex Pallett]

It seems like Russ Bullock has somehow taken over the PR part. At least on Twitter it is.

[S3dition]

Tekadept, on 18 February 2014 - 04:27 PM, said:

Garth now has Piranha Games listed as a Previoius employer on his linked in, is that true?

Blatantly false. Everything is in present tense and the dates are current.

Edited by S3dition, 18 February 2014 - 05:10 PM.

[Tekadept]

S3dition, on 18 February 2014 - 05:10 PM, said:

Blatantly false. Everything is in present tense and the dates are current.

He fails at Linkedin then. I'm sure it used to say current. Just because everything is Present tense doesn't mean much, it "can" just mean he hasn't got around to changing the wordy wordy bits yet.

hopefully the cicada man himself can weigh in.

[S3dition]

I guess we'll see. But he could have also been moved to a different position, so he's planning on updating that.

But after months of "Alex Iglesias has quite PGI"... I'd not spread news that isn't there.

[Tekadept]

S3dition, on 18 February 2014 - 05:17 PM, said:

I guess we'll see. But he could have also been moved to a different position, so he's planning on updating that.
But after months of "Alex Iglesias has quite PGI"... I'd not spread news that isn't there.

The difference is, this has an actual source managed by HIM personally versus hearsay with Alex

GARTH WHERE ARE YOU?

[Tekadept]

S3dition, on 18 February 2014 - 05:17 PM, said:

I guess we'll see. But he could have also been moved to a different position, so he's planning on updating that.

But after months of "Alex Iglesias has quite PGI"... I'd not spread news that isn't there.

Confirmed he is gone.

http://mwomercs.com/...04-garth-erlam/

[Sybreed]

yup he got fired, which kinda sucks for him. And makes you wonder what direction PGI is willing to take with MWO's community.

[GalaxyBluestar]

first niko now garth... are they really trying to change up their communication with the community... or is the budget forever tightening running at a loss?

[Tekadept]

Wonder if he got a Golden handshake, or in this case a Golden Timber Wolf

[JohnnyWayne]

Quote

Unfortunately Garth is no longer employed at PGI, it was simply a matter of his skill set no longer matching the evolving needs of the product and studio.

Am I the only one that is reading here that he was fired? I mean between that PR BS after and before, to me it says exactly that. No more skills required? So you don't need real contact to your community? Or was he too loud at shouting "THERE ARE ISSUES" and PGI just continued sticking finger in their ears and scream "LALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU". Srlsy wtf!

[FupDup]

With Garth fired, who will ever troll us with Cicadas again?



WHO?!!!

[JohnnyWayne]

Thats the question bugging you? I have more serious... sinister.. questions in my mind right now... I have a bad feeling about this... Like a disturbance in the force... dafaq...

Edited by JohnnyWayne, 18 February 2014 - 07:03 PM.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

I'm sorry to hear that Garth is no longer at PGI.

However, be careful reading too much into Russ' CC post ... while the relationship between an employee and a company is (mostly) a professional one, the relationship between a worker and his boss is (at least some ... maybe mostly) a personal one.

I hope that Garth left on his own terms, in his own time, but if that's not the case, then it's none of our business.

I'll miss Garth, but I look forward to seeing the next voice for/with the community step up.

Edited by Kageru Ikazuchi, 18 February 2014 - 07:13 PM.

[JigglyMoobs]

JohnnyWayne, on 18 February 2014 - 06:57 PM, said:

Am I the only one that is reading here that he was fired? I mean between that PR BS after and before, to me it says exactly that. No more skills required? So you don't need real contact to your community? Or was he too loud at shouting "THERE ARE ISSUES" and PGI just continued sticking finger in their ears and scream "LALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU". Srlsy wtf!

Yea that was basically a professional way of saying that he was fired.

[Antonio]

It would have been more professional if they had said something like "He has left the company to pursue opportunities outside PGI." The way they phrased it they made it blatantly obvious that he was fired for lack of skills.