How Important is a Website to You as a Gamer? MOO3 and Civ3 Sites Compared:

[Mahdimael]

Frankly, I'd rather have people working on the game and implementing all the great stuff they want to put in, rather than telling us all about all the cool features they want to put in.

I think Firaxis is being smart about this. If you release all the information about the game, how it plays, etc, etc - what is left to discover in the game? Especially a game like Civ. Part of the addictiveness of the games was discovering all the cool things you could do. Why would I want to know how to beat the game before I even get it? That's no fun.

At the same time, I can understand a desire for information. But the Internet has been the bane of computer designers. People want information about products NOW! But the designers are in a hard place: do they release every bit of information, hoping that none of the promised features get cut out of the game? Or do they release miniscule bits of reliable info, but risk the indignation of fans who have nothing better to do than dissect their every move on message boards? Before the Internet, designers did a few magazine interviews. They had a month or more before they had to release new info, if they released any at all.

The fact is, we've all become information crazy. I'm guilty of it as well. Why? Because it's fun to hear and learn about the things you're looking forward to seeing. It's happening in every type of media: movies, games, books- anything under the sun is right now being discussed by fans. The fans comments can be a useful tool for developers, but the requests for constant information are a headache.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Mahdimael
Frankly, I'd rather have people working on the game and implementing all the great stuff they want to put in, rather than telling us all about all the cool features they want to put in.

ah jesus, how many times have i heard such statements??

surely you can agree that 1 of the designers and the programmers can stop working on civ3 for one hour per (let's say) week to write an update on what's going on, right? civ3 wont be delayed that much will it?

[Rasputin]

maybe they too pissed off at end of week to let us know what is going on... i know somemtimes i feel like that and cant be bothered updating my webpages ....

[yin26]

For me, it comes down to BASIC professionalism. If you have a full-time Webmaster (hey, Firaxis even has a Web Wizard, can you imagine?), then you have a choice: Go all out and keep that guy busy with all kinds of fancy stuff and updates and monitoring the boards, etc., or your scale way back and do the minimum. Either one is fine.

What is NOT fine...and what is absolutely unprofessional and worthy of NO excuse...is hanging promises for updates and contents out there and then doing NOTHING about it. We saw it with the mailbag, now updates, and on and on.

While this Wizard is apparantly good at public disappearing acts, the larger issue is who is supposed to be keeping this Magician busy? But the people who make key decisions at Firaxis can't even say, "Hey, think you can pull a rabbit out of your hat, Wizard, and actually update the site THIS YEAR? Hell, at least take out those parts where you promised updates. That should take all of, say, 5 minutes." Or perhaps they HAVE said those things and the Wizard's power of evasion is simple too strong?

But it makes me think: If this simple web page can't even be maintained, how in the world am I to think that the game itself will ship as anything but a glorified beta? So, Firaxis will let HTML hang lose and irresponsibly but somehow, miraculously, the game code itself will be top-notch?

Thanks, Wizard, but it might be time to peruse the job-description again.

[Mahdimael]

I would not disagree that updates are a good thing and a desireable one. My feeling is that Firaxis is trying to prevent the following two situations from occurring:

1. Information overload - Do you want to be able to beat the game when it comes out? Do you want to know every single facet of information, every technology, every random event? I certainly do not. I rarely read the manual when I get a new game. If Firaxis gives us information on something new every day, this might take place.

2. Wrong info - as I stated before, this is a situation where we're given so many details that have not been nailed down that we as consumers become angry when promised or listed features are suddenly removed.

Even if they do update more frequently, we all know that all of the information given will be dissected at Apolyton in a matter of hours. they would have to update almost daily in order for there to be a backlog of information.

I'm not saying we need to get on our knees and be thankful for the scraps that Firaxis gives us, I'm just saying that instant gratification is not necessarily a good thing. Do you give a child candy every time he/she asks? No, only in certain situations. Not exactly a parallel, but it fits. Enjoy the expectation of that next sweet morsel of information.

[JellyDonut]

The web designers for these pages are just out to get into John Q. Public's wallet. A good Net presence that gets a lot of attention will get you lots of $$$. Just look at the "A.I." movie. Huge Net presence, plus mystery. Mystery helps too. Nobody really has a clue what the movie's about, but so many people are addicted to the A.I. Net thing and will pay anything to see the movie. I personally think the movie's just a bunch of hype and it probably won't be that great. I only buy games that I've heard are good in person from someone else (or that are a juicy sequel to a game I already have, like Civ3). I share Civ2 with a friend who bought it in '98 or '99. I'm a Mac user but have a Windows emulator so I can get it right when it comes out and be able to download all the Windows scenarios (and create my own) that they just won't have for Mac .

[Adm.Naismith]

Market is changing, so game developers must change too.

Into the professional market, a game is a product you produce to make money, full stop.

In order to sell your product you must fit a customer need, true or induced (by advertizing, law, whatever).

Back to old time of Ford Model-T Mr. Ford can have only black as available colour: now times are changed.

Customer care is a process you start before the product is bought: there are eligible customers, but only limited in numbers, when you compete against others companies to grab the best part of customer money.

A good product can't only live on word-of-mouth today, or resting on laurel of previus success, IMO. It shouldn't be difficult to understand for smart people as they are at Firaxis, AFAIK.

[JellyDonut]

Originally posted by Adm.Naismith


A good product can't only live on word-of-mouth today, or resting on laurel of previus success, IMO. It shouldn't be difficult to understand for smart people as they are at Firaxis, AFAIK.

Certainly not today, but after the communist revolution...

[yin26]

Of course, I totally agree that the Net can be used in a powerful way to generate interest and loyalty from your consumers. It takes time, effort and skills, of course, to do that. Or, I should say, it takes a dedicated decision in the first place, which is rarely the case.

[Urban Ranger]

Yin,

Just because a company has a "Web Wizard" doesn't mean this person's full time job is tending the website. It's highly likely that he's just another programmer - maybe a junior one - who has been pressed into the duty.

I agree with you that if they have a website and made promises about it, they should keep the promises. It's no big deal as keeping promises about the games themselves though. So many games just don't meet the hype and expectations, yet gamers have been very forgiving.

I reckon that gamers should punish companies about broken promises about games, not websites.

[yin26]

In principle I agree, of course. However: Is not an official Website a reflection of the larger company image? This, I believe, is why they hired that FULL-TIME Wizard to begin with. I'll never forget one of his best quotes:

"Well, would you rather have me not here and go back to the way things were before?"

HA HA HA! Let's see...

The Way Things Were Before: We hardly got updates, and the official Website was a rather sad display.

The Way Things Are Now: [please do the cutting and pasting yourselves].

[Urban Ranger]

I seriously doubt that Dan's a full time webmaster.

While you are correct about a company's corporate image, I am a dissident of any public relation school. I am of the radical opinion that the entire PR department of any company should be axed. The image of a company is affected a lot more by its products than any empty "campaign" they could possibly run.

[yin26]

Dan Magaha, Web Wizard
Dan Magaha joins Firaxis as the webmaster. Dan has several years of web development expertise, having worked for a global consulting firm as an electronic commerce consultant, as well as co-founding and developing Dimension-S, one of the top Sega fansites. He has a B.S. in Information Systems from UMBC.

I wonder if his top fansite has frequent updates?

As for PR, I agree that NO PR is preferrable to bad or slick garbage. But the hard work and trust that can be built from a company actively seeking to interact with and provide content for a gamer in a meaningful way is, well, both professional and profitable.

[Urban Ranger]

Most companies that have websites also have webmasters.

The question is whether it's a full time job. AFAIK most websites aren't big enough, or need changes frequent enough, to have a webmaster dedicated full time at it.

BTW I have more web development experience than Dan. Which isn't saying much, of course

[Harel]

Personaly, I don't think an official site is ANY kind of indiciation of a game... only the information available in it. I can certainly understand Firaxis approach: revealing so much information on SMAc hurt their sells (at least, that's what I heard).

Giving my opinion, I would also like to update Yin initial post. MOO3 infact has an official FAQ, but it is hosed and maintained by fans. Why? Well, I believe they pasted the 250+ question mark on it. Compare that to Firaxis FAQ with only 11 question...

But, again, I REALLY won't judge a game by a site. Let's just wait till both game ship before we pass judgement.