My Conclusions about the Firaxis-Community relations

[Hoek]

Lib and Yin and other guys who get pissed off at Firaxis: My suggestion is to not take it personally. It may be frustrating to not get replies to all your questions, but Dan and others don't intend to offend you. It may be a mistake to purposely not reply to questions, but you shouldn't take it so personally or get so angry. It isn't that big of a deal, in the end.

[yin26]

Take it personally? That's not it at all. It's a comedy of errors, actually. Tragically funny that one company with so much potential can so willingly shoot itself in the face.

[Libertarian]

Seems to me the private e-mail business leads to troubles of its own. After getting my answer, would I not then come back here and share it with other gamers? Why then the weird cabalistic method of answering? Why must someone go like Moses to the mountain top to get answers and then bring them here on tablets of clay?

Firaxis has settled on a rather Neanderthal method of dealing with fan's questions, a method that turns them into detractors. It's all just so... bizarre.

[Hoek]

Yin: but why are you so impatient? I doubt that anyone on the Civ 3 forums does not know where you stand on Firaxis and Civ 3. You have made your points clear, now you're just saying the same thing again and again. Can't you just take a rest and wait to see what Firaxis ends up doing? It won't do a lick of good to keep complaining.

[Hoek]

Well, you would be on your honor not to broadcast it either. The point would be to give a particular gamer some satisfaction while allowing Firaxis to not have stones thrown at it for speculating.

[yin26]

Do I make new threads? That should answer your question. If somebody wants to bring up (again) the issue of Firaxis PR and other people are discussing it, why should I stay out of the coversation? Makes no sense.

And, no, it seems a good number of the newbies here do NOT understand my arguments, so I find myself having to make things clear to them when they jump to conclusions, etc.

As for being patient: Hey, I returned the game and am waiting to see where we'll be come Gold Edition time. In my book, that makes me one of the most patient people here.

[Hoek]

It may save you time and energy to not post at all if it is going to be misunderstood. I make this suggestion for your own good. If you find that each time you post something, someone ends up misunderstanding and you have to then try several times to explain yourself, maybe it wasn't worth it to post in the first place.

[yin26]

As for Firaxis: When they actually show some consistent and intelligent concern for the public, I'll cut them slack. Trust me. But all I have seen is incompetence bordering on disdain for the very fans that pay their bills.

And if it is their official policy to simply remain quiet when even basic courtesy would do, then it is my official policy to voice just how disgusting I find that decision. No, I am not asking them to monitor these boards 24/7. I'm asking for official comments on Civ3.com on issues we ALL know are of a concern.

Even if that message is simply: "When know this issue is of great concern to you guys. We are listening and working on it. Please bear with us." This statement should be on the official site, I stress. Not buried in some odd-ball thread after a spur of the moment post.

Finally, if Firaxis it so terribly hurt by public criticism, I invite them not to come here. I invite them to make the final decision along the road they are actively pusuing and cut any and all contact with the fans.

Let's see if they fare better that way. Honestly, I think they'd actually be doing better in COMPLETE silence. At least then we could give them the benefit of what doubt remains.

[yin26]

As for 'saving me time,' thanks for the suggestion. But I will not use other people's basic inability to understand common English sentences as a mandate to quit posting.

You, however, seem to be wasting your time this round, don't you think? Care to stop posting now?

[Redstar]

"Dan and Lib: what do you think of this idea-use email or private messages for speculative issues.."

Yikes..how many civ owners are there?
how many have the same question?
How many would feel shunned if they were not answered but someone else was?
What would stop someone from getting their question privately answered and then posting all over the place?

How many personal emails would they have to answer?

Even the questions they have answered...get asked again and again because one or more people may not feel it was answered as they had wanted.

Firaxis are working on their next patch..so let them concentrate on it already

EDIT: oops i missed the whole second page of this thread 4 some reason.

[Libertarian]

But what, exactly, are they working on? What have they even considered? Have they heard our requests? Are they bogged down thoroughly in their OS problems to the exclusion of all else? Will the next patch be simply a fix for the few with this problem?

Do they have any understanding at all how tedious the late game is? Do they acknowledge that this problem exists? Has not anyone at Firaxis ever played into the modern age and thought to himself, 'Damnation! This is tedious!'?

Keeping silent is a bad strategy, in my opinion. But what they are doing is worse than that. They are leaving hit-and-run posts like those in this thread that address nothing other than defense of their own myopic policy. They are leaving hit-and-run threads like the one that says that it is the place to post issues and bugs. In other words, they are being silent about things that matter to us, but are quite vocal about irrelevancies.

Their staff is limited. Their time is limited. But they have to make those same sort of "interesting decisions" that we make when we play Sid's games. They need to strike a balance. By spending nearly all their time working on God only knows what and ignoring us like we are unworthy of the most common decencies, they might well find that, down the road, when they finally put out a perfect game and seek to gloat in our admiration, we all shrug our shoulders in unison, and go 'Who cares? We've found something else.'.

Lib

[Havak]

Well I wouldn't excuse them in any way for their approach to their PR but I think I can understand it. We are in the big push period for the title and the publisher (yes them again) want to ship as many boxes as possible and rake in the cash.

Its become clear from these forums that whilst some posters love the game (and all power to them for that) there's a lot of us that feel it's not quite (use your own definition of quite here) what it should have been, and indeed can be frustrating and a fun killer. You can bet that if Civ community vets are feeling that then there's a lot of Joe public out there who are not going to like this game once they have bought it?

You can bet therefore that neither the developer or publisher wants veterans running around out there saying "don't buy Civ 3". What then is the Devlopers best approach? Too much information communicated might reveal that the game can never be made what some of us desire and off we go, too little information or response and frustration may well produce the same result - but a trickle of information, a small presence on the forums and it keeps the doubters wavering whilst the all important sales rack up?

So what do others think about that? Am I just a cynic at heart?

[Libertarian]

Well, they're too late for that. I've already started talking.

[Havak]

Do you mean outside of community forums? I'm very much of the opinion any amount of forum activity here and elsewhere won't hit the sales significantly. Its if we all start talking to friends, family, colleagues etc about the game that Joe 'High Street Punter' gets to hear and overall sales could be affected.

I should point out I haven't done this proactively. If a friend asks me for my opinion of the game then I will tell them that I'm still pluggin at it but have yet to "find the fun".

Now where have I heard that before?

[CharlesUFarley]

*Attention*

yin26 is absolutely accurate, I completely agree with him.

Libertarian was also making a valid point, first of all the Civ3 website is useless. because the information is outdated, and the requests and emails go un-answered. So if we can't tell Firaxis what we think, due to lack of response. Do we get our $50 back, or take the loss? I think the only thing we can do is to vent our anger, and hope that Firaxis will eventually acknowledge it! And upon acknowledging it, respond to it! Hoek, obviously people are going to wait to see what Firaxis' comes up with. We wouldn't be "fans" if we didn't have some degree of support and respect. But you can't honestly believe its going to be a patient wait. You have to understand, Firaxis has had plenty of time, Civilization II came out in '96. And Civilization III began design in '99. So they had 3 years to "think it up" and they had 2 years to "design it". Even if the design didn't begin until '99 ... they still had 2 full years with a great design team to make it happen. Whats up with that? Personally, I would've settled for a later release date rather than a sh_tty version of Civ3. And to exhaust anymore time is financially risky.

They're next move better be good, or it could be their last.

Charles.