My Conclusions about the Firaxis-Community relations

[CharlesUFarley]

Havak, sales will climb when they please their fans. And right now the negative word is spreading, and eventually it *will* affect sales. Heck, we've been telling them how to improve the game for the last 5 years, and they obviously haven't listened to us... because Civ3 is nowhere near what the fans have asked for. Seems to me that Civ3 had only one perpose, $$$. But they have to be outta their minds if they think they'll profit without fans.

Charles.

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Originally posted by Hoek
Dan and Lib: what do you think of this idea-use email or private messages for speculative issues. This seems reasonable to me since it wouldn't broadcast tentative plans that could backfire on Firaxis since it would only be an answer to one person. If someone asks "Could you tell me such and such about multiplayer," Dan could ask "could you send me an email or pm" and then answer the question that way. That seems like a good way to smooth things over while respecting Firaxis's need for a bit of secrecy.

Hoek:

The problem with this is that there are a lot of folks who see no problem with quoting and posting verbatim your private message to them, even if you've explicitly asked them not to.

Unfortunately I've had this happen several times as well, so in general, it's not a much more useful tool.

Dan

[absimiliard]

Hey Dan, must be rough being one of you guys. I see the same thing in the Battletech community where if one of the devs posts it tends to get overblown or misinterpreted. And over at DropShipCommand.com we're much nicer to the likes of Ratboy or Mitch Gitelman than folks 'round here seem to be to you.

Sympathy.


Hey Yin, don't sweat the details of how folks view you. (I know you don't, just offering moral support here.) People have been ragging on you since the days we first met on Firaxis's SMAC boards, pre-Apolyton days. I know I appreciated your work in compiling the bug-list, and I think the dev-team also did. Without that list, and folks like you, the SMAC patches would have much weaker.

I admit I'm more fond of the games than you. But I've never thought your analyses of SMAC and now Civ III were anything other than objective, I just disagreed with them. It's all cool.

[yin26]

CharlesUFarley:

My thanks to you, sir. I don't pretend for a moment that good PR is easy. In fact, it might well be as hard as making the game itself. But it's certainly just as important to consider good PR as more than an afterthought or something heaped on a Webmaster who has already proven himself incapable. Sorry, but when you post things like: 'Get over it,' you disqualify yourself as the appropriate PR person.

absimiliard:

Thanks, man. I understand that a number of people are willing to look PAST the problems and despise somebody who keeps the problems in the forefront. It's great to hear from somebody who appreciates this dirty work.

[Libertarian]

Then where does that leave you, Dan?

When you're silent, people become paranoid and anxious. When you communicate privately, people break your trust. When you say maybe, people take it as yes. When you're evasive (as you are now), people become confrontational.

What's left?

I'll tell you what's left: up-front honesty and concern about the feelings of your fans. You see, it doesn't matter whether you're comfortable; what matters is whether we're comfortable. It doesn't matter whether you're satisfied; what matters is whether we're satisfied. And it doesn't matter what you do about us; it matters what we do about you.

You won't convince me that you have any better course of action than to listen to our concerns, acknowledge our feedback, and keep us in the know. Whatever you do has disadvantages. The policy I'm advising has the least.

[CharlesUFarley]

No prob yin, I'm just as pissed off as you are. And anyone who argue's your views obviously is full of sh_t. And they certainly dont know what they're talking about.

I've got yer back.

Charles.

[CharlesUFarley]

Everything you've posted so far is nothing short of facts!

Charles.

[CharlesUFarley]

Sorry about the double post... I got lagged....

[CharlesUFarley]

I wasn't able to delete it, so I changed it...

[Hoek]

Dan: yeah, I can see the problem with that. I'm curious about what your opinions are regarding what Yin said earlier. It seems that you guys have a difficult situation here by setting a precedent of being on these forums. By answering ANY questions, you have a situation where people get upset when their particular questions go unanswered. It seems perhaps you guys would have been better off not posting and just viewing.

I would like to apologize, by the way, about that thread I started a few weeks ago in case you didn't catch my apology then. I have changed my position and am no longer one of those disgruntled Apolytoners.

Out of curiosity, where exactly is Hunt Valley, Maryland? I'm in DC and I think it would be a neat day trip if I was able to visit the offices for a day (I could do a mini report for Apolyton ). Is it Metro-accessable by any chance?

[Hoek]

Charles: you realize that you can delete double-posts, correct?

Lib: Well, he could also just not post anymore. That would be unfortunate, but it would save him the headache of trying to reply to hundreds of posts a day from disgruntled or impatient gamers.

[yin26]

Hoek:

I think I understand you a bit more now.

This is why there is an official site. An official site should contain ALL the officially careful answers to the questions we rightfully have. Even though I've been on Poly for 2.5 years, I don't think Poly is the entire Civ3 universe. Thus, anything posted here 30 posts deep might as well never have been posted.

I have been arguing for professionianlism from Firaxis for 4 years.

[CharlesUFarley]

Hoek:

yeah I figure out the delete thing, but it gave me a error message when I tried to delete, edit worked fine though.

Thanks.

[Libertarian]

Lib: Well, he could also just not post anymore. That would be unfortunate, but it would save him the headache of trying to reply to hundreds of posts a day from disgruntled or impatient gamers.

As far as I'm concerned, posts that evade the questions don't count anyway. The only response so far to group movement was a resounding "it's not my job". That's no response at all.

Again, the disgruntlement and impatience would wane with courteous treatment and a simple expression of genuine interest. If nothing else, they would at least gain allies from people like me; as it stands, they're losing us.

Is that a good corporate strategy?

[Hoek]

Yin: there is a tradeoff, the way I see it. Either you can have a relatively small company produce pretty good games for a fan base that doesn't have the resources to adress all the concerns of fans, or you have a huge software company that produces mediocre games but can better adress specific concerns of the community. I personally prefer small-company games, however flawed they may be. I think my favorite example of a fantastic small-company game is Earthworm Jim. That game was Shiny's first game, and it was small then. As the company grew, the quality of the games decreased. It's an issue of too many cooks making a broth. Firaxis is currently a very small company, and I think you and I can agree that they have had impressive results so far (despite some disappointment over features in Civ 3).

Dan: the truth is that none of the fans like Yin or Lib or anyone else who posts here would abandon Firaxis as long as you guys don't lose your focus: on making great games. Many of us were expecting alot more from Civ 3 than ended up being there, but I think most of us will stick with you guys if you do good work.