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In this thread at CivFanatics, Dan Magaha made the following statement:
First and foremost, I applaud Dan for the plain and unequivocal language. I don't think it will be possible to misinterpret the statement. And we have no need to search the interstices for penumbras. The syntax is unambiguous.
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Nobody is "hiding".
As I see it, this means that Firaxis has not closed its mind to the playing community. At least, that's what I hope it means. A person who is not hiding can pretty much see what's going on around him.
I answer questions when I know the answers and help people where I can.
With all due respect, I would refer Dan to about a bazillion questions that stand unanswered, like this one about the Foreign Advisor screen.
In fairness to Dan, I wonder whether his problem is that the questions are so spread out all over the boards. I wonder whether it might be helpful if they were harvested into a compendium.
What we won't do is get into arguments or name-calling matches with people who've obviously already made their minds up.
Well, I think that that's as plain an explanation as any for why my own questions and comments go unanswered. I don't doubt that I appear to be a person whose mind is made up.
However, in fairness to me, it has not always been this way. If I were in Dan's shoes, I would wonder what happened with me (and people like me) who used to be staunch defenders of Firaxis and are now severe critics.
Sometimes, asking questions can be as important as answering them.
My comments about expectation management, though thoroughly unpopular, are still dead on.
That sounds vague on first blush, but it isn't if you know the context of the rest of the thread. What he means by "expectation management" is the management of what Firaxis perceives as a tendency for peoples' expectations to increase in proportion to the amount of information they are able to obtain.
For example, people are lifting quotes from the Civ3 website about multiplayer and so forth, and then holding the developers' feet to the fire for promising more than they delivered.
As anyone knows who's ever worked in a software house, there is a tendency (typically from the higher-ups and sales) to respond to any question that begins "Can your software...?" with "You betcha!" My heart truly goes out to developers who must work under these conditions.
We made the mistake of sharing too much too soon, before we were 100% sure of many things, and we were taken to task for it.
I'm going to come back to this, but therein lies the crux of what so exasperates me about Firaxis. But let's let the man finish.
This is a mistake I'm sure we won't be in a hurry to repeat
Okay, there it is.
What they don't want to do is make any statements that can be perceived as promises of delivery.
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Now, back to this:
We made the mistake of sharing too much too soon, before we were 100% sure of many things, and we were taken to task for it.
I'm sure that Shiggy (we can't use his real monicker here because, apparently, a once popular carpet is a bad word in some province or another) and others will twist what I'm about to say into the strawman of their liking, but here goes neverthess.
Dan, you've gone from the devil to the deep blue sea.
This is sharing too much: Our next patch will enable you to group units together so you don't have to move them one at a time.
But this is sharing too little: We will make a statement when we feel like we have something to say.
Between those two extremes, I think you will find that people like me, Venger, Yin, and others, would greatly appreciate something along these lines: We agree with you that unit movement is responsible for a lot of late-game tedium, and that is one of the items that we're looking at, but here is why it might be problematic [...snip...].
From our perspective (we've heard yours, now please hear ours) it looks like you've gone from promising the moon to pretending that no one is out here.
If you answer no other question, then please answer this one: What harm would it do if Firaxis were to let people know what it agrees with and what it doesn't, i.e., what it thinks is important, and what it is considering looking at without making any promises on what it will deliver?
Nobody is "hiding". I answer questions when I know the answers and help people where I can. What we won't do is get into arguments or name-calling matches with people who've obviously already made their minds up. My comments about expectation management, though thoroughly unpopular, are still dead on. We made the mistake of sharing too much too soon, before we were 100% sure of many things, and we were taken to task for it. This is a mistake I'm sure we won't be in a hurry to repeat.
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Nobody is "hiding".
As I see it, this means that Firaxis has not closed its mind to the playing community. At least, that's what I hope it means. A person who is not hiding can pretty much see what's going on around him.
I answer questions when I know the answers and help people where I can.
With all due respect, I would refer Dan to about a bazillion questions that stand unanswered, like this one about the Foreign Advisor screen.
In fairness to Dan, I wonder whether his problem is that the questions are so spread out all over the boards. I wonder whether it might be helpful if they were harvested into a compendium.
What we won't do is get into arguments or name-calling matches with people who've obviously already made their minds up.
Well, I think that that's as plain an explanation as any for why my own questions and comments go unanswered. I don't doubt that I appear to be a person whose mind is made up.
However, in fairness to me, it has not always been this way. If I were in Dan's shoes, I would wonder what happened with me (and people like me) who used to be staunch defenders of Firaxis and are now severe critics.
Sometimes, asking questions can be as important as answering them.
My comments about expectation management, though thoroughly unpopular, are still dead on.
That sounds vague on first blush, but it isn't if you know the context of the rest of the thread. What he means by "expectation management" is the management of what Firaxis perceives as a tendency for peoples' expectations to increase in proportion to the amount of information they are able to obtain.
For example, people are lifting quotes from the Civ3 website about multiplayer and so forth, and then holding the developers' feet to the fire for promising more than they delivered.
As anyone knows who's ever worked in a software house, there is a tendency (typically from the higher-ups and sales) to respond to any question that begins "Can your software...?" with "You betcha!" My heart truly goes out to developers who must work under these conditions.
We made the mistake of sharing too much too soon, before we were 100% sure of many things, and we were taken to task for it.
I'm going to come back to this, but therein lies the crux of what so exasperates me about Firaxis. But let's let the man finish.
This is a mistake I'm sure we won't be in a hurry to repeat
Okay, there it is.
What they don't want to do is make any statements that can be perceived as promises of delivery.
-----
Now, back to this:
We made the mistake of sharing too much too soon, before we were 100% sure of many things, and we were taken to task for it.
I'm sure that Shiggy (we can't use his real monicker here because, apparently, a once popular carpet is a bad word in some province or another) and others will twist what I'm about to say into the strawman of their liking, but here goes neverthess.
Dan, you've gone from the devil to the deep blue sea.
This is sharing too much: Our next patch will enable you to group units together so you don't have to move them one at a time.
But this is sharing too little: We will make a statement when we feel like we have something to say.
Between those two extremes, I think you will find that people like me, Venger, Yin, and others, would greatly appreciate something along these lines: We agree with you that unit movement is responsible for a lot of late-game tedium, and that is one of the items that we're looking at, but here is why it might be problematic [...snip...].
From our perspective (we've heard yours, now please hear ours) it looks like you've gone from promising the moon to pretending that no one is out here.
If you answer no other question, then please answer this one: What harm would it do if Firaxis were to let people know what it agrees with and what it doesn't, i.e., what it thinks is important, and what it is considering looking at without making any promises on what it will deliver?
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