Post by Zeli on Jun 6, 2007 20:42:57 GMT -5
[source]
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Official Forums for MMOGs
This is a subject that's likely to encounter some rough treatment on most game community forums, but one that's been repeatedly brought to my attention lately.
On the subject of Official Forums for MMOGs.
The more I consider the subject, the more convinced I become that official forums for MMOGs are a horrible mistake on the part of the developer/publisher.
Official message boards draw only a very small segment of the gaming community. They are dominated by noisy groups of extremists, attention-seekers and anonymous agitators (we'll just call them the forum elite) who are almost professional in the way they jockey for position and attention. The real player base is barely represented, and when present, goes largely unheard, drowned out by the forum elite.
With the small segment of the player base that actually posts on official message boards, and the constant noise and disruption caused by the forum elite, the feedback that the designer/publisher gets is incomplete and skewed. Instead of useful feedback and discussion, they are full of posts ranging from look-at-me drama and joyful agitation to "I can't take advantage of this exploit that I see others using, so it needs to be fixed" and "this game is too easy for people who don't play what I play, it needs to be tougher for them."
When developers/publishers do make comments and ask for feedback, the majority of the answers posted rarely have anything to do with the questions or comments. The answers come from people who are more interested in posting than reading and responding - like little kids who aren't really listening to a conversation, just biding their time till the speaker shuts up so that they can talk again. They push their ideas, their beliefs, their experiences, and their "I feel threatened" reactions without ever really reading and considering the questions and comments they are responding to. The rational responses get buried under posts by the forum elite, who write post after post repeatedly screaming their positions at each other, frustrating and driving off the non-elites who attempt to respond and discuss the issue.
The result is that developers and publishers who maintain official forums either listen to the small extremist, attention-loving and reactionary element that populated their message boards, abandoning their guiding principles for the game design and tweaking their poor creation in all kinds of horrible and crippling ways, or; ignore the noise coming from their own hosted forums and shut down communication altogether, frustrating the entire player base.
The only viable alternative I've seen was provided by Sanya Weathers while she handled community relations for Mythic Entertainment. She analyzed fan and game community forums (like game gamespot and MMORPG.com) - along with game articles, reviews, blogs, feedback forms and other metrics - for trends, then built reports and made that information available to the decision makers. Once decisions were made or answers provided she carried that information back to the player base to keep them up-to-date about what was being done, using a system of announcements and newsletters/grab bags. Her failure to provide a public soap-box and immediate gratification for every crisis of the moment definitely made the forum elite feel ignored and angry, and the fact that feedback was only given once issues had been studied and an answer developed did sometimes make Mythic appear less responsive than a developer who provides a place for people to publicly rant. Changes came slower than with many other developers, but seemed based on information that was better researched, analyzed, and more fully considered.
So the question is, how else can a game developer/publisher maintain regular contact with its customers and show that it is aware of the community and the issues of the players, without courting and taking crippling/destructive action based on feedback from the extremists, attention-seekers and anonymous agitators that dominate official forums?
Official Forums for MMOGs
This is a subject that's likely to encounter some rough treatment on most game community forums, but one that's been repeatedly brought to my attention lately.
On the subject of Official Forums for MMOGs.
The more I consider the subject, the more convinced I become that official forums for MMOGs are a horrible mistake on the part of the developer/publisher.
Official message boards draw only a very small segment of the gaming community. They are dominated by noisy groups of extremists, attention-seekers and anonymous agitators (we'll just call them the forum elite) who are almost professional in the way they jockey for position and attention. The real player base is barely represented, and when present, goes largely unheard, drowned out by the forum elite.
With the small segment of the player base that actually posts on official message boards, and the constant noise and disruption caused by the forum elite, the feedback that the designer/publisher gets is incomplete and skewed. Instead of useful feedback and discussion, they are full of posts ranging from look-at-me drama and joyful agitation to "I can't take advantage of this exploit that I see others using, so it needs to be fixed" and "this game is too easy for people who don't play what I play, it needs to be tougher for them."
When developers/publishers do make comments and ask for feedback, the majority of the answers posted rarely have anything to do with the questions or comments. The answers come from people who are more interested in posting than reading and responding - like little kids who aren't really listening to a conversation, just biding their time till the speaker shuts up so that they can talk again. They push their ideas, their beliefs, their experiences, and their "I feel threatened" reactions without ever really reading and considering the questions and comments they are responding to. The rational responses get buried under posts by the forum elite, who write post after post repeatedly screaming their positions at each other, frustrating and driving off the non-elites who attempt to respond and discuss the issue.
The result is that developers and publishers who maintain official forums either listen to the small extremist, attention-loving and reactionary element that populated their message boards, abandoning their guiding principles for the game design and tweaking their poor creation in all kinds of horrible and crippling ways, or; ignore the noise coming from their own hosted forums and shut down communication altogether, frustrating the entire player base.
The only viable alternative I've seen was provided by Sanya Weathers while she handled community relations for Mythic Entertainment. She analyzed fan and game community forums (like game gamespot and MMORPG.com) - along with game articles, reviews, blogs, feedback forms and other metrics - for trends, then built reports and made that information available to the decision makers. Once decisions were made or answers provided she carried that information back to the player base to keep them up-to-date about what was being done, using a system of announcements and newsletters/grab bags. Her failure to provide a public soap-box and immediate gratification for every crisis of the moment definitely made the forum elite feel ignored and angry, and the fact that feedback was only given once issues had been studied and an answer developed did sometimes make Mythic appear less responsive than a developer who provides a place for people to publicly rant. Changes came slower than with many other developers, but seemed based on information that was better researched, analyzed, and more fully considered.
So the question is, how else can a game developer/publisher maintain regular contact with its customers and show that it is aware of the community and the issues of the players, without courting and taking crippling/destructive action based on feedback from the extremists, attention-seekers and anonymous agitators that dominate official forums?
