The good, bad and ugly of official forums and dev blogs
by Shawn Schuster 
Sep 9th 2008 at 6:00PM
Filed under: Culture, Forums, MMO industry, Opinion
Traditionally, official game forums have been a place for the community members and leaders to get together and discuss their issues with the game, both good and bad. Lately, many game developers have made the decision to skip the forums and let the community sort itself out in that regard. This has allowed players to form their own social groups based on specific aspects of their favorite game, and hence develop forums centered around those shared areas of that game. However, more and more developers are turning to this new-fangled blogging thing that we've heard so much about. Cuppycake, while being an example of this herself (although she was a blogger long before she was the Community Manager for Metaplace), makes some excellent points regarding the right and wrong way for developers to blog about the game they're involved with. The biggest example of this is with Mark Jacobs' recent blog post regarding the EU WAR beta public outrage. Was Jacobs' post appropriate, or is something like that better handled by a trained PR department?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
ScytheNoire said on 7:50PM 9-09-2008
Jacobs did the right thing, because PR just shoves bullcrap in our face, and that's what GOA has been doing, and we are all smart enough to know when we are being fed PR bullcrap. Why they even bother to still do it is beyond me.
I commend Mythic for the way they've been handling their communication with gamers, because unlike some companies that keep with the PR bullcrap, Mythic has been honest about their failures and disappointments.
It's refreshing.
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Arabica said on 8:09PM 9-09-2008
Mark Jacobs reaffirms my belief that:
A. Games don't necessarily need official forums, but there needs to be at least one centralized source of official information and that source needs to be on top of shit.
B. Anyone who has interaction with customers needs to be informed to an almost super-human level and there termperment should be better than that of your average forum troll. Flipping out is not an option.
Mark Jacobs is, sad to say, in violation of that last part. I can understand why he wants to lash out and defend his folks...but you just don't do that. This is not the first time either. He has shown a consistent willingness to get down into the pit and throw elbows with customers over harsh things that were said. When you engage your player base on that level then everyone loses. Whatever it was that he did want to communicate when the thread was started is now lost in a sea of flames and drama. The people that wanted to be informed lose. The people that wanted civility lose.
Welcome to the internet Mark. Thanks for being just another forum troll. No, having a title doesn't make you any different.
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Xepherys said on 9:18AM 9-10-2008
I think he was on the spot with it. PR folks are just crap-slingers. They don't provide useful information, but rather politically correct garbage that even the scummiest of bottom-feeders can see through. I don't read PR info. It's boring, uninformative and generally useless.
Secondarily, I support people involved with anything (especially games, since I love them so) blogging. Perhaps if more corporate execs blogged, we'd have less corporate corruption. Just imagine if the Enron guys blogged... so yeah, I think it was great.
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Xepherys said on 9:19AM 9-10-2008
I think he was on the spot with it. PR folks are just crap-slingers. They don't provide useful information, but rather politically correct garbage that even the scummiest of bottom-feeders can see through. I don't read PR info. It's boring, uninformative and generally useless.
Secondarily, I support people involved with anything (especially games, since I love them so) blogging. Perhaps if more corporate execs blogged, we'd have less corporate corruption. Just imagine if the Enron guys blogged... so yeah, I think it was great.
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Boocher said on 2:49PM 9-10-2008
First, Cuppycake was talking about Community Managers, not about PR folks. They are not the same thing.
Second, whether or not you dislike PR folks, Jacobs just (probably without thinking) sabotaged both his PR folks AND his community managers very badly by becoming an internal company voice that they can't do a thing about.
If he post about something related to Warhammer, for example, and he's *wrong* (face it--it happens with executives because they can't keep up on all the detaily stuff), the poor bastards in the PR and CM and support trenches are going to have to live with that forever. Not just for a few days while they correct the information privately, so as not to offend their boss, but forever. People will always be going to Jacobs' blog and saying "BUT IT SAYS THIS HERE AND HE'S AT THE TOP SO HE SHOULD KNOW." Then the community begins to spin conspiracy theories: are the PR folks right, or are they just trying to cover something up? Do you go to Jacobs for the "truth," or can you trust the community manager, if something differs? The folks lower on the totem pole are going to end up cleaning up his mess, and there's no stopping because a) he's their boss and b) he has demonstrated that he has no idea how to handle himself in terms of managing a community.
That said, I generally agree with Jacobs that people need to take a chill pill about the beta issues. They aren't going to, though, and now they have a highly visible person at whom to rail and moan.
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