The Emergency Summit Minutes
CCP. Everytime you try to define the tone of some CSM/CCP dialogue, you come off as fucking shits. It's not like your attempts to control tone are transparent. Everyone knows you're doing it. The word gets out. The language of the documents is all too marketing-speak and obvious. There are the telltale signs of your ridiculous attempts at propaganda all over the goddamned place. Stop doing it. (Stop pretending you're the next Leni Riefenstahl.) You're making it worse for yourself. This is the exact same attitude all you Icelanders exhibited just before you bankrupted your country. Let's pretend everything is a-okay. Everything is awesome. Nothing to see here. Move along. Incarna was a success. Our banks are solvent.
People have far more respect for the truth, even if the truth upsets them. Trying to pull the wool over peoples' eyes, especially when they know you're actively trying to do it? That just causes the angry to get angrier. You do yourself and your customers a disservice.
NDAs
Nondisclosure agreements. First of all, you apparently told the CSM, in some quickie, semi-emergency Skype summit, that there is some cool stuff around the corner with respect to Flying in Spaceships™. Then you give them the predictable NDA gag to keep them from telling anyone the good news.
First of all, you do realize that you're losing subscribers. The recent charts people are chatting about seem pretty obvious about what's happening with the numbers. Keep pissing more people off, because, you know, that's been working in your favour.
Secondly. Who the hell are your direct competitors? NDAs only make sense when you have competition. Who the fuck is currently competing with you in this specific MMO space? No one. That is correct. Fucking no one. So, who is going to screw you over, competitively, if you tell us players a few of the things we can expect in the next expansion? People might get angry at some of the details (there always are those people.) In this case, though, the few angry dipshits do not outweigh (not by a longshot) the anticipation and excitement of every other player, knowing that there's some cool stuff just around the corner.
As it stands, all we're expecting of the winter expansion are three new couches and some super-capital nerfs. If there's some actual content beyond that, then let us in on it. Let us feel fucking excited about an upcoming expansion for a change. Basically the next expansion is EVE Online: Errata. Because, as far as we know, there's really no new content, just errata and addendum.
The Mittani
I know this guy sees himself as the Great Mover-and-Shaker of the EVE community. And he might well be. We'll see how his current "give us FiS not WiS" campaign goes.
What I want to know though ... has someone finally clued the dude into the realities of wormhole space? That it's not some freebie mining area, that it is fucking dangerous, and that the ISK per hour returns are not particularly great (especially when coupled with the risk)?
I know he's saying he doesn't give a flying dogshit about wormhole space. That would be fanfuckingtastic ... if he didn't keep opening his mouth about wormhole space.
Other than that. He seems to work pretty hard as CSM chairman. He cares about most of the game. I will probably still throw him a vote if he intends to run for CSM 7.
Nice write up. I think you're right in your assessment of CCP in that they are their own worst enemy when it comes to customer interactions.
ReplyDeleteI suspect its a part of their transition from a very small company with close ties to a modestly sized gaming population to a low-midsized company with an ambitious business plan. Call it growing pains. The old way of interacting with the client base, the "we're all one team out to have fun" approach doesn't fit CCP's needs anymore. And CCP hasn't figured out why that is, and how replace that previously successful model.
They are in desperate need of someone who understands public relations and how to interact with their customer base. If they figure that out and drop the Soviet style "truth control" approach to customer relations, they should do much better.
The nice thing about NDAs for one's future plans is that nobody can hold you accountable if the plans fall through.
ReplyDeleteOf course this only works if you are the second Apple and actually do deliver awesomeness on a rather regular basis.
...and now I'm reminded of Cluetrain Thesis #84: "We know some people from your company. They're pretty cool online. Do you have any more like that you're hiding? Can they come out and play?"
What Druur said. The NDA isn't to protect them against "competition" its to protect themselves from the fanbase. Look at Seleene's video on what Apocrypha was supposed to be from the Fanfest. They don't want us seeing that much anymore, they don't want us to know what we are missing.
ReplyDelete