- SAY SOMETHING. I never pushed my reporters to say something in particular. Oh, sure, I usually had suggestions for some self-serving fluff if anyone tagged me on a slow news day, but I rarely had an agenda.

That’s because it doesn’t matter a damn what you say as long as you say something. Whatever you post about my product, assuming that you checked your facts and that my product doesn’t suck, helps me in the long run. Really. Anything you want. There are only two ways for a reporter to get on my shit list when I’m wearing my CM hat – one, lie. Two, drink my booze and wear my t-shirt without giving me so much as a paragraph on your blog. That’s a one strike and you’re out offense, there. If you come to my press event and you haven’t written up something related to my product within a week, you’re not invited to the next one.

- SAY A LOT IF YOUR INVITATION COST ME SOMETHING. For better or for worse, few studios recognize the power of the small website, the fansite, the struggling comic, or the ranter. If I had to cash in chips to get you invited to the press event, you need to do more than a half-assed paragraph underneath your machima porn expose. I’m in the trenches arguing that you have more value than PC Gamer, so don’t make me look like a schmuck by “forgetting” to post anything substantial.

- DON’T REPRINT THE HANDOUT. Some professionals may disagree with me here, and their logic is sound enough. If twenty fansites just reprint the handout, well, that’s a pretty sweet job of saturating everyone with our talking points, right? If everyone says it, the intended playerbase will believe it.

However, that’s the problem. The handout is often written by someone who isn’t playing, someone who trusts the producer to not exaggerate, someone who wants to steer the development agenda by publicizing unfinished features, or all of the above. If twenty fansites print the handout verbatim, every item becomes received truth to the players and causes the CM no end of aggravation. Also, your particular readers will bitch that you only posted what everyone else did, and you’ll be back to me in hours asking me for exclusives that I can’t give you. Better for all of us if you use the handout as a starting point, colored in with investigation, questions, and experience.

- REMEMBER THE PURPOSE OF THE EVENT. Marketing’s budget paid for everything from your pleather dice bag to the steak you had for dinner. The purpose of the event was therefore to market a product. If your precious ethics prevent you from giving the studio publicity as a result of the event, you had no business eating the steak.

The actual event is benign, because MMOs are difficult to promote to people who have not had hands on experience with the actual game. It benefits everyone to get you in a room for a full day or two playing the game and talking to more than one project lead. The steak is designed to make you feel warm and fuzzy towards the product, but I believe it is possible to eat the steak and write fairly, even critically, about the game… assuming you had your ass in the seat, watching the demos, taking notes, asking questions, and shooting video instead of passed out drunk in your hotel room.

So, in short, if your ethics won’t allow you to write about a product after you’ve been wined and dined, don’t come to the event. And if you come to the event, come to all of it, not just the party.

Duh.

Anyone else want to chime in on what they expect from the press after an event?

The source of this morning’s grumbling was a reporter friend of mine. I love him to bits, he’s a smart guy, knows the genre, really enthusiastic, and above all, experienced. He was telling me about one title avoiding the usual MMO pitfall by having the endgame in place. And then he told me he hasn’t personally gotten past 18. Basically, he is taking the studio’s word for there being an endgame at all.

ARGH! No! Even if the studio is telling the truth (and the studio would have to be pretty stupid to lie, considering it’s the kind of lie that will be revealed within thirty days of launch), you can’t take the studio’s word for it and still call yourself a reporter. Printing anything without analysis and personal experience (or at minimum in-depth research) makes you a member of the White House press corps, circa 2002.

Worse than absorbing and regurgitating the party line is reprinting without comment the kind of fluff handed out at press tours and trade shows. Just because you got a tote bag, a sticker, and an early beta key does not mean you are obligated to print the things on the handout someone stuffed in the tote bag.  Also, screenshots on the disc the studio gave you for your convenience? That’s nice, but if you weren’t allowed to take your own screenshots, congratulations, you’re doing the marketing team’s work for them, not reporting.  It’s fine to use the official shots in the early days of a product’s cycle, when there is no playable version for you to use. But if the studio wants to control what is being posted in the final days before launch, you should be asking questions, not glumly following orders.

Reviewing an MMO, especially if the open beta period is short and controlled, is very difficult. The studio cannot allow you enough time to play the endgame, not and have a prayer at finishing the endgame. The usual dodge is to boost your level, outfit you in gear, and throw you at the final scenario. That’s fine. But you are obligated to tell your readers how you accessed top level gameplay. And you owe it to your readers to ask your handlers what you are wearing and how the normal player will acquire each specific item.

Finally, I think MMO reviews would be better if the headline contained the level that the reviewer had achieved without bonuses, benefits, or boosting. Don’t make me wade through all the euphemisms for “well, I didn’t see it myself, but I heard you can do X.” Tell me how far you got, tell me how you got there, and tell me how you enjoyed the journey. Otherwise, take “reporter” off your resume and replace it with “press officer.”

It HAPPENED, but it wouldn’t have been on Fox News. Okay, maybe Fox.

And how horrible am I for thinking that instead of dumping her, the guy should have been grateful she was in fact a she?

Hat tip to good ol’ Swanny for sending me the link.

Bonus hat tip to Scott for sending me this: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-10025123-7.html

It just gets better! The dog was making too much noise!

I see two reasons.

Size: Lots more people playing AOC, and therefore lots more people threatening to quit/quitting/quitting and taking THEIR WHOLE GUILD WITH THEM. Volume counts for a lot, here, but I don’t think this is the main reason.

Expectations: HGL was always a little more niche-oriented than AOC. And HGL’s beta was rougher around the edges than AOC’s. When people expect a huge success and then find that they aren’t getting what was advertised, they are cranky.

Please note, HGL doesn’t have a word about their current troubles on their website. By troubles, I mean “lack of dev team.” Given that, you’d think that perhaps a note on the game’s website might be appropriate. But there’s not. Instead, new people come to the game every day. The existing customers are left scouring other news sites looking for information. Half of the players left to hang out at a rant site that sprung up from the fields of bitterness.

And yet those guys are still not as publicly bitter as the AOC players, who have a more complete and fully supported product.

I’ve been preaching the power of expectations for a long time now, and I still find myself startled at just how furious people get when their expectations are not met. The actual state of the game, and even the existence of the game’s company, are completely irrelevant to the size and tone of the reaction to perceived failings.

In other words, don’t leave your pregame community work in the hands of your marketing team, volunteer developers, and fate.

As you already know if you’ve been reading, oh, any gaming news site in the WORLD, Austin got a little wild-eyed and scary recently. A lot of good people are looking for work right now.

So am I!

I’m not as freaked out as some of the Austinites, though. I still work for GamerDNA, but in more of an advisory capacity. The team is composed of some of the finest people to ever wield a keyboard, and wild horses couldn’t keep me from wanting to work with them. But a good consultant knows when a job can be done remotely, and when it’s just gotta be done in person. These days the boss needs someone in person, and when I say “I cannot relocate,” it doesn’t mean “give me more money.” So I’m working on the projects for them that can be done remotely, and I’m looking for new gigs. If you have burning community issues, writing, ghostwriting, copy editing, or industry commentary that needs doing, give me a buzz.

Public service announcement: Move to Maryland, work for Zenimax Online, and while you’re at it, move into my retirement community neighborhood, which is presently teeming with people who don’t even HAVE computers and stare at me funny when I try to explain my professional specialty. It would be nice if you could get a demographic breakdown before you buy a house, you know? But when I asked my agent, you’d think I’d asked him if there was a community clubhouse with facilities for draining cat cadavers. Apparently it’s illegal to give out specific demographic breakdowns. Criminy, I wasn’t trying to violate the Fair Housing Act, I was trying to see if there were people my age nearby. Grumble. Anyway, if you’re looking to move to a part of the country NOT surrounded by Texas or Yankees, there’s the link. I can even suggest neighborhoods to live in where the average age is under fifty. Firor’s not giving me any money for this post or any resulting applications, so feel free to ask me for my opinions. Won’t you be my neighbor?

You could make the same “joke” with developers and how much they post before and after launch.

This is why my road rules for developing a community include the statement “Don’t post at all unless you are willing to commit to a post-launch posting schedule, and are willing to hold yourself to the same rules that apply to the community team.” That deceptively simple statement is short, but the execution with all its implications is a full time job requiring a professional (or a clever person trained and supported by a consultant).

It is so much a full time job that a certain drop off in posting occurs even with the professional community people, as other elements of the job (feedback, ombudsmanship, customer service problem resolution, patches, design meetings, and events) cut into time that used to be reserved for posting. But the difference between the community person’s drop off, and the rock star dev’s drop off, is the size of the Grand Canyon.

The timeline with amateurs looks like this:

1. John Developer, pure of heart and intention, makes a public “statement of intent” about his game. John is enthusiastic, and his typing is mostly free of spelling mistakes. His grammar is similar to that of Koko the Gorilla, but the enthusiasm makes his occasional incoherence easy to forgive.

2. No community professional is on the team as of yet. The other devs are either busy working, or experienced enough to know that posting in public is a trap, or both. John is also busy, but with no mate, no pets, and no other hobby, he posts before work, after work, and during lunch. John becomes the public voice of the product by default.

3. John generates a thousand paragraph essay on why the new game is awesome.

4. Players (whose current game of choice has gotten to step 25) post their adulation of John, and by extension, John’s project.

5. John is afloat in a sea of warm fuzzies for the first time in his life. He personally feels so good that he gets personal with his fans. He replies publicly, for the most part, but indulges in private messages with his most rabid fans. Particularly the females. At least he thinks they’re females.

6. He releases a barrage of posts responding to every topic related to the game. If anyone has a criticism, he promises (using the phrase “I promise” with abandon) that it will be addressed. He discusses systems not yet implemented.

7. Beta begins. A community manager named Ed is hired. Ed starts making a list of what was promised, and threatens John’s life if any more promises are made. John smiles at Ed, and says that Ed just doesn’t understand how special and unique the community is. John is certain that the players will understand if things don’t quite work out as planned.

8. John continues his prolific posting schedule. He is falling slightly behind in his regular work, but he finds time to address questions on every topic from the death penalty to crafting to armor customizing.

9. John realizes that deadlines are not suggestions, and skips checking the boards for a few hours. Exhausted after a long day, John goes home, hits the beta boards, and has a mild outburst towards the lone naysayer.

10. Ed tells John that this is not acceptable.

11. John is not listening. John’s ears are filled with the kudos from all of the people who have genuinely grown to love John. John is also basking in the light of the million flames directed at the lone naysayer.

12. Now emboldened by his obvious community wrangling GENIUS, John indulges in a stronger outburst towards a handful of people who are negative.

13. Ed and John wind up in the producer’s office. The producer is reluctant to crush John’s spirit. After all, John was there at the beginning! Ed realizes he is probably screwed, here.

14. John throws his first public tantrum at testers who were expressing concern with some unfinished elements of a product that is supposedly going live this quarter.

15. Ed presents the number of moderators he will need to cope with the way things are going. Ed is laughed at. (At this point, Ed’s future diverges – either he has the pull and the sense to get John muzzled, or he’s a wimp and decides to knock himself out working overtime, following the orders of people who don’t understand community, and cleaning up after John. Or he quits. We’ll assume for the rest of this post that Ed doesn’t have enough pull to make the pain stop, but for some reason needs to keep this job at any cost.)

16. John goes on a banning spree. People are removed from the boards simply for disagreeing, because at this point, ALL disagreement is proof of a lack of faith. All negativity, no matter how presented, must be silenced before anyone can agree. He convinces himself that he’s doing the right thing. He doesn’t just lock the threads, he deletes them. Leaving the threads might cause someone to think that the banned guy didn’t say anything terrible.

17. Launch day! John posts a heartfelt thank you to the community for all their efforts, and makes a final promise – he will continue posting at the same rate that he always has. Ed cries on the inside.

18. At the launch party, to which a number of the more ardent beta testers were invited, John meets up with one of the girls he’s been PMing for the last six months. The good news is that she’s an actual girl, with a vagina and everything. The bad news is that she’s built him up in her head to be a real swashbuckling hero capable of bringing her to peaks of ecstasy all night long, and faced with that expectation, John cannot actually perform at all.

19. She puts this bit of information into a PM to someone else. Within an hour it gets back to Ed. Ed laughs. On the outside.

20. In the excitement of launch week, meaning the twenty hour days fixing the bugs and exploits that were not reported, John neglects to post for two entire days.

21. John flames the crap out of the guy who posts “For shame, John, thought you were going to keep posting.”

22. Ed jumps in and explains what things are like behind the scenes, and the drama simmers down.

23. John flames the crap out of the person who lists out all of John’s promises and concludes that the finished game is batting .125 and that only if you count the “broken calendar” as the “robust raid scheduling system.”

24. Ed starts to post that those promises were made before Ed was hired, and were delusional even then. Ed hits the backspace key just in time. Ed gets drunk instead.

25. John responds to one description of a character development bug with “it’s working as intended.”

***

I will now ring down the curtain on that drama. Even if Ed is desperate to keep his job, so desperate that he will give any number of hairy, hairy people elaborate tongue baths, he will still be looking for an edged weapon after step 25. And even if he lives, John is not likely to post ever again – but he’ll swear until his dying day that he only stopped because Ed was unable to manage the community.

But if you’re still reading, I’d like to develop THE definitive drop off formula. And I need YOU.

Either post here, or email me (sanya AT brokentoys DOT org) the following data points:

- The name of the forum

- The name of the developer and his job/function/role at the company

- The number of posts a developer made to that forum in the six months prior to launch

- The number of posts that same developer (or that developer’s publicly designated replacement, and no, the community person is not the developer’s designated replacement) made in the six months post launch

- If the product is not yet launched, or if six months have not yet elapsed since its launch, be sure to note the beginning and ending dates of the period you’ve observed.

I will remove the names (I only want them for the purpose of verification), and post the results. I’m betting that the drop off rate is dramatic for all but the community pros – and again, some drop off is expected there. This isn’t intended to be a giant game of gotcha. This is just an attempt at working out a formula for gaming jellybeans.

Sorry for all the links instead of posts, but my hands are a bit tied at the moment. Will post for real soon.

“Fat Princess” kind of amuses me. Yes, it’s another dose of the same old, same old. Yes, it’s sexist and vaguely stupid. No, you’d never see a game where you feed chocolate to a male character and make him slower in combat. But if you DID, it would be funny. And that’s really my point. It’s just funny.

However, the author of this article doesn’t seem to know much about how games are made. The Sony fellow dodged the question with his comment about the concept artist being a girl, and ol’ Ben fell for the classic distraction ploy like a magpie faced with aluminum foil.

The ARTIST behind the look of the character was a girl. The gender of the game’s DESIGNER, the person who came up with the cake concept, is unknown. None of the people ranting have to eat crow over this one, just yet.

By the by: There are games out there that reward strong social skills, with lots of cooperative elements, and you can choose whether to accept or reject slutty stereotypes. We call them MMOs.