Well, *Someone* Had That Saved Up For A While

Posted on December 4, 2006 by Scott Jennings| 26 Comments

Well, then, allow me to retort!

Jeff Freeman, formerly of SOE so don’t ask him a goddamned thing about SWG, he said so, has the post to end all posts qualifying exactly what he meant by “forums aren’t bad, just misunderstood” (he thinks they’re actually kind of nifty, just not, you know, the corporate ones).

First, some specific notes regarding Jeff’s post, then some general ones.

Specifically:

Lum was unfair as well. \’e2\’80\’9cIs Cao right?\’e2\’80\’9d

Cao didn\’e2\’80\’99t say that. He actually talked about how useful forums were (posts from non-trolls, anyway). On the other hand, I said something very much like it, months before. Official forums are trollful, and compared to fan-forums not as useful for player-to-player or player-to-dev communication. Outright useless for dev-player communication when compared to a blog, or even an email. I wasn\’e2\’80\’99t comparing official forums to nothing and proclaiming nothing to be better.

He talked about how useful forums were in a very backhanded “Your posts are swell! We love them all! EXCEPT FOR THE BAD POSTS WHICH I AM GOING TO NOW COME DOWN ON LIKE A TON OF BRICKS HERE IN A VERY IMPOLITIC MANNER AND EVERYONE WILL CORRECTLY FOCUS ON FROM THIS POINT… NOW.” Yeah. See, I’m actually going to give him credit for knowing both how his post would come across in that forum, and assume that this was in fact his intention. To wit:

If, however, you feel the need to throw another stone, indulge a rant, whine, pick apart another poster, argue a dead point, rules lawyer, quote ancient history, or engage in any of the other classic board game moves, don\’e2\’80\’99t expect us to pay attention. We have better things to do.

We have some SWG to make.

Being as that is how he, you know, closed his post, one would assume that is the point he wanted to make, and not “We think forums are swell! Did I mention that lately? I LIKE YOU! (except for you trolls over there)”. In other words: people who troll up the official forums make it difficult to do business, so we (SOE) aren’t going to pay any more attention to them. Trolls, that is. Unless they’re in EQ, in which case we like them. It was in fact a very negative post, despite the happy happy joy joy opening paragraphs. Correctly, people focused on the negativity, because that was the unusual part of that post. I mean, people post about how great it is to work on Their Game all day long. People don’t often get up and metaphorically slap around the more unruly customers in their message boards.

Oh, and while we’re talking about people who should know what they’re writing about:

And I am not post-Raph Koster SOE. SOE has it\’e2\’80\’99s own website, and this ain\’e2\’80\’99t it. Know what they have on their website? Forums! Of all people, that one knows better than to post to a developer\’e2\’80\’99s snarky blog and assign their silly opinion to their employer.

Guilty!

Now then, enough specific things I should have probably just left in a blog comment, and on to the more general navel-gazing. Minus all the “for the love of god LEAVE ME ALONE ABOUT SWG, YOU PEOPLE” (Hint to Jeff – there’s a LOT of free-floating anxiety about SWG/NGE. It flops around everywhere. Even *I* get the occasional angst-filled rant. And my entire involvement in SWG: I visited the SWG offices once. And am married to an ex-bio-engineer. Trust me: don’t go there.), Jeff thinks official forums are ineffective by definition.

Which is true, to a point. Forums are many-to-many. Blogs, even official ones, are one-to-many.

One-to-many communication has its strengths, as Jeff noted. You can clearly put out the word on what’s going on in your community. You can highlight what is happening through pointers to active community supporters, highlight unofficial forums, etc.

All this is true. However, one-to-many has weaknesses as well. Chief among them is… well, they are one-to-many. Only one person is talking. If you’re a community manager seeking to keep the “state of the game” on message and relentlessly quash community blowups, that’s a good thing. However if you’re a player who feels disenfranchised and wants their voice to heard, that’s not a good thing.

The true problem, I think, isn’t in deciding between one-to-many and many-to-many. Because, really, you need both. (Note that every MMO has many-to-many forums, whether or not they are officially run. And there’s advantages and disadvantages to both approaches.) The real problem is that MMO players feel they deserve a vote.

How you handle that demand for enfranchisement… well, that says a lot for the kind of game you’re building, the sort of company you’re running, and how much you’re willing to dangle your arse out in the heady breeze of potential litigation. But when players demand response from “Blue” or “moderators” on forums – what they are really saying is “I own part of this. I want my vote counted.”

And that’s where things get interesting.

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  • http://mythicalblog.com/ Jeff Freeman

    Don’t worry, I wasn’t really mad or anything. I started that post weeks ago and just never got ’round to finishing it is all.

    I almost – but decided not to comment on it – pointed out that telling trolls they’ll be ignored is not, in fact, ignoring trolls. And anything but ignoring them does stir them up… :o

    But otherwise it still didn’t strike me as all that controversial a post. Controversial for SWG is on a higher level.

    I don’t know what the solution is, but I think I’d like to see a blog-type front-end with links on posts to comment-threads (official, let’s say), and so “official forums” in a sense. Like LtM was.

    But then also using that blog-style front end to support fansites – and so to act as the hub of the fan network.

    Or maybe that’s all you need, and official forums wouldn’t kill fansites if a frontpage blog supported them.

    Still, the manpower involved in moderating official forums can make knitting-together the larger network kinda not happen.

    So I don’t know. Forums sure are great, though! :)

    Believe me, I know about the free-floating anxiety. I get the emails.

    I posted how I enjoyed seeing the prototype combat changes (in an update mostly ’bout something else) and I’ll never live that down: ‘Was a major affront to a lot of people, and came off as a bit of jackassery to everyone else. Think they’d accept an apology?

  • http://mythicalblog.com/ Jeff Freeman

    Being as that is how he, you know, closed his post, one would assume that is the point he wanted to make

    Wait wait wait wait wait.

    We’re supposed to be closing with the point we wanted to make?

    I think I remember that from 6th grade or so, come to think of it. Still, someone should have reminded me years ago.

    Anyway, I think I should have cut the “Is Cao right”-bit and gone straight to “And I am not–”. I had ya there.

    It’s not really that I think official forums are completely ineffective (except whatever passes for ‘General Discussion’ or the like – that is useless), but that they aren’t as good, and they stifle fansites, which is bad.

    Raph’s sold me on people want a “Mall in Washington”, so now I don’t know how to reconcile that with everyone moving into the Mall, depopulating the rest of the country, and being told to hush-up there anyway.

  • http://mythicalblog.com/ Jeff Freeman

    And for three comments in a row… I have deleted the controversial paragraph. No fair for me to say I’m not going to talk about something, then challenge your interpretation of it. Heh.

    Right, it still lives here, but it’ll be gone from my page and my archives and eight months from now when that post is the centerpiece of another bloghaha no one will remember it.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    It good to see that things never change.

  • http://mythicalblog.com/ Jeff Freeman

    What do you mean, D-one?

  • http://cnn.com ubvman

    I’m just glad I quit playing SWG before all this rubbish. Does that qualify as a Troll?

  • Freakazoid

    So we all agree, trolls are bad.

    Next topic!

  • Aufero

    Even ignoring them stirs the trolls up. I finally gave up reading official forums for any game, the bitching-to-information ratio is just too high. I’m enjoying the games I play much more now that I don’t know all the ways in which they’re horribly broken, OMG!

    Of course, some things do suck. I usually don’t need a forum to figure that out, though.

  • http://www.4thfg.com No.6

    “trollful”? Somewhere near the top of my list of rules of writing: if you can’t say what you mean without resorting to NewSpeak, don’t.

    “player who feels disenfranchised and wants their voice to [be] heard” — this is the primary problem with MMOGs. This is the age of entitlement. I deserve heroic adventures and stunning graphics and high frame rates *and* a unique adventure, yesterday, and where’s my new content already?
    Ya can’t tell them they’re wrong because they are the Customer, and their $15 Entitles Them To Personal Service.
    I personally think companies ought to have a policy of nuking threads and suspending posting rights for flamebait/troll threads. Yea, the 1st Amendment gives you the right to free speech … on your own Press, which is available to one and all on your own blog or forum you construct.
    Feel free to put up http://www.I-hate-\{insertcompanynamehere\}.com but why game companies put up with the flak they do at their own expense is a mystery. Try that level of insane banshee bitching in a brick-and-mortar store and see how quickly your tail can hit the pavement.

  • Aufero

    Somewhere near the top of my list of rules of writing: if you can\’e2\’80\’99t say what you mean without resorting to NewSpeak, don\’e2\’80\’99t.

    That Shakespeare dude should never have been allowed to pollute the language.

  • Evangolis

    Hmmm, actually waded through the whole post, with a few breaks, what I got was this:

    Official MMO forum are out of date, lazy solutions to getting customer feedback.

    Which I pretty much agree, except that I added the perjorative ‘lazy’, because I’m a judgemental bastard.

    A more distributed community would be more open, less opressive and would probably require more time and effort, but might bring you more info. Using newer tech like podcasts for dev chats is a no brainer, so why hasn’t anyone done that? Because hearing the voices of devs would be immersion breaking?

    And since so damn few players visit sites, why don’t games combine data logging (time played, characters played, zones visited, deaths, advancements, for a session) with a voluntary (and perhaps multi-level) exit quiz for players each time they leave the game? Why wouldn’t you want the direct input, if only into spreadsheets, of all the wiling players you can get?

    Yeah, he is right, the MMO CRM/Feedback software could be much better, and much better employed.

  • slog

    I’m trying to think of ANY business (besides Video Games)) that has millions of customers and attempts to use Internet forums as the primary way to get customer feedback.

    I’m not coming up with much. There is probably a good reason for that..

  • http://tidehorizon.blogspot.com Tide

    it might also be time to try something new — amateur blogs and forums that are professionally sponsored or endorsed. It sounds ridiculous, but there are several games who on their portals reference certain well run sites and not others (check out Eve’s), several modding groups and not others (e.g. EQ2Map), and of course certain amateur written strat guides or wikis that get stickied on official forums.

    It’s a little disengenuous because service providers rely on gamers to supplement their games with tutorials, (some) spoilers, updates, hosted patches and general background supportive info to other players. Forums are just the official outlet. Maybe showing some support to external efforts might help take the angst out of the foruming game, since it would provide a good example for other players to follow. Just a thought.

  • Sweetmeat

    I’m not sure how else devs are going to get a good read on what people are thinking about their game. The polls that DAoC and EQII did every so often always left me frustrated because the things I was most interested in were never on the lists they offered. I invariably had to answer other, or if that was not an option leave it blank rather than give in to the logical fallacy presented.

    As far as indepentant boards go, the VN boards have always been much worse for information content in the games I’ve played than official boards have been. If you want a true troll-fest check there. I will agree that there are a lot of posts that have little merit to them, but the nuggets are there to be mined if you care enough about your game to put in the effort.

  • sinij

    Like it or not but official forums are now expected part of service from any mmorpg. You can argue until you are blue in the face how useful or detrimental they are but you are *expected* to have them, just like billing, login servers and character names.

  • http://www.cesspit.net Abalieno

    Do the hell you want, but if you do podcasts then give me also text transcriptions.

    I for one couldn’t care less about hearing or not hearing devs voices. But when I read things I like to go at my own pace (possibly in silence), and that works better with text and it is more easily portable, quotable, linkable.

  • http://www.edgecase.net/devsite Cael

    “I\’e2\’80\’99m not sure how else devs are going to get a good read on what people are thinking about their game.”

    Subscription figures. Anything else can open a developer to the flood of drivelling cretinism that is called “Players’ Opinions On Anything”.

  • Evangolis

    The reasoning behind a routine session exit questionaire with attached log data would be that it would at least give a quantification of what portion of your player base was giving you data.

    The top level of such a would be fairly general questions, e.g. “How enjoyable was your play session?”. More detailed questions could be asked if the player opted to provide more feedback.

    The general approach would resemble the stuff Nick Yee does over on The Daedalus Project.

    More detailed player views would still be best gained from an online forum, but a questionarie might be used to gather a broader opinion base for less detailed elements of issues raised in a forum. Exit questionaries would not replace forum input, but add to it.

    I wonder what the past experience with the limited qustionaries employed so far was?

  • http://www.4thfg.com No.6

    The alternative to official boards is, of course, unofficial boards.

    Contrast http://agw.bombs-away.net/forumdisplay.php?f=9 (alt.games.warbirds, an official BBS surrounding the game ‘WarBirds’) with http://216.27.13.35/TotalSimsForum/viewforum.php?f=11&sid=efbf9d8432930e8776562cc37c880796 (WarBirds’ official board)

  • http://www.4thfg.com No.6

    (oops, first link was to the *un*official WarBirds board.)

  • http://http//mythicalblog.com Jeff Freeman

    Using newer tech like podcasts for dev chats is a no brainer, so why hasn\’e2\’80\’99t anyone done that? Because hearing the voices of devs would be immersion breaking?

    There’s a covert benefit (for devs) with how text chats can be controlled.

  • http://www.camelotherald.com Sanya

    I like my feedback system. We’re committed to reading all of it, so everyone gets their individual voice (without the peen waving in which one indulges when writing for an audience – a brand of literary production in which I once excelled, mind you). But then we present the aggregate feedback, so the developer can respond most efficiently.

    This is in theory like an election. In practice, it’s disturbingly like an election, with the potential for ballot box stuffing, charismatic internet forces unduly influencing the results, and a tendency for things to be decided by those who opt in, even if those decisions end up not reflecting the general population. All we can do is be aware of the potential danger, though, because a better system hasn’t come along.

  • http://endie.net Endie

    No.6, attempting topush back the boundaries of grotesque idiocy, said “\’e2\’80\’9ctrollful\’e2\’80\’9d? Somewhere near the top of my list of rules of writing: if you can\’e2\’80\’99t say what you mean without resorting to NewSpeak, don\’e2\’80\’99t.”

    Well, I really liked your last couple of books, Six. Oh no, wait a minute, I must be thinking about someone who is in a position to play the role of Petronius Arbiter.

    Neologisms are fun, thought-provoking and one of the reasons why the English language is, well, not like French. And I mean that in a lot of ways. For one thing, Bryson says that English has around twice the words in common and current usage.

    But, since you clearly believe that language should have been ossified a long time ago, do enjoy using your galvanic babbage calculation machine to send more ethereal messages on the topic.

  • http://www.4thfg.com No.6

    Ok, since two respondents apparently think I’m some sort of linguistic luddite, guess I’d better answer.

    The great thing about English is that it’s always expanding; as Endie noted, this distinguishes it from French :)

    However, NewSpeak shorthands (goodful, ungood, ‘trollful’, etc.) have the exact opposite effect. Their effect is to *remove* meaning and context from language, not add it. For instance, if I wrote “troll-infested” or “troll-mired” the negative connotations of forum-trolling are brought to mind; “trollful” makes no judgement about the activity.

    I appreciate the author’s intent for brevity but I don’t think adopting NewSpeak is the way to go about it.

  • naladini

    People are arguing about player / dev communication channels. The simple truth is that any model can work, and any model can get overloaded by “noise”.

    I keep seeing these debates about whether or not to have official forums, and in everyone’s haste to rush to the polar extremes, I see people skipping over one of the primary reasons to have official forums:

    Official boards don’t get bought out by entities that violate your game’s rules.

    Most fansite operators seem to start out with the best of intentions, but eventually, RL circumstances change, piles of money get bigger, operators stop playing the game, etc, and the little buyouts happen (as do bigger ones).

    This was a huge deal a few years ago, and I’d imagine as the “Next big game” closes in on launch, a similar situation will present itself. Top sites promoting that game will eventually be shown enough money that they will sell out. If a publisher/developer wants to offer a vibrant forum community and keep it out of the RMT advertising game, they need to offer the infrastructure themselves.

  • http://mythicalblog.com Jeff Freeman

    I appreciate the author\’e2\’80\’99s intent for brevity but I don\’e2\’80\’99t think adopting NewSpeak is the way to go about it.

    Oh, brevity was not my intention.

    Guess you didn’t see the original update…

    I meant it as a play off ‘awful’.

    But it’s deleted in a revision this morning anyway, so there ya go.