Drama Brewing When Customers of a Game in Development are Once Again Served an Update that "zero progress" Has Been Made. The Snowball Starts Rolling When PR for Developer Shows Up and Explains That His Feelings are Hurt (np.reddit.com)
SubredditDrama
84 ups - 31 downs = 53 votes
57 comments submitted at 02:12:47 on Feb 19, 2014 by MikeyDeez
Eh, too easy. This is the kind of stuff you get literally every day for the last two years on that subreddit.
The PR guy they hired is awful, constantly posts sarcastic and self-deprecating stuff, when he's not outright attacking or banning critics.
I may not have gotten the game I payed for on their Kickstarter, but Sauropod delivered on entertainment anyway!
Let this be a lesson. Hire actual PR people, don't let your buddy do it.
I might be oversimplifying it but how hard can PR for something like this be? All you need to do is be professional and try to assuage customer fears without promising more than the dev team can deliver.
Think about what you just said for a second.
Also, you have to walk the tightrope of doling out information without spoiling anything that your employer doesn't wnat you spoiled.
You're also the target for wrath, so there is that.
Regardless, though, you have to agree that this PR person is not doing thier job right...
Maybe I'm just biased since I've got really thick skin.
Or maybe it's because you don't wake up every day with death threats in your mailbox that you have a thick skin?
Seriously, there's "Thick skin" and then there's "Dealing with idiots on a 24/7 basis."
Just go over to notalwaysright.com and read a few stories. The true calibur of people is shown when they interact with people who they think can't fight back.
> Seriously, there's "Thick skin" and then there's "Dealing with idiots on a 24/7 basis."
I've worked in retail and right now I work in IT. I know that feel more than you know.
I'm so sorry.
When your dev team (Sauropod) can deliver basically nothing over two years... yes it's very hard. You're trying to control a community who is riotous... and has every right in the world to feel that way, given the delays and lack of any visible progress despite MASSIVELY elapsed deadlines.
Also it's even harder if you're not... how to put this politely... emotionally stable.
Right?
Things really got good in the last two updates when he started keeping it real/unprofessional.
Its one thing to bitch amongst other players...but the chance to join a bitchfit with the Devs is what early access is all about!
sounds like insert warthunder moderator here, with the exception of their pr rep who keeps up with the subreddit all of the warthunder forum mods are ravenous dicks who either openly mock the people posting or bait them into getting mad so they can lock the thread as a flamewar.
To be fair, the mods are just other players aren't they? Theres like ONE actual company rep on the forums and he's...kinda quiet...
The difference is War thunder is making progress in their content.
Was that a low blow?
I love war thunder to death, haven't even played castle story, the forums are run by assholes though.
I just... avoid official forums. It's a rule that has kept me sane.
Only exception is Dwarf Fortress and iRacing, DF just because it's well DF, and iRacing because they avoided the GIFT by having everyone use their real name. That and making it so you need to maintain a certain basic level of safety to race in higher series helps, and then there's the fact that it's pricey as fuck, which bounces the kiddies right off it. Think it's like $600 to get every car and track, although I can't imagine why you'd buy every car.
Wait, that's actually someone who's supposed to be a professional PR rep?
Sheeeit. Maybe I should get in on that kind of work. I mean, I don't have my master's in communication just yet...But I'm fairly sure I could do a better job than that :P
Yup, Saurobox is their community manager.
They hired him months before they hired a lead programmer, so he must be really good, right?
> They hired him months before they hired a lead programmer, so he must be really good, right?
Well, that literally explains everything in a nutshell.
He can't help but respond to EVERYTHING.
If you made a post saying /u/SauroBox wore smelly socks, he would find you anywhere you posted it and correct you with something like "I don't know why you're saying that...my socks were washed and I just checked them, and they don't smell. You couldn't possibly know what my socks smell like so I really wish you would stop posting all of these negative things about my socks. If you posted this in the Steam forums, I would probably have given you a short ban, but the last time I tried that on Reddit things went badly. LOL."
And now I expect him to come in and say "I don't ever post 'LOL' on here, I wish you would stop posting this stuff..."
They didn't hire me months before a lead programmer, I'm not sure where you're getting your figures. There has been exactly one hire since I was hired, and that was a dedicated QA guy.
I just want you to know that I was interested in buying the game. After seeing how you (and by extension, your company) reacted to the posts in question, any interest I had was killed.
Judging by the comments of several people who I've shared this with, I am not alone.
Oh god, what have I done?
That's... Pretty sad o_o
You should google Zhinto for Battlefield.
The guy embodies shallowbasket's post including but not limited to being on a pro team that was found to be using cheats, using his twitter account to boast about being on holiday when the game was as broke as all hell, claiming the game runs flawlessly for him so everybody else should stop crying etc.
The guy is a fucking clown yet EA not only kept him around, they promoted him.
This game is still in development? Jesus
I took part in the kickstarter, and showed it to two of my friends who also paid in. To my knowledge, only one of the three of us still tries playing it, as the other two (myself included) can't stand the various bugs, memory problems, etc.
I still think it shows potential, but I'm basically ignoring it until for a year and hopefully by then it will reach a state where it's enjoyable.
Eh, actually, what the hell. It's been a couple of months. I'll see how the latest version plays.
This is exactly where I am...the potential is irresistible although I don't have a desire to play the latest version(s) because they're somehow the same as the previous ones.
So, I gave it 20 minutes. I don't have the money to blow an adderall on a video-game, so that's about how long I could pay attention to it.
They've made solid improvements from the last time I played, but it's still not living up to that initial potential it showed. I still managed to hit issues with bricktron's being dumb (hey, I finished mining this, and there's an empty stockpile, but I'll stand here and not go put my load down even though there's more digging to do because... I feel like it), the right-mouse-ring control system that just... doesn't work as well as slightly more conventional controls, and more.
If I wanted to blow an hour or two being frustrated, I might play Castle Story, or I might play Dwarf Fortress. In one, I feel like it's the game that's dumb, and in the other I know that it's me.
Edit: And since I didn't mention, the improvements that I noticed specifically were performance-related stuff, not really "gameplay" improvements.
To be fair, dwarves in DF are pretty dumb. Socks.
Yeah, I was more saying that with DF, I feel like if a dwarf seems "dumb" then it's more likely because of "fun" interactions, like, say, the dumb dwarf is actually just sad because his friend was killed by a Molemarian, and there's not nearly enough alcohol, and his old bedroom was flooded with lava due to a minor mining miscalculation. Or something. There's some sort of reason, though.
With Castle Story it's "hmm, this bricktron is assigned to chop lumber, there's plenty of lumber to chop, it's just standing there with a log, there's open stockpile nearby... I'm waiting, I'm waiting, maybe if I manually make it put the lumber on the stockpile... oh, now it's working again." The bricktron ai just conks out for no reason, whereas my problems with DF relate more to the fact that the dwarves seem to be modeled on alcoholic toddlers prone to obsessive behaviour and insane rages.
Nah I totally got what you were saying but whenever I play df I marvel at the stupidity of some dwarfs. Like, damn, did you really think it was a good idea to go fishing during a seige?
You say that, but I bet he was going to go try to capture a giant Axolotl to then turn over to your animal trainer to be used as a mount by your King.
Edit: I forgot I traded to get that Axolotl. Make it a carp. Your fisherdwarf was going to capture carp to throw at the enemies. And we all know how dangerous carp are...
Dude. Dont mention the fish. I have nightmares about the fish.
How are they so strong? So agile? So aware?
Anywhere near the water and just BAM dead dwarf.
That's the other thing, DF bugs aren't uaually game breaking, they're AMUSING.
Like the one where the melting point of fat was set too low, so dwarves would literally melt in the summer rains.
Or the fact that doing any action levels you up, so fish would gain insane amounts of power just through swimming. (This, coupled with bite's base damage, is what made Carp god tier)
Or the time a doctor sewed a patient back up after surgery But forgot to put his guts back in first, so the poor bastard was dragging his intestines everywhere.
Or my favorite, the doctor who went to check on a patient's broken arm, diagnosed the broken arm as necrosis of the lungs and had them amputated. Yes, he amputated the lungs. The patient did not recover.
I think all of those are fixed now, and there's still debate over weather the last one was a bug or a feature of low skilled diagnosticians with the right personality traits. But the point stands.
This is why DF's bugs are better than Castle Story's.
Oh god, I remember the carp.
PR rep wonders why he tries...customers are outraged that they've been "defrauded"...PR rep explains that dozens of careers hang in the balance.
Well that's a pretty obscenely inaccurate rundown of things.
First, you should check your definitions: de·fraud illegally obtain money from (someone) by deception.
There wasn't any deception here, there were mistakes made, but nobody was lying to anyone, and nothing here was even remotely illegal.
Second, I didn't explain that dozens of careers were in the balance, where did you even get that? I implied that someones hope that our careers would be ruined said something about his character, which is very, very different.
You really do this for a living?
No wonder you're trying to keep this afloat. I can't imagine anyone else hiring you to manage people after this.
Who said we're trying to keep it afloat? We planned our budget very carefully, and we aren't on the precipice of going out of business. I'm not sure where anyone got the impression otherwise.
Beyond that, I'm not in a management position within the company. I'm the community manager, not a project lead or anything else.
Again, this article and many of the comments are being made by a small, but incredibly vocal group of displeased customers. That's not to say their arguments are invalid, they aren't, and there are certainly things we could do better. And, to that end, we're doing our best to do better. However, the majority of the community varies from content to happy.
> However, the majority of the community varies from content to happy.
The community that you're supposedly managing? Yeah I'm sure that your myopic view on the community and how it works showed you that most of them are happy. After all, it's difficult to hear dissent when you attempt to ban people who criticize you.
You are not a good community manager. You are a bad one.
You're not good at what you're doing, sorry to tell you.
>We planned our budget very carefully,
Can you elaborate on this?
Firstly, you've openly admitted that Sauropod dropped the ball on the planning of the game itself and overruns happened... but now you're saying it was all budgeted and planned for?
I'm sorry but this is two contradicting pieces of information. You cannot possibly have planned to overrun by this much, and if you did... it does begin to raise serious questions because the deadlines are well over a year elapsed at this point.
And FYI... THAT is why people think you're on the verge of going out of business. Most businesses would be looking at liquidating and walking away after the hits this project has taken.
>Again, this article and many of the comments are being made by a small, but incredibly vocal group of displeased customers.
Sigh
Denial.
Denial. Denial. Denial.
This was Sauropods excuse when it was only me and a couple others complaining when we hit 2-3 months after the deadline. You kept saying I was alone and complaining over nothing... and you know what? Some people agreed with you, hell a lot of people did actually.
But as time has gone on, now practically everyone is in agreement on the issue... but your defence has stayed the same. It just screams denial. You're refusing to acknowledge the scale of the problem by convincing yourself everyone is content... and no doubt you're relaying that back to the developers themselves which is incredibly toxic and corrosive.
Especially when they pop in for themselves and realise everyone isn't content and happy as you claim.
You're supposed to be a PR guy? Because you seem really bad at this.
You have no idea.
I've been tempted to create a private-sub just so I can self post all of the PMs I've received over the past 6-8 months... because they're a lot worse than the stuff posted in public.
Haha holy fuck. /u/SauroBox really needs to take some fucking marketing classes or just, like, some fucking customer relation classes. Because if he's legit getting paid to be a community manager this is going to be a permanent black mark on his resume. Good luck with that resume gap, SauroBox!
When Mikey put "defrauded" in quotation marks, that indicates that he's quoting someone, so I don't think he needs to check the definition of anything. And everything else he mentioned did indeed get said in that thread. It is in fact a 100% accurate rundown of things.
I can't even
3 comments until a fraud accusation. I think this is a kickstarter record...
And this is why I perfer to buy my games finished, too.
SnapShots: 1, 2, ^Readability
^I ^FINALLY ^FIXED ^THE ^READABILITY ^LINKS!
Woah, I was thinking of buying this game. Fuck that.
SnapShot
(Mirror | open source | create your own snapshots)
and that's why I have yet to see a video game kickstarter I'd support.
As (one of) the most vocal critics of Castle Story I've gotta say that it upsets me to see people lose faith in Kickstarter. Although I do kinda see it as inevitable as projects like Castle Story fail and confidence drops... it's understandable, I just hope people switch to being more careful rather than pulling out entirely. That would be bad for the industry as a whole, I think.
However even though I'm crushed by Castle Story, I'm thrilled about the other projects I've backed. Planetary Annihilation is absolutely phenomenal, Rimworld is progressing nicely and Faster than Light is getting an awesome free update soon.
And outside of Kickstarter there are a million indie projects only now made possible because of Kickstarter and other indie projects before it (like MineCraft). Theres Prison Architect, Project Zomboid, Starbound, Space Engineers and Papers Please to name a few. All incredibly original, all amazing.
Whilst there certainly are examples of failed projects, I've got supreme faith in the system and even Sauropod can't shake that. Although that doesn't mean I'm going to let them off the hook...
Ah, well, this is fun! Let me chime in with my two cents, eh?
First, I'm not really sure where the impression that my feelings were hurt came from. If anything, I explained that it was very frustrating dealing with someone that just spews venom at you when you try to explain what's happening. My feelings weren't hurt, because it's very silly to get your feelings hurt over something on the internet.
Second, ShallowBasketcase claimed I was hired months before a lead programmer, and this is just patently false. I assume he's referring to Luc, whom we hired full-time to help improve our AI in the middle of November last year, though he'd been working with us on a contract basis occasionally for a long while prior to that. I myself was hired a few weeks after that.
Am I the best community manager ever? No, absolutely not, and I won't argue with that. I am new to the industry and I'm learning every day. As a human, I'll absolutely make mistakes from time to time, and I do still occasionally let me knee-jerk reactions get the better of me.
As someone who's been there and done that, people are going to be unhappy no matter what is fixed. You release feature A, those wanting feature B will piss and moan. You fixed bugs D through M, those wanting N through Z fixed will be pissed.
You release optimizations, AI, and engine improvements, people piss and moan about no content updates. You could always just not do updates except for when it fixes major bugs or adds content, and let optimizations and such be patch note padding. Downside of that is you lose the immediate ability to determine just how successful your behind-the-scenes fixes were. You only get to see it when there's a major update.
But, honestly, it's the best way to do it. And really, staying silent is the best way to deal with the pissers and moaners. Someone will always be unhappy. That's not to say that everything your team does will be right either. I've seen professional dev studios (looking at you ANet) drop the ball repeatedly on important issues.
Oh, we've certainly dropped the ball in a few places in the past, I don't think anybody would argue otherwise. But yeah, you're right, and that's why this stuff doesn't really get to me, and why the title of this topic amused me.
The old saying, "You can please some of the people, some of the time, but never all of the people any of the time" remains quite true, and that's fine. We just have a very small group of incredibly vocal critics who don't like what we're doing, and that's fine. I'm actually quite glad I decided to manually e-mail all our physical rewards backers, because the outpouring of support from them all in spite of the delay has been very refreshing.
I think your single biggest repeated mistake is confusing "critic" with "paying customer".
I only worked customer service and took intro marketing classes so I'm sure you're much more experienced....but isn't having "critics" not like your game an entirely different problem that "people who paid money because they want to like your game" not liking it?
Do you really not see or care about the difference?