So I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on the gaming industry lately.
There’s a fine line between too much and too little communication. There’s also something to be said about good PR and community engagement positions.
That sweet spot is hard to attain; consumers either as potential or current all have their own views about what, when, why and how they want everything. From release expectations to gameplay.
What a game dev or community manager says can come back years later and bite them; even as much as the interpretation (not fact or taking into consideration changes) of what they say can evolve to untenable expectations.
Now I say all this with context of perhaps gameplay and feature mechanics. Like promising multiplayer later in an indie game; take Stardew Valley or No Man’s Sky. Released before promised features were complete under the insurmountable pressure of “I want it now” consumers and investors.
Add on to that the changing landscape of bought and paid for game journalism and YouTube content creators. Both have serious issues that can twist perception. I’m not talking about trusted sources of course; more so how easy misinformation and disinformation can spread.
If you get down to facts though, promising that X game/feature will release on X date is just unrealistic. But the pressure is there.
I think the failing of most studios is promising the sun and stars without fully laying out a true release calendar but balanced with probabilities. I mean, how could any studio account for everything? Impossible. But reasonable snags. Also, room to adjust and manage those expectations by putting a foot down.
Additionally, making the distinction between actual future releases and simply visions.
Then it’s possible death before it even starts. Hard to keep people interested if you keep pushing back on your statements. Then if it’s a particularly impacted studio by ego, investor meddling or too much player feedback being used, you get things like the fiasco with Richard Garriot and Shroud of the Avatar.
GaaS has also created much of the expectations as well.
Now for Funcom. I don’t envy the hard workers putting their blood, sweat and tears into CE. I see the passion even in newer things. Pressure is here too and depending on internal SOPs for each position does determine how much and when engagement is there.
Therein lies the rub with it all. How much is too much communication? IMHO there hasn’t been too much, there’s not enough of course. The content, purpose and reasoning is different.
Gameplay, calendar, features? Comes in spits and spurts with hints to create easter egg hunts. Fun but not as involved as previously. Dev blog is not as frequent or involved. Lack of overlap in many communication platforms.
Bug reports and access issues are often met with tone deaf copy/paste SOP responses and thread closures. Much of that work could be alleviated by improving the bug report template instructions which have been untouched since 2022. If improved, quality and quantity of those posts would be better. It’s happened more than once that a reply consisted of incorrect procedures; note that not reading the place in the forum is a mistake of even staff.
A consistent schedule of Q and A and actually acknowledging questions, not necessarily answers, would go a long way.
While clearly a big ask, clarification and improvement of ToC and Zendesk handling.
Clarification about the future of consoles, Official servers, etc.,… That in itself could a death sentence.
We don’t necessarily need to know everything and shouldn’t. As much as I appreciate the pineapple on pizza joke it is getting old and to me seems more like an inside joke or code.
But these are MY opinions. I know some share them. It’s clearly not Funcom’s viewpoint. If it were, or even if I accepted their direction, I wouldn’t be saying what I do.
They’ll do what they want regardless of reasonable industry standards. It’s their game.
We can choose to stick around or not. I don’t blame you for how you feel.
