Great article for anyone who follows gaming culture

[Farlo]

Gaming’s Biggest Problem Is That Nobody Wants To Talk

[MadWizard25]

Thanks for the article Farlo, was a nice coffee break read! Whats curious is the parallels i draw between PR in the gaming industry and PR with the results produced with various labs ive worked at, including interviews by journalists.

 

After reading the article i quickly felt defensive, and questioned the authors reasoning, but hey im a cynic. The problem as i see it, with any modern knowledge to media/ pr/ journalism transfer is the worry of how you may be brewing a major **** storm with even the most innocent, personal, and honest of answers and responses that are said.

 

I wish we could be more open, but its just ridiculous the responses you get. Its not funny at all, and major reputation damage as well as monetary damages can follow, cancellation of public-private research projects and grants. I imagine the same is possible in the gaming industry. Even if most people are ok, there will always be some few outliers that ruin it. Its just not worth it.

 

Thus by default we go on the defensive. I think the author is a little naive, yeah it would be nice to be more open, but the current environment is just not conducive to such expectations. Whenever the public (or consumer) is emotionally invested in something, its better to just put off being more open. And this is from someone who is very pro-transparency.

 

Too much angst and stress involved.

[Gyro]

The folks doing the Banner Saga are being ridiculously transparent in their development, and doing so seems to have built an excellent rapport with their community. 

[Farlo]

Yeah, there are a few developers that are being more engaged, as the post pointed out, and are really doing well because of it. You make great points MW25, and it's not just the companies I agree, everybody gets their panties in a bunch whenever something slightly displeasing is said, but in this day and age it's becoming critical to communicate with your fanbase and that's a huge problem when developers are only aloud to talk about games slated for release. I applauded Bethesda's Game Jam video and their willingness to reveal it, but it's unfortunate that insight like this is noteworthy instead of normal.

[stoppingby4now]

From my viewpoint, it seems that the willingness to communicate is inversely proportional to the number of industry investors involved. It's sad, but they hold the puppet strings. If they see/hear information they don't like (regardless if their belief holds any weight), they sell sell sell. I applaud the influx of indie games and private developers, and hope that they can help to shift this flawed mindset.

 

But, that also doesn't mean that everything is directly related to that. In some cases, you don't want to share information when new technologies or game breaking developments are involved. You don't want to help your competition become a direct competitor too quickly.

[frihyland]

Frankly I think that all parties are to blame, the few projects that are trying a more transparent process out may create a whole new paradigm that allows for managing expectations much better and much more robust development cycles or not :P In any case I applaud the attempt as the status quo is pretty sickening.