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AGC Rivebrog: Third Party Community Sites

AGC Rivebrog: Third Party Community Sites

We come to you rive from the "3rd Party Community Sites" panel, in which we're going to hear about how game companies should work with 3rd party sites, like F13.net and our ilk (although for some reason we're not on the panel -- not that anyone here is bitter).

Summary: Communication is key.  If you want to get information from developers, tell them what you're looking for, and let them know what's going to be done with that information.

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I would like to note that during this panel, we were given explicit permission (nay, we were COMMANDED) by SOE to rip on them.

How naive. There are more "entertainment news" programs on TV than actual news programs. The actual news programs have "entertainment news" on them. The scoop for super-serial news anchor Katie Couric's first show was some pointless celebrity baby picture. Most of the world cares passionately about what Tom Cruise thinks about stuff (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=3057.0), what stupid shit Brittney does next (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=2502.0). It's the topic at the water coolers. They're not chatting about the artistic merits of their movies and songs, they're gossiping about the shit that really doesn't matter. If some Sony dev or even CSR wants to shoot shit with games fans about politics, they'll have a huge audience. Do they really think that the games industry is without stars, stalkers, critics and star-fuckers?

Did Bruce introduce himself as SirBruce, or did you give people their true demon names in the article?  Not that Bruce needs to introduce himself.  Just curious if Yoru stood up, tilted his fedora back and said "Yoru! F13! You, sir, have a lotta MOXIE...."

People's names weren't floating above their heads like normal?

I wish.  No, the only people who introduced themselves at all were the panelists.  I just assigned names to the people I actually knew.  Like Schild, and Bruce, and Yoru, and anyone sitting close enough for me to squint at their badge while they were talking.

So let me get this straight, a panel on communication between game companies and fansites concluded that it's all about communication?  Just kidding.

To recap:
- big sites get exclusives, other sites get PR
- gaming news per se doesn't really exist, speculation on PR and other speculation is where it's at for you third party guys
- the EVE people are scared of F13 despite having one of the few games that gets a pretty good rap here - maybe they should hire a CRM who isn't scared of profanity.
- gaming sites want actual news, game companies do not since development is so fluid that features are changing all the time.  Or rather, that they are continuously dancing on the sword-edge between crap and meh, and the last thing they want is for people to realise this.
- people love analogies about the movie industry but have clearly forgotten movie marketing exists to fleece movie-goers from money with flashy unrepresentative trailers, inane star interviews, and overly clever guerilla marketing.

You are correct, sir.  I guess it's the journey that counts.

Exactly!

Was that the entire discussion? Was F13 really that much of a focal, or did you just pick the bits where we were mentioned?


No kidding. I can't remember a game where such a large percentage of people here either play it or at least understand why it appeals to some people. There are a few haters, but far fewer than of any other major game, or at least it seems that way.

There were five of us sitting right up front, with three of us wearing money hats (I'll post a picture when I get back), so we had a lot of visibility and therefore got called out a couple of times when people were looking for examples.  That was all.

You're in a place full of nerds with cameras, and there's only a few cable types. Borrow one. Or a USB/PCMCIA card reader. Fucking half-assed F13 photographers.

Why are you asking for him to speed up posting pictures of a room full of nerds? That's just wrong.

Just to be bellicose and belligerent. He seems to be otherwise having too good a time.

Your overachieving...again.

Some interesting bits (to me at least):


Heh.



Oh come on. Games and devs get some love here. Sometimes. Occasionally. But only under every other quarter moon, or something.


Sometimes I wish I had time to do these fun things. Then I remember that it sometimes requires actual....work. That shoots my idea to all kinds of shit. Oh well. Nice job guys.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!  BEER!

I ruv you guys.

But they have to earn their love.  They don't get the free sloppy blow jobs if they come here. 

But I wouldn't come here either.  We are the niche of the niche.  PR is about casting a wide net.

F13, niche? Sure. 

But consider this.  I think for any online game that doesnt swear off the internet in the first 30 days, there will be a natural progression to start on company websites for news, then move to "offical" fansites, and over time learn that if they want good info they will be lead to small and more niche oriented sites until everyone ends up here (or somewhere like here with less cursing  :evil: )

And having friends in the know just accelerates that curve away from "offical" sources.  Word of mouth not only gets people playing games, it also affect how people meta game.  Hello thottbot!

I think it's just part of the natural player evolution over time, and if dev houses already consider that when designing their games, why do they not seem to recognize it when it comes to communication?  Tailor your message to fit the intended audience and take adavantage of the audience diversity; don't run scared from it.

Xilren

Yeah, that pretty much encapsulates my experience when I started in EQ back in 2000.  I began on the official forums trying to gather the rare nugget amongst the turds.  Then I heard of EQAtlas either in game, or on the o-forums, and checked it out.  Eventually, from there I found Allakhazams, and then Lum's, and Tweety's.  From there I really had my eyes opened to things I either A) never would have heard about, or B) Never would have bothered thinking of.  Though, I think, the fact that I ever even made it to the official forums probably puts me in a different class than the vast silent majority that make up the bulk of any mmos player base.  Though, nowadays, with people being more knowledgable about the genre in general, I think this is less the case, and people bypass the usual learning curve, and just end up somewhere like F13.

Advertising.  I have a buddy, he is doing a CRM gig, has been for over a year.  He'd never heard of F13.  Granted, he's not on an MMO, but I'll guess somebody here will play the game, maybe do a short review, when it finally shows.

I know f13 would rather be feared and loathed than ignored, so, Advertising.  Go forth and tell people that you exist.  And you hate their shitty game.

An article on F13 that didn't call us any dirty names? I expect more from you guys ;)

Seriously though, the panel was a fun time and enhanced by the reactions from the crew here in the front row  =)  Good work on the money hats too.

Everyone loves money hats.

Edit. I have updated my avatar to illustrate this point. This is me wearing a money hat.

Well, at least, that part of me that was necessary to picture in order to properly show the breadth of the hat, since an exhausted squinty glare is more interesting than a blurry table and chair set.

I was about to agree with Ryan S, but you bring up a good point. Who here knows what Raph Koster is working on next? Okay, now who here knows what musical instrument Raph Koster plays? I couldn't tell you jack-squiddly about Tabula Rasa, but I do know how "Lord British" got his name.

And if we don't at first care about dev's personal lives, we will after they blog about them for a while. Meier, Spektor, the Miller brothers...they made themselves celebrities by letting us know who they are, what they do in their spare time, and by shouting loudly when something really gets their attention.

Rand Miller and Richard Garriott were on SPACE GHOST for fuck's sake! It doesn't get more Hollywood than that!

That was actually part of Raph's talk on Thursday... he spoke about how one of the drivers of sales for smaller, indie games (as well as AAA titles, but less important there) was going to be developer/designer celebrity. You're going to want to buy a Thomas Arundel/Introversion game. You may not know what it is until it's released, but if the designer/developer/dev house builds cred... How many people buy things because they're a Blizzard Game?

Thought so.

Famous celebrity designers aren't putting out small indie games. Celebrity is the wrong word anyway. People buy Blizzard games because of a reputation for quality, not because Rob Pardo is super famous in the minds of 10 ultra-nerds.

Celebrity in Hollywood is mostly reserved for actors, the people you actually see in the films. How many celebrity writers are there in Hollywood? Zero. Literally zero.

The closest thing the video game world has to celebrity actors are Mario and Zerglings. That's what people identify with. When Mario was the most recognizable icon among kids how many of those kids knew who designed the Mario games?
---

Obviously a reputation for quality is a nice thing to have, but calling it celebrity is silly. And indie things very rarely have a reputation for quality as most people who produce good indie work "graduate" to non-indie work.

Name a well-known dev with a reputation for quality that has produced mostly indie games. Can't be done.

I'm going through my AGC photos now.  Here's the one from this panel:

(http://f13.net/media/agc_2006/money_hats_cropped_small.jpg)

Awwww yeah.

What do you mean by indie? Microprose, Firaxis?

Teppy.

It also depends on how you define "celebrity." If you mean paparazzi and red carpet, then there are few celebrities even in the rock-n-roll and movie businesses. If you mean literally "celebrated," then yeah, gaming has its celebrities. And there are celebrity writers, too. Who wouldn't pee their pants if Joss Whedon said hi to them on the street?

Of course, not everybody. But then again, I wouldn't care if the lead singer of Gorillaz said hi to me, because I don't even know who that is. I would be pretty thrilled to meet Michael Gettel though. It seems to me everybody's got their fanbase.

Not well known outside of our little corner and ATITD folks. In fact, I couldn't even name another game he's made and it's arguable that "quality" isn't one of ATiTD's strong points. Engrossing, maybe. Ridiculous, maybe. Clever, maybe. Quality, nah. It's very obviously a completely mediocre title with some super strong niche appeal.

Gerald from Themis doesn't really exist. That razor guy from WarCry said so. Or is it razor from Teen Beat?

I should think that Sid Meier is rather more famous than Teppy... or are we just counting MMORPGs?

I think we were just going for "indie". 

I liked my answer.  :|

It was a wonderful answer!  Stunning! 

(Most of Sid Meier's games are from his own independant company, no?) 

I don't mean "celebrity" in the sense that the National Enquirer writes about you. I meant "celebrity" in the sense that (some group of) people know who you are and follow what you do, more or less actively. Notoriety, perhaps.

What I'm getting at is that developer and dev house names become brands that people use to make purchasing decisions on new games, both pre- and post-release. I can say that, right now, there's about 5 designer-developers whose games I will buy sight unseen, although since I follow them, I tend to know what I'm getting into. (Meier, Wright, Koster, Arundel and Urquhart, fyi.) That kind of name-branding, for those five guys, is valuable - it guarantees them my market dollar and costs them very little to maintain. Cultivating this sort of branding will become more important as the variety and number of offerings increases, particularly for small-to-midsize indies.

So yes, Teppy's celebrity is important to him; gamers in the know connect him with ATITD and ATITD style games. If they enjoyed ATITD, or at least were intrigued by it, they're likely to try his next outing, and that's valuable money to him.

That's why I asked about "indie". Its the punk rock paradox. As soon as people have heard of you, you've sold out and can't be called "indie" any more, even if your company is actually independent. It's the type of circular clusterfuck non-argument that leads to pointless pedantry rather than discourse. Name one famous "indie" whatever. And by indie, I mean not famous. Sure thing. I'll get right on it.

Sounds like all the finger-pointing at Kevin Smith, how he's not "indie" anymore. He never was "indie." The first Clerks was distributed my Miramax.

Meanwhile, The Empire Strikes Back was an indie film, even though it was distributed by 20th Century Fox. Yeah, I don't understand it, either. Crazy world.

Fugazi is the only wildly popular and truly indie band I can think of at the moment.

Fugazi is wildly popular? I mean, I own 3 fugazi CDs, but no radio station outside of KEXP (the Paul Allen funded indie radio station here in Seattle) would play Fugazi.

Perhaps I should have said "widely popular"? ;)

Definitely popular on an international level. Perennially popular as well -- They've been around since the late 80's, and were popular when my older brother was in highschool, when I was in highschool, and popular even among high school kids today. They still sell out shows. They've made enough cash on album sales to fund a whole slew of bands on the Dischord label. They don't have to resort to "day jobs" like every other indie band does (i.e. they make a lot of money making music alone). And lastly, they've maintained their presence and success like this without once resorting to marketing, promoting, or the like (they don't even sell t-shirts) -- It's all been by word of mouth. That speaks of just how popular they are.

Just wonder, but...Yoru, what was the last game Urquhart did? I thought it was one of the IWD games, or perhaps that Lionheart game that kinda bombed?

Oh, and sight unseen? Bioware, Epic (Cliffy B.), Timegate (Kohan), Remedy...that might be about it.

During the panel, I threw Sid Meier out there as a celebrity game designer, but really, it wont happen too often. The difference between this and movies is that people see actors, they are the face of their products. It is harder to be a celebrity director and the industry just isn't big enough for that to happen too often with designers.

At this point, it remains very much in the interests of companies to make the company the celebrity. BioWare, Blizzard... not Vogel and Pardo. That way, their reputation survives the departure of the headline name (Origin = Garriott, for example).


Dana

PS: There is one celebrity screenwriter I can think of: Charlie Kaufman.

We don't see movie directors or music producers, but they're highly considered among those in the know. They may not have wide-reaching celebrity (a handful of each do) but they are important to those who care about the art more than superficially. For every person who creates, who mediates creation, or who otherwise has a significant role that makes them notable, there are other people, even their peers, who consider it interesting what those people have to say about matters not directly related to their work. To game cognoscenti, it's not just Sid Meier that's a celebrity game designer, its Toru Iwatani, David Braben, Matthew Smith, Shigeru Miyamoto, etc. Even local pub bands have their fans.

That's total bollocks.  A complete cop-out.

Half-Life is an example.

Heh. Fans stand for it all the time. It's called Japan. Or at least used to be til America fucked it all up. A large number of the companies over there (and some still do) only release information about a game once it's 80-85% complete. But that's neither here nor there, the problem with the gaming inddustry is that shit can change mid stroke, they have years to complete a game while a movie takes a few months to film. You simply don't have the same time to dick around. Frankly, I'd rather not see anything about a game until a month before release. That would get rid of all the shitty magazines also.