Mar 8
Meat and Potatoes
The meat and potatoes of the SOE Influencer’s event was today’s series of presentations and discussions. With the last two days spent getting to know each other and the SOE Community team, today we were ‘on the clock’. The central goal was to have the team present us with big slices of the Sony Online experience, and then comment on the problems and obstacles we saw in their path. My understanding is they hope that by having outsiders enter the Community process, their work will be the stronger for it. Likewise, as ‘influencers’, we can turn back to the player community and disseminate the impressions we gathered by meeting with the Community folks.
Considering that we were supposed to be some of the most opinionated members of the community, I was a little underwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong, now that I’ve been through pretty much the whole thing I personally found it to be a useful exercise. And to be sure, it’s been a good time. But as an outpouring of useful feedback to the community team I’m not sure it was all that helpful. Who’s to blame? Well …
So first, let me clarify what I mean by underwhelmed. With Brent and other folks in the gaming community having been to some of these events before, I had a distinct idea in my head of what it would be like; while the anecdotes about drunken conversations were humorous, the angry diatribes from various player communities (IE: SWG) sounded glorious to hear. That just wasn’t what I experienced today. Grimwell and Em Stock gave presentations about the future of their games from a community perspective and we saw presentations about The Agency/Free Realms.
The heads of the customer service team spoke to us, and there was a little bit of tough discussion there. Disgruntled players voiced a few frustrations with past CS experiences. Mostly they offered up their plans for the near future – which sound promising in the extreme.
The only issue that got highly contentious was a chat about business models. It’s been noted previously that the company is keeping their options open for upcoming titles. Educating the influencers on that front was the concern during that hour/hour and half period. Some folks were definitely not in favour of the full-on abandonment of subscriptions; the arguments surrounding the value of game time and the dangers of “kids + microtransactions” raised their heads.
Even that discussion was kind of ’safe’. There was no yelling, very little frustration – I was surprised. I’d gone in expecting more along the lines of roundtables, and instead sat politely while I was spoken to. I’ll own up to it: I failed as well. I’d like to think the questions I asked were challenging (because I did ask a number of questions), but I probably didn’t bust enough in the way of balls.
I don’t necessarily think it was bad that there was no shouting, but I wonder about the utility of the experience for the attendees (SOE or no). The cost and bother of flying people out to San Diego indicates the company is serious about getting feedback on their gameworlds and business practices. If we are to assist them, providing as much and as unbiased a level of feedback as possible should be the goal. For attendees, getting big issues off of our chests should have been priority one. Even some particularly outspoken members of the community (folks that even I have heard of, non-board reader that I am) were conspicuously quiet.
It obviously hasn’t been long since the event ended (and I can assure you I’ll be writing more about the actual content of the event), so I’m tentative to point the blame anywhere in specific. Obviously we can share. Was it the format of the experience? Were the players just not focused on the task at hand? As engaging it was to get to know the other community members and CMs prior to the actual event, was it a mistake to have so much lead up time? Perhaps, lulled by that feeling of personal connection, the players were reluctant to rip into the community team who’d been so enjoyable to spend time with the last two days?
Perhaps this is just my personal viewpoint showing through, my own opinions clouding the reality of the day’s events. I’m sure there was value for everyone else involved (certainly I felt that I got a lot out of it). But that was me; I had a somewhat-unique set of goals going into this thing. I’d expected to be challenged today. I’ve drunk the RMT kool-aid, I’m a high-level guy, and for the most part individual player concerns aren’t really that interesting to me. I fully expected to have to defend some viewpoints. Instead I enjoyed a fairly pleasant day.
I knew I was going to like my meat and potatoes – I just expected to have to do more chewing.
7 comments7 Comments so far
it sounds like without getting into too much detail and providing a generalized overview that they really can’t expect much from community sites I would think. Most (except the really big ones) probably focus on one game (or at least the people attending) and there probably wasn’t enough time to really get into each of titles during the day so it is discussed in a generalized level, which (imho) I don’t really think can garner much feedback on, as opposed to really more of an announcement (here is what we are going to do, here is what we know we messed up on) arena.
Not that it is bad, I just don’t know how any one person could be prepared on fronts for all games, and it would surprise me if SOE thinks that they can garner feedback for something as business shifting as RMT, just because I would think the people sitting in the chairs listening probably don’t feel like their opinion would sway anything anyway with the “suits” of the company. It is still cool that SOE does this (I mean how many other companies do you see doing it?), but I think that if they want to look at something on such a broad scale they would be much better off flying in a couple of “suits/consultants” from other industries that work off the “make money on the backend” business models (ie Printer Cartridges, who ever else makes money off proprietary ’second sells’, etc) than community members. I’m just not really sure how members of the community could actually feel like their opinion could hold any weight when you are discussing such large scale business strategies.
As for the attendee’s though, it sound like a hell of a nice (free) trip though and they will always garner good PR from it.
Cyanbane — we don’t bring suits/consultants along because the focus of the summit is to get actual feedback from people who actually play the games. It’s not a publicity stunt, it’s an opportunity for real human moments and feedback. ;)
I’m still processing the latest event myself, and have yet to file a postmortem, but I appreciate seeing Mike’s initial responses up so fast.
Sorry comment above wasn’t to make it sound like I thought it was a ‘publicity stunt’. I was just saying that it would be hard I would think for players to feel that they have any bearing on financial directions of the company if that is in fact what they were asked about (RMT-Microtrans-etc).
I could give you my opinion all day long about it, I just don’t think it would matter much in the end :)
You might be surprised how much we pay attention to that feedback. :P
I’ve been to a couple of these and you don’t have to bring a bunch of dramatic yelling and anger to the table to get things accomplished. Even last years had some of the most rabid SWG fans I’ve ever seen who cornered John Smedley. During the sessions they were perfectly calm and rational.
Your expectations sound more like what you’d see in the Fan Faire sessions.
I always thought SOE was a black hole and was not listening to the feedback of players. I went to one of these things last year and a few SWG players complaining did make a difference and SOE listened.
I am an average blowhard like most people and I really feel SOE is at least putting their good foot forward to try and get good feedback
it’s good to see SOE making the effort to try and understand their players. Back in the day (EQ with Brad and crew) I got the feeling they didn’t really give a rats backside, but I got over that with EQ2 (it was obvious to me that they were listening to us when they started adding solo/duo content and made other changes that players were calling out for).
Personally, I’d like to see both RMT/MT’s come in, but keep full sub games as well. Let the Runescape crowd (read 8-12 yo’s) play the RMT/MT’s and leave full subs for the adults.
It’s good to listen to your players, just don’t loose sight of the “vision” (or maybe “mission statement”) each game has. Turning Vanguard into EQ2 or WoW is not what a Vanguard player wants to see (though I’m sure there’s a lot of other people that would like to see it that way). With out a clear and consistent direction for the games, too much consultation with “the players” will just make them a bland mash of “MMOG” with little to making them distinct from each other except for the “skins”.
Feel free to pass that on next time you visit them Michael :o)