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NDA What's the Point?

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  • atuerstaratuerstar Member Posts: 234

    The NDA bound experiences I have had lead me to one conclusion.

     

    The game is bad. They want to be absolutely positive these testers cannot initiate negative advertising and affect sales by leaking the truth.

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  • MMOExposedMMOExposed Member RarePosts: 7,387
    NDA is a clever form of hype. It leaves a taste of mystery to be desired from behind the wall.
    "Hey whats going on behind that wall? I want to get in."

    People get caught up in the mystery of the title that they cough over money to get into betas and behind the NDA.

    very clever. But I am only MMOEXPOSED.
    who cares about lessons in exposing hype...

    Philosophy of MMO Game Design

  • DenambrenDenambren Member UncommonPosts: 399

    Well.. most of us know where this is heading, but here it goes.

     

    The NDA thing is just a scheme thought up by some clever business people working the law, with the intent of giving only paid review sites a voice for writing positive previews of said game. The most recent Defiance preview on mmorpg.com is a good example of that, where a good chunk of the reply thread was deleted because it had negative criticism based on user experience in the beta. Of course, those users violated the NDA scheme by talking about the game, and so whatever, right? But then you look around the internet for more feedback on the game, and you start to notice that the only feedback that exists is in the form of paid previews on review sites.

     

    When a  game company just deletes negative criticism from their forum, then they're being unreasonable. But when they have the law backing them up with this clever NDA scheme,  they instead become a victim. The NDA scheme allows these game companies (and paid review sites) to switch from bad guy to victim when deleting negative criticism - it's a very clever system.

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  • laokokolaokoko Member UncommonPosts: 2,004

    I've done a few testing.  I kind of agree with someone that have posted.  They dont' want people know that the game "at that state is bad".  Else the forum will be fill with negative comment and how imcompetent the developers are which could cost them money in the future.

    Aka with NDA, the game get blostered and hiped.  With NDA all the mystery is gone, all it shows is just how bad the game at that state is and people mocking the game.

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  • MagiknightMagiknight Member CommonPosts: 782
    The NDA is just there for developers to be a bitch. 90% of the games suck anyways
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  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347

    There are a variety of different reasons for an NDA.  One is that you don't want employees leaking critical trade secrets to your competitors.

    With media coverage, a common reason for an NDA is to eliminate the rush to be the first to post something.  The problem is that whichever site posts information about a game first is likely to get the most attention and page hits.  If a game gave media permission to post about a game publicly as soon as they got access, there would be a rush to post things 5 minutes after you first played the game--and before you had any idea what you were doing.  The most widely read critiques of your game could easily be based on misunderstandings or even factually wildly wrong.

    The fix for that is an NDA.  The idea is to say that you get access right now, but aren't allowed to talk about it publicly for a week or whatever.  Everyone gets to talk about it at the same time, so as long as you have your write-up done by that date and time, no one else is allowed to beat you to it and steal your page hits.  That means you have a week or whatever to mull over what you think about a game, and hopefully have some idea of what you're talking about before you post a preview.

    With players, a lot depends on how early in development a game is.  If you still have an NDA up a week before launch, players should suspect that you're hiding something.  But if you think your game is a year away from launch (and you're actually two years away from launch, because it's going to take longer than you think) and a bunch of things are going to radically change before launch, you don't want a bunch of negative press from players talking about glaring flaws in the game that can and will be fixed long before launch.

    I'm not talking about the usual "I disagree with this game design decision" stuff.  Rather, I'm talking more about glaring bugs (e.g., it crashes when you do this) and major features that simply aren't implemented yet.  If you were to try to "play" a project I'm working on right now, for example, you wouldn't like it, at least if you tried to treat it like a finished game.  For starters, there isn't combat yet, nor crafting.  Your "character" consists of a single cylinder that is broken in several ways--and that I don't fix because it's a placeholder that is going to be deleted, anyway.  Rocks are pretty glaringly floating in mid-air, as is the player.  That's all fixable, and going to be fixed, but after the game has launched, you don't want people who are potentially interested in the game searching on Google, finding criticism of things that were fixed long before release, concluding that the game must be terrible, and then declining to try it out.

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  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by Mtibbs1989
    Originally posted by Quizzical

    There are a variety of different reasons for an NDA.  One is that you don't want employees leaking critical trade secrets to your competitors.

    With media coverage, a common reason for an NDA is to eliminate the rush to be the first to post something.  The problem is that whichever site posts information about a game first is likely to get the most attention and page hits.  If a game gave media permission to post about a game publicly as soon as they got access, there would be a rush to post things 5 minutes after you first played the game--and before you had any idea what you were doing.  The most widely read critiques of your game could easily be based on misunderstandings or even factually wildly wrong.

    The fix for that is an NDA.  The idea is to say that you get access right now, but aren't allowed to talk about it publicly for a week or whatever.  Everyone gets to talk about it at the same time, so as long as you have your write-up done by that date and time, no one else is allowed to beat you to it and steal your page hits.  That means you have a week or whatever to mull over what you think about a game, and hopefully have some idea of what you're talking about before you post a preview.

    With players, a lot depends on how early in development a game is.  If you still have an NDA up a week before launch, players should suspect that you're hiding something.  But if you think your game is a year away from launch (and you're actually two years away from launch, because it's going to take longer than you think) and a bunch of things are going to radically change before launch, you don't want a bunch of negative press from players talking about glaring flaws in the game that can and will be fixed long before launch.

    I'm not talking about the usual "I disagree with this game design decision" stuff.  Rather, I'm talking more about glaring bugs (e.g., it crashes when you do this) and major features that simply aren't implemented yet.  If you were to try to "play" a project I'm working on right now, for example, you wouldn't like it, at least if you tried to treat it like a finished game.  For starters, there isn't combat yet, nor crafting.  Your "character" consists of a single cylinder that is broken in several ways--and that I don't fix because it's a placeholder that is going to be deleted, anyway.  Rocks are pretty glaringly floating in mid-air, as is the player.  That's all fixable, and going to be fixed, but after the game has launched, you don't want people who are potentially interested in the game searching on Google, finding criticism of things that were fixed long before release, concluding that the game must be terrible, and then declining to try it out.

     So to summarize your entire post it's about press coverage rather than a proper end product? 

    If one simply hides negative critizim of their product they're more likely to cover it up rather than attending to the issues  immediately. Which is where we get the current developer mindset that flawed games are allowed to be released.

    Employee NDAs are to keep your trade secrets properly secret.  Often they're more about preventing competitors from stealing your secrets than anything about the media.

    Media NDAs are, indeed, about press coverage.  But there, the NDA doesn't change the product, and nothing the media can say will change the product.  The NDA does, however, remove pressure on media members to have to be available to play your game the moment they first get access.  It also improves the quality of media coverage, not by making it systematically more positive, but by making everyone wait until they have some idea of what they're talking about before posting a write-up.  That means that we the readers get better informed opinions with fewer glaring factual errors.

    Player NDAs aren't about ignoring criticism in general, but about restricting it to productive channels.  If a player notices that when you do such and such, the game crashes, and tells the developers, they can fix it.  Telling the entire world about it doesn't affect the developers fixing it; it just generates negative publicity for the game for no good reason--and that can make developers more hesitant to invite as many players in, resulting in a less tested product.

    Players who complain that they were in a beta and the company didn't listen to feedback often don't realize that they're giving the wrong kind of feedback entirely.  If you're in a beta and the game has lots of loading screens as you pass from one zone to the next and you say they should make it an instanced world, that's useless feedback.  That's a game decision that was baked into the cake years ago.  Developers mostly aren't looking to see if players agree with their game design decisions or not; in many cases, some players will and some won't.

    If you find bugs and give enough detail that the bug is easily reproducible, and the developers don't fix any of your bugs, then maybe you've got more of a complaint.  But this needs to be clear bugs, not just disagreeing with game design decisions.

  • WolfenprideWolfenpride Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 3,988
    I guess to keep reporters/reviewers from publishing anything when they're still possibly making changes. These days you can go to any number of streaming or discussion sites though and see the game, so I don't really see the point either.
  • laokokolaokoko Member UncommonPosts: 2,004
    Originally posted by Mtibbs1989
    Originally posted by laokoko

    I've done a few testing.  I kind of agree with someone that have posted.  They dont' want people know that the game "at that state is bad".  Else the forum will be fill with negative comment and how imcompetent the developers are which could cost them money in the future.

    Aka with NDA, the game get blostered and hiped.  With NDA all the mystery is gone, all it shows is just how bad the game at that state is and people mocking the game.

     I Maybe it's because I'm able to access these betas with no issue at all is the reason I see no need for the NDA. However, I believe that one of the biggest enemies to games in the long is the hype that is generated. Sure they might sell 5-10 million copies. But if they don't have a proper product in the end the game will still be a dud.

     Once again I think this might lie with the lack of communication between developers and the testing audiance.

    eih? if a game going to flop, it's going to flop.  At least they sold 5-10 million copies and loss less money.

    If you the CEO of the game studio, do you want to loss more money or less money?

    Besides, as far as I know most games in beta have a beta forum.  You are suppose to give feedback to the developer, and maybe discuss among with other players in beta.  I don't see how discussing beta with other players that arn't even in beta helps.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by Mtibbs1989

     So to summarize your entire post it's about press coverage rather than a proper end product? 

     

    "With media coverage, a common reason for an NDA is to eliminate the rush to be the first to post something.  The problem is that whichever site posts information about a game first is likely to get the most attention and page hits.  If a game gave media permission to post about a game publicly as soon as they got access, there would be a rush to post things 5 minutes after you first played the game--and before you had any idea what you were doing.  The most widely read critiques of your game could easily be based on misunderstandings or even factually wildly wrong." - You

     I like this comment right here and many media organizations are notorious for how vague they word their articles. When articles are released after XX amount of time due to an NDA many reporters are very vague with their findings of a games features. Which can lead to over hyping a products features and in turn makes it just as bad as having improper information being relayed.

     

     If one simply hides negative criticism of their product they're more likely to cover it up rather than attending to the issues  immediately. Which is where we get the current developer mindset that flawed games are allowed to be released.

    Let's move away from games slightly and talk about video card launches instead.  That's hardware, rather than software.  The final masks from which the silicon will be made have to be done several months before launch and can't be changed later.  By the time AMD or Nvidia sends review sample cards to a bunch of tech media sites, the final product is what it is and nothing that the reviews say can change it.

    It takes time to do a proper review of a new video card, however.  You need to run a bunch of different video cards in exactly the same test with exactly the same other hardware to compare how they do.  And you need to do that with a bunch of different tests, as any one test could easily be a weird outlier.  A lot of different things can go wrong in testing that make your data garbage.

    Meanwhile, your readers want to see the information as soon as possible.  If one of your competitors is allowed to post a snap review a few hours after he gets the card, then gamers who want information on the new card will flock to his site.  By the time your review is ready, it's old news, and not so many people will read it.  For web sites that live and die by page hits for advertisers, this is a big problem.

    That would lead to most or all tech review sites posting quick snap reviews of hardware as soon as they possibly can.  Those quick snap reviews will mostly be worthless, as they don't have enough data to draw any reasonable conclusions.  Who exactly would benefit from that?  An NDA says that everyone has time to do a proper review before anyone can post it.  That means that you can write up a good review without having to worry that it will be old news by the time you post it.

    -----

    If the point of an NDA were to suppress important criticism, then how do you explain that the NDA is eventually lifted?  Criticism that would have been valid during the NDA period will still be made if it isn't fixed before the NDA ends.

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  • RednecksithRednecksith Member Posts: 1,238

    NDAs exist to prevent bad press about game features which may not be complete / functioning properly at the time of the beta. There's nothing wrong with them, and I support their use and enforcement because misinformation can be incredibly damaging. Especially when you consider that features maligned during alpha / beta test might actually be working as advertised at release.

    That being said, any publisher / developer which engages in the practice of review embargoes is to be treated with contempt and scorn, and any website / publication which agrees to abide by them is to be treated with much the same. For those not in the know, review embargoes are the practice of a publisher forbidding a gaming review site / magazine from publishing a review until the game's official release day, despite the fact that said game has actually been sent out by the publisher to be reviewed weeks ahead of time. Essentially, it prevents reviewers from warning folks ahead of time that a game might suck, in order to maximize the profit of developers & publishers off of preorders for a product which they damn well know won't sell well once official reviews denouncing it as crap begin to circulate.

    I understand that review sites make money by playing sucky-sucky with game publishers, but being willing to openly deceive and / or mislead people (due to misinformation or lies by omission) into purchasing products which would generally be considered universally inferior in order to justify their own existence is just disgusting.

    Bottom line is, don't trust publishers which issue review embargoes, and certainly don't trust review sites which enforce them.

    Sorry if this has been touched on earlier, or if this is redundant information within the thread. I honestly was too lazy to read the majority of it. I'm just rambling on my opinions pertaining loosely to the subject matter based upon my recent experiences in getting screwed out of valuable money due to the aforementioned practices.

     

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  • RednecksithRednecksith Member Posts: 1,238
    Originally posted by Mtibbs1989
    Originally posted by Rednecksith

    NDAs exist to prevent bad press about game features which may not be complete / functioning properly at the time of the beta. There's nothing wrong with them, and I support their use and enforcement because misinformation can be incredibly damaging. Especially when you consider that features maligned during alpha / beta test might actually be working as advertised at release.

    That being said, any publisher / developer which engages in the practice of review embargoes is to be treated with contempt and scorn, and any website / publication which agrees to abide by them is to be treated with much the same. For those not in the know, review embargoes are the practice of a publisher forbidding a gaming review site / magazine from publishing a review until the game's official release day, despite the fact that said game has actually been sent out by the publisher to be reviewed weeks ahead of time. Essentially, it prevents reviewers from warning folks ahead of time that a game might suck, in order to maximize the profit of developers & publishers off of preorders for a product which they damn well know won't sell well once official reviews denouncing it as crap begin to circulate.

    I understand that review sites make money by playing sucky-sucky with game publishers, but being willing to openly deceive and / or mislead people (due to misinformation or lies by omission) into purchasing products which would generally be considered universally inferior in order to justify their own existence is just disgusting.

    Bottom line is, don't trust publishers which issue review embargoes, and certainly don't trust review sites which enforce them.

    Sorry if this has been touched on earlier, or if this is redundant information within the thread. I honestly was too lazy to read the majority of it. I'm just rambling on my opinions pertaining loosely to the subject matter based upon my recent experiences in getting screwed out of valuable money due to the aforementioned practices.

     

     I can understand that bad press is bad press. However, NDA's are usually used for early stages of developement so by the time the NDA is released which is around closed/open beta the product will be exposed to a lot of press regardless of good or bad. Which will essentially rule out any usefulness of the NDA. If you're going to use an NDA maintain it unless the product is released to avoid the negative press.

    I understand that. What I mean to say is that I believe that an NDA actually has a legitimate use, unlike a review embargo which is used purely for malicious / dishonest means.

    As a recent purchaser of Aliens: Colonial Marines (a game under embargo), I do have quite a bit of bias in that respect however, so as always take what I say with a few industrial-sized bags of salt.

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  • maplestonemaplestone Member UncommonPosts: 3,099

    Do not underestimate the importance of controlling the first impression.  My one experience with an NDA involved a lot of content that was very raw and quasi-functional.  My view of the finished content was tainted by my memories and frustrations of some of those early builds and the flamewars that errupted on the private board (people can get pretty bitter about being on the losing side of debates over which way a feature should go). 

  • MalcanisMalcanis Member UncommonPosts: 3,297
    They say no one who likes law or sausages should see how they're made.

    Give me liberty or give me lasers

  • EzhaeEzhae Member UncommonPosts: 735

    In most cases NDA applies to games that are in fact still being worked on. Yes, some companies will abuse it as marketing/damage control tool, but 9 out of 10 times I actually had to agree to NDA it was warranted. 

    Now why NDA is good? Because when you pull alpha/beta testers from random pool you are bound to get some impatient troubled souls among. Those people, at the sight of slightest bug, instead of reporting it to the developers will rush off to public forums and moan how stuff is terrible and how the game is terrible and how anyone who wants to plays it is a sinner. They don't wait for next build or patch, they don't wait for developers response. They just go and talk about stuff they have no idea about. 

    When the NDA is used as intended however, you will see changes throughout the testing process, each build will usually improve some things, perhaps break others. That's how coding generally works. You iterate and adjust until you have product stable enough that it can be shipped. 

    Without NDA, you'd see millions of posts on different forums complainign about stuff that perhaps a week later becomes irrelevant because it was fixed/changed. But the posts stay, and they are providing false information to people without first-hand experience which may hurt the game's sales when it eventually launches. 

     

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