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Vocal negative minority
jusomdude
Member RarePosts: 2,706
How much of an impact do they have on the success of new games? I think they can have a pretty big impact on the easily influenced players. They don't even have to only spew their garbage on forums, they can also have an impact through in game chat.
Would some games that have shut down or gone free to play have had different outcomes if it wasn't for the negativity of the vocal minority?
Comments
The vocal negative minority exists everywhere in life. People tend to be more motivated to speak up when they feel slighted than when they are content.
Same goes for me. Typically I don't even bother to check game forums unless there is something pissing me off.
IMHO I don't think that's true
MMO's these days give everyone plenty of chances to get a good test drive. Anyone who's interested in the game, or just wanting to see if the game fail or be a success will try it. You will always have the flaming on the boards and that has a lot more to do with the quality of the poster's then it does the quality of the game.
In the end, a game will live or die on it's own merits.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
I dont think they effect it much at all because as you have said they are the minority and while they remain so they are largely ignored by the developers and the majority of forum browsers for what ever game they are negative towards whether or not if there is reason to their negativity in the first place. When they become the majority is when people take notice and when they have a chance to effect sales/subs is when the developers take notice. Also remember that only about 25% of a mmos player base will actually visit forums and follow posts.
I'm not going to agree with your vocal minority assessment. Pick a specific incident and discuss it.
Word of mouth can definitely impact a game/company. SOE is just recently (past year or two) not being completely destroyed in discussions for what they did to SWG and it's players. Try asking Smed or any of the dev's who were part of that incident (if able to) if word of mouth carries any weight. I bet they've been asked a few million times. Literally.
I wouldn't touch a SOE game for about 5 years maybe a little longer after what they did. A SOE game wasn't even an option for me. I would read SOE and that was it. Didn't care what it was. Even if they were just publishers and not the developers. If it had a SOE tag. Big middle finger.
I was horrified that a company would do that to their playerbase. It's probably more or less how they went about it which was really bad. It mortified me. While legally they can do so, It surprised me that a company would do such a thing. I felt for the people who invested so much time and effort into the game. To have been deceived into an expansion and then have the game completely overhauled into something different with little to no warning. As a MMO gamer I felt for those who were their customers. As a mmo gamer how could I not? Pick a incident and discuss it. Seems like you are trying to broadly paint everything into a narrow p.o.v.
Had SOE handled that transition better. Things might have turned out differently. They deserved ever ounce of flak that they received for what they did to their customers. SOE has done some good things for mmo's as well since then. But that incident has forever cast a shadow over that company, even today. They saved at least one mmo that was dead out the gate and even improved it a little.
The problem is that it has a snowball effect. One or a few guys in a group of friends doesn't like something, and complain about it to the rest of their friends, then they might start parroting it to other friends, then them to more friends and it just continues downhill.
It's no secret that word of mouth can have a big impact on a product, whether or not it's online.
On a new game? Really? When almost anyone can get into open beta and try it for themselves? Who is going to spend hours checking forums but not take 5 minutes to apply for open beta?
Also that "garbage spewing" vocal minority has been correct about every major AAA release for the last 9 years as the vocal minority turns into the vocal majority several months after launch.
And no, no game ever went f2p because someone said something bad about it on a forum. Games go f2p because enough people who were subscribed took the time to cancel their subscription. The vast majority of the time because they were dissatisfied with the in game experience. I would go on to bet that far more people have canceled subs because of financial distress than because someone said something mean on a forum.
It doesn't have as big of an impact as forum goers think. Your avg player has never heard of the f2p/p2p argument nor do they care about it. They don't know that EA is evil, SWTOR is the worst game ever that ESO isn't skyrim and is a huge disappointment...etc etc etc.
They just play mmos and avoid general chat.
The vocal minority probably have a pretty big impact on people who visit forums a lot and don't know enough to laugh at the doom and gloom types.
I guess in that case you should pick a specific incident to discuss and see what people say. You can't label every incident as a vocal minority snowballing out of control. SOE deserved the flak that they received. If's not to say people didn't like the game after but the sheer act of what they did and how they did it. I question anyone as a gamer who was actually playing mmo's back then and then says it had no impact on the way that they viewed SOE. Even if they still played SOE games.
For something to snowball completely out of control there has to be some truth to it I think. Otherwise it won't take off. Though I do agree people seem to jump on the bandwagon of hate at times just because it's popular. They put very little thought into why they dislike a certain company other than hearsay.
That's pretty much exactly the problem right there, how does a minority become the majority? Most likely by being influenced by the minority.
Not really. It's because after launch for the first time people actually have a chance to play all the games content for an extended period of time.
@Robokapp
Right about what? Most of the things I see people bashing games for are subjective.
Not much.
I mean all you have to do is just look at GW2 when it was released - if this was truly the case that game won't have survive this long. So much people was hating on that game.
It is really not that much. The ones that really got affected significantly are in fact are not very good games in the first place or there are elements in them that are really affecting the whole experience.
If it was decent, people plays it and will like it, it is very hard to form a justifable negative opinion without people seeing through it. Besides, people cares more about actual professional reviews more than people ranting.
SWTOR is also proof that word of mouth doesn't always carry as much weight as people like to think. Even if they do have some valid points. This sites community would have had people believing SWTOR was a complete failure last year. I believed it. Not that I really cared or looked into it. I was playing other stuff. Since SWG though I kind of trusted this communities consensus. I don't anymore after seeing how wrong it was in respect towards SWTOR.
The amazing thing was how far from the truth the spammed threads were. SWTOR had issues no doubt. But dam.. I loathe cash shops who try and sell one the most basic of features. More so than I loathe lottery based cash shops systems. I think this had the biggest impact of all. Plenty of stuff to charge for other than nickle and dime on the most basic features.
This is why I say you can't broadly talk about this and a specific incident should be named.
If the game is good , no matter how many bad posts about it from "minority" people will keep buy it and pay for the sub . And the game will keep it grow.
"Some games that have shut down or gone free to play"
Because they aren't good enough for "majority" keep spend money on them.
Snow ball effect only work from high to low .
It mean the game quality is low from start so the snow ball start to roll , become big from just little.
If it's a good game which higher or same with "majority" want, then the little "minority" ball can't roll . it will stand in one place or just gone.
Well a company that got killed by their game vs one that still brings in hefty profits seems sorta like apples & oranges to me, but w/e.
Failure in terms of SWToR is also pretty subjective.