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A Day with a Media Badge - MMORPG.com

SBFordSBFord Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
edited January 2019 in News & Features Discussion

imageA Day with a Media Badge - MMORPG.com

Red Thomas writes about the days leading up to PAX South from the perspective of someone attending with a media badge. Have you ever wondered what these events were like from the journalistic side? Red pulls the sheets back for you and reveals the deepest darkest secrets of the biz!

Read the full story here



¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 


Comments

  • SamhaelSamhael Member RarePosts: 1,495
    Excellent article, thanks! It's not the usual type of event article and stands out the more for it. This was an excellent insight to what you guys go through and how you approach it. I doubt as many go into these things quite as orderly/logically as you do though!
    Red_Thomas
  • Red_ThomasRed_Thomas Member RarePosts: 666
    Samhael said:
    Excellent article, thanks! It's not the usual type of event article and stands out the more for it. This was an excellent insight to what you guys go through and how you approach it. I doubt as many go into these things quite as orderly/logically as you do though!
    Well, that's probably my Army Intel background coming through.

    My old Command Sergeant Major used to tell us that he knew we were going to get into trouble.  He wasn't going to waste his breath telling us not to, but we had each better take a battle buddy down with us (because we weren't supposed to do anything stupid on our own) and we'd better have a plan to establish dominance quickly when we got arrested for whatever it was.
    Blacklabelcali
  • AlbatroesAlbatroes Member LegendaryPosts: 7,671
    I honestly couldn't do an on-site job like this just to hear developers/publishers trying to hype a game that may or may not come out about 50% of the way it was represented at one of these events at 'launch.'
  • Red_ThomasRed_Thomas Member RarePosts: 666
    Albatroes said:
    I honestly couldn't do an on-site job like this just to hear developers/publishers trying to hype a game that may or may not come out about 50% of the way it was represented at one of these events at 'launch.'
    I would say that what you're talking about is more a problem with perception.   It's pretty rare for games to launch and not meet the vast majority of what the developers described in their pitch to the public.   That's not necessarily true of design docs and investor pitches, but my experience with devs has been that they try very hard to do what they say publicly.

    I think the problem is usually what the developers say, versus what people hear.  It's a problem that effects me, too.  We all come into it with pre-conceived notions and then on very small amounts of information, we extrapolate these ideas about what the developers are trying to do.  We're usually just wrong.

    In part, that's because devs are used to talking with other devs, so they use the vernacular they're familiar with, and that translates poorly when many gamers hear it.  Usually because we tend to have these great ideas about what they COULD do, but don't really grasp the technical limitations.

    Of course, technical limitations play a part, as well.  Often devs have an idea for how they want to do something when they say they're implementing some mechanic.  That bleeds into how they talk about it.  Then they find when building it that they can't do it the way they intended.  At that point, they redesign and implement the same thing a different way, but because it works differently than they'd planned, some gamers feel there's some inconsistency there.  In reality, they promised a mechanic and they delivered on a mechanic.

    It's sort of a programmer thing, I think.  Anytime you start a program, you know something is possible and even generally how you plan to do it, but everything changes as you actually putting hands to keyboard.   Everyone who has dealt with software development knows that and it changes how they listen to things.   You hear the intended result as a definite and all the how-to-get-there stuff automatically gets tagged with a (if it works) in your mind.

    That's how I approach this stuff.   I'm listening for the design goals, not the implementation.   I'll ask about and write about the implementation, but I only ever hold anyone accountable for design goals.  I'm definitely interested in implementation and will even spend a lot of time talking with them about it, but it always just gets filed as a maybe in my head.  The definites are those design ideas for general systems.   Eg, player economy, PVP with restrictions, ect.   Stuff like that.
    TacticalZombeh
  • AmatheAmathe Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
    PAX, I read somewhere, banned booth models. This would have been so much cooler before then.

    EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests

  • Red_ThomasRed_Thomas Member RarePosts: 666
    Amathe said:
    PAX, I read somewhere, banned booth models. This would have been so much cooler before then.
    That's why they call them "ambassadors," now.
    Amathe
  • WizardryWizardry Member LegendaryPosts: 19,332
    edited January 2019
    Except it is really hard or i guess really easy for devs to do as they say since they never say anything but VAGUE comments like,......expect a BIG patch to come or we have great content coming !!,you know nothing definitive that we can hold them to their word,just vague stuff.

    I am sure it has happened once or twice but the ONLY developer i have ever notices to lay down a strict foundation of incoming content is Square Enix,all the rest just BS us with the typical vague comments.

    Ask for free stuff,get exclusive interviews,pat each other on the back,deceive the gamer's.Funny because just yesterday someone actually tried to get smart with me about all the people making money off of games but NEVER claiming sponsored.There are sneaky ways around it and that has been the gaming industry the lat 10 years VERY sneaky but leaning towards downright dishonest.

    PAX and ALL of the gaming shows are nothing more than $$$$ events that do NOTHING for the gamer's but only for the businesses.What is worse when we see self promotion events ,like the Blizzcon where they que the crowd to cheer everything they say.In real life outside the business of gaming,NOBODY cheers for commercials,instead we go to the fridge while they are on or flip the channel.

    Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.

  • Red_ThomasRed_Thomas Member RarePosts: 666
    Wizardry said:
    Except it is really hard or i guess really easy for devs to do as they say since they never say anything but VAGUE comments like,......expect a BIG patch to come or we have great content coming !!,you know nothing definitive that we can hold them to their word,just vague stuff.

    I am sure it has happened once or twice but the ONLY developer i have ever notices to lay down a strict foundation of incoming content is Square Enix,all the rest just BS us with the typical vague comments.

    Ask for free stuff,get exclusive interviews,pat each other on the back,deceive the gamer's.Funny because just yesterday someone actually tried to get smart with me about all the people making money off of games but NEVER claiming sponsored.There are sneaky ways around it and that has been the gaming industry the lat 10 years VERY sneaky but leaning towards downright dishonest.

    PAX and ALL of the gaming shows are nothing more than $$$$ events that do NOTHING for the gamer's but only for the businesses.What is worse when we see self promotion events ,like the Blizzcon where they que the crowd to cheer everything they say.In real life outside the business of gaming,NOBODY cheers for commercials,instead we go to the fridge while they are on or flip the channel.
    That's a bit of a stretch.  For one and as we've seen in this very thread, people will very often take things developers say either out of context or just misunderstand them.  That results in frustrated gamers who feel they were cheated somehow and that's not good for the game.

    Also, there's just the general lack of anything to say.  I'm not sure how much experience you have with programming, but I've never seen anything come out the way it went in.  You often have an idea of what you want to accomplish and general thoughts on how, but when it comes to actually laying the code down, things change.   Developers are usually professional enough to know what they think will happen is often not what happens, so they know any super detailed information they could give you will be wrong before long.

    Like the game or not, that's why Shroud of the Avatar was such a great game to follow.  The devs posted everything short of the actual JIRA tickets, and sometimes even those got out.  If you cared about that game, you could follow virtually every aspect of development from beginning to end, including several shifts in direction when encountering roadblocks.

    There's no great conspiracy to deceive gamers.   Maybe a couple decades ago when it was still possible, but in the age of social media, streaming, and lots of lets-play videos...   That's just not a good business decision, even if it were really possible.
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