Comments on: Are Official Forums a Necessary Evil?

By: Nerfbat » 3 Things Official/Unofficial Forums Do

Nerfbat » 3 Things Official/Unofficial Forums Do — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:44:31 +0000

[...] innocent post declaring official forums a necessary evil led to some controversy. Garthilk, a guy who actually runs very good fansites like WHA, basically [...]

By: Ryan Shwayder

Ryan Shwayder — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:05:13 +0000

Garthilk:
Part of the problem is poor official websites. Fansites sometimes don’t easily portray developer involvement, but they usually do.

EQII.com: It died from both. For EverQuest II, we launched official forums well before the game came out. Prior to that, EQII.com’s forums were the unofficial community forums. But, that shifted almost entirely over to the official forums when they came out. If some other people had volunteered to help with EQII.com after I left to work at SOE, and they refocused the entire site, it could have stayed around. But that’s a lot of work for little payoff (as is any fansite).

What are 3 things that I believe can only be done on official forums? Hmm, good question…

I’ll answer that one in a new post!

By: Garthilk

Garthilk — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:29:16 +0000

Ryan,

Are you talking about a developers official site being lackluster in that it doesn’t show what’s going on in the community and their involvement in external sites? Or that a fansite doesn’t easily portray the developers involvement?

In your example with EQII, which was the cause of death? Did the developer cause the death of the fansite, or was the fansite the cause of it’s own death?

Lastly, what are 3 things that you belive can only be done with official forums?

By: Ryan Shwayder

Ryan Shwayder — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:13:47 +0000

Garthilk:
You knew how to track dev posts because you’re a gamer, and you were fully entrenched in that community. It took ME a couple hours to figure out where to go to find where devs were posting. Imagine if it was a new MMO player–they’d just think the developers never communicated, and they’d have no idea how to get in touch with the community outside of the game. You have to design for certain edge cases, and new players are one of the most important ones to design for if you want your game to be successful.

That said, you should never stop posting on fansite forums. Some fansites are built on that communication existing (though I’d argue they really need to offer more than just that after launch), and it can be a death blow. I really like for other fansite forum communities to exist because it’s a place to get unfiltered feedback (and, believe it or not, sometimes a better signal-to-noise ratio). I especially love forums for classes, races, servers, etc.

Take EQII.com as an example for what can happen: I ran that site with a couple buddies before EverQuest II came out. After I started working at SOE, there weren’t enough people to keep the actual site updated with new features and such, so the only thing that it did was give news and provide a forum… then the official forums showed up, and even though Moorgard and I both posted there sometimes, it killed the site.

By: Garthilk

Garthilk — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:31:13 +0000

I hate to dissagree,

In fact, Warhammer Online is one of the best examples of why you do not need official forums. During the launch, the external community flourished. Developers could post at 3-4 different fansites and the developer posts could be tracked and read all in one place. So regardless of where developers posted, customers knew what developers were saying at X fansite, Y fansite, and Q fansite. You can stop fooling yourself If you think that Mythic’s sudden change to official forums has anything to do with seeing the light.

By: waldo

waldo — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:08:17 +0000

IMO when one creates a forum with a negative mindset, one will simply reap what one sows.

“Back in the day” when I admin’ed an 80k user forum for a large game company, I actually enjoyed it. It was a nice place, people had fun believe it or not. And I think that’s because from the get go it was meant to be a ‘good thing’ as opposed to a ‘necessary evil’.

One should also ask if the “problem customers” are a result of a bad game, bad service or some other failing in the product.

By: JuJutsu

JuJutsu — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 01:20:25 +0000

Well they’re not my customers. I think the bias and disrespect is generally well deserved. Dan Gray thinks that “…you generally have the people who have used forums before, who are most enthused by the game, or who have even been in similar communities previously. They are the people that generally will have played other MMOs, and have a greater experience of MMO design and how to give feedback in a format that can be digested.” With all due respect I think Dan is delusional and that the nice people he describes avoid game forums like the plague. Gaming forums are pretty much like the rest of the internet but with a worse class of people because the porn sites get a lot of the non-trolls.

http://digg.com/design/Greater_Internet_Dickwad_Theory

By: waldo

waldo — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:33:05 +0000

I think you make your first mistake by referring to them as a “Necessary Evil”. From the get go you’ve walked in with a bias and disrespect for your customers. If you create a forum with that attitude (“necessary evil”) you’ll get what you ask for.

Might as well post, “Hey we really hate this thing but it’s a necessary evil. I guess it makes you guys happy so have fun. Oh and don’t forget our ‘Because we can so shut up’ moderation policies before posting”

By: makkaio

makkaio — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:14:46 +0000

@Dan Gray – I wrote my comments early in the morning without first having coffee. So I kind of mashed some thoughts together there that shouldn’t be read too literally. However, I still believe forums should be used as a community building tool and not be used as your guidebook to designing your game. And in some cases, over the twenty some odd MMO forums I’ve been a part of, it has. And those games, sadly, are not doing well or have closed up shop completely.

Of course, there is going to be discussion about the design of your game. Ideas will come and go. The feedback is invaluable. And like you said, CMs and developers *should* be smart enough to sift through the crap. Or take the issues in stride.

Developer interaction and moderation needs to be done right. Everyone loves it when developers interact with the community. Even if it a developer is talking about how the donut he had didn’t quite cut it for breakfast. If that wasn’t true, things like Twitter and blogs wouldn’t have such the popularity they do.

Here is the problem with allowing a vocal minority to influence and take over your message boards. And by vocal minority, I’m not talking about the whole player population. I’m talking about the fraction of a % of the 10-20% number you used for message board population. Say your game has 200,000 players. Then 10% would be 20,000 players. Say a fraction of that, 200 players, hates an entire combat system and jumps on board a thread. And the developers bend to some major changes. You’ve just let .001% of your player base change a major element of the game. Problem is, this has happened more than once.

Here’s what else happens. Players start figuring out they can influence and bully the development. Now you create this feeling that the development is over responsive. This notion caused two separate bands of players in two different games I just happened to fall in with to take up projects of drafting extensive system ideas and submitting them to developers. When they didn’t get feedback like the development was so readily giving to the vocal minority on the boards, they were put off and quit the games. That vocal minority tends to be viewed as elitist. Not the greatest way to build community.

Sorry…more rambling on my part. LOL. But, I love message boards when they are done right and I hate to see any game suffer when they’re not.

By: Feedback Methods « Biff The Understudy

Feedback Methods « Biff The Understudy — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:17:43 +0000

[...] Design, Industry | Tags: community management, Game Design, official forums, Ryan Shwayder In a post by Ryan Shwayder on official forums being a necessary evil, I came across this comment from a user [...]