Flipside: By Julie  Whitefeather

Flipside - last week I covered the opposite side of this issue.  That article, if you recall, was about  “SOE bashing”  and some of the people who do it simply because everyone else is doing it, following along like a sea of lemmings, letting someone else spoon feed them their opinion. This week we look at the opposite side of the issue. 

“Speaking at a Goldman Sachs investor conference this week, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said that just establishing even footing with Blizzard’s titan MMOG would require a half-billion dollar investment, and even then the outcome would be far from certain.”  - Activision CEO talks Take-Two takeovers, $500M WOW-killers  by Tom Magrino, Gamespot News

Flipside - last week I covered the opposite side of this issue.  That article, if you recall, was about  “SOE bashing”  and some of the people who do it simply because everyone else is doing it, following along like a sea of lemmings, letting someone else spoon feed them their opinion. This week we look at the opposite side of the issue. 

Grandmother would have called it “grandstanding”.

What do I mean by that? Read the quote from Gamespot News Above.  Does the Activision CEO really believe that “establishing even footing with Blizzard’s titan” would require half a billion dollars?  If so, as Darren from Common Sense gamer said of this issue on his show “Shut Up We’re Talking” I want some of whatever Bobby Kotick is smoking - he is certainly high on something and if he is serious about his statement that something he is high on is himself.

And that, my friends, is grandstanding.

Whether he was showboating for investors, employees or competitors, back in high school we had another name for it: we called it “blowing smoke” and in this case he is blowing it out his posterior.

What this is indicative of, however, is the attitude that large gaming companies develop once the gamers who developed a company fall by the wayside and the “suits” start to take over.  I have discussed marketing in this column before.  As I have always said, the point to marketing is making your product meet the needs of the client, and not the other way around.  What happens when the creative minds are cast aside in favor of the inflictive mind of the businessman?

What happens, my friends, is that companies, no matter how well intentioned at first, begin to forget who really pays the bills - the customers.

When this happens it is just wrong. It is, perhaps, indicative of MMO gamers that we expect a certain degree of access to a company. We expect feedback from the developers and in the very least from the community manager.  (after all isn’t that what community managers are for?) Yes, it is true, that when I go out and buy an major appliance, say a washing machine, I don’t expect the people at Maytag to come around and give me their input on the laundry.  But when we buy an MMO it is a whole different story. Why?

When we buy an MMO and subscribe to the game we are not just buying the game - we ARE BUYING A SERVICE.

Say it with me SOE and all you other companies out there: BUYING A SERVICE.

When a company begins to hold itself aloof of the player base the service that sets apart an MMO from a console game or a multiplayer game disappears.  On a recent edition of Massively Online Gamer Ryan Verniere (one of the shows hosts) told the audience that he felt that MMOs were NOT the future of gaming. Whether or not he was blowing smoke, he may not be far from wrong.

Whether it is the CEO of Activision blowing smoke out his posterior for investors, or an employee at SOE, if you put yourself up on a pedestal that becomes a very dangerous place to be.  When all is said and done the simple fact of the matter is that the entire MMO industry is a luxury industry.  As the economy and service to customers decline, even the Blizzard Gorilla could end up shoveling excrement for a living.

Not long ago, as well all know by now, SOE forced the founder of “EQ2 Flames” (who calls himself “LFG”) to leave their “Influencers Program”.  If the goal of the influencers program is to take the pulse of the community, by handling things the way they did - by holding themselves aloof of the community, they managed to alienate a large portion of their player base. If their goal of the influencers program is to hope to “influence” the community through individuals they had better pray that their goal doesn’t work: they won’t like the influence that LFG has now.

Before all this happened the Influencers Program could easily be viewed in a similar manner to the “high end” or “Hard Core” raiding guilds that spend their time (what little they have after raiding) kidding themselves think that the set trends we all follow. But by handling kicking LFG to the curb SOE assured that he would have influence on the community - and they are going to have to work hard to undo that influence.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather