Return Fire

The Alex Rodberg/Homeworld II message-board fooferaw that Tom wrote about last week is remarkable only in that people are discussing it. This incident warranted a lengthy thread on a private forum I frequent, along with much hand-wringing about the rudeness of hardcore gamers. Why? Interactions like this are the norm, not the exception. Has any forum, anywhere, been friendly to a developer or PR representative for longer than a few weeks?

Usually, whenever someone in the know arrives on a message board or a usenet group, the initial response is ecstatic. Everyone thanks the person for coming out, for having the guts to face the frothing mob, etc. Then he or she takes a little too long to answer a question. Rising criticism then begins courteously but soon descends to a level where everyone is calling the company rep a PR shill just trying to drum up sales. Cue the expletives and the immediate disappearance of the rep to greener pastures.

I agree with Tom that the hardcore types are largely to blame for this, though I also cut them some slack. Tom says that buzz is mostly conducted by word of mouth, by friends, and by the press. All of this is true to some degree, although it’s often the few hardcore nuts who get the ball rolling. Yeah, these are “the guys with the loudest mouths,” but they’re also the ones with the power to drive the industry. Especially concerning smaller games from little-guy developers. Sometimes we owe a debt to the lone goofballs who can’t shut up. Where would Serious Sam be if not for Old Man Murray, for instance? Even Homeworld, big-budget title song by Yes notwithstanding, needed a lot of hardcore support to get off the ground, since it wasn’t exactly the friendliest game of 2000.

Because of this, I think that Tom needs to seriously reconsider the way he commends company representatives for posting on message boards. Alex Rodberg and others may be fantastic people, but they’re still only doing their jobs. They aren’t there out of common courtesy, or a desire to build a hearts-and-flowers game community, or to do Q-and-As with guys named twitchtastic. They’re there because they want to spread the good word about their game to people who matter, so that sales stay high and they get to keep their jobs. And they’ve gotta learn to take the roses with the brickbats, no matter how obnoxious some zealots can become.