To say "Blizzard's PR should be like this!" and point to a Beta that is structred tottally differently (a competitive, online shooted as aposed to a coopertive RPG) just doesn't work IMHO.
Another good point. I'm not really saying Blizzard should be any particular way, and especially not specifically like any one company. I just think some elements of Blizzard PR are not working, and I wanted to find out what they can do better by comparing them to specific communications by other companies.
Do I wish they would tell me when waves of invites are going to REALLY start going out? Yes. But if they do tell us "this Friday at 4pm" and then nothing happened they would have to explain what went wrong.
Exactly, they purposefully avoid accountability to their own customers.. which in itself is ok.. but they way they portray that idea to the community (in my opinion) comes off as arrogant and obtuse.
This is where Blizzard sets themselves ahead in quality, but behind in PR. Let's think it though, though. Is their philosophy working?
The idea is, "Hey, if we don't tell them a release date for X, they won't get disappointed and grill us!" Thing is, it doesn't work like that! The community at large still gets really angry when Blizzard takes a long time, and they get super-pissed when *perceived* delays happen (such as DH resource re-write, rune re-writes, etc). They don't tell us it's a delay, but we assume it is.. Because SOMETHING is making this take a long time, and we don't have any useful info as to why that is.
Blizzard LETS US ASSUME THE WORST.. and often, we humans tend to do that.
The negative response is almost exacerbated by the fact that we have NO idea what time impact anything is going to have, because Blizzard, in trying to "save us from the disappointment of a missed deadline" is, in fact, letting us assume the worst.
It's not that we can't handle delays. What we can't handle is being manipulated and mis-directed, which is the only tool to use when hiding things like dates from your customers.
I can't question their game quality, it's obviously top-rate. But since they refuse to talk straight with their loyal customers, I can't have much good to say about their PR.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
Are you positive you wanna bring up Valve to a PR debate? Like, really? It's one of the companies with the most amount of delays and problems in PRs to date.
[...]
But I wouldn't at all put those other companies in a pedestal and pretend they're much better. Those a far from good examples of great PR to me.
Although I agree with everything you said in your post, I think you're misunderstanding the point of this thread.
All I'd like to do is provide shining examples of good communication and PR. I'm actually trying to remove the particular quotes from their context, because as you fairly point out, no company is perfect. But if we compile a big list of "wins" and use our imagination to interpolate, we can get a really clear picture of ideal PR and fan communication.
Although there may be no company that does a satisfactory job in the eyes of the hungry gamer, if we set our own expectations as a community based on evidence, everyone wins.
Gaming companies deserve respect for the daunting task of not only developing complex products, but managing a particularly bitchy customer base. The way we can best help gaming companies help us is to communicate our expectations clearly, with more evidence and less emotion.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
I've been pretty vocal about two things. One, my love for Blizzard games. Two, my distaste for the way Blizzard manages their community and PR. Though in some cases people act really spoiled, there's a simple credo I follow in my work when dealing with customers:
If they are always complaining, you're either setting the right expectations and not meeting them, or you're not setting the right expectations.
I just saw this post on the dota site. I was blown away not only by how responsive they are to their fan base, but how excellent their wording is.. just makes you feel good, like they are making this game to please YOU, and not themselves.
If you find any examples of great PR, post them here!
We’ve been a bit quiet lately. As always, we learn a lot whenever we put something out and get feedback from you all. Showing Dota 2 to the world at The International gave us a lot of feedback to chew through, and the many recent forum threads talking about the information leaking out of the beta has added to the pile. After a bunch of thinking, we’ve decided to change our plans a little.
Our original plan was to spend the next year or so in beta, adding new features and slowly growing the number of heroes until we reached a level of parity with Dota 1, at which point we’d release Dota 2 to the world. But the feedback we’re seeing everywhere is that people just want to play it, even though there’s still a ton of heroes yet to be implemented. We’ve also seen that the folks who are already in the beta are chomping at the bit to show everyone else some of the fun games they’ve had. So we decided our original plan was dumb.
Welcome to the new plan: We’re going to take the current version of Dota 2, which has The International set of heroes, and get it out there as fast as we can. We’ve still got some work to do in a couple of areas, so we’ll be keeping it invite-only for a (hopefully short) period of time. But there’ll be no restrictions on what players can do with it – they can release screenshots, make movies, shoutcast matches, write guides, publicly make fun of our HUD, or anything else their hearts desire. While they do that, we’ll be shipping regular updates with more heroes, new features we’ve been working on, and improvements on the existing content as we get more and more feedback.
What does this mean for you? It means it’s even more important that you get on the list that we’ll be inviting from. If you’re talented, you could take a shot at winning an invite in the GosuGamers competition or the Playdota contest. Once you’ve got your hands on the game, feel free to talk about it however you’d like – we’re excited to see what you’ll produce.
In the meantime, we’re going to be ratcheting this blog up a little too, so you can expect some more regular posting from us.
almost as sad as taking the time to insult those people.
-Thomas Jefferson
Yeah I agree that wouldn't be fair.. That's not exactly what I was trying to do, but a point-to-point comparison is kind of inevitable I suppose.
Another good point. I'm not really saying Blizzard should be any particular way, and especially not specifically like any one company. I just think some elements of Blizzard PR are not working, and I wanted to find out what they can do better by comparing them to specific communications by other companies.
Exactly, they purposefully avoid accountability to their own customers.. which in itself is ok.. but they way they portray that idea to the community (in my opinion) comes off as arrogant and obtuse.
This is where Blizzard sets themselves ahead in quality, but behind in PR. Let's think it though, though. Is their philosophy working?
The idea is, "Hey, if we don't tell them a release date for X, they won't get disappointed and grill us!" Thing is, it doesn't work like that! The community at large still gets really angry when Blizzard takes a long time, and they get super-pissed when *perceived* delays happen (such as DH resource re-write, rune re-writes, etc). They don't tell us it's a delay, but we assume it is.. Because SOMETHING is making this take a long time, and we don't have any useful info as to why that is.
Blizzard LETS US ASSUME THE WORST.. and often, we humans tend to do that.
The negative response is almost exacerbated by the fact that we have NO idea what time impact anything is going to have, because Blizzard, in trying to "save us from the disappointment of a missed deadline" is, in fact, letting us assume the worst.
It's not that we can't handle delays. What we can't handle is being manipulated and mis-directed, which is the only tool to use when hiding things like dates from your customers.
I can't question their game quality, it's obviously top-rate. But since they refuse to talk straight with their loyal customers, I can't have much good to say about their PR.
-Thomas Jefferson
Although I agree with everything you said in your post, I think you're misunderstanding the point of this thread.
All I'd like to do is provide shining examples of good communication and PR. I'm actually trying to remove the particular quotes from their context, because as you fairly point out, no company is perfect. But if we compile a big list of "wins" and use our imagination to interpolate, we can get a really clear picture of ideal PR and fan communication.
Although there may be no company that does a satisfactory job in the eyes of the hungry gamer, if we set our own expectations as a community based on evidence, everyone wins.
Gaming companies deserve respect for the daunting task of not only developing complex products, but managing a particularly bitchy customer base. The way we can best help gaming companies help us is to communicate our expectations clearly, with more evidence and less emotion.
-Thomas Jefferson
If they are always complaining, you're either setting the right expectations and not meeting them, or you're not setting the right expectations.
I just saw this post on the dota site. I was blown away not only by how responsive they are to their fan base, but how excellent their wording is.. just makes you feel good, like they are making this game to please YOU, and not themselves.
If you find any examples of great PR, post them here!
Source: http://blog.dota2.com/
Edit 1: Here's how you explicitly and clearly communicate about a beta:
http://www.battlefield.com/battlefield3/1/beta
-Thomas Jefferson