Boy, this is a delicate issue far as I'm concerned. There are certainly times the minority is simply unrealistic in their concerns or what they deem to be an issue.
Then there are other times they're simply ahead of the curve. There have been more than a few times I've seen the concern of the vocal minority be ignored and eventually end up being something screamed by the majority. Which at that point can become rather problematic especially if it wasn't taken remotely serious or looked into beforehand.
Kind of a case by case scenario from what I've seen over the years.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
The general rule of thumb with customer complaints for any business is that if one person takes the time to complain about a problem there are ten more that didn't bother to speak up. That vocal minority might just be a majority.
In my opinion the point of view of developers can be way off to the actual game experience. While it is a case by case scenario and a delicate one at that like wicked pointed out. It is a sword which cuts both ways. When an entire community goes ballistic and forum topics have 50+ pages of responses something is up and should be looked into. I have seen examples of this happening and the developers turning a blind eye. I also have seen developers react to said VM and pissing off the majority in the progress. This tells us the process of taking in feedback and translating it into usefull information needs some work.
In the end it is the company producing an MMO and thus also their developers who try to sell us a product. A point which leads to alot of trouble in the exchange of usefull feedback are the promises being made before buying the game. None of us will be satisfied if we buy a car and it turns out to have only three wheels now do we. So by releasing games that are not finished, and there are many examples of that, it is you who try to sell us three wheel cars,
And if we get vocal about it we whine. Ofcourse there are the souls being lost in cyberspace hunting that very same experience they had with their first MMO which they will never find. The ones who think everyone except themselves suck and so on. But what is harmfull to your business is throwing the involved people in the community on the same heap as the lost ones. When this happens to involved people they stop to care, stop their involvement. They will adress the problem in a different manner and simply move on.
So my advice is:
Say what the game will actually be and will not be, avoid terms like next gen we are tired of those because everyone uses them.
Implement criteria to tell trolls, flamers, brats apart from the vocal people standing with both feet in the community and who care about the future of the game (data is the new oil, just determine what you want to find out).
Have a pro active attitude in fixing parts of the game that really don't perform as planned.
Present yourself as an approachable entity and also give a peek on what is happening in development land.
Remember the average age of gamers playing your games is 37 (source: ESA) not 14.
And also as a rule of thumb acknowledge developers are often overly positive about their game, the features or abilities that are implemented in said game. It is in their nature! Because you can't develop cool stuff if you focus on the possible negatives all the time! If changes are nigh impossible to implement due to technical boundaries within the designed framework also mention those. We do read, we do understand it is not feasible to make another game of it.
i think the article overlooks the reality that majority does not create correctness, and that it DOES often require a dynamic few to put things into context, that most people are not aware of. this article, if taken seriously, will only serve to mute the observations of those who forum mods would choose to squelch. a good and intelligent dev team will know when they are hearing pointless negativity and when they are hearing quality suggestions. and, if they are not a good and intelligent dev team, it certainly wont be because of a whiny bunch of forum baners that the game falls apart.
POST MOD EDIT EDIT:
i dont know why this was edited, i didnt break any rules, and i think what i said was valid. The article is trying to create another negative term for people to call eachother. We dont need this.
I agree with Sonya here. There has been more than one instance where I was busy playing a game, and the vocal whineority (who ususally spend more time on the boards than actually playing) cried up a storm until something that was working just fine for the majority was changed. It can be a bit annoying. SWG was famous for listening to the minorty of whiners and where did it get them? yeah, dead.
DAoC, Lineage 2, etc etc still plugging along ignoring everyone they may not post the numbers they did in their prime, but they are still very much alive.
Bottom line; The vocal mionority does way more harm than good in my opinion.
If only the people at Mythic, including Sonya had listened to the vocal minority she decries here perhaps DAOC wouldn't be a dead shell of what was arguably once one of the best PVP MMO's.
In this particular case, I think the minority had a much better handle on how the game should have been developed and this post serves to show how out of touch she and the other folks at Mythic really were.
haha so true, its always easier to biatch about something when it already happened than to accept whats happening now and make the change. .
Boy, this is a delicate issue far as I'm concerned. There are certainly times the minority is simply unrealistic in their concerns or what they deem to be an issue.
Then there are other times they're simply ahead of the curve. There have been more than a few times I've seen the concern of the vocal minority be ignored and eventually end up being something screamed by the majority. Which at that point can become rather problematic especially if it wasn't taken remotely serious or looked into beforehand.
Kind of a case by case scenario from what I've seen over the years.
This. And my take on the article was that this was the point being made. I love and am passionate about games. I've participated in my share of beta tests, and in those, I'm always a very active forum poster, because I am excited by the idea that my thoughts and feedback might, in some small way, help to make the game better. However, I am rarely active in forums once the game goes live, because I get so sick of the high volume of "obnoxious."
For one, some people feel the need to completely shred each other for sharing an opinion, which makes the game's community look like a bunch of socially inept mouth-breathers raised by rabid squirrels. Great way to grow the game, right?
But equally silly (in my opinion), are the posts by George Q. Gamer with the underlying tone that the devs have the ultimate goal of specifically making his entire life a living hell and stealing his cookies. They nerfed *his* class or didn't drop everything to immediately act on *his* comment, so they must hate him, personally, and be planning basement rituals to send their dark minions for his soul.
/eye roll
THAT is the thing that makes it hard for devs (and everyone else!) to take the VM seriously. It should be obvious that devs either want to make a good game because they are passionate about their game, or failing that, they want to make a good game because that's how they make money with which to pay their bills.
People assume their specific concern is the most important issue in the whole game, all other players must agree with them, and if the devs aren't fixing it, it's because they're secretly conducting evil brain chemistry research on what levels of masochism can be willingly endured by the average human. The level of freak-out displayed in conversations about Star Wars Galaxies alone could probably power entire continents. Don't get me wrong; I loved that game and they pretty much effed up a lot of things, but they didn't burn down my house and murder my puppy. At the end of the day, it's a game, and I feel like perhaps some people should consider decaf and/or valium.
So, to sum up...I agree. VMs feel strongly about their games, which is awesome. And if they would speak about it in a rational, respectful tone that recognizes the devs have a lot of things going on at once, people would probably listen to them more often.
I like that Dominus has so many polls on their site. While you still may be attracting mostly the vocal, 'I really am soooo excited about this game' crowd, you often seem to have more poll responses than text responses on a given forum. I try to respond to them all, though I only have a few posts there.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Unfortunately I've seen in alot of message boards posters (not generaly moderators or "community weenies") use the term "Vocal Minority" as the MMO rhetorical equivalent of labeling someone a "Wife Beater". It's become used as an ad hominem designed to invalidate the opinion of the person being labeled as unimportant and therefore not worthy of even considering the content or the relative merit of thier position, regardless of what that opinion is.
I kind of think it should be the gaming equivalent of Godwins Law. The first person to accuse someone else of being a "Vocal Minority" automaticaly forfiets the debate.
- Most people who fall back on the term have little factual basis for determining what may or may not be a majority/minority opinion. Even companies themselves don't always have a good handle on the preferences of thier target audiences...not unless they've put significant effort into researching said preference...and sometimes even then not.
- When dealing with factual questions as opposed to simple audience preferences, there isn't neccessarly any correlation between what is popular and what is correct. For example, if someone tells you that they can break the account security on your login system...it doesn't matter if 99 percent of the people think they are wrong...if they actualy show you working proof that it can be done, then you'd be foolish to ignore it regardless of what others might think...because eventualy someone else, far less forthright is apt to figure that out as well.
Sounds like someone got their favorite game "picked on" and now they're vewy vewy angwy.
So If someone posts a problem, by the OP's definition they are part of the vocal minority just for posting and should be ignored. If they don't post they remain safe and snug in the majority but the problem doesn't go away. Hooray for the status quo!
Kind of an amusing post Sanya. Since no one ever listened to the vocal minority at DAoC, where nerfing classes and abilities into oblivion was SOP. And of course the famous Trials of Atlantis fiasco that did a major deflate on the playerbase. Sometimes the vocal minority is screaming for a darn good reason and ignoring them is the wrong move.
I wouldn't put it exactly the same as you, but I did find it funny that she would post this semi-rant. Come to think of it, wasn't her last post on here something of a similar: "if you were in CS in a game company you'd understand more" post? Or maybe something about how to be a good CS rep or something.
In case you read my comment Sanya, I appreciated your hours toiling over trolls in your DAOC days. Many times I recall waiting to see what info you had to share with the community. So for that, thank you. I think you have some good insight on many occasions, but this article seems a little bland.
Vocal Minority= Dr King, Rosa Parks, Elizabeth Stanton, Fredrick Douglas, etc...
(no sarcasm)
There is a reason why we may need to stop to listen to those marginalized, and minimized due to their percieved deviance.
Sometimes they can tell us more about ourselves than all of us can say about them...
Case in Point: Fox News ( they rule the majority in cable news land) Should we hold all of journalism to their standards and belittle those who go against their propaganda ridden, context twisting, emotionally amplifying diatribe?
To the caterpillar it is the end of the world, to the master, it is a butterfly.
My problem with labelling people a "vocal minority" is that there's no such thing as a "vocal majority." Just a silent majority. You can assume the majority are happily playing, but it could also be true that they silently quit, or they're silently about to. Just seems a bit foolish to write off the vocal minority, when you don't know whether they're really so much of a minority or just the only ones being vocal.
Best bet is just to think about what they're saying, instead of trying to figure out how much of a minority they really are. Instead of dismissing complaints out of hand, decide for yourselves whether they have a point or not. Minority or not, sometimes they really kinda do.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
First the Apples to Pears thing you mentioned: Thing is Developers and games come along and think this new and ideal thing would be perfect to their game then you come along and have things like......Trials of Atlantis in DAoC, NGE in SWG, Cataclysm in WoW, Trammel in UO, and umpteen other bad decision alot of games make. There are ways to means test a new idal, just freaking use it instead of throwing the community a curve ball.
Secondly we might be the Vocal Minority but you do know the laws of statistics and averages then right? Basically if many someones are vocal about particular issues you can damn well expect that a majority of people would agree if given a scientific poll.
Lastly, Developers, Studios, community relations gurus need to understand that because soemone is Vocal it isnt bad it means we are passionate about the game. Use that model of free advertisement and bottle it up and for heaves sake dont make a idiotic rant like this one when 99% of every freaking MMO built over the last 7 years is designed with a clear lack of innovation and lets not even get into the whole "I built a MMO that caters to less then 10% of the average MMO player" You know the whole "raid or Die" menatality that it seems liek every game company designs for which has been proven time and time again that less then 10% of any given playerbase will complete.
So in conclusion I'll quit being a minority when you start deeveloping a game for the majority. All in all it is what Themepark WoW clones are trying to do right?
Playing: GW2 Waiting on: TESO Next Flop: Planetside 2 Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
Comments
Boy, this is a delicate issue far as I'm concerned. There are certainly times the minority is simply unrealistic in their concerns or what they deem to be an issue.
Then there are other times they're simply ahead of the curve. There have been more than a few times I've seen the concern of the vocal minority be ignored and eventually end up being something screamed by the majority. Which at that point can become rather problematic especially if it wasn't taken remotely serious or looked into beforehand.
Kind of a case by case scenario from what I've seen over the years.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
wicked yea thats true
The general rule of thumb with customer complaints for any business is that if one person takes the time to complain about a problem there are ten more that didn't bother to speak up. That vocal minority might just be a majority.
In my opinion the point of view of developers can be way off to the actual game experience. While it is a case by case scenario and a delicate one at that like wicked pointed out. It is a sword which cuts both ways. When an entire community goes ballistic and forum topics have 50+ pages of responses something is up and should be looked into. I have seen examples of this happening and the developers turning a blind eye. I also have seen developers react to said VM and pissing off the majority in the progress. This tells us the process of taking in feedback and translating it into usefull information needs some work.
In the end it is the company producing an MMO and thus also their developers who try to sell us a product. A point which leads to alot of trouble in the exchange of usefull feedback are the promises being made before buying the game. None of us will be satisfied if we buy a car and it turns out to have only three wheels now do we. So by releasing games that are not finished, and there are many examples of that, it is you who try to sell us three wheel cars,
And if we get vocal about it we whine. Ofcourse there are the souls being lost in cyberspace hunting that very same experience they had with their first MMO which they will never find. The ones who think everyone except themselves suck and so on. But what is harmfull to your business is throwing the involved people in the community on the same heap as the lost ones. When this happens to involved people they stop to care, stop their involvement. They will adress the problem in a different manner and simply move on.
So my advice is:
Say what the game will actually be and will not be, avoid terms like next gen we are tired of those because everyone uses them.
Implement criteria to tell trolls, flamers, brats apart from the vocal people standing with both feet in the community and who care about the future of the game (data is the new oil, just determine what you want to find out).
Have a pro active attitude in fixing parts of the game that really don't perform as planned.
Present yourself as an approachable entity and also give a peek on what is happening in development land.
Remember the average age of gamers playing your games is 37 (source: ESA) not 14.
And also as a rule of thumb acknowledge developers are often overly positive about their game, the features or abilities that are implemented in said game. It is in their nature! Because you can't develop cool stuff if you focus on the possible negatives all the time! If changes are nigh impossible to implement due to technical boundaries within the designed framework also mention those. We do read, we do understand it is not feasible to make another game of it.
[Mod Edit]
i think the article overlooks the reality that majority does not create correctness, and that it DOES often require a dynamic few to put things into context, that most people are not aware of. this article, if taken seriously, will only serve to mute the observations of those who forum mods would choose to squelch. a good and intelligent dev team will know when they are hearing pointless negativity and when they are hearing quality suggestions. and, if they are not a good and intelligent dev team, it certainly wont be because of a whiny bunch of forum baners that the game falls apart.
POST MOD EDIT EDIT:
i dont know why this was edited, i didnt break any rules, and i think what i said was valid. The article is trying to create another negative term for people to call eachother. We dont need this.
haha so true, its always easier to biatch about something when it already happened than to accept whats happening now and make the change. .
This. And my take on the article was that this was the point being made. I love and am passionate about games. I've participated in my share of beta tests, and in those, I'm always a very active forum poster, because I am excited by the idea that my thoughts and feedback might, in some small way, help to make the game better. However, I am rarely active in forums once the game goes live, because I get so sick of the high volume of "obnoxious."
For one, some people feel the need to completely shred each other for sharing an opinion, which makes the game's community look like a bunch of socially inept mouth-breathers raised by rabid squirrels. Great way to grow the game, right?
But equally silly (in my opinion), are the posts by George Q. Gamer with the underlying tone that the devs have the ultimate goal of specifically making his entire life a living hell and stealing his cookies. They nerfed *his* class or didn't drop everything to immediately act on *his* comment, so they must hate him, personally, and be planning basement rituals to send their dark minions for his soul.
/eye roll
THAT is the thing that makes it hard for devs (and everyone else!) to take the VM seriously. It should be obvious that devs either want to make a good game because they are passionate about their game, or failing that, they want to make a good game because that's how they make money with which to pay their bills.
People assume their specific concern is the most important issue in the whole game, all other players must agree with them, and if the devs aren't fixing it, it's because they're secretly conducting evil brain chemistry research on what levels of masochism can be willingly endured by the average human. The level of freak-out displayed in conversations about Star Wars Galaxies alone could probably power entire continents. Don't get me wrong; I loved that game and they pretty much effed up a lot of things, but they didn't burn down my house and murder my puppy. At the end of the day, it's a game, and I feel like perhaps some people should consider decaf and/or valium.
So, to sum up...I agree. VMs feel strongly about their games, which is awesome. And if they would speak about it in a rational, respectful tone that recognizes the devs have a lot of things going on at once, people would probably listen to them more often.
I like that Dominus has so many polls on their site. While you still may be attracting mostly the vocal, 'I really am soooo excited about this game' crowd, you often seem to have more poll responses than text responses on a given forum. I try to respond to them all, though I only have a few posts there.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Nice post Sanya,
Unfortunately I've seen in alot of message boards posters (not generaly moderators or "community weenies") use the term "Vocal Minority" as the MMO rhetorical equivalent of labeling someone a "Wife Beater". It's become used as an ad hominem designed to invalidate the opinion of the person being labeled as unimportant and therefore not worthy of even considering the content or the relative merit of thier position, regardless of what that opinion is.
I kind of think it should be the gaming equivalent of Godwins Law. The first person to accuse someone else of being a "Vocal Minority" automaticaly forfiets the debate.
- Most people who fall back on the term have little factual basis for determining what may or may not be a majority/minority opinion. Even companies themselves don't always have a good handle on the preferences of thier target audiences...not unless they've put significant effort into researching said preference...and sometimes even then not.
- When dealing with factual questions as opposed to simple audience preferences, there isn't neccessarly any correlation between what is popular and what is correct. For example, if someone tells you that they can break the account security on your login system...it doesn't matter if 99 percent of the people think they are wrong...if they actualy show you working proof that it can be done, then you'd be foolish to ignore it regardless of what others might think...because eventualy someone else, far less forthright is apt to figure that out as well.
Sounds like someone got their favorite game "picked on" and now they're vewy vewy angwy.
So If someone posts a problem, by the OP's definition they are part of the vocal minority just for posting and should be ignored. If they don't post they remain safe and snug in the majority but the problem doesn't go away. Hooray for the status quo!
I wouldn't put it exactly the same as you, but I did find it funny that she would post this semi-rant. Come to think of it, wasn't her last post on here something of a similar: "if you were in CS in a game company you'd understand more" post? Or maybe something about how to be a good CS rep or something.
In case you read my comment Sanya, I appreciated your hours toiling over trolls in your DAOC days. Many times I recall waiting to see what info you had to share with the community. So for that, thank you. I think you have some good insight on many occasions, but this article seems a little bland.
Vocal Minority= Dr King, Rosa Parks, Elizabeth Stanton, Fredrick Douglas, etc...
(no sarcasm)
There is a reason why we may need to stop to listen to those marginalized, and minimized due to their percieved deviance.
Sometimes they can tell us more about ourselves than all of us can say about them...
Case in Point: Fox News ( they rule the majority in cable news land) Should we hold all of journalism to their standards and belittle those who go against their propaganda ridden, context twisting, emotionally amplifying diatribe?
To the caterpillar it is the end of the world, to the master, it is a butterfly.
Totally agree! I love that vid...
Heh-heh. The Vocal Minority is it's own worst enemy. Signal to Noise ratio is often times attrocious.
The trick is however, they don't see it that way.
(looks around with a guilty face)
Imma go play some Pong now . . .
Wherever you go, there you are.
My problem with labelling people a "vocal minority" is that there's no such thing as a "vocal majority." Just a silent majority. You can assume the majority are happily playing, but it could also be true that they silently quit, or they're silently about to. Just seems a bit foolish to write off the vocal minority, when you don't know whether they're really so much of a minority or just the only ones being vocal.
Best bet is just to think about what they're saying, instead of trying to figure out how much of a minority they really are. Instead of dismissing complaints out of hand, decide for yourselves whether they have a point or not. Minority or not, sometimes they really kinda do.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Ok I'll bite.
First the Apples to Pears thing you mentioned: Thing is Developers and games come along and think this new and ideal thing would be perfect to their game then you come along and have things like......Trials of Atlantis in DAoC, NGE in SWG, Cataclysm in WoW, Trammel in UO, and umpteen other bad decision alot of games make. There are ways to means test a new idal, just freaking use it instead of throwing the community a curve ball.
Secondly we might be the Vocal Minority but you do know the laws of statistics and averages then right? Basically if many someones are vocal about particular issues you can damn well expect that a majority of people would agree if given a scientific poll.
Lastly, Developers, Studios, community relations gurus need to understand that because soemone is Vocal it isnt bad it means we are passionate about the game. Use that model of free advertisement and bottle it up and for heaves sake dont make a idiotic rant like this one when 99% of every freaking MMO built over the last 7 years is designed with a clear lack of innovation and lets not even get into the whole "I built a MMO that caters to less then 10% of the average MMO player" You know the whole "raid or Die" menatality that it seems liek every game company designs for which has been proven time and time again that less then 10% of any given playerbase will complete.
So in conclusion I'll quit being a minority when you start deeveloping a game for the majority. All in all it is what Themepark WoW clones are trying to do right?
Everything you need to know about Elder Scrolls Online
Playing: GW2
Waiting on: TESO
Next Flop: Planetside 2
Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.