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General: Weathers: How To Read A Press Release
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
It's Friday and that means a new edition of the MMO Underbelly. This week, Sanya Weathers gives us a crash course in "How To Read A Press Release." Inside she rips apart a fiction press release and pulls out the double-speak and PR code words.
“Our growth is dramatically exceeding our expectations,” says John Doe, President, Co-Founder, Lead Designer, and Giant Douchehound. “We want to thank our players and our retailers for their enthusiastic support. We’ve delivered a highly polished product, and we’re hard at work on our next content patch with flying beagles.”
First of all, John Doe said no such thing. The PR person writing this thing couldn’t get John Doe to return a phone call or answer an email in ten million years. However, John Doe has let it be known that leaving out any of his titles will be cause for a whining sulking hissy fit that will last for days. He is all of those things, and don’t you forget it because he was designing games with punch cards and rubber bands when you were just playing D&D.
But it’s good that John doesn’t write his own quotes. John is too much of a self-centered cretin to think of thanking the retailers or the players, so it’s best someone without a personality disorder is the one writing the quotes.
Enjoy the full article here...
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
Epic!
Haha, there needs to be a I told you so poll attached to your article. I've been hearing players here saying simialr things everytime a company press release is put out.
I Reject your Reality and Substitute it with My Own!
Oh, wow. Another whiny, "funny" people-who-work-on-MMOs-are-the-DEVIL piece of satire crap. This is EXACTLY what I want to read when I come to this site.
Yeah. I keep the horns filed, though.
Edit to add: What I mean is that I wrote press releases in my first two post-college jobs, and my experience in the game industry proved that there was nothing new under the sun. I do think it's funny when people take press releases literally.
Sanya M. Weathers
Director of Community
Undead Labs
Was funny.
Made me chuckle.
Yeah its interesting how journalists will spin anything and everything.
www.CyberneticPunks.com
Hardcore Gaming Community
Thats the Capitalist mentality. What ever brings in the most readers, viewers, or gets more money from the studio & publisher is the right thing to do.
Okay, I'm taking a mulligan on my last post, especially because I felt like a jerk after I looked up what a Director of Community Relations does. It went something like:
"A-HA! What could a person who's job it was to write press releases possibly know about... oh."
Lovely column. Did Mythic make you this cynical about the game industry or was the damage already done when being an EQ guide?
Edit: Wait. I read Tweety. Never mind
::Chuckles::
Are you going to copy and Paste Tasos posts for your next article labelled "How to Read Developer Blogs"?
Right on Sanya!
Dana is awesome. Everything she writes is smart and entertaining.
All the other columnists suck, and I hope they get fired soon.
Careful DarkRexx, apologizing on the Internet causes an intensely painful rash. It must, since you see it so rarely done!
I know it's not going to happen, but, just once, I'd like to see an insider take apart a real press release. It would be highly entertain, er, edumacational.
Avatars are people too
First, Dana is a guy.
Second, Sanya wrote this, not Dana.
Dana is one of those other columnists/employee of that site that I assume you hope gets fired
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Sadly I am one of these people who took press releases 'kind' of seriously... I knew most of the press release was bunk. but I had no idea the extent of the Founder/lead developer/CEO ego issues.
The fact that said people are quoted for things they have not said, is just scary. And the fact that its necessary to massage one persons ego so much in a press release is just frightning...
And we all know about the 'new features' talked about in press releases. Its kind of sad really. A developer could have a 20 minute conversation about a conversation they had about possible ideas they had for an expansion, such as flying monkies coming out of the behinds of PVE cheater. The next day the boards would be lit up by why this was not in the game yet, when is this feature going to be added, and people screaming bloody murder and threatening to stop their subscription if it is added.
Your just in a no win situation when you talk about any feature, what is a absolute known quantity today could be impossible to implement tomarrow. Happens all the time and no amount of explemantion will ever stop the forum whining about it though.
Funny aside, the part about no coufounders being mentioned, reminds me of the EA mess on wikipedia a while back.
Some emloyees at Eletronic Arts were "cleaning" up the wikipedia entry for EA.: little things like cutting out all the referances to contraversies that EA had been involved in... and revising history by editing out all referances to the original founder and CEO of EA..
I never have been able to figure out why they did this or why the new CEO would want all referances to the past CEO (who did not have any contreversies under his leadership by the way).
The only reasion I can come up with is Sanya's: He (the current CEO at the time, they have a new one now I think) was a giant douchehound and ego maniac that could not handle referances or acknoledgement of anyone else besides himself.
So Sanya I have a question for you, why do these founder/CEO/Lead producers have this ego problem? You wrote press releases, why would they refuse to talk to you and then have a hissy fit if you forgot a title or mentioned another founder type?
And luckily I mostley only by games by Bioware/Blizzard/Cryptic, companies where if any employee or founder is stupid enough to make themselves known to the public, they are beaten, flogged, humiliated, tarred, and feathered, as is proper and just. :P
I didn't apologize. I took a mulligan. The offending post never happened. :P
First, Dana is a guy.
Second, Sanya wrote this, not Dana.
Dana is one of those other columnists/employee of that site that I assume you hope gets fired
Sanya is awesome. I like her alot, although I feel that her portrait does not do her RL pic justice.
I'm not a fan of Dana's work.
When first reading it it's tempting to think how funny it is (which it is, don't get me wrong) and laugh a bit...for 5 minutes. But then you realize, and I know I'm not the only one who has a long time ago, that this stuff actually happens...and is standard operating procedure.
I learned a LONG time ago not to trust anyone that I hadn't sat at a gaming table with and rolled dice with or that I hadn't seen in a completely drunken state. I also believe that this (what Sanya illustrated) isn't limited to press releases. It goes well into all the video and written interviews you get from people "okayed" by the company to speak to anyone outside the company about the game.
If there was ever a possibility of a grass roots movement for change within this industry, the articles by Sanya and Dana and the discussion that follows would be a good place to start.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Sanya, will you marry me?
By far and away the most entertaining writer this genre has to offer.
Totally true.
Nuff said.
Creativity : The ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods or interpretations; using originality, progressiveness, or imagination.
Advertising in general is intentionally deceptive, which is the same as dishonest in my book, and it's insulting. The writers are smiling at you while they tell you, "This product is (insert description)," when they know that it's (at best) not everything they're making it out to be, or (at worst) not at all what they say it is. They're calling us stupid. And why would I give my money to someone who insults me?
Good article. I like your choice of topics!
Just wanted to add something here: Call me black and white - or perhaps over the years I've become a bit of a miser - but if I'm on the fence in regards to buying a product or service, I'll give my money to the entity that's endeavoring to be honest, even if I haven't made up my mind entirely that I need the product or service. In my mind, it's simply rewarding honesty. The opposite is also true. If I feel like I'm being deceived in the slightest, I'll withdraw myself and my money from any association with the the deceptive entity forevermore.
I think any change in the way things are done - any grassroots movement - would have to come from the consumers. The problem becomes convincing others not to buy. Ever try getting someone in your family to cancel their TV service?
I have been playing MMOs for over 10 yrs. now and my fondest memories are from reading Sanya posts on VNBoards and the CamelotHerald. Glad she has joined us here and her articles are great! So true and an eye opener for some.
Good article. Really all of this isn't isolated to MMO or the gaming industry as a whole. The fluff that comes out of Apple, MS, Sun, etc. and has been for years. I've seen old adds touting the benefits of tape worms for weight loss.
http://www.diet-blog.com/archives/2007/05/24/vintage_weight_loss_sanitized_tapeworms.php
Still waiting on those beagles.
Golden Archer
First, Dana is a guy.
Second, Sanya wrote this, not Dana.
Dana is one of those other columnists/employee of that site that I assume you hope gets fired
ROFL!!!
"I don't give a sh*t what other people say. I play what I like and I'll pay to do it too!" - SerialMMOist
i don't know wether to laugh
or cry
would also add the the line i usually see on mmorpg's that i look at
a true alternative ot world of warcraft meaning it's different from wow (but shhhh not really)
One of the refreshing bits of social media, including twitter and facebook, is that the companies often assume that they are reaching into the snarky heart of their fandom, and they should actually reduce the bullsh*t quotient if they don't want to be mocked.
This is why I love doing social media consulting -- I get to wrap VP/C level folks brains around the concept that they need to be real and NOT LIE if they want to do it right.
I, btw, am one of those marketing people who has turned down jobs because I'll say *at an interview* "I'll spin but I won't lie, and I know the difference." So we aren't all total whores.
Frankly, I think anyone who understands current marketing is an idiot to stick with the old mushroom paradigm "keep 'em in the dark, and feed 'em crap." There are too many of us today who have good BS detectors, to the point where snark will intrude its fugly head even where it's not merited.
Oh, and fun column!
Shava
She's on the money again. That was a free jounalism lesson in a bottle. Go Sanya!