I would like to point out that this is far from a gamer's phenomena...I see this occurring more and more in politics, work, and even in daily experiences in my personal life.
No one has patience to understand context anymore. If you write a paragraph immediately followed by a list, you can pretty much count that about 50% of the readers will look at only the list and make their own assumptions. This happens at my job with people that are very well educated and pretty smart overall. I've watched my father blow by tons of information that told him some of the nuttier political nonsense was false, to just cherry-pick the one or two sentences (taken out of context) that supported his point. I've watched my wife tune me out until she heard a phrase or two that she cared about leading to massive misunderstandings.
This is modern life. Best thing to do in this situation is to keep a copy of the original post, and be diligent about reposting the original whenever you see someone posting something that is missing at least some of the context. The more a single post can stand alone, the better off you'll be in the long run as well...
I think one thing you need to consider is where you are when posting stuff on the internet and my recent experiences have helped prove that to me. This site is actually pretty good and while not all read fully most tend to get the point and don't resort to trolling and flaming due to lack of reading.
Recently however I had an idea for EVE that I didn't really need more refining I just needed to get the opinion of the average eve player on it. While I could have written pages about justifications and reasoning I didn't bother as most eve forum goers don't read past a couple sentances. The eve forums are pretty bad when it comes to trolls, memes, flames etc. it's very rare tha a user bothers reading the whole post or even writing it. Therefore I summed up my post in 2 sentances and the response I got is about what I expected, plenty of trolls and memes and flames included.
I also recently had a go at the other eve forum "scrapheap-challenge" trying to ask some advice for a ship. Now I'd heard a lot of good things about this forum so I bother to go for a proper post with a standard copy paste of my setup, a written description of the changes I'm thinking of making and some bullet points at the end to some up the advantages of the setup before and after changes.
The problem came that I made a mistake in one of the bullet points that seemed to indicate I was doing something very stupid. While I had explained what I was doing fully the part covered by that bulletpoint was burried deep in the 2nd paragraph. This resulted in lots of flaming and trolling as people skipped the text saw the bullet points and made asumptions, the fact that I was new to the forums made assuming I was clueless much easier.
While some fault no doubt rests with the people who made the misinterpretation you should always be aware of who your audience is and cater you communication to them. If that means your audience won't read more than 2 sentances you need to be very good at writing a tl;dr. This doesn't mean we should all write simple, I like to think a site like this is specifically for writing more complex arguments.
I think what Jon Wood was writing here is IMO one of the most important texts ever written here. Too many people just don't really read what other say, some may be even misread things on purpose.
But it's a two edged sword, as many are not taught to read, many who speak & write are not educated to make things clear. Every amateur thinks he can write like a journalist or make info text about a game. Well, here is the news: writer is a job you have to learn like any other! Too often we let some enthusiatic devs write or speak, and while he may know a lot about the game, writing or explaining it is a skill just the same. It's not something you can, just because you can hold a pen. I am sure that also contributes to the issues here.
I work for a software developer that recently gave away a free upgrade. In fact, we've never yet charged for an upgrade. When we released the new version, everything we wrote about it stated that it was a free upgrade.
It's amazing the number of people who wrote asking how much the upgrade is, or stated that they weren't going to upgrade now because they couldn't afford it at this time. I've had email correspondence where I stated that we needed to get them taken care of with their free upgrade to the new version -- only to have them reply inquiring how much it was going to cost.
The same holds true for phone calls. On more than one occasion I've spoken with people and had to state that the upgrade is free three or four times before they finally understand. It's not just reading comprehension that's going out the proverbial window, but all comprehension. Believe me when I say that working in customer support is depressing thanks to how dim one's opinion of humanity's future becomes.
Jon Wood was right about the impact of the internet, but I feel that this is only one of the factors contributing to the problem. A second is certainly education. The more schools have moved into the "no child left behind" mentality, the more they've found themselves teaching to the lowest common denominator rather than attempting to raise anyone to excellence. Those at the bottom of the heap really haven't gained much while those who should be at the top become bored and lazy.
The third factor is parents. They have become less engaged in every way. First, they are increasingly relying on schools to do the parenting for them -- while simultaneously removing all capacity for discipline. Second, as a general rule they don't even bother to follow up and ensure that their children are receiving a solid education. How many parents today even look at their children's homework? How many fewer, upon seeing that a problem exists, bother to contact the teacher? How many fewer still actually step in to help tutor their children and remedy the problem personally?
I also disagree vehemently with the person above who blamed things on a lack of post-secondary education. Primary education is when reading comprehension should be taught. Secondary education is when it should be reinforced. Post-secondary education is for specialization; not for teaching fundamentals that should have been learned a decade earlier. What's more the education we receive in secondary school today pales in comparison to what was taught in grade school just 100 years ago. We seriously are dumbing down as a society and the pace is accelerating.
Communication has always been of prime concern to me and, in fact, led me to take a degree in Communication Studies which covered the topic from every perspective. I think the reason it fascinates me is because there is so much room for misunderstanding whether we communicate directly through speech and body language, or indirectly through text, art and other mediums.
Even with my life-long interest and aim to be as clear as possible in any communication (including paying attention to the message from the other rather than just focussing on getting my own message across), it's absolutely amazing how often misunderstandings occur between, for example, my son and I. The most recent was a case where I asked him when he would be getting up the next morning. He replied "at my normal time". I took that to mean his normal time on a normal college day, but it was, in fact, a study day, so he meant something else. After these little misunderstandings I always feel intensely frustrated with myself that I forget, every time, that even a very simple seeming message can be misinterpreted because each party has a context with they don't always share with the other.
So, in the example quoted, I could have asked for clarification as to what actual time he meant by "normal", and equally, he could have given a time rather than used the word "normal", but most of the time we (people in general) forget to clarify and think we know what the other means.
With the written word, which the OP was referring to, the problem of misunderstanding can be magnified because there are literally just the symbols on the page rather than additional cues from body language, tone of voice etc. Also, let's not forget the intention of the original "sender" of the message (in this case Jon Wood) and the intention of the reader. These intentions may not match at all and it might be that some people do just scan an article for items of interest and then jump on their hobby horse if it is represented there.
In other words, my experience is that misunderstandings and miscommunication are commonplace and it would be reductionist of us to focus on one possible cause such as education at school. Human interaction is rich and complex, and therefore the ability to engage fully and well with all modes of communication (including forums) is, I think, going to be rather rare.
I refuse to be a puppet and put the article writer's full name in my response to show a point, that part is fairly childish. Should of had people post "Purple Monkey Dishwasher" to at least make it amusing.
I think the issue is much simpler. When any dev makes any comment about any feature/game element that does or does not exist, several players read that as "This is what is happening". Then since 75% of the MMO players don't ever go to forums/official sites for news, that misinterpretation is spread through out the community by word of mouth.
It happens with Asheron's Call all the time because the devs are very involved with the forum community and reply back and forth with players along with making posts about ideas they are working on/considering working on. A month later players always refer to it as "I thought that was being implemented this month, what happened?" even when it is something the devs said "We are considering implementing later in the year."
This can be applied to many other parts of life as well but the next best example is politics. The vast majority of Americans will never closely follow politics. They won't research the issues or what the actual plans involving issues are. They won't research all of the parts about a proposed law. What they will do is read blogs by people who skew the facts to fit their personal agenda or to help their party. The next thing you know everyone is using the buzzwords that those bloggers or politicians said about the other candidate. Just look at the whole Sarah Palin thing. She would say phrases like "gotcha journalism" "liberal media" "socialism" and the next day on Facebook you'd have all these people talking about how Obama was a socialist but it wasn't getting reported because of the liberal media and their gotcha journalism.
Essentially all it takes is one person purposely distorting the facts to serve their needs and all of the people who don't do any research into the facts on their own will just start repeating that. It doesn't take long for something to spread in that fashion and then since so many people are saying it everyone assumes it is fact.
once again a brillant article by Jon Wood. all true, ive seen the list, was and am excited but i know most of whats there wont be included , y? cus it was never said they would include these features hence no promises were made.
Just kidding. I actually skimmed the original and got the correct context.
"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 point Jon Wood. You know what this remember me? A reading comprehension trap one of my university teacher passed to us a few semesters ago. I'ts a very simple questionnaire that strat with the following task: Start by reading all the statements/questions. Then you get a list of stuff to do rnaging from drawing to standing up and shouting stuff. The last question states to only do what number 1, 2 and 3 say. But if you hand the test to the average 18 years old, you end up with a rather high % of poeple standing up and shouting.
Just saying that cause it's more a matter of patiente then of reading comprehension. I'm not saying reading comprehension as gotten better or worst over the years, just saying it might not be the most important element in the calculation.
P.S.: sorry for the poor english.... Some of us had the luck of not being born in the US
This is a great response, but I discount it for the lack of the phrase "Jon Wood".
Originally posted by MMartian
I think that you have properly described the problem.
I often see posts in game forums where responces are simply "TL;DR". (Too Long; Didn't Read for those that do not know what it means.)
This goes to show that even when someone tries to present the context people are not interested in seeing it. This often makes it hard for players to exchange and discusss complect concepts, or for developers to get reasonable feedback of what players actually want to see in a game.
Players often jump on a bandwagon of a suggestion and each actually have different problems that they want to see addressed. This lack of willingness to communicate in both directions does cause a lot of problems.
I feel that most of the reason for this is a lack of reading comprehension. People do not want to read or write proper messages since they either can not comprehend them or are afraid that people will not understand them because the others can not comprehend what they said.
I can't help but see a correlation of people lacking reading comprehension skills to their lack of writing skills. I just saw a thread that made me think of this of this topic. The thread was named "more people joined left".
There are so many examples of people not using any punctuation let alone being able to communicate a thought in writing. Please don't mistake me for a forum nazi, or implying that I have great writing skills - I do not. I'm no stickler for grammar, but damn there is some level of grammar skills needed to communicate. Too many people are lacking it.
Now that you've seen my sexy buzz word, I'll tell you I didn't read this article. I'm going to assume it was about purple carebears who enjoy fudge. Not the good kind of fudge you get at the beach, but the back alley fudge that hobos make in their socks. I'm sure the article had all of this and also ninjas who know how to twirl too.
Jon Wood, I think this article should be linked as a sticky on most MMO discussoin forums.
People that put themselves above others put me in a bad mood. http://www.surrealtwilight.com/index.php ^Has nothing to do with that retarded Vampire Novel Series, I swear!^
Heh, this article speaks on many levels. Mostly because it describes the problem of inattentiveness and a complete disregard for details. People want more more faster faster but if its given to them in too large of bites, its rejected.
And by reading comments, I do find it interesting how many missed the point. Even a few posts above mine, they even said TL:DR.
There is also an aspect of "sensationalism" that I believe that Jon Wood missed. Some sites will intentionally skew or alter the true message to get more hits and create buzz. Tabloids do that. They take two pictures, photoshop them together and toss a headline up there that has nothing to do with the actual contexts of each shot. Some people mislead to generate more business and feed on the chaos and hype.
So does Jon Wood have a tally yet on the number of posts that suggest they didn't read the whole thing? I'll concede that while I did, of course, blaze through the article word for word, I did not suffer through the many pages of responding posts to add it up for myself.....
Heh, this article speaks on many levels. Mostly because it describes the problem of inattentiveness and a complete disregard for details. People want more more faster faster but if its given to them in too large of bites, its rejected.
And by reading comments, I do find it interesting how many missed the point. Even a few posts above mine, they even said TL:DR.
There is also an aspect of "sensationalism" that I believe that Jon Wood missed. Some sites will intentionally skew or alter the true message to get more hits and create buzz. Tabloids do that. They take two pictures, photoshop them together and toss a headline up there that has nothing to do with the actual contexts of each shot. Some people mislead to generate more business and feed on the chaos and hype.
During the play of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony was able to make his famous speak to turn the minds of masses to up rise against the assassins. Point - Humans will distort reality to fit there misconceptions. Many famous people learnt to manipulate this amazing quality of the average 'joe'.
Yes, the topic is much more complex then most would care about. You have the whole complex vs attention span thing. Do you think the average read would understand Searle's Chinese room? My bet a good percentage of cognitive scientists would have a misconception regarding it. Ah that's me being cynical again... I think I need to start weed or something.
On that note, I'll leave with this quote "I'll concede that while I did, of course, blaze through the article word for word, I did not suffer through the many pages of responding posts to add it up for myself....." I nearly choked on my tea when I read that one... hahaha I hope he is just being sarcastic uh?
Kudos to anyone reading this far, including the OP.
Quote, "It’s exactly this kind of misunderstanding that has led us to a place in the MMO industry where players believe all developers to be money hungry liars who make false promises only to break them later and developers to be left bewildered, wondering when and how those promises were made in the first place."
I suppose this includes broken game code and driver problems?
Quote, "... we, as a larger society, just aren’t being taught how to properly read and understand the words that we read in our browsers. We, on the whole, often show ourselves to be illiterate not in terms of not being able to see and recognize words, but in terms of being able to fully understand what those words are trying to communicate."
Yes, definitely important to those taking today's tests while in school or some for certification. I have been told that colleges have classes that teach how to take tests, or, some commercially available class that teaches how to take tests.
My contention has been, why does anyone need classes that properly teaches them how to take tests? Why are tests not written in a manner that permits everyone to take tests and score high? The problem stems from the method of teaching and the A, B, C, and D answer system.
If a subject is properly taught then students will understand. Much of today's teaching has to do with key words and how to recognize them. And, you wonder why people speed read or quickly view anything? Students have been taught to look for key words for years, and you wonder why people continue to do so after graduation?
While taking my check ride to be certified as a commercial pilot I was directed to make a short field landing at an airport. After I made the landing I taxied off of the runway. The examiner was shocked and disappointed and wanted to know why I had made a complete stop, and that I was supposed to do a touch and go. I informed him that he had told me to perform a short field landing, which I did, and I stated that is what he requested and that is what he got.
An example would be, if I wanted to perform a touch and go at a large airport and I was cleared for a landing, that is exactly what they mean. Cleared for a landing does not give me permission to perform a touch and go, only to land.
That subject material may have been written in a book somewhere, however, in the real world of aviation one needs to physically practice in addition to listen, because, physical practice brings about perfection while flying an aircraft, and it hones the process of thought and transmission of thought into physical action.
What action is required of students in classrooms that hone subject material? How many middle school teachers take their students out of doors and let them find subjects that hone what was stated in a book? For example, how tall is the school flag pole? How high is that tree? How far is that tree from me? How far is that tree to another tree? Also, how many students are told to read something in class, are then given extra time to digest what they have read, and then provide the teacher with oral or written explanations of what a book stated or implied. Are these exercises performed? No.
School systems in the United States are told by the government what and how to teach, then wonder why students do poorly.
In your writing, do not accuse a former student of not understanding statements, rather accuse the school system.
EDIT: Removed a double statement.
Intel Core i7 7700K, MB is Gigabyte Z270X-UD5 SSD x2, 4TB WD Black HHD, 32GB RAM, MSI GTX 980 Ti Lightning LE video card
Wait, World of Darkness is going to have permadeath?
Lol, I'm just kidding. Unfortunately, Jon Wood, I think this problem rears its ugly head outside of the mmo world as well. I work in food service and it's hard enough just to get people to look me in the eye and tell me what they want.
It may seem that Jon has got a bit of Wood on about this but he has a point (ahem). I think it is as much about reader expectations though, you mention a game with enough expectations and people will read what they want to see.
I find that people just "don't like" to read anything serious unless its offensive enough to keep them entertained.
When I read a lot of tech articles I read the first and last page simply because I am the person who reads entire technical documentations and analyze technology that I do not need to see heavy benchmarks as I know the flaws in most of them...due to this I read the first and last page and find opinions fast.
Call it a lazy population that does not want to get educated and is saturated with reading what they are interested in and posting their interests. Too bad too...More people learn to read, but few people learn to write and express themselves. That is not learned online as you don't have a focus to improve your own writing vs the focus on trying to tell someone off.
Before I get into stuff - I think there is a clarity issue in the forum. When people claim that SWTOR will succeed/fail or that we can't know whether or not it will succeed fail - they often do not identify what they mean by succeed/fail. Some people are talking about the game succeeding if it is a fun game that they play for 6-7 months, some people define success as being financially stable for a 5 year period and returning some degree of profit for the investors, others define success as crafting a game that could sustain some level of players for some amount of time. I think theorizing about success/failure is fine as long as you clearly define what you mean when you are talking about success. I think we don't have much information as to what the gameplay / progression / world will actually come together as, so it is hard to tell if it is going to be really fun or not, and for whom and how long. The things I do think we could talk about is financial success - how much does the game cost and how many box sales and subscriptions for what amount of time would be necessary for the game to succeed in turning a profit. Tobold or someone crunched the numbers and seemed to think that it would take a huge amount of sustained subscriptions for the game to be successful. I don't know how accurate their figures were, but this is something that could be researched and turned into an article. Research the costs - development, maintenance, marketing, etc., then research what the revenue would need to be based on the monthly fee and cost of the box in order to determine how many subscriptions would be needed in order to make money on the game. Once we have a number like... 1 mil box sales and 300k subscriptions or something, we could talk about whether or not that is a realistic goal for SWTOR to reach or not. Jon Wood - it would be awesome if you wrote this article - I think someone did a barebones analysis in the blogosphere but if you did an in depth research project and looked at comprable games to help estimate the full list of costs/revenue it would be awesome. You could interview some CFOs of other game companies to see what they have to say. Could be awesome! Do it!
Wood states a lot of the facts about the game - which is nothing hugely special, but still useful to keep people in check. That said, I think it is not really valuable to rule out speculation as to success/failure of the game b/c if you do - and only allow a presentation of the facts, then there really isn't much to talk about. And, we do have some information about the game, which we can use to make some arguments about how successful the game may be both in terms of success as a good/enjoyable game, and in terms of economic success. I think the issue Wood takes with this speculation is that so much of it is unfounded and without specificity or much argumentative weight - and also makes claims such as SWTOR WILL FAIL! as opposed to I think that because of x, y, z aspects of the game and looking at past games that attempted such things / spent such money failed/succeeded I think that SWTOR will perform in x manner. It would be helpful to know more about c, d, e in order to make a better guess at the games success. Basically people don't lay bare their arguments.
I think one of the biggest questions (for me at least, and I haven't been following very closely) is simply what the game world will be like. A lot of people are concerned about how a single player RPG story-based type game will translate into a MMORPG with small grouping. How linear is the gameplay? How many different paths are there you can take through the leveling process? How will everyone working through different parts of the story simultaneously work in a world? Will you be able to repeat dungeons / instances? How will they change after you have done the major story part associated with the dungeon? What are the dungeons going to be like? What are the interactions b/w good and evil factions going to look like? Where does pvp come in to play? How will it work?
---- Some of these questions may already be answered, but I don't know them. I don't really know how a story based MMO with small groups will work. I love the Diablo series (which people often compare SWTOR to, when upset) but I don't have any clue how it would work as an MMO. Which isn't to say it won't work, I just can't picture it yet. If anyone has answers to some of the questions - post it up.
Comments
I would like to point out that this is far from a gamer's phenomena...I see this occurring more and more in politics, work, and even in daily experiences in my personal life.
No one has patience to understand context anymore. If you write a paragraph immediately followed by a list, you can pretty much count that about 50% of the readers will look at only the list and make their own assumptions. This happens at my job with people that are very well educated and pretty smart overall. I've watched my father blow by tons of information that told him some of the nuttier political nonsense was false, to just cherry-pick the one or two sentences (taken out of context) that supported his point. I've watched my wife tune me out until she heard a phrase or two that she cared about leading to massive misunderstandings.
This is modern life. Best thing to do in this situation is to keep a copy of the original post, and be diligent about reposting the original whenever you see someone posting something that is missing at least some of the context. The more a single post can stand alone, the better off you'll be in the long run as well...
I think one thing you need to consider is where you are when posting stuff on the internet and my recent experiences have helped prove that to me. This site is actually pretty good and while not all read fully most tend to get the point and don't resort to trolling and flaming due to lack of reading.
Recently however I had an idea for EVE that I didn't really need more refining I just needed to get the opinion of the average eve player on it. While I could have written pages about justifications and reasoning I didn't bother as most eve forum goers don't read past a couple sentances. The eve forums are pretty bad when it comes to trolls, memes, flames etc. it's very rare tha a user bothers reading the whole post or even writing it. Therefore I summed up my post in 2 sentances and the response I got is about what I expected, plenty of trolls and memes and flames included.
I also recently had a go at the other eve forum "scrapheap-challenge" trying to ask some advice for a ship. Now I'd heard a lot of good things about this forum so I bother to go for a proper post with a standard copy paste of my setup, a written description of the changes I'm thinking of making and some bullet points at the end to some up the advantages of the setup before and after changes.
The problem came that I made a mistake in one of the bullet points that seemed to indicate I was doing something very stupid. While I had explained what I was doing fully the part covered by that bulletpoint was burried deep in the 2nd paragraph. This resulted in lots of flaming and trolling as people skipped the text saw the bullet points and made asumptions, the fact that I was new to the forums made assuming I was clueless much easier.
While some fault no doubt rests with the people who made the misinterpretation you should always be aware of who your audience is and cater you communication to them. If that means your audience won't read more than 2 sentances you need to be very good at writing a tl;dr. This doesn't mean we should all write simple, I like to think a site like this is specifically for writing more complex arguments.
also since I've been playing too much oblivion
Into the breach meatbags
I completely agree with you Jon Wood.
I think what Jon Wood was writing here is IMO one of the most important texts ever written here. Too many people just don't really read what other say, some may be even misread things on purpose.
But it's a two edged sword, as many are not taught to read, many who speak & write are not educated to make things clear. Every amateur thinks he can write like a journalist or make info text about a game. Well, here is the news: writer is a job you have to learn like any other! Too often we let some enthusiatic devs write or speak, and while he may know a lot about the game, writing or explaining it is a skill just the same. It's not something you can, just because you can hold a pen. I am sure that also contributes to the issues here.
I work for a software developer that recently gave away a free upgrade. In fact, we've never yet charged for an upgrade. When we released the new version, everything we wrote about it stated that it was a free upgrade.
It's amazing the number of people who wrote asking how much the upgrade is, or stated that they weren't going to upgrade now because they couldn't afford it at this time. I've had email correspondence where I stated that we needed to get them taken care of with their free upgrade to the new version -- only to have them reply inquiring how much it was going to cost.
The same holds true for phone calls. On more than one occasion I've spoken with people and had to state that the upgrade is free three or four times before they finally understand. It's not just reading comprehension that's going out the proverbial window, but all comprehension. Believe me when I say that working in customer support is depressing thanks to how dim one's opinion of humanity's future becomes.
Jon Wood was right about the impact of the internet, but I feel that this is only one of the factors contributing to the problem. A second is certainly education. The more schools have moved into the "no child left behind" mentality, the more they've found themselves teaching to the lowest common denominator rather than attempting to raise anyone to excellence. Those at the bottom of the heap really haven't gained much while those who should be at the top become bored and lazy.
The third factor is parents. They have become less engaged in every way. First, they are increasingly relying on schools to do the parenting for them -- while simultaneously removing all capacity for discipline. Second, as a general rule they don't even bother to follow up and ensure that their children are receiving a solid education. How many parents today even look at their children's homework? How many fewer, upon seeing that a problem exists, bother to contact the teacher? How many fewer still actually step in to help tutor their children and remedy the problem personally?
I also disagree vehemently with the person above who blamed things on a lack of post-secondary education. Primary education is when reading comprehension should be taught. Secondary education is when it should be reinforced. Post-secondary education is for specialization; not for teaching fundamentals that should have been learned a decade earlier. What's more the education we receive in secondary school today pales in comparison to what was taught in grade school just 100 years ago. We seriously are dumbing down as a society and the pace is accelerating.
(Problem fixed. Post deleted by author.)
Communication has always been of prime concern to me and, in fact, led me to take a degree in Communication Studies which covered the topic from every perspective. I think the reason it fascinates me is because there is so much room for misunderstanding whether we communicate directly through speech and body language, or indirectly through text, art and other mediums.
Even with my life-long interest and aim to be as clear as possible in any communication (including paying attention to the message from the other rather than just focussing on getting my own message across), it's absolutely amazing how often misunderstandings occur between, for example, my son and I. The most recent was a case where I asked him when he would be getting up the next morning. He replied "at my normal time". I took that to mean his normal time on a normal college day, but it was, in fact, a study day, so he meant something else. After these little misunderstandings I always feel intensely frustrated with myself that I forget, every time, that even a very simple seeming message can be misinterpreted because each party has a context with they don't always share with the other.
So, in the example quoted, I could have asked for clarification as to what actual time he meant by "normal", and equally, he could have given a time rather than used the word "normal", but most of the time we (people in general) forget to clarify and think we know what the other means.
With the written word, which the OP was referring to, the problem of misunderstanding can be magnified because there are literally just the symbols on the page rather than additional cues from body language, tone of voice etc. Also, let's not forget the intention of the original "sender" of the message (in this case Jon Wood) and the intention of the reader. These intentions may not match at all and it might be that some people do just scan an article for items of interest and then jump on their hobby horse if it is represented there.
In other words, my experience is that misunderstandings and miscommunication are commonplace and it would be reductionist of us to focus on one possible cause such as education at school. Human interaction is rich and complex, and therefore the ability to engage fully and well with all modes of communication (including forums) is, I think, going to be rather rare.
I refuse to be a puppet and put the article writer's full name in my response to show a point, that part is fairly childish. Should of had people post "Purple Monkey Dishwasher" to at least make it amusing.
I think the issue is much simpler. When any dev makes any comment about any feature/game element that does or does not exist, several players read that as "This is what is happening". Then since 75% of the MMO players don't ever go to forums/official sites for news, that misinterpretation is spread through out the community by word of mouth.
It happens with Asheron's Call all the time because the devs are very involved with the forum community and reply back and forth with players along with making posts about ideas they are working on/considering working on. A month later players always refer to it as "I thought that was being implemented this month, what happened?" even when it is something the devs said "We are considering implementing later in the year."
This can be applied to many other parts of life as well but the next best example is politics. The vast majority of Americans will never closely follow politics. They won't research the issues or what the actual plans involving issues are. They won't research all of the parts about a proposed law. What they will do is read blogs by people who skew the facts to fit their personal agenda or to help their party. The next thing you know everyone is using the buzzwords that those bloggers or politicians said about the other candidate. Just look at the whole Sarah Palin thing. She would say phrases like "gotcha journalism" "liberal media" "socialism" and the next day on Facebook you'd have all these people talking about how Obama was a socialist but it wasn't getting reported because of the liberal media and their gotcha journalism.
Essentially all it takes is one person purposely distorting the facts to serve their needs and all of the people who don't do any research into the facts on their own will just start repeating that. It doesn't take long for something to spread in that fashion and then since so many people are saying it everyone assumes it is fact.
once again a brillant article by Jon Wood. all true, ive seen the list, was and am excited but i know most of whats there wont be included , y? cus it was never said they would include these features hence no promises were made.
TL; DR.
Just kidding. I actually skimmed the original and got the correct context.
"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 point Jon Wood. You know what this remember me? A reading comprehension trap one of my university teacher passed to us a few semesters ago. I'ts a very simple questionnaire that strat with the following task: Start by reading all the statements/questions. Then you get a list of stuff to do rnaging from drawing to standing up and shouting stuff. The last question states to only do what number 1, 2 and 3 say. But if you hand the test to the average 18 years old, you end up with a rather high % of poeple standing up and shouting.
Just saying that cause it's more a matter of patiente then of reading comprehension. I'm not saying reading comprehension as gotten better or worst over the years, just saying it might not be the most important element in the calculation.
P.S.: sorry for the poor english.... Some of us had the luck of not being born in the US
But I like sexy bullet points and buzz words
My head hurts from reading
Getting all hyped up is fun, and cheaper than strippers
I suggest John Wood use more bullet points 8)
* I read most of what Jon Wood writes
* He needs more bullet points though
I wonder if Jon Arbuckle, Garfields owner, ever had a job chopping down wood.
And people really don't read fine print. or any print, i doubt anyone reads this, I know I didn't
My Thoughts on Content Locust
I can't help but see a correlation of people lacking reading comprehension skills to their lack of writing skills. I just saw a thread that made me think of this of this topic. The thread was named "more people joined left".
There are so many examples of people not using any punctuation let alone being able to communicate a thought in writing. Please don't mistake me for a forum nazi, or implying that I have great writing skills - I do not. I'm no stickler for grammar, but damn there is some level of grammar skills needed to communicate. Too many people are lacking it.
PERMADEATH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now that you've seen my sexy buzz word, I'll tell you I didn't read this article. I'm going to assume it was about purple carebears who enjoy fudge. Not the good kind of fudge you get at the beach, but the back alley fudge that hobos make in their socks. I'm sure the article had all of this and also ninjas who know how to twirl too.
/ Pass it on
Jon Wood, I think this article should be linked as a sticky on most MMO discussoin forums.
People that put themselves above others put me in a bad mood.
http://www.surrealtwilight.com/index.php
^Has nothing to do with that retarded Vampire Novel Series, I swear!^
Heh, this article speaks on many levels. Mostly because it describes the problem of inattentiveness and a complete disregard for details. People want more more faster faster but if its given to them in too large of bites, its rejected.
And by reading comments, I do find it interesting how many missed the point. Even a few posts above mine, they even said TL:DR.
There is also an aspect of "sensationalism" that I believe that Jon Wood missed. Some sites will intentionally skew or alter the true message to get more hits and create buzz. Tabloids do that. They take two pictures, photoshop them together and toss a headline up there that has nothing to do with the actual contexts of each shot. Some people mislead to generate more business and feed on the chaos and hype.
So does Jon Wood have a tally yet on the number of posts that suggest they didn't read the whole thing? I'll concede that while I did, of course, blaze through the article word for word, I did not suffer through the many pages of responding posts to add it up for myself.....
Current MMOs: Rift, GW2, Defiance
Blog: http://realmsofchirak.blogspot.com (old school tabletop gaming and more)
During the play of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony was able to make his famous speak to turn the minds of masses to up rise against the assassins. Point - Humans will distort reality to fit there misconceptions. Many famous people learnt to manipulate this amazing quality of the average 'joe'.
Yes, the topic is much more complex then most would care about. You have the whole complex vs attention span thing. Do you think the average read would understand Searle's Chinese room? My bet a good percentage of cognitive scientists would have a misconception regarding it. Ah that's me being cynical again... I think I need to start weed or something.
On that note, I'll leave with this quote "I'll concede that while I did, of course, blaze through the article word for word, I did not suffer through the many pages of responding posts to add it up for myself....." I nearly choked on my tea when I read that one... hahaha I hope he is just being sarcastic uh?
Kudos to anyone reading this far, including the OP.
Quote, "It’s exactly this kind of misunderstanding that has led us to a place in the MMO industry where players believe all developers to be money hungry liars who make false promises only to break them later and developers to be left bewildered, wondering when and how those promises were made in the first place."
I suppose this includes broken game code and driver problems?
Quote, "... we, as a larger society, just aren’t being taught how to properly read and understand the words that we read in our browsers. We, on the whole, often show ourselves to be illiterate not in terms of not being able to see and recognize words, but in terms of being able to fully understand what those words are trying to communicate."
Yes, definitely important to those taking today's tests while in school or some for certification. I have been told that colleges have classes that teach how to take tests, or, some commercially available class that teaches how to take tests.
My contention has been, why does anyone need classes that properly teaches them how to take tests? Why are tests not written in a manner that permits everyone to take tests and score high? The problem stems from the method of teaching and the A, B, C, and D answer system.
If a subject is properly taught then students will understand. Much of today's teaching has to do with key words and how to recognize them. And, you wonder why people speed read or quickly view anything? Students have been taught to look for key words for years, and you wonder why people continue to do so after graduation?
While taking my check ride to be certified as a commercial pilot I was directed to make a short field landing at an airport. After I made the landing I taxied off of the runway. The examiner was shocked and disappointed and wanted to know why I had made a complete stop, and that I was supposed to do a touch and go. I informed him that he had told me to perform a short field landing, which I did, and I stated that is what he requested and that is what he got.
An example would be, if I wanted to perform a touch and go at a large airport and I was cleared for a landing, that is exactly what they mean. Cleared for a landing does not give me permission to perform a touch and go, only to land.
That subject material may have been written in a book somewhere, however, in the real world of aviation one needs to physically practice in addition to listen, because, physical practice brings about perfection while flying an aircraft, and it hones the process of thought and transmission of thought into physical action.
What action is required of students in classrooms that hone subject material? How many middle school teachers take their students out of doors and let them find subjects that hone what was stated in a book? For example, how tall is the school flag pole? How high is that tree? How far is that tree from me? How far is that tree to another tree? Also, how many students are told to read something in class, are then given extra time to digest what they have read, and then provide the teacher with oral or written explanations of what a book stated or implied. Are these exercises performed? No.
School systems in the United States are told by the government what and how to teach, then wonder why students do poorly.
In your writing, do not accuse a former student of not understanding statements, rather accuse the school system.
EDIT: Removed a double statement.
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SSD x2, 4TB WD Black HHD, 32GB RAM, MSI GTX 980 Ti Lightning LE video card
Wait, World of Darkness is going to have permadeath?
Lol, I'm just kidding. Unfortunately, Jon Wood, I think this problem rears its ugly head outside of the mmo world as well. I work in food service and it's hard enough just to get people to look me in the eye and tell me what they want.
It may seem that Jon has got a bit of Wood on about this but he has a point (ahem). I think it is as much about reader expectations though, you mention a game with enough expectations and people will read what they want to see.
I find that people just "don't like" to read anything serious unless its offensive enough to keep them entertained.
When I read a lot of tech articles I read the first and last page simply because I am the person who reads entire technical documentations and analyze technology that I do not need to see heavy benchmarks as I know the flaws in most of them...due to this I read the first and last page and find opinions fast.
Call it a lazy population that does not want to get educated and is saturated with reading what they are interested in and posting their interests. Too bad too...More people learn to read, but few people learn to write and express themselves. That is not learned online as you don't have a focus to improve your own writing vs the focus on trying to tell someone off.
Before I get into stuff - I think there is a clarity issue in the forum. When people claim that SWTOR will succeed/fail or that we can't know whether or not it will succeed fail - they often do not identify what they mean by succeed/fail. Some people are talking about the game succeeding if it is a fun game that they play for 6-7 months, some people define success as being financially stable for a 5 year period and returning some degree of profit for the investors, others define success as crafting a game that could sustain some level of players for some amount of time. I think theorizing about success/failure is fine as long as you clearly define what you mean when you are talking about success. I think we don't have much information as to what the gameplay / progression / world will actually come together as, so it is hard to tell if it is going to be really fun or not, and for whom and how long. The things I do think we could talk about is financial success - how much does the game cost and how many box sales and subscriptions for what amount of time would be necessary for the game to succeed in turning a profit. Tobold or someone crunched the numbers and seemed to think that it would take a huge amount of sustained subscriptions for the game to be successful. I don't know how accurate their figures were, but this is something that could be researched and turned into an article. Research the costs - development, maintenance, marketing, etc., then research what the revenue would need to be based on the monthly fee and cost of the box in order to determine how many subscriptions would be needed in order to make money on the game. Once we have a number like... 1 mil box sales and 300k subscriptions or something, we could talk about whether or not that is a realistic goal for SWTOR to reach or not. Jon Wood - it would be awesome if you wrote this article - I think someone did a barebones analysis in the blogosphere but if you did an in depth research project and looked at comprable games to help estimate the full list of costs/revenue it would be awesome. You could interview some CFOs of other game companies to see what they have to say. Could be awesome! Do it!
Wood states a lot of the facts about the game - which is nothing hugely special, but still useful to keep people in check. That said, I think it is not really valuable to rule out speculation as to success/failure of the game b/c if you do - and only allow a presentation of the facts, then there really isn't much to talk about. And, we do have some information about the game, which we can use to make some arguments about how successful the game may be both in terms of success as a good/enjoyable game, and in terms of economic success. I think the issue Wood takes with this speculation is that so much of it is unfounded and without specificity or much argumentative weight - and also makes claims such as SWTOR WILL FAIL! as opposed to I think that because of x, y, z aspects of the game and looking at past games that attempted such things / spent such money failed/succeeded I think that SWTOR will perform in x manner. It would be helpful to know more about c, d, e in order to make a better guess at the games success. Basically people don't lay bare their arguments.
I think one of the biggest questions (for me at least, and I haven't been following very closely) is simply what the game world will be like. A lot of people are concerned about how a single player RPG story-based type game will translate into a MMORPG with small grouping. How linear is the gameplay? How many different paths are there you can take through the leveling process? How will everyone working through different parts of the story simultaneously work in a world? Will you be able to repeat dungeons / instances? How will they change after you have done the major story part associated with the dungeon? What are the dungeons going to be like? What are the interactions b/w good and evil factions going to look like? Where does pvp come in to play? How will it work?
---- Some of these questions may already be answered, but I don't know them. I don't really know how a story based MMO with small groups will work. I love the Diablo series (which people often compare SWTOR to, when upset) but I don't have any clue how it would work as an MMO. Which isn't to say it won't work, I just can't picture it yet. If anyone has answers to some of the questions - post it up.