Shedding light on dev/fan interaction via forums - askagamedev

The BSN Prime "community managers" didn't do squat. After Priestly, they did not exist. On the BSN at any rate. I always got the feeling they had other life goals they wanted to pursue, and this community manager gig was just a truck stop on their way to their destiny.

It was the actual devs that gave insight and communicated. Like Allan Schumacher. He was very good when he did his stint on the BSN Prime. When people got hyperbolic, he would ask questions; provoke a bit of introspection on the issues. Try to get to the heart of what the hyperbolic complaints about. He was very good. Jos. Barret. Even that one guy "BroJo"? I hear he was pretty decent within the MP community.

Point is, it was not the so-called community managers that were any good at managing the community. They were absentee landlords. It was the devs that were the best at interacting with the community. Even Gaider was better, though I'm still pissed with him and Priestly.

No one can spend too much time on the forums. Hell, you can't spend too much time on the internet in general without friggin drowning in it all. It's like wading through the undulating subconscious of the human species.

So, I guess it's easier sifting through Reddit and Tumblr. Or Twitter where people can be harassed so much they close their accounts, or go dark. Yeah, sure you're right.

You also got that whole Youtube thing going on where they're trying to make it more "advertiser friendly" by shutting down channels with people cursing, and what not. Trying to make it more Facebook-y with areas the content creators can interact with their audience better, though still safely limited. Forum-lite.

Meh. Meh all the way around! My proverbial jimmies are still rustled.

EA is a bunch of cheapskates. Yeah, I said it.

Read it earlier today but I'm always happy to see AAGD's post linked and discussed - their insights and explanations on how game development and the industry work are always excellent and interesting to read.

On the one hand, the original BSN was really great, and I'll miss it. Despite its numerous flaws, I really feel like it managed to actually be a working channel of discussion and dev-fan interaction, and I feel like really important discussions and interactions took place there, and some of them had a real impact on the game development and writing: one discussion that comes to mind is the DA2:MotA trans character representation discussion that actually sparked change and helped BW write better trans characters in the comics and in DA:I. If memory serves, that post was written in such personal way that I have a hard time imagining someone writing that on, say, BioWare's FB page.

But on the other hand... I get it. From a fiscal point of view, it's just a drain on resources without offering much in terms of return of investment.

I believe it was Conal Pierse, but it could've been someone else, who specifically said it was not at all a monetary decision. EA has deep pockets. If they felt that the forum served BioWare in a positive way, BioWare would have a forum.

I will always believe that the DA2 negative fallout followed up by the ME3 disaster put this into motion, regardless of the PR they offer as to their reasons. The BioWare Forums became an effective central hub of negativity for those two games, for a time. No company wants that from their official forums. I think they figured the official forums were more trouble than they were worth. This had little to do with operating expenses or lack of developer/gamer interaction.

So why bring up this whole "forum is a lot of work and so on?" No one is buying it anyways.

Is this actually a new fad among games companies? The Wizards forum closed it´s doors, too with some mumbling about new social media making forums obsolete. Anyways, seems to me, that most people migrated to other forums instead.

dragontartare , it's not what they did while a part of the forums. Realistically, they did sometimes act like douchebags back then, as well. Mostly, we still appreciated them for it, though, as it wasn't generally unprovoked.

When the public announcement of the forum closure was made, they exchanged some snarky "Bye, Felicia" tweets between themselves. It felt like a petty low blow to those of us who shared the forums with them in those years past; especially considering they're both supposedly professionals who have moved on to other jobs beyond BioWare. I suspect they're each probably okay guys, in person; but they each tend to act like asshats, at times, online.

The amount of recources does not really matter. Let's say you spend 5$ per month on something that you don't see usefull and\or nice. It's just 5$, and it would only make 60$ per year, but do you really want to go on spending those money for nothing? 

Running forum costs server space and bandwidth (hosting), and BSN was using a licensed version of the engine (I assume, never bothered to check that), add moderators (as few and cheap as they are).

What IS funny, however is that BSN-prime had added content after  26.08. I've just noticed.  
HK-47 'bot' had posted on 30.08 (twice) and on 20.09. Those are news posts, but why adding content a month before the total wipe?
 

    

Just when I thought I was over this....

I appreciate the acknowledgement by the dev that the forums were for the hardcore fans. That forums can be a mine field, sometimes dramatically so. I can also understand why some devs aren't comfortable chatting on forum boards. Not everyone that makes games is super social, and I do respect that. I hate it when people treat developers and writers like acceptable targets over a damn game.

But, yet again, they missed the point.

I've talked to and seen a lot of old BSN'ers that still avoid the tweets and the reddits and all of that jazz. They didn't migrate to social media. Please, I don't think all former posters want to wade through reddit or twitter just to get a scrap of info. To be honest, their Facebook page is an absolute joke. I see more ads for their merchandise and for TOR related info than anything else. I know that other folks feel the same sort of contempt that I do.

Many of them haven't been glued to social media exclusively. Many of them have migrated to...wait for it...other forum boards. Some went to TSG, some went to Fextralife. I'm sure others have also started their own fan sites.  It wasn't solely for the social aspect.  Some of the lurkers mentioned that they went for things like the Twitter thread to find info about the game. That it was easier to go to that thread than monitor Twitter constantly.  Or to try to keep up with the insane amount of threads on reddit.   The BW related subreddits are very busy and even dev annoucements can get lost within a couple of hours. 

I doubt the amount of followers on FB and Twitter are going to show such a jump because they closed the BSN Prime. I don't use my FB much, but I made it a point to log into my account after the announcement to unfollow them. I know it was very petty and meaningless, but it wasn't like it was useful anyhow.

If this is the wave of the future, then why hasn't EA canned it's forums all together?  Why is the forums for TOR still up at all?  Surely those players can "make their own wikis and forums."  The TOR devs almost never ever posted there anyhow.   Yet, they felt that it's worth the time and money to keep that forum board going.  Meanwhile, the rest of the BioWare fans, which are millions of us, can't even have an official forum.  

I am an off and on TOR player, so I don't mean any disrespect to the players.  To quote a meme: Why not both?

If this is what the future is, why do other big AAA companies keep their forums going?  Oh wait, it's because they know it's for their fans and it's something that keeps them happy.  They use social media, but they don't have the audacity to claim that their fans will embrace it over a forum board for news.  

Fans created threads like the one based upon Twitter updates so all of that wasn't lost in the shuffle.  It made it clean, organized and mostly revelant info.  Random articles and interviews?  Yep, fans made sure those were in one place that was easy to find.  Game videos?  Why, some fans combed through Youtube to put it onto the BSN Prime.  

Yet the suits that gave this the green light expect us to go through social media to get that same information.  Without a centralized location that fans have happily organized.  Ridiculous. 

The suggestion to create a Mod-Only sticky thread for blog news was completely ignored.  It was one I made and one that I saw many other people make.  Too hard to make a thread that links to a blog that is locked to other posters I guess.  Bleh.

They also still haven't justified taking the forums completely offline. I watched when Conal stated it wasn't about money.  DA:I did very well, so to me leaving a site read-only is well within their budget. What is going on here? Conal tells us one thing, then another dev does an interview where he talks about how expensive it is to run a forum board. Er, maybe the devs should get their stories straight.

Please don't mistake me.  I loathe this decision and I have no respect for this move.  However, I know these are just people.  I'm not ripping on any employee, nor do I advocate anyone doing so.  Poor Conal got a lot of hate over being the messenger.  That isn't acceptable no matter what.  I am, however, hurt and still a little bit angry over the handling of this.  I can't get behind this decision.  I never will.

I'm glad that the Halloween season is going to keep me busy. The final days of even being able to look at BSN Prime is upon us.

/endrant

Honestly, I think migrating to a new site was for everyone's best interests. Now we can discuss all our favorite and least liked things about Bioware's games in peace, while the devs can go on their merry ways.

Weren't they all outsourced stuff anyway?

Part of the challenge for Devs in the past is that they were afforded 'moderator status' on BSN Prime and so got sucked into that work.
Also as they were posting on the 'official forum' they would often get hog-piled for information whenever they popped up.

Both of those things detract from their ability to 'just be' on the forum.

It was a very easy moderator decision on this forum to make sure that BioWare folk who post here are treated nicely and not hassled,
as they are just as entitled to share their views, as anyone else.

Are there any BioWare folks around here? Just got here so I haven't really had time to catch up on everything yet.