Tattered Page

Timothy Burke has a good writeup over at TerraNova addressing the apparent developer disdain for official forums.  Great points, but I think (or at least hope) that he’s mixing up the PUBLIC expressions of the developers with the REAL attitudes devs take from them.

Near the end of the writeup, Tim gets a little conspiracy-theory on us: devs might prefer to discard the importance of the forums because they need deniability. Essentially, if a dev isn’t ready or willing to address an issue that the community sees as critical, it’s best to claim ignorance, rather than respond actively in the forums.  

I disagree.  Any good illuminati would have abandoned THAT strategy when it failed to work- and it has NEVER worked.  Forumites assume that any information posted in any thread, no matter how deep or how off-topic, has been duly reported to the devs.  Claiming ignorance has never given any dev a break.   

It’s my turn to play Jerry Fletcher. (Get your tinfoil hats ready)

Any developer worth his salt would agree with Timothy on the value of the forums, But affirming that importance cedes power. 

Power itself isn’t bad- if used responsibly, but spend some time in an “official online gaming community” and you’ll understand that ”monkeys with dynamite” doesn’t even begin to describe the potential damage here.  Sure, you’ll find level-headed forum regulars, but for every Zeus or Lady_A supporting level-headed, constructive community building, you’ll find a half-dozen hotheaded flamers that crave the power, attention, and importance they lack in real life. 

Given even the slightest hint of influence, the voices of reason will be drowned out by loud-mouthed, rude, socially-challenged attention mongers deluded with inflated images of self-importance.  They’ll claim to represent the people, make demands (budget-be-damned) and require immediate results in fields that they have no real expertise in.

We already have one U.S Congress, thankyouverymuch.  At least those blokes face SOME form of selection process (flawed as it may be).  Anyone can register for a forum account.

Once these people are convinced of their own importance, refusal will carry a high price.  While a dev could revoke the power granted to the community, those mobilized to act will not be silenced easily. They’ll create enough noise to make the more herd-minded stampede.   That’s managable, but costly. 

Better to let them wallow in the sloth of disenfranchisement. 

In summary: 

• Unrecognized influence is more easily denied.
• Recognized influence will attract those that seek power.
• Power attracts those least qualified to weild it. 
• They’ll always believe they have more power than they do.
• They’ll always seek more power.
• Paring back that powerbase, once established will result in rebellion.
• Rebellions can be quashed, but at a cost
• Better to downplay the forum’s importance, minimize the powermongers, and make any rebellions more easily quashed.

I may be posting this half-joking, but many MMO observers have speculated on whether we’ll ever see a ” Player’s Bill of Rights (or Magna Carta): a group of community activists bent to limit the power of the devs… much as we once sought to define and limit the power of kings.   Take a look at some of the wackier manifestos that dot the game boards.  They’re not too far off….

You can take off those foil hats now.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.