I've decided to switch over to Wordpress. It's prettier, and I don't like the stupid URL I had made for this website too long ago. So I made an even stupider URL, and you should switch over to this site:
http://oftollsandrolls.wordpress.com
I've moved all the posts over there, and I won't be updating Blogger any longer. It's been a pleasure, Google, but your time has come. Later!
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Pulling the rug out from under you
Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, developers of Stargate Worlds, fired their Community Manager this week. Their claim (which I believe) is that they wanted a CM who was local to the company. Now, I can completely understand that preference. Working in Seattle this summer allowed me to be so much more helpful than I could have been at home. And even now, back at school, it's much harder to stay in touch and keep up with everything that's going on around the office. But, what happened at CME is something very different. Because it is extremely hard on a community to take the CM who they've come to know and love, and throw them out for someone completely new.
I'm not like all the other forumgoers who claim that this will ruin the community, blah blah blah. But I do think that there is a balance through the development cycle of when taking away a CM can be beneficial, and when it turns harmful. CME didn't cross that line, I'm fairly certain. Yes, right now it sucks that we lost Katie, who everyone knows to be awesome and sweet and just fun all around. But I bet in a few months, or whenever the beta starts, we'll be just as happy as we were a few weeks ago.
However, try firing the CM right before launch. It's possible complete chaos will reign. Your community builds up this trusting rapport with the CM, and to have them lose that will also cause them to lose faith in the company a little. Yes, you can build it back up with someone new, as I'm sure CME will do, but it takes a lot of time and effort, during which many players might not be willing to put in everything they had been putting in. I know that I, personally, feel less compelled to help out on the forums, because I know Katie's not there to help out. I remember reading that some of the community helpers there wanted to quit in rage after hearing about it, but, thankfully, they all stayed on.
Anyways, point being, there's a balance there. I think CME will be fine from this occurrance, but other companies might not be so lucky.
PS. I need to watch the Star Wars trilogy again.
I'm not like all the other forumgoers who claim that this will ruin the community, blah blah blah. But I do think that there is a balance through the development cycle of when taking away a CM can be beneficial, and when it turns harmful. CME didn't cross that line, I'm fairly certain. Yes, right now it sucks that we lost Katie, who everyone knows to be awesome and sweet and just fun all around. But I bet in a few months, or whenever the beta starts, we'll be just as happy as we were a few weeks ago.
However, try firing the CM right before launch. It's possible complete chaos will reign. Your community builds up this trusting rapport with the CM, and to have them lose that will also cause them to lose faith in the company a little. Yes, you can build it back up with someone new, as I'm sure CME will do, but it takes a lot of time and effort, during which many players might not be willing to put in everything they had been putting in. I know that I, personally, feel less compelled to help out on the forums, because I know Katie's not there to help out. I remember reading that some of the community helpers there wanted to quit in rage after hearing about it, but, thankfully, they all stayed on.
Anyways, point being, there's a balance there. I think CME will be fine from this occurrance, but other companies might not be so lucky.
PS. I need to watch the Star Wars trilogy again.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Fringe
JJ Abrams's new show finally premiered this week. I wasn't caught up in all the hype about it, because as much as I love Lost, I think it's gotten way weird lately. I love it because I was in it from the beginning, back before it was crazy super weird. Fringe starts off with the weird, and plans to keep going, and I really have plenty of weird from Lost and Heroes combined. Anyways, I watched the Fringe pilot online yesterday just to see what it was like, and here are my thoughts.
It's not bad. It's got an interesting premise, and you do get a lot of the explanations you were interested in by the end of the episode. There's a nice twist in it which I sort of predicted, but all in all, it was a well-made episode. Though I do admit, I was extremely grossed out at the opening sequence.
My main anger stems from the blatant similarities between this and Lost. Let's see: Story starts with a plane. One actor crosses over from Lost to Fringe. The show's about psuedoscience (which sort of is what Dharma was looking at). The same guy does the music for both shows, and they sound extremely similar (complete with a crescendo into an abrupt silence before commercial). Oh, and the one passenger they pointed out dying: Passenger 108. I mean, really? You had to choose THAT number?
So, the show was fine. I'm not hooked, which is a very good thing, and I've basically decided I'll be happy enough letting the season run, then reading an entire synopsis of it next year to find out what happened. That'll be great.
In the meantime, here's the breakdown of shows I'm going to be watching this Fall:
Monday
8PM Chuck (starts 9/29)
9PM Heroes (starts 9/22)
Tuesday
10PM Eli Stone (starts 10/14)
Thursday
9PM The Office (starts 9/25)
9:30PM 30 Rock (starts 10/30)
Not too bad, I think.
It's not bad. It's got an interesting premise, and you do get a lot of the explanations you were interested in by the end of the episode. There's a nice twist in it which I sort of predicted, but all in all, it was a well-made episode. Though I do admit, I was extremely grossed out at the opening sequence.
My main anger stems from the blatant similarities between this and Lost. Let's see: Story starts with a plane. One actor crosses over from Lost to Fringe. The show's about psuedoscience (which sort of is what Dharma was looking at). The same guy does the music for both shows, and they sound extremely similar (complete with a crescendo into an abrupt silence before commercial). Oh, and the one passenger they pointed out dying: Passenger 108. I mean, really? You had to choose THAT number?
So, the show was fine. I'm not hooked, which is a very good thing, and I've basically decided I'll be happy enough letting the season run, then reading an entire synopsis of it next year to find out what happened. That'll be great.
In the meantime, here's the breakdown of shows I'm going to be watching this Fall:
Monday
8PM Chuck (starts 9/29)
9PM Heroes (starts 9/22)
Tuesday
10PM Eli Stone (starts 10/14)
Thursday
9PM The Office (starts 9/25)
9:30PM 30 Rock (starts 10/30)
Not too bad, I think.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
It's Amazing...
...what you can do with a little CSS. Check out Pirate's new website: http://www.burningsea.com. I know a lot of work went into it, but all the data remains unchanged, and it just looks ridiculously good compared to the old design. I really wish I was good at web design...
Sunday, September 07, 2008
A Moment of Your Time
Allow me to rant, yet again, for a minute.
Today, I gathered up the courage to jump into Grand Theft Auto IV's multiplayer mode. I always get scared the first time I play multiplayer, because I feel like I'm jumping into a pool where everyone's already been there for days, and I don't even know what the temperature's like. Weird metaphor. Anyways, I did it. The game itself was awesome. My first (and only) match I ended up playing with a developer of the game, which I only knew because I unlocked an achievement when I killed him.
On the other hand, however, I also had the unfortunate pleasure of playing with a 12-year-old. Let me be clear here. I am not an agist in any sense, mostly because when I was young, I enjoyed having conversations online with people older than me, since I could hold a coherent conversation. But when you're playing a game that is rated Mature, and not just any game, but Grand Theft Auto, you do NOT need to see a whiny 12-year-old yelling at you in his Texan accent, about how he had sex with your mother last week.
My rant is twofold here. First, obvioiusly, is how this kid got the game. I am very proud of the fact that when I worked at CompUSA, I was ALWAYS making sure the parent knew what game they were buying for their child. ALWAYS. And many times, after I explained that Game X was all about killing babies, the parents would look at me in shock (and gratitude), and tell their child there was no way in hell they'd be buying it for them. GameStop, from my experience, has been pretty good about that sort of thing as well. I'm 21, and they still carded me when I wanted to buy GTA. That's fine with me. I'm happy to do that. But what fucked up parents would let their child buy a game entitled "Grand Theft Auto"? If he wanted to buy a game called "Murder Children In Their Sleep", I bet mom and dad would happily hand over their wallets. Seriously. This is ridiculous.
My second rant is why ANY game allows for these kids to join in multiplayer, and just yell at you nonstop for 20 minutes. I'm not complaining about trash-talking. I just need a feature, like in Halo 3, to mute a person who is annoying me. It's very simple, and extremely necessary. I would've had the greatest gameplay experience today if it weren't for that young'un, and I searched around for a way to shut him up. Couldn't find anything. Developers, you need that feature. I'm afraid to play again, because I don't ever want to sit through eight people yelling at a child, and him yelling profane things back. It's just unacceptable.
We now return to our regularly scheduled program.
Today, I gathered up the courage to jump into Grand Theft Auto IV's multiplayer mode. I always get scared the first time I play multiplayer, because I feel like I'm jumping into a pool where everyone's already been there for days, and I don't even know what the temperature's like. Weird metaphor. Anyways, I did it. The game itself was awesome. My first (and only) match I ended up playing with a developer of the game, which I only knew because I unlocked an achievement when I killed him.
On the other hand, however, I also had the unfortunate pleasure of playing with a 12-year-old. Let me be clear here. I am not an agist in any sense, mostly because when I was young, I enjoyed having conversations online with people older than me, since I could hold a coherent conversation. But when you're playing a game that is rated Mature, and not just any game, but Grand Theft Auto, you do NOT need to see a whiny 12-year-old yelling at you in his Texan accent, about how he had sex with your mother last week.
My rant is twofold here. First, obvioiusly, is how this kid got the game. I am very proud of the fact that when I worked at CompUSA, I was ALWAYS making sure the parent knew what game they were buying for their child. ALWAYS. And many times, after I explained that Game X was all about killing babies, the parents would look at me in shock (and gratitude), and tell their child there was no way in hell they'd be buying it for them. GameStop, from my experience, has been pretty good about that sort of thing as well. I'm 21, and they still carded me when I wanted to buy GTA. That's fine with me. I'm happy to do that. But what fucked up parents would let their child buy a game entitled "Grand Theft Auto"? If he wanted to buy a game called "Murder Children In Their Sleep", I bet mom and dad would happily hand over their wallets. Seriously. This is ridiculous.
My second rant is why ANY game allows for these kids to join in multiplayer, and just yell at you nonstop for 20 minutes. I'm not complaining about trash-talking. I just need a feature, like in Halo 3, to mute a person who is annoying me. It's very simple, and extremely necessary. I would've had the greatest gameplay experience today if it weren't for that young'un, and I searched around for a way to shut him up. Couldn't find anything. Developers, you need that feature. I'm afraid to play again, because I don't ever want to sit through eight people yelling at a child, and him yelling profane things back. It's just unacceptable.
We now return to our regularly scheduled program.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Braid
So. Everyone's been talking about this new game on XBLA called "Braid". It's being praised as this amazing game, totally worth the money, blah blah blah. This situation sounds really really familiar though, because the last time the media praised a game this much, it was for Portal, which is now my favorite game of all time. So I know that if I buy Braid, I'm going to love it, and will write lots of glowing reviews about its awesomeness, especially about whatever this supposed "end-game sequence" is that everyone's peeing in their pants from excitement about.
So why haven't I bought it yet? Well, mostly because I'm trying really hard to be conservative with my money this year, I guess. I spent SO much last year on games and toys and such. I'm not complaining at all, but I should probably be more careful with what I buy, that is, unless I start getting paid for my job. Then this plan goes out the window. Anyways, there are lots of games and stuff coming out this year that I've made a list of that I want to buy. For example, Lost season 4, Chuck season 1, and Spore, to name a few. All of which are very important things to be purchasing. So I'm going to hold off on buying Braid for a little while. I'm sure it'll be around, I've played the demo in the meantime (it's fine, but not enough to grab my attention just yet), and when I have the money to spare, I'll jump in and be back here, writing about how awesome it is.
So why haven't I bought it yet? Well, mostly because I'm trying really hard to be conservative with my money this year, I guess. I spent SO much last year on games and toys and such. I'm not complaining at all, but I should probably be more careful with what I buy, that is, unless I start getting paid for my job. Then this plan goes out the window. Anyways, there are lots of games and stuff coming out this year that I've made a list of that I want to buy. For example, Lost season 4, Chuck season 1, and Spore, to name a few. All of which are very important things to be purchasing. So I'm going to hold off on buying Braid for a little while. I'm sure it'll be around, I've played the demo in the meantime (it's fine, but not enough to grab my attention just yet), and when I have the money to spare, I'll jump in and be back here, writing about how awesome it is.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Community vs. Stage Management?
I've come realize why it is that I'm so attracted to the community management field of work. It's because I love stage managing, and there's a lot of overlap.
So, I've written a devlog on my experiences at Flying Lab this summer, and the things I learned from being on the inside of a game company. That'll be online at http://www.burningsea.com fairly soon. But one thing I wanted to include and didn't have time/space to was what community management is, and why I wanted to be a community intern.
So, community management is a bit difficult to describe. The way I see it, the CM is the communications hub and relay between the developers and the players. All information from both ends need to be fed through him/her (for the sake of this post I'll just use "him" from now on), in order to make sure that the proper information is being passed both ways.
Imagine a developer posting on the forum that they want to add in some new feature, say, pet monkeys. Now, as is usual, the post gets blown out of proportion simply by word of mouth, so that in a few weeks, everyone's claiming they were promised flying monkeys that fling bananas a week ago, and where the hell are those damn monkeys already? This is a slap in the face to the people who pay $15 a month, and goddamnit, they deserve 24/7 attention.
Well, you can see how crazy that gets just from a dev posting something they'd like to see. This is why CM's are needed to funnel that information. I like seeing developers post on the forums, of course, but the CM needs to be aware of things that they're saying (in case those features do not happen) as well as what the public now believes will happen (in order to calm them down, and let them know that banana-flinging flying monkeys probably would NOT fit in a game set in medieval China, for example).
Now how is this related to Stage Management? Simple. Conflict resolution. Both through courses and experience, I've learned that SMing is all about avoiding conflict, and resolving it quickly if it does occur. They need to be great at compromising, but firm in decisions, and need to be constantly aware of everything that's happening around them. Everything that happens in the theater needs to be filtered through them, so that they are aware of every design decision that was made, any changes that are going on, etc. If there are any Community Managers reading this post (I'm looking at you, Troy), you're probably nodding along, because I just described exactly what a Community Manager does. The difference is that the CM has an entire community of players to report to. Thousands, or, in the case of a game like World of Warcraft, millions of players all look to the CM for news and help handling issues. So, it's Stage managing on a much larger scale. With an invisible audience.
So what makes a CM position seem more rewarding to me than an SM? Well, I can answer that easily. The SM is the most thankless job in the theater business. To an audience, at least. How many of you have gone to a show and read the bio of the stage manager? I didn't think so. The SM has the toughest job, and yet the only people who actually know that are the actors, crew, and designers of the show. Which is great, but those aren't the people who appreciate the complexity of a production. The audience does, but they don't realize who it is that puts it all together.
On the other hand, a CM is seen and heard by the entire playerbase. He is the voice of the game, sometimes. Everyone knows Aether at Pirates of the Burning Sea. And no one hates him, either. He's a great guy, and is really good at relaying information and making sure people are constructive. And people really appreciate him, both within the company, and outside of it. I hate to admit it, but I do need some sort of recognition. Stage management was great, but I couldn't do it because I didn't like the fact that no one realized how much work I put into it. Even my parents couldn't see the amount of time it took start-to-finish. And that was really rough. So community management seems more like my thing, because it's more out in the open than any other job I'd want.
Still, it's interesting that I didn't even notice the connection until now :P
So, I've written a devlog on my experiences at Flying Lab this summer, and the things I learned from being on the inside of a game company. That'll be online at http://www.burningsea.com fairly soon. But one thing I wanted to include and didn't have time/space to was what community management is, and why I wanted to be a community intern.
So, community management is a bit difficult to describe. The way I see it, the CM is the communications hub and relay between the developers and the players. All information from both ends need to be fed through him/her (for the sake of this post I'll just use "him" from now on), in order to make sure that the proper information is being passed both ways.
Imagine a developer posting on the forum that they want to add in some new feature, say, pet monkeys. Now, as is usual, the post gets blown out of proportion simply by word of mouth, so that in a few weeks, everyone's claiming they were promised flying monkeys that fling bananas a week ago, and where the hell are those damn monkeys already? This is a slap in the face to the people who pay $15 a month, and goddamnit, they deserve 24/7 attention.
Well, you can see how crazy that gets just from a dev posting something they'd like to see. This is why CM's are needed to funnel that information. I like seeing developers post on the forums, of course, but the CM needs to be aware of things that they're saying (in case those features do not happen) as well as what the public now believes will happen (in order to calm them down, and let them know that banana-flinging flying monkeys probably would NOT fit in a game set in medieval China, for example).
Now how is this related to Stage Management? Simple. Conflict resolution. Both through courses and experience, I've learned that SMing is all about avoiding conflict, and resolving it quickly if it does occur. They need to be great at compromising, but firm in decisions, and need to be constantly aware of everything that's happening around them. Everything that happens in the theater needs to be filtered through them, so that they are aware of every design decision that was made, any changes that are going on, etc. If there are any Community Managers reading this post (I'm looking at you, Troy), you're probably nodding along, because I just described exactly what a Community Manager does. The difference is that the CM has an entire community of players to report to. Thousands, or, in the case of a game like World of Warcraft, millions of players all look to the CM for news and help handling issues. So, it's Stage managing on a much larger scale. With an invisible audience.
So what makes a CM position seem more rewarding to me than an SM? Well, I can answer that easily. The SM is the most thankless job in the theater business. To an audience, at least. How many of you have gone to a show and read the bio of the stage manager? I didn't think so. The SM has the toughest job, and yet the only people who actually know that are the actors, crew, and designers of the show. Which is great, but those aren't the people who appreciate the complexity of a production. The audience does, but they don't realize who it is that puts it all together.
On the other hand, a CM is seen and heard by the entire playerbase. He is the voice of the game, sometimes. Everyone knows Aether at Pirates of the Burning Sea. And no one hates him, either. He's a great guy, and is really good at relaying information and making sure people are constructive. And people really appreciate him, both within the company, and outside of it. I hate to admit it, but I do need some sort of recognition. Stage management was great, but I couldn't do it because I didn't like the fact that no one realized how much work I put into it. Even my parents couldn't see the amount of time it took start-to-finish. And that was really rough. So community management seems more like my thing, because it's more out in the open than any other job I'd want.
Still, it's interesting that I didn't even notice the connection until now :P
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Steps Forward
I think one thing for sure that has come out of this summer (aside from the millions of other things) is that I'm no longer ashamed of what I enjoy. I mean, it was always very obvious that I love video games, but I never really liked talking about it openly. I guess my parents sort of instilled a "this isn't a real job" thing in me, so I always figured I was wasting time (enjoyably, mind you) playing games and getting involved with communities. But now...I work in the games industry. I have a legitimate job in it. So it's no longer embarrassing to me. PLUS, I've met so many people in person, and guess what? None of them are losers. They're all awesome. They're all people you wouldn't be ashamed to be friends with. And that means I can be one of those people too! Next time someone asks me what I do, I can actually explain it to them, without kind of mumbling off some crappy answer.
So, friends, anytime you're curious what I do, feel free to ask. I'll actually be honest this time around. I'm a gamer, and I love it.
So, friends, anytime you're curious what I do, feel free to ask. I'll actually be honest this time around. I'm a gamer, and I love it.
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