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Sierra Sinks to a New Low


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I'm was reading Penny-Arcade.Com today, a 3x-a-week video game comic strip and it's become apparent how low Sierra has sunk since the days Ken Williams was running the show.

 

Basically, at a site called RelicNews.Com (a site organized quite a bit like this one), a PR guy, Alex "Marweas" Rodberg, from Sierra drops in and gives "droppings" of info from Sierra, kind of what Diamond from Revolution does for us when he's got a chance. Recently, people were wondering why Homeworld 2 wasn't at ECTS and the PR guy from Sierra had this to say:

 

Originally posted by Marweas

*yawn*

 

Well, I'll be concluding my participation in this forum with this post. Frankly, the effort put into keeping this miniscule community informed is not worth the aggravation or the time.

 

I just returned from Leipzig, Germany, where Homeworld 2 was demonstrated at a consumer Games Convention larger than ECTS. The game looked fantastic and people responded to it marvelously. Given that trade shows like ECTS are used to hype upcoming products, not products practically in stores, and given that VUG has about a gazillion games to market (most of which have greater earning potential than HW2) we made the decision to focus on other products at ECTS.

 

Enjoy the game.

 

I look forward to hearing more complaints about how Sierra ignores the community. I'm sure accusing instead of asking, and b****ing instead of learning will accomplish your goals admirably.

 

Cheers, and goodbye. – Alex

 

I don't claim to have a lot of business sense, but that was singly the rudest post I've read from any video game company before. My main criticism is this: EVERY CUSTOMER IS IMPORTANT AND SHOULD BE TREATED WITH RESPECT. I know that being a PR guy for a video game company can be rough, but anyone with a business degree getting into PR really should know what he's getting into. Saying nothing would have shown more professionalism and class than ranting at a couple of forum posters. Penny-Arcade also put in their two cents, but it has some rough language, too, so be forewarned:

 

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-09-01&res=l

 

I'm thankful that this site gets the "Diamond"s of the industry rather than the Marweases.

 

--BPF

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I've been reading PA religiously since 1999, very soon after they got started. They've gone through a few periods where their strips haven't quite been up to snuff, but in the last year/several months they've been getting their mojo back. They've also more frequently addressed issues that are more political in the gaming world, which is interesting.

 

I found the behavior of that Sierra PR guy pretty appalling, and when I saw that PA earlier today I was very surprised that a company employee would actually make a post like that. A similar thing happened (and was also parodied by PA) a month or two ago in the action genre. I don't recall the company, however. Behaviour like that is just ridiculous.

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PA rules, even though their news and commentary is often many times funnier than the comic strip itself.

 

I don't really understand the massive outcry after Marweas posted those comments. Sure, it wasn't a particularly smart thing to do, and I bet he's gonna get in trouble for it. But I do understand why he said it.

 

That forum looks like it's full of trolls. The standard reply to anything seems to be "OMG Si3rra sux0rrzzz!! hahahaha". That's not a particularly motivating place to work in. Even though Sierra may have done some crap things the past couple of years, the members of that forum don't have an inch of respect for the enormous time and effort that goes into creating a game. All they do is bitch and whine, so I'm kinda on Marweas' side here. (I don't know the guy, though, and I haven't seen any of his earlier posts.)

 

To think this whole affair was triggered by fans complaining about HW2 not being shown at ECTS. A valid complaint, perhaps, but I don't see a single person who considered any other theory other than "Sierra personally hates us".

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I feel some sympathy for this Alex guy to be honest because it must be a hard job being the face of a company. It means you get all the abuse and probably none of the praise.

 

But sierra really are not good at dealing with their fans at all. They've ridden roughshod over people in the past, and they never seem to talk directly to the people buying their games; just to games publications etc.

 

I can understand Alex getting angry when people are flaming sierra in a thread because he must think that in some way it reflects directly on how he is doing his job. The reality is that sierra as a whole are doing it to themselves and people like him who are taking time to speak to the fan communitys are fighting a loosing battle. Sierra needs a major policy change imo.

 

For example, they may not be interested in making adventure games anymore but they are interested in exploiting some of their past "franchises". As soon as rumours started about LSL8, they should have released a statement answering peoples questions instead of making people feel ignored and thus angry. In the days of Ken Williams they used to actively court their customers (they were effectively a "direct marketing" company as he said in an interview not so long ago). Now they're just a faceless company thats playing the game by everyone elses rules instead of making up a few of their own.

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You can deal with a situation like that a lot more elegantly than throwing a little tantrum and storming off like he did. As Gabe said in the second PA news post today, that's not going to teach anyone a lesson, or make them feel bad... it doesn't fix anything. Just pisses off your fans, be them assholes or not. ("be them?") You can leave their community alone without telling them off stupidly.

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Originally posted by BigJKO

Yeah, I'm trying to suck some serious ass here, work with me!

Is there -- nevermind. Insert your own disgusting joke here. Mine's not suited for this board.

 

I agree that this Alex thing is being thrown out of proportion. I agree that there would have been better ways to handle it, but I can understand how he would sort of spiral into that position. Believe it or not, they wanted to stay apprised of and be involved in the community in a close-knit way. How would you react when you have to read, day in and day out, constant attacks to your who-knows-what? Most people would just shut that channel of communication off, but they tried to keep it open, in order to stay in touch, and feel a little less like a monolith company.

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