I’ve always been a halo fan, but I’ve only recently started to participate in the halo community and forums. Coming from the EVE Online community, I’d like to point out some differences on how these communities are dealt with by their respective developers, and how these differences provide insight on the type of game we are participating in, its developers, and why we patrons feel entitled to affect the course of the game.
If you’re unfamiliar with EVE Online, here’s a brief overview.
EVE Online is a MMO set in a distant future and universe that allows players to pilot ships in an vast array of militaristic, economical, and diplomatic objectives. The shear complexity and depth of the game is difficult to describe briefly, and is unrelated to the point of this topic.
What IS related is relationship between CCP (EVE’s developer) and its community. The most notable example of this is the CSM (Council for Stellar Management). CSM is comprised of 7-9 EVE players, and is voted on by the entire EVE playerbase every 6 months. CCP flies members of the CSM to their office in Iceland twice per term to meet with them and discuss the direction of the game and how resources should be allocated (ie bug fixes, new content, rebalancing, etc).
On top of this, CCP provides forum feedback constantly (usually hourly) to anyone with questions, concerns, or new ideas. EVE’s community is always updated with what issues CCP is currently working on, as well as their ideas for the future. If the community doesn’t like something, their concerns can be voiced, and more importantly, heard. These concerns are ALWAYS replied with either a “Awesome idea, we will take this into consideration” , a “that’s a good point/idea, but if we did that, it would mean _____” or a polite “tough -Yoink-.”
Now, I understand that Halo games aren’t subscription based, but they’re still ever evolving experiences that require ever evolving managing.
What is TRULY different is the types of fanbases these games have. EVE Online consists of mostly businessmen, economists, and other professionals, with a smaller percentage of casual gamers. I don’t know the exact demographics, just understand that the majority are educated adults. The halo fanbase is a much broader scale of casual to hardcore gamers, with the majority being teenagers and young adults.
These are 2 entirely different demographics, and are justly treated differently. CCP welcomes all opinions, as opinions from a community of mostly professional adults are likely to be calculated, whereas opinions from a community of teens are likely to be emotional, exaggerative, and derived on a whim. I’m not saying there are no educated adults playing halo, but their voices are few and far between, washed out by the sea of teenrage on the forums. This provides a more challenging task for 343, as they not only have to tally number of opinions on a matter, but weight of merit as well. My sympathies go to 343 on this one, because dealing with such an unstable community has to make you want to pull your hair out.
But I think not discussing the direction of the game with the community is the EASIEST route, not the BEST. Telling the community you’re planning on removing the ability to jump (just an example) and asking the fans what they think beforehand is better than keeping it secret until it releases and surprising everyone the first time they try to jump. The same people that would have complained had you asked beforehand are still going to complain, but now people that may have peacefully discussed pros and cons beforehand are now swearing 343’s name as well because they just dumped this new feature on them without warning. And once again 343 has to clump all these people together in a “unproductive fanrage” category.
343, help us help you provide a product and service we can be happy we payed for. COMMUNICATE with us! Let us know what’s going on, it’s ok if you’re trying to deal with issues you don’t yet have the answer to, everyone understands this is your first rodeo. And please understand that not everyone disagreeing with your choices and actions are just raging kids butthurt over losing that last halo match.