The Develop Conference garnered a lot of heated words between developers, and anyone is potentially a target it seems. Earlier this week, Positech’s Cliff Harris made a rather interesting comment indicating his opinion that Epic’s Mark Rein “is a jerk,” and that Epic as a whole could go “F**k off.”
The Positech team, responsible for Gratuitous Space Battles, along with Hello Games, Beatnik and Introversion held a conference discussing ideology on attracting a consumer base with better communication. It would seem that the argument started when Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games, snorted at a comment made by one of the lecturers during the conference.
Harris explains it in his blog rather well:
“Basically I started making the point, and Mark was also agreeing about how someone can email you as an indie dev, and you can reply personally back to that potential customer, and hopefully, that way you have converted that guy to buying the game.
At this point, there was this derisive snort from this guy in the front row, who said something to the effect of ‘one guy? who cares, that's a waste of time'. He then started to lecture us on how that's a silly way to do it. I'm 95% sure that all four of us on the panel thought ‘what the f**k?' as well as ‘who is this guy'? compounded by Robin asking him if he worked in marketing.
Anyway… it turned out this guy was Mark Rein from Epic, although he seemed to assume everyone within earshot knew exactly who he was, and why he must obviously be right. I got the impression he was there to laugh at the little guys, or to just inform us how we are all wrong. Interestingly, it seemed there was someone from sports interactive (one time indies, as I recall) there, who seemed more on the indie wavelength than Mark. It would have been cool to chat with him.
So… I've given this a lot of thought, and weighed up the pros and cons of just putting this down to misinterpreting someone, and so on, and I have reached this conclusion.
Mark Rein is a jerk.”
Harris’s words get a little more heated at the end of his post, wrapping up with some rather touchy words towards Epic. “Triple-A studio bosses trying to lecture me on how to communicate better with gamers? F**k off.”
3 Comments
July 16, 2010
I received both Gears of War games as gifts and have played them long enough to say they are average at best. The character is so frustrating bulky and slow. I have no idea why the games sell over 5 Million and I'm not going to try and figure it out. As far as i'm concerned Epic got lucky and though I could do without the language I applaud Mr. Harris for saying something. I would guess that most times when there's a problem people won't say anything, brush it off, claim things are blown out of proportion or some simply don't offer their own opinion at all as a way to go along to get along. It's a little refreshing.
What Rein did was rude and I believe Harris strategy could work. Though obviously you're not going to have time to respond to everybody unless you require your public relations manager to do that sort of thing. I know that i'd at least like to pretend that I have a developers ear and can in a way directly communicate with them and get a response to a question I might have. It creates some sort of personal relationship where the customer feels like they have input, i.e. not a waste of time. It's surely more effective than hoping some dev reads your comment in their forum. Good to know how Epic feels about customer relations though. Not that I thought they cared at all before.
July 17, 2010
Clearly, different publishers and developers have different sales goals: While a half million sold would mean disaster for the likes of Epic, it would mean triumph for your typical indie dev. In other words, that single sale made through a timely reply to a potential buyer's email (or better yet, a forum post that others can see) is far more cost effective for an indie than it is for a large developer.
In my own personal experience, a number of my decision to buy an indie game on Steam have been bolstered by the simple fact that the devs are on the forums and responding to gamers' posts. Devs like Tripwire Interactive (and many others) do a huge service to their customers—and their own sales numbers—by addressing the concerns and technical issues on forums.
Like everyone else on this planet, gamers prefer to buy products from companies that at least appear to care about their experience and satisfaction with the product. And I would imagine that I'm not the only one who has gone ahead with an indie game purchase because they saw another gamer's concerns being addressed by the devs in forums.
Indeed, it would be very smart PR for the giant publishers and developers of AAA games to have their employees pay a bit more attention to their customers—and not just on their own official forums. There's a reason why gamers have so much contempt for the publishers, and an utter lack of concern for customers after the sale is a big part of it.
On another note, it's a pity to see these grown men (Harris included—no matter how right he is in his assertions) act like highschoolers from rival cliques. It's bad for the industry and bad for their own images. You'd think someone would learn from the recent Tim Shafer v. Bobby Kotick. Of course Shafer had a valid point, but he's done himself no service by sinking to the level of calling Kotick a "prick" and then eating humble pie in apologizing.
July 19, 2010
Without going into the substance of the matter:
Anyone who has dealt or tried to deal with Rein will instantly agree. He's fun in this though.