Community Management - a question, a suggestion.

In all the kerfuffles that Uber has had with its customers, it's been communication that's been lacking the most, on two fronts - one being the odd mix of lots/none information they distributed, and two, getting the information that existed out in front of their customers in an easy and obvious manner.

I've wondered throughout this experience what kind of effect a fully open information policy from Uber could have had on the community's tone and especially reception to the 'release'.

From being in the Backer's forum I believe that this community has proven it can handle uncertainty, can handle things changing or not being as originally envisioned. What it got up in arms about, every. single. time. was the exclusion of the community from being informed about the decision making process.

Delta commander? Might have been fine if they'd talked about it first.
No server at release? Would have been fine if they'd been up front about it not being there for release, along with a plan for when it will be released.
Commanders being sold? Would have been fine if they had talked beforehand before everyone 'found out' from the game itself.
Megabots? Were perfectly fine because they were up front about it from the beginning.

So Brad, please help me understand, since you're the official Community Manager - is there a theory at work here, some kind of community management class, something that says "Its not good to give customers inside information"? Are there things that have really burned your hide where you think Uber released heaps of information to the community and it just backfired? I'm really curious as to the reasoning / thought process behind the release / non release of information by Uber.

Secondly, you've got a website, twitter, g+, Facebook and Steam. Please please start using these tools to your advantage. These forums are a low visibility medium in terms of giving people information for commonly asked questions and concerns. Why not make an always updated page answering them, instead of getting frustrated about people not getting the message? It would make threads like this obsolete, and would give the rest of us forum warriors a great spot to link to 'official' responses from Uber Employees.

Hell, give BrianPurkiss access to a page on Uberent.com and he'd probably keep it updated for you for free .

Actually they were up front about server not being in by release, we knew about that like a month before release. Also I don't really remember commanders being sold a problem... Other than some anti-microtransaction guys but they'd be against it no matter how it was spun.

I agree on pretty much all other points.

Yeah, I've brought this up pretty up every time there is a "debacle" but I approach it slightly differently, I see it more so that while the overall outcome might not have changed, the actual discussion surrounding these topics would have been much better, more positive, more working to find a good middle ground instead of us trying to figure out what exactly happened and why and being disappointed right out of the gate.

For example, the Able Commander, had the Community had been involved/notified at an earlier stage we probably would have still ended up veto-ing the Progenitor being used as the base model for the Re-skin, but if Uber had approached us at the start of that project there still might have been time to selected a different commander to be re-skinned instead and everyone would have come out of that situation a winner. Even if there still wasn't enough time to change gears to a different commander the discussion would not have stemmed from feeling cheated or from disapproval.

It's not so much that the outcome would be different as much as how we reached that outcome would have been better for both Uber and the Community.

Mike

An analogy I'd choose for this situation is a group of creative chefs get a big group together for a big fancy dinner. Then in front of everyone, a bunch of grease fires break out.

Well, oops, that's unfortunate, but nothing special for them, fairly natural occurrence for our creative chefs. They know what to do.

BUT, before they can do it, what does the crowd do?

why of course, its fire, throw water on it.


Now our Uber chefs have lost their eyebrows and got to wait awhile for them to grow back before appearing in public again.

lol thats a fairly accurate description of a lot of public-developer interactions.

That doesn't really work, we don't know about the grease fires at the same time as the chefs do. That's the entire problem with Uber's current communication method.

A better example would ordering a coffee and asking for something like Splenda instead of regular sugar or something(Warning, I don't drink coffee) and as you're getting into your car away from the coffee shop the Batista runs up to you and says "Oh yeah by the way we ran out of Splenda and used brown sugar instead hope you don't mind." and just walks away.

The problem isn't that they didn't have any Splenda on hand, the problem is that they didn't tell you right away and let you buy and start your coffee before telling you, assuming you didn't figure it out on your own or the Barista actually came out to tell you and you go back upset to try and get the right thing.

Mike

Not exactly up front about the server release - they simple said that it was a feature like any other and would be prioritized and allocated resources as they deemed necessary. And the entire community said please don't release without it. No more was said until release.

And I think out of all the customer commander creators, KNight himself made several rather lengthy posts wondering what the heck was going on.

My point though, isn't that I think Uber made the wrong decisions - it's their call to make. I would just like to know a bit more about the decision making process behind the decision of tell/don't tell. That, and put a word in for centralizing the information in an official manner. Their Google+ page hasn't been updated since March.

the @brianpurkiss idea is one i've had for a long while and that seems fairly obvious too me, well put Pawz.

Sadly I must agree to what has been said in this topic. Brad may be a good salesman as proven by the fact that PA was near that top of steam selling charts, but when it comes to actual community involvement, Brad, you have failed. There have been countless posts around the forums where people have complained (myself included) about the lack of communication. Not only the able commander, but there is mod development, important feature development, balance concerns (although I do agree that balance is sometimes in the eye of the beholder) and just general information about the project. Now I know we can't say we don't get any information, that isn't true, but the information we do get is minuscule or severely obscured. "There is something big coming soon" may be a good hype inducer but a really dedicated fan of the game will rather roll his eyes when he sees that. We know something big is coming soon, no need to tell us that. Tell us what is coming, or at least tell the backers what is coming as they are the ones who deserve the most to know. When is rather irrelevant as long as it's properly done.

The other thing I don't like is certain actions you take. The least severe of them being outright trolling of people who have either been critical or have provided constructive input that no one wants to hear, but must be said. The two best examples I can give is posts @nanolathe and @KNight make (or made in the past rather). You are an official figure of Uber entertainment and while everyone like to have some fun this isn't what an official community manager should do.

And just as @Pawz said. Good communication would severely reduce the negative reactions of the community. Something bitter is easier to swallow if you know it's coming. This isn't just the able commander or the offline mode. There are a lot are a lot of other things that have disappointed the community. I do think that not everything can be discussed with the community because the game development would slow down to a crawl, but at least let us know when something important is cut and why.

I'm not sure they qualify as micro transactions considering their extensive price.

That was the basic premise of my concern more or less, There simply isn't 10-15$ worth of value in Commander Skins.

Mike

I agree, I've listened to their explanation for their pricing on the matter "we threw around some numbers, and said yeah that's worth 25 bucks, and hey presto" and I wasn't impressed.

Agreed. There is much to be desired when it comes to communication from Uber.

One of the things Uber keeps on saying over and over and over is "we're working on things and stuff and it'll be cool and you should be hyped." No. That doesn't work. Maybe it is alright once, but it's all Uber does.

One of the main selling points of PA is that it is going to be updated over the long run. If that is a main selling feature we should know what is coming. It keeps the community happy, engaged, and is a sales pitch.

Many of the bad reviews could have been less bad if Uber had made any form of attempt to communicate. Tell peopple that offline, server, etc is coming. Most people don't read the forums! A post from brad on page 2 of a community member asking what's going on is not acceptable.

There are so many basic things in regards to communication, sales, promotion, and the like, that Uber should be doing and isn't. They hardly post on social networks! Easy way to get sales is to post on facebook about some cool video, mod, screenshot, etc. People share it, people see it, people buy the game. It's social marketing 101.


But I digress.

Uber. Communicate more.

YYou have an incredibly dedicated fanbase. You have a fanbase that most game development companies would die for, yet you do nothing to capitalize on this. You ban people for asking questions. You troll heavily invested fans. Youu don't take advantage of the raw power of a dedicated community.

IIt's not right that we have to be your PR team.

guys, this is a forum dedicated to planetary annihilation. call me out via PM, if you must. this isn't the place, tho.