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The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

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Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#31

Post by ghshephard »

georgemcbay wrote: post #17

I can't speak to the media/publishing side of things, but personally I stopped talking about SimCity because I stopped playing it. Looking back at the whole fiasco, I'm positive that the always-online requirement and server overload will forever define the game, but there was a much bigger problem lurking below that issue, which is that the game sucks anyway even if you disregard the early technical issues and the po…

I concur absolutely with you - I am the worlds great sim fan, and I've lost countless thousands of hours watching my little guys (and gals) run around in Stronghold, Settlers 7, and Caesar 3. I also got a lot of fun in previous Sim City games.

The Latest SimCity got about 6 hours out of me, before I just went, "meah." - I didn't really get the same sense of progress, or emergent features, or ownership of the process and events that I get from other sims.

But - EA scammed me out of the $60 before I discovered that the game actually sucked, so - maybe it wasn't such a bad strategy on their part after all. But, with that said - this approach (hyping a game, limiting its playtesting, not providing extensive reviewer copies) - only works so many times before people start to get wise to your ways...

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#32

Post by PakG1 »

When I looked at the big hubbub about Yahoo's decision to end telecommuting, I couldn't help but think that Mayer was making the right decision by not commenting. She was hired to turn around a company in crisis, there were major problems, and she based her decision on data (seeing that many people who were supposed to work via VPN weren't even logging in according to their VPN records).

It was clearly a unique decision for a unique situation and not a comment on telecommuting in general, despite what all the screamers were screaming. Judging from various comments from alleged insiders, it was a good decision because many of the telecommuters were just loafers.

Fact is, who cares what the screamers were screaming? Would people boycott Yahoo's products because they ended telecommuting? This so cannot be compared to buying products made in sweatshops, which many people clearly did for years anyway (and still do). Would employees stop wanting to work at Yahoo? Apparently, job applications are way up, including what industry considers top tier candidates.

When you make the right decision, sometimes the best option is to stay quiet and let the truth come out naturally. Of course, OP is more about the strategy in general, not whether or not the truth comes out naturally (in fact, in OP, they cared not for truth). I'm just saying I felt throughout the whole Yahoo telecommuting thing, Mayer did the right thing. Screw the screamers. They had no idea what they were talking about and wouldn't affect Yahoo in any way anyway.

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#33

Post by PakG1 »

JacobAldridge wrote: post #3

I facilitated a workshop recently where one of the speakers specialised in, among other things, crisis PR. She said that the two best ways to approach most brand attacks were 1) Silence, and this wasn't appreciated enough by brands wanting to respond; and 2) to 'burn' the story by giving access to mid-level news organisations or softer journalists - once they run with the story, it's often 'burnt' for larger / hard-h…

Definitely won't work for all crises

The golden standard for PR crisis management is probably Johnson & Johnson: http://www.aerobiologicalengineering.com/wxk116/TylenolMurde...

They definitely didn't choose silence. You're right, you definitely have to choose your strategy carefully, depending on your situation.

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#34

Post by buro9 »

rmc wrote: post #30
JacobAldridge wrote: post #3

I facilitated a workshop recently where one of the speakers specialised in, among other things, crisis PR. She said that the two best ways to approach most brand attacks were 1) Silence, and this wasn't appreciated enough by brands wanting to respond; and 2) to 'burn' the story by giving access to mid-level news organisations or softer journalists - once they run with the story, it's often 'burnt' for larger / hard-h…

Can you expand on the burn thing for those of us who don't know much about pr? Is it just because hard hitting journalists don't like to be second?

Pretty much.

All journalists don't like to be second, but most don't get a say (they work in quantity not quality).

Journalists need exclusives, just re-hashing an existing story doesn't offer a compelling reason to the reader to choose your news outlet.

So the top-tier outlets will only want to spend their column inches and reader attention on the stories that give a compelling reason for them to continue returning... that is, exclusive stories and additional depth into breaking news.

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#35

Post by _mulder_ »

georgemcbay wrote: post #17

I can't speak to the media/publishing side of things, but personally I stopped talking about SimCity because I stopped playing it. Looking back at the whole fiasco, I'm positive that the always-online requirement and server overload will forever define the game, but there was a much bigger problem lurking below that issue, which is that the game sucks anyway even if you disregard the early technical issues and the po…

Completely agree. I went away on holiday for a week, before I was playing it every day, when I came back I didn't even think about it until now (4 weeks later).

This game just didn't have the longevity of the previous games.. I found I outgrew my city areas quite quickly, multiplayer was completely broken (whenever I clicked to join a game, all the lots were already full, I could never find a region with a free city. So I start my own region and nobody ever joins!) and even when I had a full region to myself, which is what I wanted all along, I could only ever link up 4 cities out of 16 because of how the Highways interconnect.

On reflection, I think one of the main problems was actually that the game was too easy! Plop in a Coal mine and a Trade depot and you could be making millions without ever plopping a house.

I'm just looking forward to GTA5 now... they've delayed the launch for 4 months to get it exactly right. Perhaps EA should look to Rockstar to see how to manager a cult game franchise properly... Attention to detail!

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#36

Post by rubinelli »

ghshephard wrote: post #31
georgemcbay wrote: post #17

I can't speak to the media/publishing side of things, but personally I stopped talking about SimCity because I stopped playing it. Looking back at the whole fiasco, I'm positive that the always-online requirement and server overload will forever define the game, but there was a much bigger problem lurking below that issue, which is that the game sucks anyway even if you disregard the early technical issues and the po…

I concur absolutely with you - I am the worlds great sim fan, and I've lost countless thousands of hours watching my little guys (and gals) run around in Stronghold, Settlers 7, and Caesar 3. I also got a lot of fun in previous Sim City games. The Latest SimCity got about 6 hours out of me, before I just went, "meah." - I didn't really get the same sense of progress, or emergent features, or ownership of the process…

Personally, I burnt out after Molyneux's Black & White, but recently GoG.com helped me rediscover the classics. If you don't care about fancy 3D graphics, the fun/buck is hard to beat.

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#37

Post by ghshephard »

rubinelli wrote: post #36
ghshephard wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concur absolutely with you - I am the worlds great sim fan, and I've lost countless thousands of hours watching my little guys (and gals) run around in Stronghold, Settlers 7, and Caesar 3. I also got a lot of fun in previous Sim City games. The Latest SimCity got about 6 hours out of me, before I just went, "meah." - I didn't really get the same sense of progress, or emergent features, or ownership of the process…

Personally, I burnt out after Molyneux's Black & White, but recently GoG.com helped me rediscover the classics. If you don't care about fancy 3D graphics, the fun/buck is hard to beat.

Yes! I ended up spending 3x a much time in the last two months with Empire Earth, Gold Edition, than I did with SimCity. My major challenge is armwrestling with compatibility modes/video drivers to get the older games playing. I couldn't get EE running on either Windows 7, or my VMware instances of Windows XP, so I finally ended up installing it on my work system (A Dell Precision 650, still running windows XP) - Works Great.

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#38

Post by ghshephard »

smutticus wrote: post #23

I'm quite glad the story went away. Some company released a crappy product and people got angry. Why? Just don't buy it. It's not as if EA has redeemed themselves in any way. SimCity still has a 1.9 score on Metacritic. The public still agrees this game is a failure and their sales will reflect that.

It's not just that the company released a crappy product - it's that they also "didn't tell the truth" about it. Their Always-On DRM was explained at varying times as either (A) Part of the compute process (untrue), or (B) Part of their MMO strategy - which given the almost complete lack of socialization in the game, makes no sense whatsoever.

Should they be held accountable for their words/actions?

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#39

Post by ChrisNorstrom »

That's not "silence", that's the power of the "2 week give-a-damn limit". In today's society we're overwhelmed with constantly breaking news from all over the world. People tend to forget about things after about 2 weeks. There's just so many new things to care about that it's impossible to not move on from old news. Especially when it's just about a game. I'm sure gamers will keep the Sim City fiasco in the back of their minds and pirate later games published by EA but for now, we're really just tired of hearing about old news.

Same thing happened with the whole "WarZ" fiasco. That team had false advertising on Steam, a glitched game released, artwork from the walking dead was stolen, bug reporters banned from the forums and censored. It was a lot worse than SimCity, yet 2 weeks later we just stopped caring. It's a shitty game, moving on, lets focus on something more important, like plastic in our oceans.

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#40

Post by ghshephard »

Tichy wrote: post #25

Maybe it just wasn't a very intetresting story. Gamers had to wait a couple of days for EA to fix their servers. Not very shocking at all.

The issue was more the fact that they had Always On DRM built into the game, and didn't tell the full truth about what it was there for.
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