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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

#41

Post by skrebbel »

PakG1 wrote: post #33
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.

If something goes wrong and it's your fault and you don't want to pay the consequences, silence may not be so bad.

J&J had the opposite situation. Something went wrong and it wasn't their fault. Choosing to pay the consequences anyway made them look double good; once for taking responsibility, and again for doing it when other companies might've walked away.

The problem with EA is not so much their PR strategy per se, but their general unwillingness to fix fuckups. No amount of marketing can fix a fundamentally broken company.

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

#42

Post by Kiro »

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 disagree. Best game ever actually and I will probably never get tired of it.

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

#43

Post by djt »

dotx3 wrote: post #14

While the story went away, did the problem for the company? I personally didn't buy SimCity and I know several people that didn't because of what was up in arms at the time. To me the damage is done. I won't bother complaining or yelling. I just won't pay $80 and if certain organisations keep associating themselves with poor releases/games why would anyone keep handing over their money. Especially when you're releasi…

I didnt buy it either and I haven't bought any EA games since Origin started. I figure there are a lot of other games out there from businesses I'd rather support.

I am confused by people that post on forums and get outraged then buy the games anyway.

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

#44

Post by venomsnake »

PakG1 wrote: post #32

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 decis…

Nothing boosts the morale of a company in crisis than having a boss that rules with decrees instead of leading.

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

#45

Post by DanWaterworth »

Ygg2 wrote: post #28
tacticus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SILENCE WILL FALL. I must say The Silence are a rather awesome enemy for the doctor.

I think you are wrong, those are just middle ranked PR division in EA.

The middle ranked PR division in EA is a good enemy for the doctor.

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

#46

Post by marcosdumay »

NamTaf wrote: post #26
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.

A number of reasons: 1) People pre-ordered, but didn't find out about the crippling problems until after installing it. By that time, they'd opened it. People are used to servers being overwhelmed for a few hours right on launch day. After that's passed and the problem persists, the whole thing is too late. 2) EA was refusing refunds of digital downloads. [1] 3) Even if you subscribed to their crap and waited for the…

In a sane market, people would learn not to preorder after something like that.

Nut games isn't a sne market. Most people with experience on it move away.

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

#47

Post by PavlovsCat »

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…

If you lie in such a crude fashion and get caught, then screw anyone giving you tips how to cover it up. Let's not even fantasize about hacker ethics; just get some ethics period.

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

#48

Post by Tichy »

ghshephard wrote: post #40
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.

You mean like every game on Steam.

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

#49

Post by uptown »

dotx3 wrote: post #14

While the story went away, did the problem for the company? I personally didn't buy SimCity and I know several people that didn't because of what was up in arms at the time. To me the damage is done. I won't bother complaining or yelling. I just won't pay $80 and if certain organisations keep associating themselves with poor releases/games why would anyone keep handing over their money. Especially when you're releasi…

Same here - decided to save my money. I'd probably have waited for the Mac version anyway (which comes out next month) but there were enough gameplay complaints to convince me it wasn't worth the premium price they were charging. It the price ever falls considerably, maybe I'll re-consider.

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

#50

Post by sjtgraham »

This reminds me of the Instagram TOS fiasco. Instagram essentially was burned very badly by doing the right thing, i.e. by being extraordinarily forthright about changing their terms. Usually TOS provide the company the ability to change their terms without any notice whatsoever; we are somewhat unreasonably expected to regularly check back ourselves and try to find changes. Instagram tried to do right by their users by clearly communicating upcoming and significant changes that would affect their users, and the Internet collectively and unilaterally sh*t the bed. I remember thinking they were crazy for doing that, because it was obvious exactly how it would play out.

Sometimes doing the right thing is the wrong thing. Unfortunately sometimes silence is golden.

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