Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

rockpapershotgun.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 112 posts

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

#101

Post by lnanek2 »

ghshephard wrote: post #29
bravura wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is burning a story still effective? HuffPo will run a story from a mid-tier news org (AFAIK), and then it will go viral. So it seems this might be a deprecated crisis PR strategy.

HuffPo doesn't rise to the level of "mid-tier" - they are definitely less Relevant (at least in the united States) than the mid-50 media outlets, and don't even compare to something like the Top Tier (NYT, WSJ, Tribute, LA Times). For example, from HN Search: Results 1-10 of 493 for http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ Results 1-10 of 12,273 for nytimes.com

Doesn't really matter how many stories. Matters how many see them and who the people who see them are. If your target market is PC gamers, a viral story from an online site could hit your target audience right where most of them will notice it. Last time I read a times article was when Tesla revealed their stories are fake.

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

#102

Post by qu4z-2 »

peacemaker wrote: post #63
jahabrewer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But - EA scammed me out of the $60 before... Chargeback if you can't get a refund (like me, I bought on Origin). I called up Amex, identified the charge, told them EA misrepresented the product, and a day later I had a credit on my statement. Took three minutes.

EA made it quite clear if you were to do a chargeback they would cancel your Origin account. Fine if you only have SimCity on there but you could end up losing a lot more than $60 if you had a few of their games via Origin.

If I were in that situation, this by itself would be enough to make me do a chargeback.

Possibly over-reacting, but I hate it when people use underhanded tactics like this, and I'd be ok with losing my other games just to spite them.

Sadly, I don't own any EA games, so I can't do this.

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

#103

Post by qu4z-2 »

Kiro wrote: post #42
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.

When I was a kid my mother "decided" I was allergic to milk, and so I wasn't allowed to drink any. Milk ended up being one of my favourite things, in no small part because it wasn't something I could have whenever I wanted.

Maybe it's the same here :) Because you can only sometimes play it you feel compelled to because who knows when it might go down again?

Just a thought.

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

#104

Post by sk5t »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #93
svachalek wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference between what's in a contract (and I'm not sure TOU even count as contracts, even though they may call themselves such) and what's actually considered "binding". IANAL but as I understand it, the more unilateral a contract is (see just about any TOU) the more likely it is to be thrown out.

I'm aware of that, but this kind of provision (chargebacks cancel access to service) have been around for quite some time. I think I'd have heard about it if they'd been challenged successfully.

I'd assume the sort of organization that would write in a chargeback=cancel policy would also work strenuously to avoid an actual test of that policy in the courts...

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

#105

Post by kbenson »

ghshephard wrote: post #37
rubinelli wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) - Wor…

Are you referring to the GOG.com versions, or originals? GOG will actually fix the games so they work in newer windows versions[1] For games where that's not feasible (older DOS games, for example), they wrap it a small GUI config and some sane defaults for dosbox.

I've actually taken to buying games I bought in the past (and in some cases still own the media for) specifically because it's supported better, and their digital game shelf allows me to download and install what I want, when I want (and it's cheap, I'll pick up 4-5 games for less than $3 a piece on their weekly sales). They've definitely made a fan of me.

[1]: http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/11/26/gog-com-announces-windows-...

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

#107

Post by lobotryas »

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.

The "Tylenol case" was a "sniper-fire crsis" - aka, a crisis caused by an outside force, like a psychotic killer. In this case no one's going to root for the serial killer regardless of how much the company may be at fault. Also, J&J has a long history of manufacturing popular products and has a good reputation with the general populace. These are the major factors that allowed J&J to handle the situation in the way that it did.

Conversely, if a client is in tabacco, genetics or weapons manufacturing then the tactics adopted by J&J will be completely useless to them. Saying that the "Tylenol case" is a golden standard is missing the big picture.

For anyone out there interested in crisis PR I highly recommend "Damage Control": http://www.amazon.com/Damage-Control-Revised-Updated-Managem...

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

#108

Post by ghshephard »

kbenson wrote: post #105
ghshephard wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) - Wor…

Are you referring to the GOG.com versions, or originals? GOG will actually fix the games so they work in newer windows versions[1] For games where that's not feasible (older DOS games, for example), they wrap it a small GUI config and some sane defaults for dosbox. I've actually taken to buying games I bought in the past (and in some cases still own the media for) specifically because it's supported better, and their…

I'm referring to the GoG games - they provide ridiculously good tech support for $6-$10 games, and I would be more than happy to pay $30-$40 to get wrappers for the games I really love, like AoE - but, as it turns out, sometimes it's cheaper (all things considered) to just buy a Circa 2000 Windows XP system, with 2000 era video cards, and drivers, than to try and get some of the GoG games working on a Circa 2010 non-mainstream system.

I'm a huge GoG fan.

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

#109

Post by wnight »

iy56 wrote: post #89
wnight wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you expect me to use a valid credit card when I pay? Because I expect a game that works as well.

No. I validate the credit card before completing the transaction. Maybe you should check whether the game is terrible before you buy it.

If "you" didn't lie to some reviewers and pay others I'd be able to.

This isn't a case of a game that doesn't age well, the thing just didn't work. Even after fixing the servers it's still defective by design. Worse, EA deliberately lied about this and their coordinated responses show widespread and high-level involvement.

Anyways, thank your lucky stars I can chargeback, it's a lot cheaper for you than any of the other (all legal) things I'd do to get back at someone who knowingly sold me a defective product. Hiring a PI isn't that expensive...

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

#110

Post by ghshephard »

ghshephard wrote: post #108
kbenson wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to the GOG.com versions, or originals? GOG will actually fix the games so they work in newer windows versions[1] For games where that's not feasible (older DOS games, for example), they wrap it a small GUI config and some sane defaults for dosbox. I've actually taken to buying games I bought in the past (and in some cases still own the media for) specifically because it's supported better, and their…

I'm referring to the GoG games - they provide ridiculously good tech support for $6-$10 games, and I would be more than happy to pay $30-$40 to get wrappers for the games I really love, like AoE - but, as it turns out, sometimes it's cheaper (all things considered) to just buy a Circa 2000 Windows XP system, with 2000 era video cards, and drivers, than to try and get some of the GoG games working on a Circa 2010 non-…

TESTING
Post reply on HN