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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

#51

Post by Goronmon »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #39

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…

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.

Yeah, I think this about sums it up. When it comes down to it, all that happened is that a company made a bad game. Companies have been doing this for many years and will continue to do so for as long as the medium exists.

If anything, this whole SimCity fiasco has made me less of a fan of RPS in general. It felt like half their site was dedicated to bad-mouthing the game and EA for the first week or so after release. And, of course, they need to throw out a piece like this after a while to generate page views and remind us how terribly angry we should be that such a tragedy could have been allowed to happen.

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

#52

Post by jahabrewer »

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…

> 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.

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

#54

Post by eli »

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.

It's also a strategy that's so hard to follow that even Johnson & Johnson has had trouble replicating it in later disasters (it also didn't hurt that J&J was completely blameless of the original charge). On The Media had a nice story about it in reference to the Toyota "unintended acceleration" issue:

http://www.onthemedia.org/2010/feb/12/better-safe-and-sorry/ (transcript: http://www.onthemedia.org/2010/feb/12/better-safe-and-sorry/...)

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

#55

Post by [deleted] »

djt wrote: post #43
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.

[deleted]

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

#56

Post by belorn »

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 glib remark of "Just don't buy it", simply won't cut it. This attitude is harmful, both to consumers and to developers/producers, and to a lesser degree, peoples health.

First off, it harms consumers to not get what they pay for. This is simply wrong.

Second off, it harms developers and producers because people view software purchases as high risk. Ever wondered why people dwell on buying a $3 app, but can impulse buy a phone for $300? If the phone is broken, you go back to the buyer and get it replaced. If the phone is unusable in term of user-interface, you replace it with a different phone/model or return it to the shop (EU law enabled this option by law most of the time). In one sentence, the producer is responsible so the consumer view it as low risk. With software, if won't start, is buggy or simply won't fulfill the intended task, the consumer is to blame for doing a bad purchase. The consumer see this as high risk. Thus, risk aversion goes into affect. If you are in the business of software development, you do not want this.

Last, if the producers of software is never hold responsible for their product, that attitude creeps over to critical systems like medical instruments and airplane computers. If faults or security problems is viewed as the consumers problem, then the quality and trust in critical system goes down.

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

#57

Post by onli »

Goronmon wrote: post #51
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #39

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…

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. Yeah, I think this about sums it up. When it comes down to it, all that happened is that a company made a b…

You misrepresent what happened severely. It isn't the case that this is simply about a bad game. This is about a game which didn't work for the people buying it. Which got great previews and reviews(!) before the issues with their servers arised. And which wasn't even a good game, because it was fundamentally flawed, which at the beginning remained undiscovered.

Furthermore, this is not even about the game at all. It is about the crisis management of EA/Maxis, who simply lied (I doesn't care whether she lied or not, in effect it was a lie) when claiming that the Always-On-DRM, which prevented people from playing the game, was necessary to run the game at all because of server-side calculations.

I think RPS is right to make a story out of this fact. Companies who get away lying their customers and the press should feel consequences of this. All too often, and in EAs case this seems to me especially true, companies who behave unethical create a growing mass of disgruntled players not respecting, and not buying from, that company anymore, which the company can ignore for quite a while when focusing only on quarterly results (and given the arrival of new players all the time), until the negative image becomes so overwhelming that their customer-base collapses.

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

#58

Post by ChikkaChiChi »

jahabrewer wrote: post #52
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…

> 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.

Same here. I explained they failed on digital delivery of a service. I also told the rep that the company had threatened me and other customers with a refusal of service if any such chargebacks were attempted.

I may have been willing to wait out the launch fiasco, but when EA reps explained to me and others that our Origin account would be BANNED if we issued any chargebacks...that was the last straw for me.

I'm sort of hoping EA does ban my account. I'm sure my AG would love to hear about how they no longer provide me access to games I purchased in the past but they now no longer think I should be allowed to use.

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

#60

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

Silence is a great tool, especially initially.

Many places that feel that they need to "do something" end up speaking before they really understand what is going on. So you have the bigger risk of either making content-free statements that everyone sees through, or worse making incorrect statement that feed that flames that your organization is incompetent.

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