Comments on "Word of Mouse"

[Jester of Death]

I don't particularly like the competition. I think if people can post the correct way, then it can be done. Although you could've made some money putting those two spots on eBay

[D Love]

Yes, but people are discussing it. They're not dropping a reference to Game X and moving no, which is the behavio[u]r you are encouraging. In fact, even your instructions imply that this is spamming... "(it avoids two people spamming a forum with the exact same information)". So if 2 people post the same text independently it's spamming, but if 1 person does it, it's not?

In any event, I wanted to add my 2 cents and agree with the vocal crowd thus far that this encouraging spamming behavior and also should be beneath a company such as SI and a product such as OOTP. It's really bush league stuff and you guys should be reflecting a major league persona.

In short, I think it may tarnish the professional image of SI and OOTP. The contest should have been set up to (1) encourage DISCUSSIONS about OOTP on other boards (ie, you can't just post and run, you have to start discussions which would differentiate this from spamming) and (2) once a board has had a discussion started, no one else can get credit (ie, allowing multiple people to get credit for posting to the same board means you're really pushing people towards spamming).

Now the real question is- how do you back track on this poorly thought out concept without appearing like you simply bend to the opinions of the masses at a whim? I wouldn't want to be in your shoes. Maybe you can blame it on Markus, saying he asked you to withdraw this idea. That way, everyone saves face.

Originally Posted by Marc Duffy

if you look in several of the forums on this very website, there are already people promoting other games in a non intrusive and spamming manner.

[Hador]

Originally Posted by Marc Duffy

Many many companies pay people to seed other forums both postive and negative. Whilst I can say I've never done this, I know it goes on in the games industry. I don't think you can limit that to Nvidia.

I think this competition is far removed from that and once again.

No, it is exactly the same. You are not paying people money but you are offering them a reward, in this case the chance of becomig beta testers. Basically this is EXACTLY the same.

Personally I think this a horrible idea. People ALREADY spread the word about OOTP. Why do you think it became so successful in the first place? By staging a contest like this you are actually putting this whole thing at risk because, without any doubt, such a contest will result in some bad blood on other websites and will inevitably make you look bad. Putting in this rule that contestants aren't allowed to mention the competition just makes it worse.

Really bad move IMO

[ukhotstove]

Totally agree with what I see as 90% of the threads on here that it's a bad idea, I would like to add that many OOTP players have internet connection through the day so are able to post on forums through the day so by my take your rewarding the people with most internet time and penalising the players who don't have as much internet time. There are various ways to find beta testers an idea brought up was a few lines saying why you like OOTP or why you feel you should be a beta tester, also you could have people send slogans about OOTP which you could use in the future to advertise the game.

[Marc Duffy]

It's not about saving face.

I'm happy to say it's 100% my own idea, it's not gone down too well - I'll remove the competition from the website.

The itention was never quite how it's been portrayed and I'll put this one down to an idea that sounded good but was let down in it's execution.

[D Love]

As always, I post first and think second...

Now my thoughts behind the general premise as written remain...

However, perhaps Marc was thinking of something different. As I said before, for instance, I would not object if the contest required creditable posts to involve a DISCUSSION of the game rather than a one-and-done post plugging OOTP.

An alternative which I don't find objectionable is someone posting on an unrelated topic but simply having the OOTP language in his/her signature line. A passive spam, in some ways, but much less objectionable. As we all know, THAT sort of passive spam is commonplace here and everywhere.

Hopefully that's the sort of thing Marc had in mind.

Also, as an aside, Marc- while the Eligibility section is clear that you only need to have posted 100 times prior to 3/15, the opening line may cause some confusion. When I first read it, I thought it was limited to only those who pre-ordered. On a 2nd reading, I realize that it's the 100+ posters, regardless of whether you've preordered or not. It might be worth changing that 1st line to make it clearer.

[Marc Duffy]

There have been some good ideas here on potential competitions, if people do not mind I'll steal some of those ideas for a future competition.

[deadringer]

Originally Posted by Marc Duffy

It's not about saving face.

I'm happy to say it's 100% my own idea, it's not gone down too well - I'll remove the competition from the website.

The itention was never quite how it's been portrayed and I'll put this one down to an idea that sounded good but was let down in it's execution.

As I said before, I didn't (don't) believe your intentions were wrong but this can be a very sensitive matter (as you've no doubt noticed) and unless it's worded and handled perfectly, feather will be ruffled.

I do appreciate the effort to bring in more people to the community and to add the beta tester slot.

Maybe a better contest would be to have members of the forum describe their love / excitement for OOTP and then post the winner's thoughts in a "customer" section of the website.

[Marc Duffy]

Originally Posted by deadringer

As I said before, I didn't (don't) believe your intentions were wrong but this can be a very sensitive matter (as you've no doubt noticed) and unless it's worded and handled perfectly, feather will be ruffled.

I do appreciate the effort to bring in more people to the community and to add the beta tester slot.

Maybe a better contest would be to have members of the forum describe their love / excitement for OOTP and then post the winner's thoughts in a "customer" section of the website.

Already have a number of customer opinions on the game rotating around the website but there's been some other good ideas here which I'll claim ownership of.

[Sublimity]

I've never noticed people to get upset over spamming before. But maybe it's just because I've never been around a spammer before. I wouldn't really know about the whole topic.

[Bobbuttons]

Originally Posted by Sublimity

I've never noticed people to get upset over spamming before. But maybe it's just because I've never been around a spammer before. I wouldn't really know about the whole topic.

^^^^
Gets it

[Sublimity]

BTW, for those of you interested in OOTP, you might really enjoy Cricket Coach. It's a neat game that's set to come out on Friday. You can check out the threads in either the OT or OOTP GD forums for more details and links to the site.

[Kaitiaki]

Originally Posted by Marc Duffy

Many many companies pay people to seed other forums both postive and negative. Whilst I can say I've never done this, I know it goes on in the games industry. I don't think you can limit that to Nvidia.

And I never said it was limited to Nvidia. It was an example, and one that came to mind easily because it was recent. Also, even if it's commonplace, that something is common doesn't make it right, or make me like it (or the people that practice it) any more.

I'm glad that you've never done it before. As I said, though, I think you're skating dangerously close to doing it with this contest. This contest is only removed from what Nvidia and others do in two regards:

(1) the compensation provided for advertising your product is only potential, not promised, and takes the form of a free product, rather than cash.

(2) the directive to use our established internet accounts and reputations to advertise your product is coming after the establishment of those accounts and reputations, not before.

Both, to me, are negligible distinctions.

In the case of (1), giving someone a movie ticket or putting $10 or $12 in their pocket amounts to the same thing. And the fact that only two people will, in the end, receive any compensation doesn't change the fact that everyone who participates in the contest is doing so with at least the hope of getting to see that movie for free - in other words, our posts are driven just as much by ulterior motives whether we eventually win the contest or not.

Number (2) is almost worse than the Nvidia version, to me, as it involves subverting something that was created with no hidden intent, rather than the more "honest" approach of being dishonest from the get-go.

I think this competition is far removed from that

And I don't. I would be more than happy to actually discuss the finer points of this with you here, if you care to. What I would most be interested in hearing is a justification for the "you can't tell anyone" clause of the contest. As I said, that is what causes me the most concern with the contest itself, and it is that secrecy aspect that reminded me of the Nvidia thing in the first place.

My inference was that you don't want our motivations revealed because that would reveal, to use your word, the "dirty" nature of the marketing campaign/contest. You say there was no intent to run a "dirty" campaign - so why is it important to hide the motivations of contestant's posts?

The single aim is to promote the game from the good word of it's fans.

And I salute your ends - as mentioned, I've been a fan of OOTP for a long time, and enjoy it enough to run an online league with it - but think this is a horrible choice of means. I would submit that the good word of the game's fans would be better enhanced by continuing to provide high-quality game information, rather than through what could arguably (although somewhat unfairably - again, perception trumping reality) be considered bribery.

The best advice I could give would be this: be more like Stardock (link goes to the homepage for their recently released TBS game Galactic Civilizations II). I cannot speak for how other people react, but Stardock's approach to PR for their game got me to do exactly what your contest failed spectacularly to get me to do: spread good word of the game to internet communities that I am a member of. What did they do differently than SI is doing with OOTP2006?

(1) their game had a 100% open, albeit not free, beta. Anyone who was willing to subscribe to their gaming service could play the game throughout the Beta. I will not provide you with free marketing based on publicity screenshots and promotional blogs. Let me experience the game for myself, rather than through a PR filter, and I'll tell others what I think of it.

(2) their development journals and posts have been open about both positive and negative aspects of the game. The blogs I see here have always had a "marketing" taste to them - praise the wonderful features of the new game, with an absence of any talk about any difficulties. Perhaps, again, that's a perception vs reality thing: maybe there have been more "self-critical" posts by Markus & Co that I've missed, but the best that would allow you to say is that Stardock did a better job of making me perceive them as forthright than SI has.

I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my post, Marc. The fact that you are at least willing to communicate on the boards about issues like this is at least one point in your favour to balance out the bad points this contest created.

---

I refreshed the thread while writing this, Marc, and noticed that you've already retracted the contest. This was actually going to be number (3) on the list of PR things you could do better: in addition to simply "communicating" with users through these forums, show a greater willingness to act on the presented concerns of users as a result of such discussions (I don't really consider much communication to have occurred when one side focuses primarily on "defending the party line", which was the sense I got from your initial reply to my comments).

Retracting the contest is exactly the type of action I had in mind there. Kudos for having the professional balls to admit to a mistake and taking prompt action to correct it. That action, along with the BS-free mea culpa, earned you and SI back the respect you lost from me by posting the contest in first place.

I look forward to seeing which ideas you steal from this thread for another contest.

- Kai

[Marc Duffy]

Like I said, the competition was 100% my own idea and given the reaction it seems like it was a bad idea.

My office door is always open, if I make a mistake I'll throw my hands up and equally if someone thinks I've made a mistake they are welcome to talk to me about it.

[SSG Troyer]

I've mentioned OOTP in the ES:IV Oblivion boards as one of my most anticipated games. My post was in a thread titled "What else are you looking forward to, besides OB?" or some such.

Much in the same way I've just mentioned ES:IV Oblivion ... not so much as promotion, but as a natural part of an ongoing conversation.

On these boards, I've mentioned GalCiv II a couple times, as I wondered how I would find the clock cycles to split my day between so many great games that are or have recently come out. Was I promoting GalCiv II? Maybe, in a way. But what I was not doing was spamming ...

[Cooleyvol]

Originally Posted by Ford Prefect

What you want is to press very possible dime out of OOTP and as cheap as possible.


thats why you want guys from here to do your work for free

chill out, dude.

[Sublimity]

Originally Posted by Cooleyvol

chill out, dude.

Yeah, he should really check out Cricket Coach while he's blowing off steam. It'll help him relax.

[cephasjames]

Originally Posted by Sublimity

Yeah, he should really check out Cricket Coach while he's blowing off steam. It'll help him relax.

pst.lnk.pls.

[ukhotstove]

First link is the game second link is the thread on the OOTP boards were it started.

http://www.cricketcoachgame.com/

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=113550

[Gromit]

Originally Posted by Kaitiaki

If you were expecting this contest to have a positive effect on your PR and marketing efforts for OOTP2006 in particular and SI Games in general, then the single most compelling thing I can say is this: please be aware that, for this one customer, at least, it has had exactly the opposite effect.

Well put Ash...I mean Kai.