EA says no to forums, prefers controlled media like Twitter and Facebook to convey public opinion.

ASnogarD

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Yeah, so I wanted to complain in the forums about recent comments to move comments to twitter and facebook, but I dont want to enter that cesspool of strictly regime controlled comments from fans that actually care about the product and do not want to cause disruption of other consumers appreciation of the product in question.
It is a shame we need to resort to a rigidly controlled 3rd party system to discuss a game, is game appreciation so hard today ?
In my day it rocked, or sucked... now we seemed to need to consult the 'reddits' and 'facebook' to decide.
Why is there not a neutral forum controlled by EA and the GAMERS, why add 3rd parties that come with pre packaged excuses like... we cant control that, and its their site.
Get some balls EA and co, keep your own feed back mechanism, and own up when you balls up.. dont go political and pass the buck.

Kotick you deranged ************, go run some bean factory, at least there you wont ruin art.
 

bastardofmelbourne

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It's hard to champion online forums as the preferred setting of debate when so very many online forums are myopic circle-jerks dominated by garbage people.

When I was sixteen or so, there were some WoW forums I hung out on where I would spend all day crafting masterful demolitions of someone's self-esteem in the hopes of one day earning kudos from the cool kids who had 30,000 posts and a House avatar. Eventually I just...got bored. It's like living inside a hall of mirrors.

Anyway, a company can use whatever medium they want. They can use no medium at all, if they prefer to just shut fans out entirely. Fans aren't entitled to an unfiltered forum to voice their grievances; these things exist because they're good PR, and using third-party websites like Facebook and Twitter allows companies to shrug off any issues of accountability that might cause bad PR.

I don't like the trend, but that's mainly just because I don't use Facebook and I kind of hate Twitter. I'd prefer a professionally moderated message board for getting information on stuff like patch notes, server downtimes, and bug fixes. But it's easier (for them) and better (for them) for companies like EA to just use Twitter, so they just use Twitter. Just gotta deal with it.
 

Pirate Of PC Master race

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Jun 14, 2013
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Ah, those were days. All the shit-posting, trolling, sarcasm...
The figurative, gladiatorial forum where raw internet argument triumphs over everything else.
Speaking of which, there are better ways to describe them.
bastardofmelbourne said:
It's hard to champion online forums as the preferred setting of debate when so very many online forums are myopic circle-jerks dominated by garbage people.
It is single good, family friendly example as why internet isn't for everyone. Which is why Forums are terrible medium of announcements. Thank gods for making it somewhere else.
 

Headdrivehardscrew

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I despise EA, Facebook and Twitter.

Kind of makes life easy for me.

From a business standpoint, though, I do think that EA is onto something, like it or not. Just think about it:

[li]Running a forum requires you to RUN and POLICE said forum.[/li]
[li]Running a forum requires infrastructure that generally isn't available for free[/li]
[li]Facebook offers a convenient way of an outsourced ersatz forum, with the added benefit of getting more data/information from your users/customers than they would normally care to divulge. It's the manna of analytic bastards and marketing ghouls.[/li]
[li]3rd world operators can operate Twitter without having to adapt to ticketing systems or having to be trained on other expensive custom software. This makes recruitement incredibly easy and very, very cheap.[/li]
 

Fappy

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Say what you will about Blizzard, but they handle community feedback rather well. Not only do they control their own spaces for discussing their games, but they also monitor and post in the various sub-reddits for their games (especially r/wow). Hell, they even have social media links on their official pages that direct you to the fan sub-reddits.

Not sure how popular the Bioware forums were in recent times, back they were a cesspit back when I frequented them. Not sure if they were still separated from the other EA games when this news came out. Hopefully Bioware will at least collect feedback from the fan subs.
 
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Forums have their pros and cons, and BSN is/was one of the more infamous official game forums, but as someone who doesn't use Facebook, Twitter, or reddit, it's pretty disappointing. On the upside, it seems like the fan community is pretty determined to stay together and several unofficial replacement forums are being set up, with all of the old posts from BSN being archived to them. Given that Bioware have pretty much ignored the forums for years anyway, it may ultimately make little difference to the way the fans and dev interact (or don't). Still, it's a shame that the central hub of the Bioware fan community is being lost because EA can't be arsed to maintain it.

Edit: Also, Kotick is boss of Activision Blizzard, not EA. The CEO of EA is Blake Jorgensen.
 

Tayh

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That's hardly exclusive to EA. I don't know of any developers who prefer communicating on their own hosted forums above reddit or on social media.
 

Erttheking

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I think EA just realized that their reputation can't get worse and isn't going to get better so they just don't care anymore.
 

Silvanus

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Tayh said:
That's hardly exclusive to EA. I don't know of any developers who prefer communicating on their own hosted forums above reddit or on social media.
ArenaNet do, but they're one of the few, and still do interact via Reddit as well sometimes.
 

FalloutJack

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Well, unfortunately, it makes sense. Why would you bother constructing something that you're going to ignore?
 

Euryalus

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bastardofmelbourne said:
It's hard to champion online forums as the preferred setting of debate when so very many online forums are myopic circle-jerks dominated by garbage people.
I mean that's just most of society now. "Socratic dialogue" is a dead virtue.

OT: Moderation and algorithms on some sites can be shady or have an unintended "chilling" effect on discussion, especially if its a controversial but necessary conversation to have. It's unfortunate, but paranoia around driving away a customer/user base is a *****. What to do, what to do...
 

votemarvel

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I don't see how Twitter or Facebook are a good alternative to a forum.

The feeds often move so quickly that even being gone from them for 10 minutes means you have to do an immense amount of scrolling to find relevant information. Of course you can go to the page of a company on those sites but unless they have pinned a post or tweet, then you will likely be doing a great deal of scrolling here as well.

Twitter and Facebook aren't even good for announcements because of that, let alone holding a conversation.

Of course Bioware also recommend that their users head to Reddit, the site where harassment of one of their female members of staff began (good suggestion there Bioware). Reddit is closest to a forum but quickly threads become a confusing mess of nested conversations.
 

Exley97_v1legacy

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Fappy said:
Say what you will about Blizzard, but they handle community feedback rather well. Not only do they control their own spaces for discussing their games, but they also monitor and post in the various sub-reddits for their games (especially r/wow). Hell, they even have social media links on their official pages that direct you to the fan sub-reddits.

Not sure how popular the Bioware forums were in recent times, back they were a cesspit back when I frequented them. Not sure if they were still separated from the other EA games when this news came out. Hopefully Bioware will at least collect feedback from the fan subs.
This times 1,000. Bioware's forums were AWFUL. Full of bad elements, bad behavior and massive trolls. I figured one day EA would just throw in the towel and get rid of them, and that some folks would blame EA for giving up and not having "balls" to run its own forums. And lo and behold, that's exactly what happened.

I'd obviously like to see EA keeps its own forums alive, but you know what? I don't entirely blame the company for getting rid of them. If forum members can't control themselves and act like adults instead of turning forums into cess pools, then it's on them. This is why we can't have nice things.
 

MCerberus

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bastardofmelbourne said:
It's hard to champion online forums as the preferred setting of debate when so very many online forums are myopic circle-jerks dominated by garbage people.

When I was sixteen or so, there were some WoW forums I hung out on where I would spend all day crafting masterful demolitions of someone's self-esteem in the hopes of one day earning kudos from the cool kids who had 30,000 posts and a House avatar. Eventually I just...got bored. It's like living inside a hall of mirrors.
Oh hey, another person who looks back with a dead-eyed stare about how the WoW forums made you a worse person.

OT- They didn't think it justified the expense. Which is fair but EA is shady AF. At least the MMO side of things they can't get rid of forums, since they're the preferred knowledge depository, especially for tech issues. But I wouldn't put it past EA to do anything to let them control all press about their products. For a company that keeps stabbing itself, it's the equivalent of throwing away "old rusty" because of tetanus.

I still hate reddit though. Pretty much anything reddit succumbs to tyranny of the majority circlejerk
 
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Exley97 said:
Fappy said:
Say what you will about Blizzard, but they handle community feedback rather well. Not only do they control their own spaces for discussing their games, but they also monitor and post in the various sub-reddits for their games (especially r/wow). Hell, they even have social media links on their official pages that direct you to the fan sub-reddits.

Not sure how popular the Bioware forums were in recent times, back they were a cesspit back when I frequented them. Not sure if they were still separated from the other EA games when this news came out. Hopefully Bioware will at least collect feedback from the fan subs.
This times 1,000. Bioware's forums were AWFUL. Full of bad elements, bad behavior and massive trolls. I figured one day EA would just throw in the towel and get rid of them, and that some folks would blame EA for giving up and not having "balls" to run its own forums. And lo and behold, that's exactly what happened.

I'd obviously like to see EA keeps its own forums alive, but you know what? I don't entirely blame the company for getting rid of them. If forum members can't control themselves and act like adults instead of turning forums into cess pools, then it's on them. This is why we can't have nice things.
I've only frequented the Dragon Age part of the forums, but it didn't seem too bad to me in recent years. I've been on waaay worse forums than the Bioware ones in terms of trolling, but it is true that they did seem to attract their fair share of weirdos.
 

Exley97_v1legacy

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Bilious Green said:
Exley97 said:
Fappy said:
Say what you will about Blizzard, but they handle community feedback rather well. Not only do they control their own spaces for discussing their games, but they also monitor and post in the various sub-reddits for their games (especially r/wow). Hell, they even have social media links on their official pages that direct you to the fan sub-reddits.

Not sure how popular the Bioware forums were in recent times, back they were a cesspit back when I frequented them. Not sure if they were still separated from the other EA games when this news came out. Hopefully Bioware will at least collect feedback from the fan subs.
This times 1,000. Bioware's forums were AWFUL. Full of bad elements, bad behavior and massive trolls. I figured one day EA would just throw in the towel and get rid of them, and that some folks would blame EA for giving up and not having "balls" to run its own forums. And lo and behold, that's exactly what happened.

I'd obviously like to see EA keeps its own forums alive, but you know what? I don't entirely blame the company for getting rid of them. If forum members can't control themselves and act like adults instead of turning forums into cess pools, then it's on them. This is why we can't have nice things.
I've only frequented the Dragon Age part of the forums, but it didn't seem too bad to me in recent years. I've been on waaay worse forums than the Bioware ones in terms of trolling, but it is true that they did seem to attract their fair share of weirdos.
Maybe that's true, I haven't been on the Dragon Age one is years. But I know what it was like back then, and what Mass Effect's forum was like (which I felt were worse than DA's and grew progressively worse with each passing month). When one of your lead writers says that he won't go on the company's own forums because they're so toxic and uncivil, then that's freakin' bad.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-01-10-biowares-increasingly-toxic-forum-repels-dragon-age-writer-david-gaider

P.S. I will make one caveat -- I seem recall that during the Jennifer Hepler "controversy"/character assassination/harassment campaign, folks on the Mass Effect forums were *generally* well-behaved and even supportive of Hepler and Bioware, but to be honest, I didn't spend all that much time combing through the threads so I could be wrong.