Draech said:
Bioware isn't interested in my forgiveness. They may like that they have a loyal fanbase, but that itself is just one point in getting into your wallet. They dont love me. No developer does. They dont even know me.
Emphasis added by me. As someone who's been on both sides of the gamer/dev border, and has moderated on said dev's forums for awhile, pretty much this.
Only a very small percentage of the studio looks at the forums, usually a couple writers, QA perhaps, the community reps if the studio is large enough to have one, otherwise they'd rely on the owning publisher's PR and marketing team. And even then, they usually only frequent their own, not others like, say, here's.
I mean, can you name the devs on the game and their roles (Without looking up the credits)? Their past game credits? Probably not, you mostly only see the front facing ones they parade around at shows and videos.
And of course it goes both ways, if you came up to them at a convention and introduce yourself, would they go "Oh it's you! How are you doing?" I rarely remember who I've talked to on forums from last year, let alone last month. It's all due to the frequency of the interaction, they MIGHT interact with you for like one post a day, maybe a week? If you're lucky - most of the time some rep will do something like collect feedback and forward a list to the devs, so they don't even know who posted it. Unless you stand out in some way besides just posting on a forum.
And yet people think their $60 purchase == investment in the company. I'm not trying to be dismissive of the impact the community can be, or say "know your place, you're just a number" but realize how ignorant the devs are of you.
