The following article is taken from the Bash and Slash forums and was written by ibleedv20. This article holds excellent vision into gaming communities and offers valuable advice.
The role of COD PC Gamers as critics.
The tumult raised by groups and individuals of the Cod community and pointed at Treyarch seems to be quieting down as we enter the second quarter of 2009 and in hindsight could have been predicted.
What do I mean by tumult and why could it have been predicted.It was tumultuous because It was a riot never fully responded to by Treyarch in spite of the employment of a community manager with the ungodly task of communicating with a somewhat petulent PC Community (I am being nice here). As concerns the Community manager I am reminded of the famous line used in the movie The Godfather 2 where Willie Cicci say's;
"Oh yeah, a buffer. The family had a lot of buffers!
So,with the the half life of a COD game appearing to be considerably shortened by yearly releases the community could have predicted the general outcome of all the hubbub in regard to the delayed response of Treyarch concerning patches. Treyarch must put it's attention first and foremost to it's financial position that is driven by the half life of the game. DLC must take some presidence over solving all of the games shortcomings in an area where 100% of the people will never be fully satisfied.
"half-life" - the time required for something to fall to half its initial value
I think it is unrealistic to expect, and therefore fight for, the level of focus and attention, regarding game support that may have occured in the past. This is a battle that cannot be won.
We have to accept that console gaming is and will be the primary focus of gaming developers for the forseeable future. Let me state here that "acceptance need not be surrender to an inferior product". The very fact that the games we love are ported over from console at all should give us some solace. Though our buying power is diluted we are still seen as a market force and hopefully "a valuable soundingboard for the finer development of games"
So how do we as gamers,consumers and invariably critics consolidate our position and adapt to the changing face of the cod series?We the PC community just dont have the finacial clout to be making demands that exceed our market position.In addition, being a thorn in the side will never replace a serious conversation in respect to garnering respect and being allowed to contribute some of the fine input that the community can offer. Yes I said ALLOWED. We dont own the game that we think we bought . We have only purchased the permission to run it on our machines. Somewhere deep in some dusty legal tome I am sure that there is presidence for "Class action lawsuits" and if the moon sat on the earth it would be an 8. There are a few things you can do to be a proper critic and help the community become more accepted if not respected.
1. Choose your community voices with the same passion with which you play the game
2. Know the community and have a roadmap to it.
3. Frequent the best of what the community has to offer.You will generally know by the tone of the site which ones are good for the community.
4. Make the developers websites better by using them often and with your known community name.
5. Share the great sites you know with others and encourage site webmasters to develope resposible link directories that have a central hub as it's starting point.
6. Go to Omnilinkit.com and help create a community roadmap where new blood can find the best of what the community has to offer. Yes this is my site but there's nothing stopping anyone from doing it better. To help contact webmaster@omnilinkit.com and ask to be an admin or moderator.Or just steal it and do it better.
7. Lastly if you have a voice that hasn't been heard use it. Move around the best sites. Be reasonable. Be fair and write articles where they can be posted. The pen is still mighty and debate is not a four letter word. If you are flamed by the principals of the site never return.
Let's debate this
