EA Chief Creative Officer on forum complainers

Unknown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... Ykc#t=2276

the entire thing is interesting, but I thought his comment about complainers on the forum was pretty appropriate.

edit: added the time to the link

Unknown

You realize this is an hour long? Can't even give us a start time if the specific part you mentioned?

Unknown

Psykopathic wrote:

You realize this is an hour long? Can't even give us a start time if the specific part you mentioned?

thanks, I thought I copied the link with the timestamp but I accidentally pasted the wrong one.

original post has been updated

Unknown

I think it's interesting that he doesn't seem to think what seems obvious to me - the "biggest payers" feel like they have the most invested in the product, so it stands to reason that they're the most critical of it

Unknown

My YouTube refuses to work today. Care to summarize?

mischiefmaker

The clip is only about 3-4 minutes long and worth watching, but he basically says:

- the people who whine the most pay the most
- people say different things that what they actually do in-game

Also he makes the claim that EA has better data on its users than Google or Amazon does on theirs, which is interesting.

Neat link, thanks for sharing!

Unknown

Sure, but the customer is not always right.

Unknown

I would think that the biggest players would actually like the game they are playing and not be super critical.

have constructive criticism yes, and many people here are constructive. but we see people here threatening to leave, calling people idiots, it's kind of uncalled for. Even iceX said he was going to stay from from the forum because he was getting attacked.

Unknown

mischiefmaker wrote:

The clip is only about 3-4 minutes long and worth watching, but he basically says:

- the people who whine the most pay the most
- people say different things that what they actually do in-game

Also he makes the claim that EA has better data on its users than Google or Amazon does on theirs, which is interesting.

Neat link, thanks for sharing!

That is interesting - thanks for filling me in. I wonder why ea thinks thy have better data than those other two companies?

Unknown

pandaberry6 wrote:

That is interesting - thanks for filling me in. I wonder why ea thinks thy have better data than those other two companies?

Everyone believes they have the best data, and you could have the best data and your games can still suck.

I'm not sure how he comes to the conclusion that whiners are the one who pay the most, especially in non F2P games. For example a guy whining about Diablo 3 probably didn't spend any more money on the game than any other guy. Even if you're talking about say a multiboxer in a MMORPG, the fact that you're paying for 5 accounts isn't anywhere close to enough for a company to care about what you have to say compared to any normal guy that pays for only 1 account.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

pandaberry6 wrote:

That is interesting - thanks for filling me in. I wonder why ea thinks thy have better data than those other two companies?

Everyone believes they have the best data, and you could have the best data and your games can still suck.

I'm not sure how he comes to the conclusion that whiners are the one who pay the most, especially in non F2P games. For example a guy whining about Diablo 3 probably didn't spend any more money on the game than any other guy. Even if you're talking about say a multiboxer in a MMORPG, the fact that you're paying for 5 accounts isn't anywhere close to enough for a company to care about what you have to say compared to any normal guy that pays for only 1 account.

he says that because they have the data to back it up.

btw, I love his skullet.

Unknown

EA got voted worst company of the year.

But they prolly have better data because it's both a smaller and more specific market.

Unknown

davecazz wrote:

I would think that the biggest players would actually like the game they are playing and not be super critical.

have constructive criticism yes, and many people here are constructive. but we see people here threatening to leave, calling people idiots, it's kind of uncalled for. Even iceX said he was going to stay from from the forum because he was getting attacked.

I would say anyone attacking ice is new to the forum mostly. Everyone else knows he has been a great life line for information, be it good or bad. I mean, there is nothing wrong with taking them to the shed on something that is bad or doesnt work in your opinion, such as the current set up for "gold" characters, but personal attacks are really uncalled for. Also, nothing wrong with threatening to leave...its really all a customer has to back thier opinion up...not spending money, and then not playing the game. Also logic..sometimes..lol

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

pandaberry6 wrote:

That is interesting - thanks for filling me in. I wonder why ea thinks thy have better data than those other two companies?

Everyone believes they have the best data, and you could have the best data and your games can still suck.

I'm not sure how he comes to the conclusion that whiners are the one who pay the most, especially in non F2P games. For example a guy whining about Diablo 3 probably didn't spend any more money on the game than any other guy. Even if you're talking about say a multiboxer in a MMORPG, the fact that you're paying for 5 accounts isn't anywhere close to enough for a company to care about what you have to say compared to any normal guy that pays for only 1 account.

A lot of ea games have dlc or in-app purchases even though they are not free to play.

Also, ea sucks. Poor sim city....

mischiefmaker

His claim on data went something like this: say you're shopping for shoes on Amazon. You maybe look at 10 pairs of shoes, and each pair of shoes we maybe get 5 pieces of data: do you buy it, how long do you linger on the page, what do you zoom in on, what reviews do you read, what colors do you pick. So maybe 50 pieces of data.

Now compare that to FIFA soccer. How many decisions do you make in a minute? Way more than that, right? OK, so we have a ton more data. Also, he argues that when you buy shoes, you're painting a picture of who you want to be (your shoes project a certain image of you to other people, so you're shopping for something that projects the image you want), but when you play a video game, you're making decisions too fast to lie, so your video game data paints a picture of who you are, and who you are is a better predictor of what you'll do in the future than who you want to be.

As for the whiners=payers argument, that one is straightforward. You just match the forum handle and the game ID and check out their transaction history.

kensterr

So does EA think that the gamers who bought this has valid complaints?

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/10/fifa-13-wii/

Big LOL!

Unknown

The whole big data analysis reminds me of how like the basketball guys talk about how the Houston Rockets had all this awesome advanced analysis but it didn't really matter until they signed Harden and Howard and you don't need fancy analytics to tell you those two guys are good.

I've no doubt gaming companies collect a ton of data on you but in the game end they still have to have the game that is actually good. You're not going to turn something that sucks into a profitable machine just because you collected enough data.

Unknown

kensterr wrote:

So does EA think that the gamers who bought this has valid complaints?

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/10/fifa-13-wii/

Big LOL!

That makes me so angry. The wii u is a fantastic machine - completely underrated - and they shaft them like that? Lame.

Unknown

soenottelling wrote:

davecazz wrote:

I would think that the biggest players would actually like the game they are playing and not be super critical.

have constructive criticism yes, and many people here are constructive. but we see people here threatening to leave, calling people idiots, it's kind of uncalled for. Even iceX said he was going to stay from from the forum because he was getting attacked.

I would say anyone attacking ice is new to the forum mostly. Everyone else knows he has been a great life line for information, be it good or bad. I mean, there is nothing wrong with taking them to the shed on something that is bad or doesnt work in your opinion, such as the current set up for "gold" characters, but personal attacks are really uncalled for. Also, nothing wrong with threatening to leave...its really all a customer has to back thier opinion up...not spending money, and then not playing the game. Also logic..sometimes..lol

absolutely, we should speak up about anything we dont like. ideally it should just be constructive and don't expect them to listen to you because you are yelling louder than everyone else. It's better to have a dialog and talk about the reasons for doing things vs the reasons why we don't like something.

coming from the game industry, it's impossible to just take everything from the player's perspective and make it exactly like everyone thinks it should be. We might have an idea of how scaling and rubber banding works, but there is a lot more than we are unaware of, including their goal to make a profit and grow the audience. Also, people have different ideas. I hated the skip tax idea but some people thought it would be ok. turns out, I'm getting used to it and matchmaking seems a bit better lately (I think that is being reflected in higher PvP scores).

Speaking of people not always agreeing, I actually like gold Thor and I'm trying pretty hard to get his 3 covers in the Hulk event. I like playing with Thor and was dreading having to find someone to replace him. I think it's cool that I'll be able to get a 3* Thor now. and I have no problem with having to level him from scratch and that he has basically the same powers.

speaking of EA whiners. I wonder if anyone complained about the new dungeon keeper mobile game.

Unknown

davecazz wrote:

Speaking of people not always agreeing, I actually like gold Thor and I'm trying pretty hard to get his 3 covers in the Hulk event. I like playing with Thor and was dreading having to find someone to replace him.

I went through that and then found that there are several very cool characters and now I don't miss him. In fact, I use OBW and Mag Now way more than T2 in my 2* lineup. That said, I think T3 is a solid character... Maybe the most solid this game has seen so far. I don't think there's be any complaining about him if we hadn't all built T2 up first!

kensterr

So I'm wondering what can D3 make out of today's data collection...

1. It's the weekend and less players grind for points in Hulk Event
2. Players not bothered to grind because rewards for subs are normal Heroic tokens instead of Hulk tokens
3. Players are just plain bored and frustrated with Hulk event after 3 days of grinding