Player generated Documentation that is slightly ahead of the companies or player generated documentation that expands on what the company published or player information that dramatically surpasses the companies guides but fills a gap that was not intended to be addressed by the game company, like Allakhazam’s game information as an example, is not really what I was meaning.

There are many users that publish game information that far surpass what a game company ever intended to publish, and that is actually a great thing.

But the bad side: I know a game company that has guides that still discuss character abilities that had been removed many years ago. While game changes are implemented monthly, large parts of the game information on the game companies own web site has not been updated for well over 5 years. It had always really been that way, even shortly after launch of the game, though it was not as noticeable long, long ago. For players to get accurate information concerning how the game works, they need to look to third party sites rather than trust the game sites information.

An example of good: I was surprised at WoW when they came out with a change/patch to part of the game. I read the patch notes and wanted to compare the old system to what the new patch notes described so I went to the WoW game web page to look for the old information, thinking that it would take a while for the patch notes to hit the game guides, and surprisingly the game guides had been updated before the game servers were even back online from the patch that was being installed.

Out of curiosity I searched through many parts of the WoW game www site looking for information from the patch that had ‘not’ been updated on the web page and I did not find any. I am sure that there was probably something that had not been updated that I missed, but everything that I looked at had been updated to reflect the current status of the game, and it was published on the web site before the patch had finished going live.

At WoW there are many player sites that far surpass what Blizzard intended and I do not consider that a red flag at all. Player generated information often surpasses the general information a game company publishes.

This seems to be a sore spot with me and I took your reference and went off on a rant with it, sorry.

Furthermore, every program I’ve ever used, every tool I ever downloaded, and every plug in I ever installed had the most useful information on third party sites.

So if it’s a red flag, the entire software industry is flying it.

If I had to guess as to why, it’d be that the company is writing documentation based on their intention at the point of creation. Users write documentation with no information besides what is right in front of them.

There can be many different red flags but I believe that this is one. When players routinely write better documentation than the game creators/game company, it is a dangerous situation.

It is one thing to talk about caring for the customer; it is another to put it into action. If a company actually and truly cares about the customer the game documentation should not lag far behind the reality of the game patches or mods.

Lets face it, how would we all feel about an auto manufacturer if the car manual said the gas tank fill was in the center of the back and the actual gas gauge in the dash had a little arrow that said the fill was on the right, but when you drove into the gas station, after much searching, you found the gas cap was on the left rear of the car? Then when you inquire at the dealer you are informed that no one has gotten around to sorting all that out because everyone is just too busy on other more important projects.

While I have never seen an auto company that poorly managed I have seen game companies that though nothing of documentation that was so out of date it described a game that did not actually exist. (I wont mention the name.) It actually sounds like many game companies, which is very unfortunate.

I am not saying that your company fails the test and player documentation being very slightly better than the official documentation is completely acceptable. But it is still a red flag that needs to be closely watched.

The most notable example of which I can think of would be the movie “Quantum of Solace” (By the way, whomever thought that name up deserves to be tarred, feathered, then slow roasted over a chemical fire).

The director of the movie DIDN’T LIKE Bond movies. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the movie went over like Mission Impossible, in the James Bond universe ( /gag )

Dirty work – aside from banning – involves saying no to angry people. Angry people who, if handled well, will stop being angry people and will speak well of your game in public. If they remain angry, they will speak ill of your game in public. Saying no with humor, grace, affection, and genuine regret is not a task for a embittered and burned out hulk of a CSR.

And giving one team all the hard jobs that involve dealing with customers at their worst means that team will burn out in days, not the usual months. Being able to make someone happy is practically the only reward the job HAS.

Most importantly, other than the minimal contact required to pass off cases back and forth, these two teams do not have a common culture within the company. They’re kept separate, so that the Bad Cops can feel free to look at the customers as the enemy without polluting the Good Cops with that attitude. This setup has the additional advantage of having somewhere for your more bitter customer service staff to go if things are getting ugly.

It’s not a very refined idea, but one that I think has some potential.

So many customer support organizations totally blow. And I’m talking both internal support organizations, as well as external ‘customer facing’ organizations. I work for one of the largest companies in the world. Their internal support system is worse than the mom-n-pop fly by the seat of everyone’s pants computer store I worked for in the early 80′s.

The support axiom for today seems to be Customer Disservice: because we’re not satisfied, until you’re not satisfied. I’ll admit that’s not original, but it’s very true for far too many service and support organizations.

Tom

I’ve been in meetings where an external partner basically said that the potential players of a game were morons. This attitude informed their entire approach to the game’s design.

Lack of respect for players is how shovelware gets made.