I don't think he's done so good necessarily.
You would think the PR would be more of a kiss ass to the consumers trying to ease them into being comfortable with the wait and stuff.
It's kind of his job to be patient with angry consumers. He's the scapegoat afterall.
In the realm of dealing with the public there is a very tight control on what information can and cannot be released, for a number of reasons. One of them is consumer confidence. If you tell your public "we're having a problem with this because of this" there's a greated probability that people will view your company as weak and ineffectual when compared to the projected loss of sales of just keeping quiet and trying to get something fixed as quickly as possible. And we're not just talking the immediate sales loss, but the long-term losses that drops in consumer confidence can create. If you need an example of this, look at certain brands of cars or computers. One brand will be effectively the "popular favorite" for one reason or another, and that status will earn it a certain degree of confidence from on-the-fence customers who haven't made a decision. When consumer confidence drops, then those people are more likely to patronize a competitor simply because they've heard that they can't trust Brand A because of this, this, and this.
In this regard, Bethesda has managed to shoot itself in both feet trying both ends of the spectrum. On the one hand, they waited more than a month to release ANY information to the public. And when they DID, it was a twitter post (I appreciate the capacity for data flow, but it doesn't seem to me like the proper place to make this kind of professional corporate announcement, just my opinion) that effectively was Pete Hines very politely telling everyone who didn't own a copy for the Xbox360 to shove off, they don't have anything for us and that's really all there is to say. Not surprisingly, the same customers who had suffered through the triple farce that has been Bethesda's PS3 port-folio (see what I did there) from Oblivion through the Fallout games got angry. Angry enough to blow up the message boards and news feeds, angry enough that the media took notice. And then they just revised to say "shove off for now, we're trying, what do you want from us?" Since then they have been barely drip-feeding us nothing but vague "we're tryings" every three or four weeks (probably to push back another internet firestorm.) A little green Muppet once said "Do or do not. There is no try." I'm just saying. And these little drips of information are laced with resignation and feigned bemused regret. Like they're not really sorry that they're just excluding 30% of the market share because of production policy, but they know they have to apologize or people will just stop giving them money. This happened in my high school years ago when some football players had to apologize for picking up and throwing pit percussion across the field during a halftime show they had decided was running too long. Their apologies and pleas for forgiveness sounded hollow, forced, and rehearsed. Kind of like "we really want to release this content for everyone and we're trying as hard was we can to make that a reality, but..."
Now, just for fun, and because I'm bored and have time on my hands, we're going to play a little game.
It's been a few weeks, and we wanted to make sure everyone knows where we're at with Dawnguard. Skyrim is a massive and dynamic game that requires a lot of resources, and things get much more complex when you're talking about sizable content like Dawnguard. So far so good. It shows an active effort by the company to at least make an attempt at rectifying the silent treatment, followed by a fairly general justification of how there's a problematic environment. For most of the techno-savvy consumers, this part is unnecessary, but it's not there for us. It's there for the people who are just end-using consumers.
We have tried a number of things, but none of them solve the issue enough to make Dawnguard good for everyone. This statement creates a logic vacuum which invites criticism and sarcastic rebuttal. I'm pretty sure I don't need to give examples or explain the particular logic vacuum in question. If I'm wrong, I'll explain it later.
The PS3 is a powerful system, and we're working hard to deliver the content you guys want.The first half of this sentence is irrelevent. Period. We know that the PS3 is powerful, but unless it's powerful-ness is causing the problem, there's no reason to bandy that point about like it matters. Unless you're Johnny Cochrane reincarnated, that kind of non-sequitur doesn't actually work. The second half of the statement however, is promising, except that it's followed by this.
Dawnguard is obviously not the only DLC we’ve been working on either, so the issues of adding content get even more complicated. There aren't even words. This statement is fail. You tell a bunch of customers who haven't received your last product that you're working really hard on another product that they ALSO won't get for at least a month, if ever, and that's another reason that you can't accomplish your professional directives. To the customer's brain, this statement says "getting you this content isn't actually important enough for us as a company to appropriate additional company resources, nor was it important enough for us to delay its release on all platforms until it was ready to go for all three, and not only that, if you examine our track record with this specific kind of process, you'll see exactly what the reality is likely to be."
This is not a problem we’re positive we can solve, but we are working together with Sony to try to bring you this content.This, however, is what I believe to be the actual message content. And there's a LOT of information in this one sentence.
Number 1: They're trying to be honest with their customers for once. Points.
Number 2: They are no longer working on this alone.
Number 3: It is possible, if not likely, that Sony initiated their assistance in this matter. I say this because of the language used. We are working together with Sony. This is a very passive voice, and does not paint gamesas as the instigator to corporate cooperation. It seems more likely to me that Sony, realizing the money THEY stand to lose if gamesas repeats Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas in regards to PS3 support and DLC availability, decided to take matters into their own hands and, I imagine, work the code themselves if they must to get it ported over sometime ever.
Number 4: We have something to the tune of 1% greater hope that Hearthfire might release in a timely fashion, either by means of "well since you guys are here anyway" or "if that happens again the customers might not forgive us."
Number 5: They honestly don't know if they can release this content because it might just be TOO BROKEN. If they are actually going to release to the public that they don't know if they can fix it, that means they're fairly serious about how unsure they are.
Which brings some questions to mind.
If this content is so broken, then why did they release it for the other platforms?
How did you manage to code something that works over here but CAN'T be fixed? This question is extremely detrimental to consumer confidence, because it creates a breeding ground for doubt towards the company's standards, ethics, competence, and sincerity.
Exactly how are you creating this content that it is SO untranslatable? I understand that the PS3 is very difficult to create for, but as has been mentioned a million times, lots of other companies seem to experience much less problems in this regard with the products they release to the public. Is the engine to blame? Does it just not mesh with the PS3 architecture like it needs to? Doesn't that speak to needing a different engine?
Shouldn't you guys have tested your new engine a little more thoroughly in the PS3 environment before releasing a MASSIVE product that relies on it? I mean Skyrim's had all these problems since the beginning, so...does that speak to pure incompatibility, or is it because the company just didn't take the steps or handle the resources correctly to
Do you know what you call something that is so broken that you can't sell it? It's not a product. It's a prototype, a test run, or to use the industry vernacular, still in creation. This implies that the product was not really ready when they released it. Which seems to be something of a pattern. I'm not saying other games are bug-free or that other studios have no problems with PS3, because that would be naive and pure ignorance. I know better. I've seen a MySQL database die for three days, no fixing had any effect and then all of a sudden it just worked again for no reason. Code is tricky. Porting code is even trickier. But that's maybe why you pay some PS3 guys. And I also understand that ground-up building something the size of Skyrim not once but twice is something astronomically ridiculous to even consider in terms of man-hours...but this is kind of your business, this is what you do to make money. Customers will only put up with what looks like the bare minimum for so long before they just give up and move to greener pastures.
We wish we had a more definitive answer right now. We understand the frustration when the same content is not available on all platforms. When we have an update, we will certainly let you know. We deeply appreciate all the time and support you have given us, and we’ll keep doing our best to return that. And the whole thing ends with a contradiction to the "we're developing other DLC at this time..." statement. You can't be doing your best to do something and doing other things at the same time. You're just doing what you're willing to do. If you want to return the time and support the PS3 market has given you...then cease production on other Skyrim DLC until Dawnguard can be released for all platforms, or, as I like to say, until it's actually ready to release at all. Inverse payment for beta testing is a nasty corporate principle. Because unless you do that, no one is going to take your "best" seriously. Because now your statement sounds like "we're not sure we can actually meet the expectation of your faith in us, but we're gonna do everything we can...you know...except actually change our strategies or reorganize our production teams to treat this as a priority for us as a company."
People demanding DG for reduced price, or free, or receiving some consideration from Bethesda for all the time and support you have given that they have said they would do their best to return...don't hold your breath. At this point I start to feel that the above statement is about the closest thing to a return on faith investment the consumer public's gonna see anytime soon. I really hope I'm wrong...but I don't hold out much hope anymore. I just want the content. I love Skyrim. I love most of the games I've been talking about in this post. I've been playing the Fallout 3 GOTY (without incident...my gf has already had it crash on her two or three times...poor girl has NO luck) and some vanilla New Vegas. I want to keep buying this company's games but we're kind of reaching that point where I feel that to continue to give them my money is anologous to a battered spouse returning home to let their abuser beat them for leaving in the first place.
It's almost to a point where maybe gamesas should consider just leaving the PS3 market and sticking to what they are obviously more familiar with: creating kick-ass games for PC and XBox. As a PS3 owner, it svcks to consider, but I'd rather they just stick to their strengths and create quality.
And I know this post has taken a fairly negative tone but, to be honest, I am just kind of bored and I wanted to break down some of the company release's PR jargon into some of its more basic rhetorical components to display how this company's vocalists keep hurting their own cause.
» Sun Nov 18, 2012 2:37 am 
.
