"Let's be honest" as in call a spade a spade and acknowledge most of the posters here will continue to purchase bioware games after the forums close down. The advocacy marketing link you provided is worth a read but seems more geared to startups or small businesses that don't have the marketing army or the pipeline that companies like EA have. I'll reiterate that closing the forums is incredibly stupid but it's highly unlikely to impact sales for the studio. Obviously we disagree and I'm okay with that. I suspect we both agree that this isn't the same company it used to be however the difference may be that I'm resigned to the inevitably of it all based on the money that is involved in the gaming industry. It's going to happen to CD Projekt Red as well.
Nah. It is just an act. Just as the term vocal minority belongs in the list of whinge, assumptions, entitled, fan service and disliking CDPR. It's one of the things I won't miss when these forums close.
You didn't say that you dislike CDPR, but now that you've you mentioned it, that company is an interesting example.
When TW1 appeared, the critics were impressed, but the gamers were very disappointed, because of the many bugs, bad voice acting and other problems. They were very vocal. Instead of giving up, they worked for a year to work on an EC with additional content in which nearly all problems were fixed (including tens of thousands of voice acted lines in several languages), while patching their game and investigating where else they went wrong. They provided the EC for free to existing customers. That turned the tide for the dissatisfied customers and some became advocates.
These days CDPR is not a startup company, given the popularity of their games, that's no surprise. Both the critics and the gamers seem happy.
They learned from their first mistake. You see that they believe in what gamers think is important in their products. It's noticeable in every public statement and interview they make. You can even watch a recent stock holder meeting on Youtube where they state over and over again why the customers are important and what they did to implement their wishes. They not only tell their customers what they want to hear, they translate that in a product that gamers seem to enjoy. That includes service and support after release. That's exactly the strategy to generate more advocates.
BW? Not so much. Their community management and marketing department are based around hype marketing and they have no idea what to do with the critique after DA2 and ME3. I must give credit, where credit is due, though. The DA:I team really tried to improve the product. It isn't a perfect game, certainly not, but many flaws that plagued DA2 have gone. They even had a public beta patch test program. They could have used all that in their marketing, but BW has chosen not to do that, because it doesn't fit hype. The ME3 team felt that they needed to do something, but the EC turned out to be more of the same, to save their "artistic integrity". The ending still felt detached from the rest of the games. Of course the ME3 team never felt that they'd failed, because those nasty gamers really didn't understand their vision. That doesn't gain any confidence in the company.
All that remains now is that BW indeed listens (they shout it from the rooftops), but they forgot to pull the fingers out of their ears, just as their gamers are allowed to speak, as long as they keep their mouth shut. Hence, they close down of the forums.
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