Improve Communication for DICE

[CptainCrunch]

Found this article at bashandslash.com:

A few hours after BASH 136 was released, Gordon Van Dyke from DICE issued this public comment on EA's official forums:

Source

As many have noticed already DICE has stopped posting in these forums. This was my decision and supported by the team. This does not however mean communication will stop for us, it will just be from other channels than forums that have proven more effective.

To support this we have rolled out a plan internally to keep knowledge and tech/non-tech insight related to Battlefield and Frostbite flowing to those interested via our blog. This will insure a healthy and broader way for our Dev's to communicate and share, and hopefully increase it too.<!--more-->

Now before you freak out, this doesn't mean the forums are dead or useless. This is your space, not ours, and we have disrupted that environment and going forward will work to support you and the BF Forums in a better way. These forums are for you to welcome in new BF members, support existing ones, create BF discussions, speculate BF, share thoughts, and much more between your peers, not Dev's. We will continue to support our forums by reading them and getting inspiration for new blogs that reflect your curiosity and questions.

First on the plate to do this is an Audiophile blog which will appear on our official BF Blog in the near future.
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PSN ID & X360 Gamer Tag: GordonVanDyke
Official Battlefield Website: http://www.battlefield.com/
Official BFBC2 Twitter Page: https://twitter.com/OfficialBFBC2

Nakam, during the webcast did mention that he thought communication between PC gamers and DICE could be improved and it appears that this complaint was heard.

Note that the replies from BF gamers in the forum above have taken Gordon's comments with some salt to say the least. The two-way exchange of information between player and dev is certainly being handled differently than it was even a few years ago. I for one will be interested to see if the forum system can be bettered; nevertheless, nice to see that GvD took the time to explain the thought process at DICE.

I guess I am just old fashioned, but if official forums contain no official information, aren't they just another forum? Is this a good move to centralize information now that there are so many different avenues to get news that are all "official"?

Source

[Dangerdog]

Re: Improve Communication for DICE

Sounds like they just want to put a lid on the dissemination of information, it always rolls over the wrong way when a dev would make an announcement and then someone would have to come along and retract the statement, prone is in BFBC2... oh wait, it's not in. That sort of stuff.

It was also hard to track the posts from devs on here back when they did, had to view all posts by user to find out if a question had already been answered.

I'm sure they'll still monitor the hot issues on the forums, regardless if they themselves respond directly to them in the forums or their blog, in the end though whether or not an issue is addressed is strictly up to DICE and I can only think of a few situations where a dialog between a dev and the community directly affected a change to the game.

[[Expletive Deleted]]

Re: Improve Communication for DICE

This sounds like crap. They want communication to be one-way. Others have been doing that lately. 402 comes to mind.

Poor precedent to follow, really.

[Minmaster]

Re: Improve Communication for DICE

if you think about it, they never really did participate all that much in the forums anyways. maybe 1 useful post a month or something? so in that sense, we're not losing much i suppose.

i see part of this as to avoid proper post-release support imo. they will leave it in shambles because they have to work on BF3, just like how BF2 suffered with 2142, and 2142 suffered for console titles, and how 1943/BC1 suffered for BC2 development. of course it wouldn't be an issue if these games didn't have unresolved issues, but they did and still do in all honesty.

frankly, dice never had a place where they could properly communicate with the community. they can hide behind the wall of EA that stands between them and us and communicate only when they want to, and leave games in shambles when it comes to support. dice uses EA to deflect all the responsibility when it comes to support and now they want to do even less as they approach the release of their next title and start of a beta. if this game follows the tradition of bug riddled BF games we're accustomed to, then we're in for a turbulent ride. now they relegate themselves to just communicating at their will, only responding to what they feel like, sure it will filter out stupid complaints, but it will also cut out our requests for proper support for problems with the game. if you want to see an example, just click my sig and see where 3 years of post release support has taken 2142.

oh and communicating via twitter is the laziest method. is this how other professional companies communicate with their clients? maybe for announcements and minor releases but they can't expect to use twitter as a serious method of communication between 2 parties. blogs? oh please. enough of this 1 way communication ffs. :shakehead:

[Dangerdog]

Re: Improve Communication for DICE

if you think about it, they never really did participate all that much in the forums anyways. maybe 1 useful post a month or something? so in that sense, we're not losing much i suppose.

DICE have always considered the forum banter to be over vocal minority when it comes to player feedback, despite how passionate people are when they post walls of text on a forum it doesn't by itself drive any major decision making. Referring to your sig, even if DICE saw the list some or none of it may be on their "to do" list.

Despite how much I dislike Twitter, it's already taken over as the "go to" source for information by more companies than just DICE and IW.

[Rambo]

Re: Improve Communication for DICE

way to keep you loyal fans in the dark and avoid flames maybe,would it be different if consoles had a keyboard?

[Minmaster]

Re: Improve Communication for DICE

correct me if i am wrong, but IW at least has their own boards. dice doesn't even have their own boards to show up to, show up seldom at EA forums, and now they don't want to show up at all. what ever happened to the couple community relations guys they used to have?

[Leopardi]

Re: Improve Communication for DICE

If this prevent another catastrophic patch failure because some noobs whine about things on their forums, then it's just a good thing.

[CptainCrunch]

Re: Improve Communication for DICE

I dont know, I dont see this as a bad thing or less community involvement. We have seen devs ignore peoples requests and forums all the time as well as taking requests and responding to posts.

Going back to IW, since its so recent, look at their forums. They are never updated and the information is old. Treyarch, same way. DICE forums, somewhat the same way. You have all these twitter accounts, blogs, forums, websites for DICE and EA, and so on. They can still read the posts just like they have been doing for some time.

I think DICE coming out and saying, "Check this one spot for updates" will stop some confusion and spreading throughout the internet for little pieces of information.

Of course, I go all over the place looking for news, so maybe I am being biased

Crunch

[Minmaster]

Re: Improve Communication for DICE

i don't care about implementation of features and what not in upcoming games, which seems to be the reason why dice got so fed up with (complaints about red dot, no hardware audio, public server files, etc). i have to see the game first to pass any judgments on what works or not.

what i do care about is how they will handle tidying up the game after release because we've been through some sh*tty dealings when it came time for them to fix stuff (and not break so many new things in the process). they just disappear, assign 1 or half a person to fixing their games, and sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. this is to me where communication with the community is a must, and where dice has been lacking sorely. for everyone's sake, i hope this game starts a trend of less buggier and glitchier games in the BF franchise.

[Mavrik347]

Re: Improve Communication for DICE

The only feedback that works is 2-way.

Are they trying to become IW?

[Minmaster]

Re: Improve Communication for DICE

lol IW proved successful with their method so who knows if they're being followed.

[=)BiT(= Evant3k]

Re: Improve Communication for DICE

IW has done absolutely 0 communication when **** hit the fan. We only had 402 trolling on twitter.

[starjax]

Re: Improve Communication for DICE

I don't mind the blog format they are adopting. GvD is also being communitive and upfront about the changes. Instead of pointing to another dev who is a failure in that area, how about we look at one that is successful? This is much the same way that Valve communicates through the tf2 blog. It's proven thatthis method can work. It's also proven that it takea a lot of effort to do right.

As for news,I tend to come here first, cause you guys do such a good job.

[Minmaster]

Re: Improve Communication for DICE

yea but you can't say dice treats their games the same way valve treats TF2. TF2 gets incredible amount of love long after release, where as other valve titles don't (TF2 is more exception to the rule). as for BF games, it's a struggle to get any fixes in a timely manner. and then they often break other things.