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Bungie is different
Posted By: Anonymous Rex	Date: 11/28/01 11:09 p.m.
In Response To: Re: Stop the presses. (Louis Wu) : You say you're disappointed by Halo - okay, that's certainly your : prerogative. You said, in a different post (I don't want to go looking for : it now) that you were out $700, which you didn't think Halo was worth, but : returning the equipment didn't serve your needs, or something - this is : the part at which you left the realm I would consider reasonable. The point I was trying to make was that if my interest was in getting a good game out of Bungie, then returning the game really doesn't address that interest. :All the rest of that stuff - Bungie already does that! I appreciate their design genius from afar and have never had the pleasure of partaking of the free stuff. Perhaps, what I was looking for, instead, was a specific remedy (i.e. an acknowledgement from them to us that Halo, this game that we waited too long for and paid a lot of money to play, was not what they had promised us it was going to be). : look at that and say "well, they just did that so that you wouldn't : turn on them after the sale"... and maybe they did. But the bottom : line was, they respected FANS enough to let the fan-run sites know : something was up.) That's Soell's job, Louis. PR. I'm pretty cynical about the buyout and disagreed with your assessment in the review that they did it because they wanted a stable hardware platform to work from. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I would bet Vector's small pig that it was money and the opportunity to publish a game with the backing of the largest software company in the world. If you're a writer, you want people to read your work. If your game designer, you want people to play your games. What better way to access your audience than to go with a publisher who has distribution muscle? I said I was cynical, but that doesn't mean that I hold it against them. I wouldn't, for example, term it a sellout. As I said before, I felt bad about it when it was announced, but if I was in their shoes, I'd probably have done the same thing. I knew as soon as Marathon came out that they would eventually move to a bigger market than what Mac could offer them, but rather than forget their roots, they continue developing for the Mac and that's pretty cool in my books. : The reason, I think, you're seeing such hostility to your approach is because you seem to think that Bungie owes you something FOR YOUR EXPECTATIONS. I submit that Bungie is largely responsible for my expectations and I'm not the only one who had those expectations or who thinks this way, as evidenced by reactions in this forum and elsewhere. You, yourself, have said as much. There's a reason why Bungie (and many others including Apple) do not give projected release dates for products in the pipeline and that is so that they don't create false expectations and then disappoint when they can't deliver on them. There is no benefit accruing to the developer in that scenario. There is a benefit that accrues as a result of creating hype around a product, albeit a short term one. It's disingenuous though, and I guess I held (hold) Bungie to a higher standard than that. I wouldn't expect the same from Sierra, because to me they are a faceless company. I'm not much of a gamer, as I said before, but I religiously buy Bungie games, read Bungie news, care enough to engage in rants about how disppointed I am in a fan forum if they disappoint me, etc. I do that because to me, Bungie is different. I've also used a Mac since 1984 (not the same one) and I would put Apple and Bungie in the same category. Obviously, I consider my relationship with companies like Bungie and Apple to be different than my relationship with Microsoft and Sierra and the Gap and McDonald's. I have higher expectations of the those companies and because I do I'm a more valuable customer to them. The obverse of that is that those companies, because they have created these relationships and leverage them for their own business success, need to recognize that their relationship with their customers is a very special one. There are people - sociologists and business theorists - who have explored this. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the literature and couldn't talk intelligently about it. I just feel it. I think it boils down to trust. Why would I trust a company like Bungie and not Sierra or Apple and not Microsoft? I think it's because they have asked, implicitly, for that trust by engendering a more personal relationship with their public. Of course, with any trust comes responsibility. As an addendum, I worked for a company that, because of the nature of its products, also had an important trust relationship with its customers. We took great care in communicating to them not only decisions that the company had made as they made them, but the rationale (as much as we could) behind them. It's a much more labour-intensive way of doing business than simply cranking out code, but I don't think we could have done it any other way. Competitors, who chose not to expend that effort, are now gone. Anonymous Rex

Message Index

How to Keep Loyal Fans Happy	Anonymous Rex	11/27/01 12:46 p.m.
Get over yourself.	Nijhazer	11/27/01 1:08 p.m.
Re: How to Keep Loyal Fans Happy	Riggs	11/27/01 1:09 p.m.
Re: How to Keep Loyal Fans Happy	Apollo	11/27/01 2:51 p.m.
What demos? *NM*	Andrew Nagy	11/27/01 3:00 p.m.
Re: What demos?	*Ar-Isildur of *WP*	11/27/01 3:48 p.m.
Re: What demos?	Andrew Nagy	11/27/01 4:35 p.m.
Re: What demos?	Apollo	11/27/01 8:28 p.m.
Re: What demos?	Ferrex (Dead)	11/28/01 12:36 p.m.
Re: How to Keep Loyal Fans Happy	vector40	11/27/01 8:09 p.m.
I'm keeping it simple...	Djof@School	11/27/01 1:20 p.m.
Re: I'm keeping it simple...	vector40	11/27/01 8:11 p.m.
Re: How to Keep Loyal Fans Happy	mnemesis	11/27/01 1:24 p.m.
Re: How to Keep Loyal Fans Happy	Caerdwyn	11/27/01 1:31 p.m.
Re: How to Keep Loyal Fans Happy	Ferrex (Dead)	11/27/01 1:52 p.m.
well said *NM*	*Ar-Isildur of *WP*	11/27/01 2:01 p.m.
Thanks for replying	Anonymous Rex	11/27/01 2:42 p.m.
Re: Thanks for replying	Andrew Nagy	11/27/01 2:56 p.m.
Re: Thanks for replying	Ferrex (Dead)	11/27/01 3:58 p.m.
Re: Thanks for replying	Anonymous Rex	11/27/01 5:18 p.m.
Re: Thanks for replying	Cunbelin@Work	11/27/01 6:10 p.m.
Re: Thanks for replying	kayas	11/27/01 6:50 p.m.
One in the eye, Louis.	vector40	11/27/01 8:37 p.m.
rotfl!	Louis Wu	11/27/01 8:52 p.m.
Re: rotfl!	vector40	11/27/01 9:25 p.m.
Re: rotfl!	Louis Wu	11/27/01 9:29 p.m.
OMG!! OMG NOE!!!!! (NT)	MakeMineRed	11/28/01 6:48 a.m.
Re: OMG!! OMG NOE!!!!! (NT)	vector40	11/28/01 7:15 p.m.
Re: OMG!! OMG NOE!!!!! (NT)	Cunbelin The Spoiler	11/29/01 1:40 a.m.
Re: OMG!! OMG NOE!!!!! (NT)	MakeMineRed	11/29/01 6:58 a.m.
Re: OMG!! OMG NOE!!!!! (NT)	vector40	11/29/01 7:06 p.m.
September (end of) *NM*	Louis Wu	11/29/01 7:12 p.m.
Thanks. *NM*	vector40	11/29/01 7:19 p.m.
Re: Thanks for replying	vector40	11/27/01 8:30 p.m.
Re: Thanks for replying	vector40	11/27/01 8:18 p.m.
bunch of kids...	Marty the Elder	11/27/01 4:16 p.m.
Re: bunch of kids...	*Ar-Isildur of *WP*	11/27/01 6:22 p.m.
Re: bunch of kids...	Achronos	11/28/01 4:14 p.m.
I'm amazed...	*Ar-Isildur of *WP*	11/27/01 2:12 p.m.
Re: I'm amazed...	no7orious	11/27/01 5:07 p.m.
Re: I'm amazed...	*Ar-Isildur of *WP*	11/27/01 6:45 p.m.
That sounds about right... cool! *NM*	no7orious	11/27/01 7:37 p.m.
Re: I'm amazed...	James Isaak	11/27/01 8:18 p.m.
Re: I'm amazed...	*Ar-Isildur of *WP*	11/27/01 11:30 p.m.
Stop the presses.	Frost	11/27/01 2:35 p.m.
Re: Stop the presses.	Anonymous Rex	11/27/01 2:47 p.m.
Re: Stop the presses.	vector40	11/27/01 8:35 p.m.
Re: Stop the presses.	Anonymous Rex	11/27/01 11:13 p.m.
Re: Stop the presses.	vector40	11/27/01 11:30 p.m.
Show cats	Anonymous Rex	11/28/01 12:35 a.m.
Re: Show cats	vector40	11/28/01 7:13 p.m.
Re: Show cats	Anonymous Rex	11/28/01 9:05 p.m.
Re: Oh really!?	kayas	11/28/01 10:07 p.m.
Re: Show cats	vector40	11/28/01 10:09 p.m.
Re: Show cats	Hackerhitman13	11/28/01 7:17 p.m.
Re: Show cats	Anonymous Rex	11/28/01 8:41 p.m.
Re: Show cats	Hackerhitman13	11/28/01 11:24 p.m.
Re: Stop the presses.	Louis Wu	11/28/01 5:28 a.m.
Re: Stop the presses.	Frost	11/28/01 4:47 p.m.
Louis is much better at this than I am. *NM*	vector40	11/28/01 7:14 p.m.
Bungie is different	Anonymous Rex	11/28/01 11:09 p.m.
This is just dripping :)	vector40	11/29/01 12:00 a.m.
Bungie is different	Anonymous Rex	11/29/01 2:56 a.m.
Re: Bungie is different	vector40	11/29/01 7:02 p.m.
Re: How to Keep Loyal Fans Happy	Cunbelin@Work	11/27/01 5:16 p.m.
Re: How to Keep Loyal Fans Happy	Impact	11/27/01 9:58 p.m.
Re: How to Keep Loyal Fans Happy	Steve Campbell	11/27/01 10:24 p.m.
if you would...	ONEi	11/28/01 12:06 p.m.
Re: if you would...	Steve	11/28/01 12:29 p.m.
Re: if you would...	vector40	11/28/01 7:01 p.m.
Re: How to Keep Loyal Fans Happy	HeavyMetalMachine	11/28/01 4:06 p.m.