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Hexed Gamer -> RE: WinSPWW2/MBT will be avaiable soon!! (10/16/2004 4:29:13 AM)
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Thanks for the further comment clarification Alby :)
Things that have happened in 2004 that I thought were a combination of things, but mostly were unfortunate.
The ole stomping grounds became "less a home, and more a place of business".
That's not a negative nor a complaint.
Just an observation.
There are lots of stores I really love to visit. Nothing turns my crank more for instance, than to visit a local hobby store in Toronto.
They always have the most cutting edge models and support products, and the staff are all older guys not bored uninformed kids paying for an education with a job they could care less about in a year or two.
But I don't really go there to hang out. And I don't tend to have much use for the place if I have no effective way of buying anything while there.
MMP makers of ASL among other things. They have a great web page if you are looking to buy. No forums though. Forums take effort and time among other things. Effort and time that might be used on producing the games I suppose.
Now ASL is a board game admittedly, and thus, you will never be downloading a latest official patch for any of the modules for one thing.
But the company does have guys that are out there in the world of forums interacting with the fan base answering questions etc.
Keith Dalton likely has an uneviable job though, as he gets to deal with guys like me asking those tough questions about the game.
But Keith fields all those answers as a guest of Warfare HQ.
Warfare HQ is run as a club first and last. It's well organised admittedly. And a member would have to be pretty dim to want indepth discussion of the ASL game outside of the ASL forum there.
But the forum like I said, is run as a club. It isn't a business.
When I first came to Matrix Games, the game was Steel Panthers. We all knew it was basically the Steel Panthers WaW version for the most part.
But in the span of about 2 years time, I realised the Steel Panthers community was a very dedicated very passionate very active group.
I really got to like the game mostly for the community, not for the game itself.
The game is just a game eh. If I deleted every single game out of my life but say for instance Strategic Command (another computer game I like), my life would not implode.
I miss the community feel to the place here (Matrix Games the place, not just one specific portion of Matrix Games).
Success brings many things.
Some might not be so much bad, but they do involve changes that are not always without regrets.
The first thing that I notice each time I load up the forums, is how the forums are now such a large sprawling number of games.
There was a lot of fear and apprehension when Warfare HQ and Armchair General recently merged. And guess what, the biggest worry was about the loss of that "club" feel to the place.
And the owners were indeed concerned and indeed have done a great deal to stress they are NOT interested in losing that club feel.
The biggest thing I have noticed the last while, is there doesn't "seem" to be a coordinated sense of "interest" in Matrix Games retaining any sense of "community".
Now granted, "community" has it's limits.
And who here hasn't seen comments to the effect "we are about making games"?
That is I think, no surprise to anyone visiting Matrix Games.
Anyone here actually unaware that Matrix Games is a business?
What's the one thing though, a business should always fear?
Negative publicity.
What's the one thing you can't buy for any sum of cash normally?
Positive word of mouth.
Each person that visits Matrix Games becomes usually something in the middle (fanboys and the "I hate you crowd are really not the majority :) ).
It's not always about negative publicity, nor always a bastion of positive word of mouth either responses though.
But something really needs tobe done around here.
A handful of moderators (unpaid volunteers in some cases) is not in my view, always a realistic way to run the public face of a company.
Maybe I am just missing something.
But there are a lot of curious similarities with Matrix Games and MMP if you ask me.
Both seem to be companies, run by guys that only have their spare time available, that are seemingly being run as companies trying to look like full time businesses.
And in the end, they come off as companies seeming to make promises they seem often ill equipped to deliver on ideally.
That's not always a wise prospect.
Not a slag on either group, just an observation.
HTTR, one of the better games to grace my life in a long while.
Definitely no argument there.
But really, how much can one very finite group of guys simultaneously juggle?
Comments like "oh that game has it's own team, and they are not being distracted by other games", may well be true.
But this company, Matrix Games, how many owners are there really?
Is David Heath THE owner?
If so, how much can David really control at once?
If it is true, not one of the games here is the sole occupation of not one person involved, then how many games should David (and whomever else) be realistically indulging?
It's a logical question.
There are only 24 hours in a day. If you have a "real" job, and a family, the end result, is your "hobby business" is not going to get many hours out of you in the end.
I speak only for myself, but I don't even have the job stealing away hours, and I rarely get all the things done in any given day I want seen to.
And that is what I think is contributing to how we get to this point where it seems an overtly intrusive thing, to post a thread/post to the Steel Panthers WaW forum, and have it deemed as incorrect/inappropriate to have done so.
I think a lot of us have not been very happy to see the community paved over to make a parking lot for a store.
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