Talking Game Design - Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games - page 54

DEVELOPERS: REACHING OUT TO PLAYERS
The clearest link to wordplay begins by examining how developers reach
out to players in an ef ort to (re)defi ne how their game is seen. Developers
often address players directly to communicate the rationale behind a key
decision, seek to build anticipation about an upcoming development, or
attempt to make players feel more invested in the games they are playing. In
these situations players are not directly impacting the design of a game, but
they still dictate the terms on which the discourse of video games is built.
Another reason developers may choose to engage players is as part of
a larger community management strategy. In the case of Star Wars: The
Old Republic , the addition of a new Senior Community Coordinator led
to increased participation from developers in “fan podcasts, websites, and
the oi cial forums,” as for gamers “it is always refreshing to fans when
developers sit down with them to answer their questions.” 8 Adopting this
strategy is an acknowledgement that the players of the game matter and, by
reaching out to them and answering questions, the players participating in
the game are likely to be more committed to it. In the case of a Star Wars
game, it is particularly notable that this addition to staf was made well
before the game launched. The vibrant, pre-existing community of fans
could be counted on to stoke anticipation for the game, but only if they
were properly managed. Large game titles, predominantly in the MMOG
genre, depend mightily on the ongoing subscription payments of their play-
ers, which make the level of investment of those players crucially important.
The addition of positions like “Senior Community Coordinator” is further
acknowledgement that video games are not solely constituted by what is
on the disc or in the lines of code, but also by the discussion surrounding
the game, as publishers are increasingly recognizing the importance of how
they and their games are perceived by their audience.
Similar examples of reaching out to a community of players can be found
in a variety of dif erent games, from large budget titles to small ones. Shortly
after APB: All Points Bulletin was shut down, the game was purchased by a
dif erent developer, GamersFirst, 9 to be relaunched as a free-to-play game.
In an ef ort to guide discussion and recapture gamers who had been playing
APB , one of the executives of GamersFirst began a blog to update players
on the plans for the new version of the game at key points of time. The
beginning of closed and open betas was announced, so that gamers could
participate in the reconstruction of APB-Reloaded . 10 Another example of
developers reaching out to the player community occurred when the devel-
opment team behind the independent hit Super Meat Boy used a blog post
to announce their response to a PETA protest of their game and the integra-
tion of a playable Tofu Boy, complete with “Infl ated Ego” and who is “[n]
ot actually as ef ective as he thinks he is” 11 as a downloadable update to the
game. The response let the developers, Team Meat, capitalize on the pub-
licity surrounding criticism from a prominent animal-rights organization,