Bryan Ekman has posted an official response to some of the questions raised about the interview with him that Polygon posted after GDC.
I’ll admit there are some answers in the original interview that seem kind of vague, and could be interpreted as being “bad”, but, I also think you’d have had to be looking for something bad (or, maybe had your tin-foil hat on a little too tightly). I’m glad to see PGI taking the time to address the concerns that arose from the article (a sooner response wasn’t posted, because Bryan was on vacation).
Here’s my thoughts on the whole “issue”
1 – The original article could probably have been a bit clearer.
2 – The MWO “Community” needs to stop jumping to the worst possible conclusion, when there are no facts that point to that conclusion
3 – People need to grow up… the amount of outrage on the MWO Forums, because Bryan had the “nerve” to go on vacation, and not immediately post a clarification, was insane. Game developers, regardless of what their role at the company is, are just as entitled to a vacation as any other person. Game Developers do NOT owe ‘you’ (you, in this case, is the vocal minority on the game’s official forums, who seem to think Developers are expected to never leave the office) an immediate response to an interview, they are not required to release all information in the manner you see fit, or to run anything by you for approval first.
4 – If, as Bryan mentions in his clarification, folks at IGP or PGI did receive threats of violence.. I hope that in addition to the game banning that Bryan talks about, PGI/IGP also pursue legal action against those people. Anyone who would make violent threats to a publisher/game developer over anything – let alone a couple of sentences in an interview at GDC – has some serious issues.
Here’s the link to Bryan’s clarification. Full copy/paste, along with some additional commentary after the jump:
No, we will not require players to have a Premium Account to play in a Merc Unit.
Yes, we are considering monetizing aspects of Community Warfare.
- A small one-time MC and/or CB fee to create a Merc Corp*.
- Some aspects of CW will reward players with MC, we are considering a Premium Account requirement to participate in these rewards. This will not prevent non-paying customers to participate in all aspects of CW with their friends and teammates.
- If we decided to launch Private Matches, they will likely require a Premium Account to cover costs of hosting a match on our hardware.
* We are looking at ways to prevent/mitigate name reserving and parking. We may simply require players to have a minimum of 1 company or 12 active players to maintain a valid status.
At this time no final decisions have been made.
Due to the article coming out on a Friday and myself being on vacation, I was not in a position to write this response on the forums. Instead I used my Twitter account to try and alleviate some of the concerns. Please consider any communication via my Twitter account as an official response.
The Polygon article was correctly reported with one omission by the interviewer and one omission from myself:
- I made mention near the end of the conversation that no final decisions have been made. I also used soft language, like may, possibly, could, probably – these are far from definite. At no time did I make any statements of finality.
- I did not clarify that the requirement of premium time would be for the MC reward system and private matches. Both are part of the CW.
The response from the community and the timing of events were both unfortunate.
We cannot control when third-parties release their interviews with us and how they present the information we have provided them.
While we accept that the community is passionate and expects communication from us, and we always strive to provide the best answer we can:
Sometimes we are simply not available to answer right at that moment; Holidays do exist for developers.It’s one thing to disagree politely and intelligently, even passionately, with the content as it had been initially presented.It’s a whole other issue when the community sends violent threats to PGI/IGP staff for any reason: whether it’s a misunderstanding or for not being available to respond in as timely a manner as expected.
However, we will hold firm that aggressive and threatening behaviour towards staff of fellow MechWarriors will never be acceptable and will result in banishment for those who do so.
I take solace in the fact that this behavior represents the minority, not the majority of our amazing players.There are probably hundreds of other questions to be answered, however this was by far the most pressing. We are going to be rolling out a series of Command Chair posts over the next few weeks and months detailing all the aspects of CW. Since it’s such a large feature, it will take time to reveal all the details.
As you can see, Bryan does admit he could have been clearer in the interview. I can’t really blame him, or the interviewer though. From everything I’ve heard, GDC is busy, loud, and hectic.. which would make it a rough place to try and do a super indepth interview at (all that background noise has GOT to make it hard to clearly get every word, even if you’re recording the interview).
I’m ok with MOST of the Community Warfare information, as clarified.
- A small one-time MC and/or CB fee to create a Merc Corp*.
Perfectly reasonable, though, I don’t think the “Community”‘s definition of small, is going to match PGI’s.. I’d hope this small fee is in the 300-500 MC range.. but, I have a feeling it’ll be closer to the 5000 – 6000 MC range.. which is ok, if you take into account that will help address the ‘name camping’ problem Bryan also mentions.
- We are looking at ways to prevent/mitigate name reserving and parking. We may simply require players to have a minimum of 1 company or 12 active players to maintain a valid status.
This one, I’m less OK with. I think PGI should dis-allow ANY canon unit names to begin with, outside of that.. I don’t think there should be any restriction beyond a player only being able to “own” or be a member of, one Merc Unit at a time. If someone wants to form a single person Merc Corp at the start of CW (maybe they have friends who are going to start playing soon, and want to make sure they get their unit name), they should be able to.
- Some aspects of CW will reward players with MC, we are considering a Premium Account requirement to participate in these rewards. This will not prevent non-paying customers to participate in all aspects of CW with their friends and teammates.
I’m mostly ok with this.. if they’re going to be rewarding MC, I guess I can see requiring a premium account as a requirement to earn those MC rewards. I’d like to see this done similar to how Premium Time currently functions, and have the MC reward increased for premium accounts.
- If we decided to launch Private Matches, they will likely require a Premium Account to cover costs of hosting a match on our hardware.
Totally OK with this, and think it’s a reasonable requirement, the alternative, is a per-match MC charge.
While we’ve got more information/clarity then we did after the GDC interview, there is still a LOT of information we need about the CW system, information that PGI either doesn’t have, or isn’t ready to release at this time. So, it’s time for people to wait patiently, for PGI to be ready to release that information.
It will come, they have no reason to keep information about the game a secret from the player base. They need to have all their information together though, as the ‘community’ has already proven it’ll take the slightest molehill, and turn it into Mt. Everest.