I’m working on a story for the next issue of Games for Windows Magazine about the rise of online public forums as game industry water coolers–places where developers rub elbows with the people who play their games. Qt3 is a significant part of the story, and I’ve been conducting interviews with developers who regularly visit and participate. But I need more! If you’re a game developer who regularly visits Qt3 (and if you have a little time for a quick e-mail interview on the subject), please PM me with your e-mail address. We can keep your username out of the story if you’d like to stay anonymous on the board.
Are you covering dev and game forums as well? There’s some active communities around games* like Enemy Territories: Quake Wars, Burnout Paradise, Sword of the Stars and Sins of a Solar Empire where the devs talk directly to the fans and not solely through community managers or PR people.
There may be more but these are the ones I’m familiar with and frequent.
There’s plenty of the opposite though, where the devs have stopped posting because they come under constant fire. For every healthy suggestion he received, Oleg Maddox in the IL2 forums got swamped in plenty of overboard, confrontational remarks about the most trite points. I think in general, PC game specific forums often get inundated by everyone who’s having technical trouble with a game, and console specific forums are often younger (read:annoying) posters. I suppose it’s a reason why QT3 is special to me.
Heh, I should actually fix that reference to all the accounts being stirred into the general population. It doesn’t happen. In fact, aside from the one time I just went ‘ahh, screw it!’ and turned on all the accounts, it’s never happened. Every new account is still the result of an email exchange – usually very brief, but an exchange nonetheless – between me and the person with the account.
The most active dev/community interaction I’ve ever seen, is the http://forums.s2games.com for savage 2. About half a dozen staff members post there daily. This includes the principal devs and s2maliken who owns/finances the company. The rest of the staff seems to post more or less frequently than that.
It’s interesting to say the least. Maliken in particular is known to bully into even the most heated debates and take them personally. It’s a little unprofessional/unorthodox at times. But, given that the audience is mostly typical aggressive fps types, and that s2 favors only light moderation, it makes for quite a unique dynamic.
Sure, but when devs post here, they generally aren’t representing their companies. I mean, sure we know who works where, but that’s not important when we’re talking about which DS strategy games to bring on a long trip, or complaining about which copy-protection systems are most irritating, or threadcasting trade-show presentations.
Yeah I don’t know if the GFW article is supposed to be about game-specific forums, but rather general forums for industry chit-chat among both developers and players. But I could be wrong.
