Perhaps in an idyllic sense community management is for marketing. Reality check? It’s damage control these days.

Press releases put up on the front of websites get highlighted on every gamer news site. The things they say make it onto feature lists.

I’ll stop when you stop. Sounds fair to me.

Press releases are written for reporters, investors, and executives. They are meant to grab the attention of low-attention-span suits who don’t have time to really understand anything about games besides whether or not they will make money.

Companies are not going to write press releases for gamers. That’s what marketing is for. That’s what community management is for.

Press releases have a specific format for a specific audience. It’s as much its own style of writing as a movie script or a haiku.

Complaining about a press release for doing its job as a press release is a futile effort. Stop it.

Any MMO from that side of the world is crap, in my experience. Often beautiful crap, but crap nonetheless.

From a business perspective, I would not be touting this particular person when you can go ahead and tout the collective pedigree of those ex NCSoft, Microsoft, Blizzard and other company employees that make up your team.

The problem with a MMO like Tera, and more specifically a company like En Masse, is that it is not their work they are “producing”. The major reason why Aion has not found a large niche in Western countries is not because its not a good base game. It is because NCSoft does not control the actual game from the ground up.

The successful MMOs of the last several years have been those that have production teams and development teams that are near the same. WoW is at the forefront of this, but games like EQ and FFXI also have this. Looking forward, we see SWTOR produced by Bioware. We do not want anymore small Asian games being westernized. We want the games to be created for the masses to begin with. The need not be “English” games, but they should be targeted towards the world from the get go, not be niche and become larger.

Has nothing to do with Brian Knox. I don’t know the guy well enough to make a comment on him personally. The way they tout Aion though is certainly not how I remember, and probably not how the majority remember, it going down.

Aion was probably the most successful MMO (from a business prospective – not l33t g4m3r prospective) of 2009. You wouldn’t put that on your resume if you were Brian Knox? If you were En Masse you wouldn’t be proud of advertising this employee?

Agree with you 150%. Many companies think that being vague is beneficial because it attracts interest but doesn’t paint them into a corner until launch. Wrong! By being vague, you are doing the worst thing possible to your customer audience. What’s that? Assumptions! The more people assume things based upon vague descriptions, the more they will probably be let down when reality hits at the game launch (or beta).

So ya, I’m with you. If you can’t get specific about game details or mechanics, don’t release anything. If you’re going to release details, make sure they are as specific and understandable as possible (even including video highlights to explain new innovative gameplay mechanics). Simply put, the more you can make your “official” site like a “fan” site, with lots of detailed info, the better it will be. People don’t want to read stuff they can get off the back of a game box. They want something substantial with some depth to it, that is updated at least weekly with a new detailed tidbit of content prior to the release.