Academia on Fallout fans

[Ausir]

It's the first game they made, but they've been publishing games since 1994.

 

[welsh]

Sometimes I wonder what the more hands-off community managers do all day.

Must be a cosy job.

Ahhh.. dissertate?

 

[UncannyGarlic]

It's unfortunate too, very early on during the development of Morrowind, the developers were much much more active on the forums. As time passed, they withdrew bit by bit as they started getting harrassed and badgered and it stopped being enjoyable to interact with their fan base. I understand why...and just one glance at the Bethsoft forums now provides plenty of more reasons not to return.

So, what you are saying is that they are scared out of their wits to interact with the fans because they might <gasp> be proven wrong ?

And i glance at the Beth forums to, you know. And what strikes me is the mostly pro-Beth posts there. More critical posts usually become flame wars and mostly because of the pro-Beth crew or are locked. So, i see no cause for the devs to go there because they have enough people on their forums willing to kiss their collective asses.

It's actually gotten worse recently, I started reading recent posts in a thread and there were three pages that primarily consisted of two or three people flooding it with what looked to me to be propaganda.

There are some people who ask hard questions but the critics are respectful and nice to the devs when they post, as shown by Emil's damage control by coming on to answer some real questions (and deny it was damage control after not posting for a week ).

Analyzing forum interactions made for great study, since I had never seen research document regular producer/fan interaction so deeply, never mind the bombastic beauty of the forum’s confrontations. I’ve never seen such eloquent flames.

He isn't talking about the Bethsoft forums is he? I don't think I have ever seen anything approaching eloquent flames on the Bethesda boards courtesy of summer and co.

Yeah I was wondering about that aswell, he may have been talking about specific flames (I've seen a handful of good ones) but I'd agree that most are hardly better than the chans...

Been reading through the thesis paper, it's pretty good so far but I've just reached the point where he's started really discussing Fallout 3 and not being general. I have to agree that using what he himself describes as a microchasm of the industry to generallize about it as a whole was maybe not the best choice but it's a good paper from what I've read.

 

[Disconnected]

IllWinter (the Dominions guys) and Stardock (GalCiv) are also big on talking, listening and heeding the wishes of their users, and offering steady post-release support.

 

[horse]

the underlying and interesting question is: how is the "ownership" of the media text defined? of course, bethesda owns the rights. i also understand that a lot of fans "feel" some kind of ownership towards the fallout content. that is only natural, and in comparison to other fan communities the fallout fan base is very creative and lively.

so conflict has to happen - and i find it remarkable that the fans really accepted their role in the making of fallout 3. of course i havent read through all the bethesda forum threads, so it may be that desperate "but i OWN fallout because i am soooo deeply involved in it!" threads escaped my attention.

anyway, great thread, interesting finding.