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Chairman of the Boards: How Online Forums Influence Game Makers and Marketers

Chairman of the Boards
How online forums influence game makers and marketers.
By Robert Ashley

Tyler Malka is the 24-year-old owner of one of gaming's most beloved Internet stops. On any given day, thousands of game fanatics -- and a sizable number of developers, marketers, and journalists -- take a break from whatever they should be doing to log in to the message boards at NeoGAF.com, a no-holds-barred WrestleMania of breaking game news and snarky commentary. "I like to think of it as a nexus of fandom, media, and industry," Malka says. "GAFers take gaming news and issues very seriously, and you'll often see big names jumping into discussions and flame wars with everyone else."

You don't read NeoGAF. You follow it, like a sport with a high probability of bloodshed. The site's regulars, unpaid enthusiasts working mainly to bolster their reputation within the gaming community, sift through the vastness of the Internet in search of any detail, screenshot, or video they can dig up about the games they love and the people who create them. Their work makes the site the best aggregator of up-to-the-minute gaming news around, fueling a boom in traffic. In January alone, NeoGAF scored 30 million page views from 750,000 unique visitors. And Malka, needless to say, is now self-employed.

The site is proof that, though ancient by Internet standards, message boards are a vital part of the gaming ecosystem, providing an outlet for passionate players to be heard by and influence industry tastemakers, creators, and deciders. It also allows them to indulge in that most cherished of Internet traditions: thumbing your nose at authority -- anonymously, and with as few properly spelled words as possible.

Blood Sport

Any regular GAFer will tell you that news is only part of the reason to visit. The thing everyone's really looking for (and this is where the bloodshed comes in) is a scandal, a batch of bad screenshots to joyously tear apart or a misspoken, out-of-context quote from an industry VIP ragging on the competition. Like chum in a shark tank, these occasional events can provoke impromptu swarms of violence, page upon page of whining, yelling, and piss taking, usually to comic effect. Sometimes, the GAFer army manages to make so much noise that the din reaches the upper echelons of the industry. Case in point: In July 2007, Microsoft's press conference at the Electronic Entertainment Expo featured (then new) marketing VP Jeff Bell. As GAFers watched streaming video of the event and posted their impressions live, Bell provided comedic fodder, faking his way through a game of Madden against New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush, after which he stiffly remarked: "You schooled me on that one, brother." NeoGAF pounced.

Mike Maag ("a Master Ninja," NeoGAF poster): The general consensus seemed to be that Bell came off a bit like a used car salesmen during his presentation. A number of posters mocked his attempts to use "hip, urban" terms.

Wes Holt ("Teknopathetic," NeoGAF moderator): I think that companies didn't really know what they had gotten themselves into when they first started to publicize these events via the live feeds. For the most part, they're still using the same dry corporate executives. If they want to use the trade shows as big infomercials, a bit of personality helps.

"Muttyeah416" (NeoGAF poster): This Bell dude sounds like a douche.

Jeff Bell (VP of global marketing, interactive entertainment business, Microsoft): We like to get feedback, and we take it very seriously, but we always encourage people to try and be polite. There aren't really a lot of other industries that generate the same level of passion as videogames. For me, that was a learning curve, to understand the intensity of the community and, perhaps, the lexicon and language.

Mike Maag: A week later, news broke that longtime Xbox spokesman Peter Moore would be leaving Microsoft for EA. My post ["Keep Peter Moore, get rid of Jeff Bell"] apparently caught Mr. Bell's attention. That day a new member, calling himself "bell801," was approved. His first and only act as a member of NeoGAF was to send me the following message: "And you're contribution to society is...what?"

After site moderators confirmed that "bell801" was, in fact, Jeff Bell, the feeding frenzy commenced. Users quickly turned to Photoshop, plastering Bell's face over an assortment of characters, notably Vanilla Ice.

Jeff Bell: The only thing I could tell you is that I'm a human being. I'm a nice guy, a father of three boys, [and] married for 21 years. I mean no harm. I am, in fact, listening to gamers, and I've brought their voice into the work we're doing. Am I learning? Absolutely. Have I made mistakes now and again? Yes.

Mike Maag: The entire incident was surreal to me. I'm just some anonymous message board poster who criticized a corporate executive. I could never have predicted that Mr. Bell would actually read that post, let alone respond to it. I like the idea that someone with influence might read our feedback and implement our suggestions. My one piece of advice to gamers who post on message boards is to be aware that the industry is paying attention to us, for better or worse.

Putting the Message in Message Board

But just how closely are they paying attention? Do marketers keep their ear to the ground at NeoGAF and other message boards? Do they track public reaction to their promotional efforts? Did they all take notes when Bell got his 15 minutes of online infamy? Do they see inside our heads?

Elizabeth Tobey (community manager, 2K Games): With the proliferation of public-discussion places, we have a constant source of real-time feedback that can lead to bigger and better things for our products. At every level, we have people who follow the trends closely and pay attention to what the community takes to and what the community skewers.

Tammy Schachter (senior director of PR, EA Games): People at EA are gamers first, so they are reading the boards like everyone else in the industry. Whether in the studio or in marketing, we're all always interested in hearing what gamers are saying about our games and the competition. We live in an online world where anything we say and do is disseminated on a global scale in an instant. This has revolutionized the way we do marketing and PR. While we are always thinking about our campaigns through a digital, global lens, we do not micromanage our campaigns in reaction to any one online moment.

The sneaking suspicion for many, however, is that paid shills lurk in the ranks of online forums, trying to shape group opinion by cheerleading for certain games.

Justin Epperson ("sp0rsk", NeoGAF moderator): I'd like to think GAFers could smell a rat, but it seems like a good percentage of them can't even smell the ones right under their noses. A while back user "GhaleonEB" became an Xbox VIP and was given a free trip to go see Halo 3, among other things. Instead of being cynical about how valid his opinion was, fellow Xbox fans attacked anyone who thought it was a little fishy.

Ben Caton ("GhaleonEB," NeoGAF poster): Microsoft has an MVP program for active members of communities, not just Xbox, but all of their groups. It's basically a list that gets you invited to events like that a few times per year. The Halo event is the only one I've gone to; there is a big one next month, but I declined to attend. It's closer to some kind of viral program than I'm comfortable with.

1UP: Do you feel like you've done anything underhanded or intentionally fooled anyone in the community?

Ben Caton: When I was accepted into the program, I contacted the GAF administration to let them know, and posted a thread on the topic. I also asked for and received a tag noting my status. I wanted to make sure everyone knew about it and how it worked. There are, at least, two others MVPs on GAF that did not disclose.

Justin Epperson: No one is safe from PR people trying to control the message. That's a risk I think you have to consider when using a forum as a source for news. You have to be your own editor, in a sense.

Read All About It

Many people use NeoGAF as a one-stop shop for gaming news. If you go there looking for original reporting, you're in the wrong place. But the GAFer army gathers news stories from around the Web with surprising efficiency. So much so that many news pros keep an eye on the site for potential material.

N'Gai Croal (Newsweek blogger): A good message board serves as a news aggregator, a gauge of what a portion of hardcore gamers deem important or interesting, and a sampling of how they're reacting to the news in question. So scanning NeoGAF a few times a day is like killing three birds with one stone: I can find out about a story that I wasn't aware of and/or determine how compelling GAFers think a story is and/or measure their take on it. I might know more about games than one gamer, two gamers, or even 10 gamers. But there's no way I know more about games than 100 gamers. Or 1,000. Nor can I keep track of as many stories as the collective forum. So as long as I keep things in perspective -- trust but verify -- it's one very useful tool among many.

NeoGAF isn't a real news organization, but its owner has to deal with one aspect of covering games that the pros face: publishers angry about information posted on the site. Though you'd think publishers would be most worried about the kind of inaccuracies that pop up in an unedited forum, the opposite is true.

Tyler Malka: It's not when inaccurate info gets posted -- it's when accurate info gets posted. Every now and then you'll see substantial NDA [nondisclosure agreement]-protected material get leaked and then posted on NeoGAF, and it has caused some trouble with publishers. I've tried to be reasonable, but sometimes they open their dialogue with threats straight out. More than once I've been threatened with being blacklisted out of the PR mechanisms of major publishers, which is about as hollow as a threat can get when we're not even on any of those PR lists to begin with.

Quarter to Three: The Anti-NeoGAF

NeoGAF is certainly not the only gaming message board on the Internet. It's not even the only message board well visited by industry insiders. Many developers who enjoy interacting with gamers online prefer something more low-key, and that's where the forums at QuartertoThree.com come in. Owned and operated by 1UP contributor Tom Chick, QT3 is a far cry from the spectacles and shouting matches of its behemoth rival, and that's the way its members prefer it.

Tom Chick (owner, QT3): NeoGAF is a much larger forum, in terms of traffic and membership. But it's also a younger forum, in a couple senses of the word. NeoGAF is like a bunch of people in a coliseum to see a big show. QT3 is more like a neighborhood jazz bar.

1UP: But for a small community, QT3 seems to have a greater ratio of developers and journalists who actually participate on the boards and make their presence known.

Tom Chick: I have no idea how it became the industry water cooler that it is today. We inherited a lot of people from the videogaming groups on Usenet, but I don't know why videogame writers and developers ended up there.

Scott Lantz (associate producer, PopCap games): QT3 is as subject as any other place to trolling and flame-ups, but it's mercifully free of 12-year-olds and illiterate fanboys. So even when trolling or flame-ups happen, they can still manage to be literate and/or witty.

Brad Wardell (CEO of Stardock, Sins of a Solar Empire): I visit QT3 because when I absolutely, positively need to know the important things happening in the game industry, one quick peek at the QT3 forums will tell me. It's made up of industry veterans who already know what is going on and can discuss game industry issues intelligently.

Audience Interaction

For game developers, public forums like Quarter to Three and NeoGAF offer a chance to interact with the audience they toil for. Trapped in the office all day, these sites provide a window into the thoughts of the everyday gamer, though developers disagree on what kinds of interactions are appropriate.

David Jaffe (founder, Eat, Sleep, Play): The Internet is an amazing tool for facilitating communication between fans and creators. Why would I not want to communicate with folks who not only like the products we make, but who, like me, just love games in general? The idea of being inaccessible does not work for me. I'm not looking to be seen as ultraimportant and hard to get a hold of. I love that I'm just sitting here in my sunny little house in Southern California, and pretty much anyone out there who digs games can somehow get a hold of me.

1UP: You've never been shy about jumping into the fray in threads about your games or interviews. Do you feel a need to defend yourself in these public spaces?

David Jaffe: At the beginning, I enjoyed the semi-shock value I would create by responding to someone who was -- usually anonymously -- insulting me. They never expected me to jump in and call them out. But yeah, I would try to defend myself in the past. I used to think I could really turn the tide when someone on the Net was bagging on me. I would just jump in there and defend and attack right back at them and really try to set the story straight. And it was a total waste of time. The reality is: I am 90 percent responsible for the image I put out there.

Soren Johnson (lead designer, Civilization IV): I definitely can't keep myself from wading into a thread about Civ, especially when it appears on a non-Civ forum, as the opinions tend to be more varied in the wider world. I will post from time to time to answer questions. However, it's hard to know what to say, as I don't believe developers should ever post opinions about their own games. One should never defend a game in public. It's OK to post facts, but it is too hard to be objective when discussing attitudes, opinions, and feelings about games, especially your own.

1UP: Do the game developers who participate in these forums actually take the feedback they receive into account when they close their web browsers and get back to work? Are they influenced by what they read?

Rob Fermier (game developer, Ensemble Studios, Age of Empires III): "Well, of course I'm influenced.... There's not much point in a discussion if you aren't going to be open to new ideas or changing your mind! Feedback certainly gets folded back into the churning mass of neurons in my skull, and that in turn fuels all kinds of different game development work."

Brad Wardell: I think of QT3 and NeoGAF as a 24/7 Game Developers Conference panel. The comments on the forums about our games are taken very seriously. Both Galactic Civilizations and Sins of a Solar Empire had significant features integ.ated into them both before and after release based on feedback.

Soren Johnson: Forums are a great way to get unfiltered feedback on your game, and I can think of many interesting ideas and suggestions for Civ that came from the forums. With Civ III, unfortunately, most of that feedback came after release, so the changes were only evident in the patches. To solve this problem with Civ IV, we pulled in around 100 of the best posters from the Civ forums into a private test session over a year before the game's release.

Site gags
Words are all well and good, but when thousands of people are scanning a message board thread, eye-grabbing images can communicate more. That's where visual memes come in. In the context of message boards, these are images or short animations that online communities adopt as in-jokes, a lingo that, to outsiders, may appear nonsensical. At NeoGAF, the best of these images tend to come from site-specific events, as when a particularly rough batch of screenshots from the Xbox 360 launch game Perfect Dark Zero ignited a feeding frenzy of negative comments in the summer of 2005. One decidedly underwhelming screenshot featured a soldier taking cover behind a wall. Spontaneously, GAFers began Photoshopping the image into new contexts (other games, moments in history, random photos of kids at Chuck E. Cheese) and creating animations, christening the character "Wall Guy."

Which brings us to private forums. Some developers prefer the more focused and cozy confines of a board dedicated to just their games, especially when it comes to tweak-heavy online multiplayer games.

Paul Wedgwood (owner/creative director, Splash Damage, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars): The biggest challenge one faces with community feedback is the quantity. If a player takes the time to write down his thoughts, it's really important to us that we're able to respond (either with a reply or by incorporating that feedback into a subsequent game update). However, it's just too much of a challenge to read every Enemy Territory forum around the world. Further, we feel it's almost an invasion of community privacy for us to go snooping on community forums and interjecting our opinions.

Nerd Power

Loud, brash, and sometimes mean -- do the superactive gamers of online forum communities wield power over the kind of games that are published, how those games are marketed, or what the critical reception of those games might be? Maybe a little?

Todd Howard (executive producer, Bethesda Softworks, Fallout 3): [The online forum community] a good barometer of what "real" gamers are thinking and talking about. I can remember seeing the massive Oblivion thread [on NeoGAF] and thinking, "the game is doing well...."

David Jaffe: If all you did was appeal only to the hardcore NeoGAF crowd, you'd make well-loved classics that sell about 100K, at best. It's not like the sales of Sims 3 or Halo 4 are going to be affected. But if you have a new IP, you damn well better get these folks behind your title because they were the ones who will get the less hardcore to give your game a shot. So as passionate gamers, they are always important because they champion a medium we all love so much.

Tim Lewinson (associate director, Propaganda Games, Turok): The loudest, most hardcore contingents aren't necessarily the folks who represent the widest range of appeal. I've told more than a couple of posters not to overestimate their influence. That said, they care. As a developer, it feels good to know that there are gamers who take it as seriously as I do and want nothing more [than] to enjoy a fun, engaging game at the end of the day. That's what I want to make, and hopefully there's a middle ground we can meet at. With axes at the ready.

DragonFable: Choose your own adventure

The upside to running an episodic role-playing game that relies on player suggestions to advance the plot is that, with droves of enthusiastic fans beating down your door for a chance to contribute, you never run out of ideas. The downside? Enthusiastic fans beating down your door can get a little creepy. That explains why Artix Entertainment, creator of the fan-directed, web browser-based RPG DragonFable, operates under a shroud of guarded privacy. Just tracking down a warm body for this story was a challenge. No e-mail address for press inquires, no PR contact. Their customer service number leads to the ancient squeal of a fax machine. When I did manage to speak to the creative director of DragonFable, this is how he introduced himself: "As far as anyone's concerned, my name is Cysero. I've done a good job of keeping my real name from some really overzealous fans, and I'm happy that way."

Since launching his first game, AdventureQuest, from the dining room of his house in 2002, company founder and nick-namesake "Artix" has experienced several strange run-ins with his audience. "My favorite one was a young boy who offered to give me some diamonds and started calling my house and breathing heavy into the phone," says Artix. "I called him back and got to talk to his dad two days before Christmas." Though they sometimes cross the line, devoted fans are what turned Artix's homemade Flash game into a legitimate business. The company has registered over 50 million player accounts for the three games it operates, all free through ad support (an optional one-time fee unlocks nicer equipment). "It was always my dream to make a videogame," says Artix. "The goal was just to get 100 people to come play it so I could say I'd made a real game. Things went a little overboard."

DragonFable is a valentine to those dedicated players. A simple, turn-based, single-player RPG updated (pretty much) every Friday with new content, the game relies on the players themselves to brainstorm new ideas for what should happen to their characters. "We have a huge forum community where everyone is welcome to come in and give suggestions and feedback," says Cysero. "We get a lot of our ideas from the players, and we really want the players to know that the games that we make come almost entirely from what they want to see," says Cysero. What they want to see, apparently, is standard dragon-loving fantasy fare drawn by anime-raised Americans and riddled with self-deprecating jokes and whimsical silliness. "There's a lot of sword swinging and drama to keep it going, but mostly it's bad puns and terrible jokes," says Cysero.

Perhaps the most compelling "game" in DragonFable is the online competition to get your ideas written into the world. "If you're a player who's really into the game and you see your idea being used, it's like the biggest thrill of your life," says Cysero. Not quite as thrilling as tracking down the address of one of the game's developers and peering into their kitchen from the backyard bushes. Just a guess....