A kick in the teeth?

This morning I saw something on the Wyrd boards, it was a post by Wyrd manager Eric J:

1st Edition was created and designed by myself, and written/tested with significant help from Dan (and a few others)

2nd Edition was created and designed by myself and Dan, starting nearly 2 years ago. Mack and Justin came on board and got involved earlier this year when we needed to get a ton more hours/week on the project. They bring a ton of ideas, every single one is approved by me, or revised by me, or rejected by me and replaced with another idea. So if you need to place blame, do it to my face and don't run around throwing insults that do nothing more than prove you don't know the facts.

That said, without the involvement of Dan, Mack, Justin and many others not mentioned in this thread, nothing about Malifaux could have become reality, and they deserve all the credit in the world. It couldn't happen without them.

Despite being really really loud, it has become incredibly clear in the last 2 days that the original poster in this thread is in an even smaller minority that I already thought. Look at the poll in the "something seems wrong" thread, where the changes are liked at a 4-1 ratio (Edit- just checked, actually nearly 5-1) to people who voted dislike (and thats not taking into account the 10 or so dislike votes from the same IP (yes, I can track that)). And based on feedback I am getting from all my channels, the dislike votes in this thread are actually exaggerated based on the fact people who are coming here tend to come here to complain, while people who like things are just off testing to help us finish up balancing.

For every 1 person who is crying doom like the original poster, I hear 20 stories about people who wouldn't touch 1st edition due to the "rules wall" on all the 1st edition stat cards. You may not hear those stories because honestly, they don't come here because they weren't interested in getting involved in Malifaux before.

There is a reason that I haven't followed the feedback that is similar to the original poster, and it's not just because it's stating that they don't like my work and the work of my team (which I firmly believe is a huge improvement to first edition). The reason is that it's in the VAST minority of all the feedback I receive (note the all caps, underline, AND bold there for emphasis). The fact it's given in a very very LOUD way, and presented in a way attempting to become a spectacle, does not make it anything more than a very loud minority opinion.

This relates to a post in the following thread: here.

I'd like to apologise for the length of quote, especially when only a small part is related to what I want to discuss, but I wanted people to understand that I am not taking things out of context and only quoting that which suits my needs.

I'd also like to bring back to the surface Eric's previous blog post where he called all beta testers liars: www.ericjgames.com

This starts to paint a very interesting picture.

It has already been stated in Eric's blog post that 'certain' posts are ignored, or 'selectively dismissed' and now after today's post we are seeing yet more reinforcement that there are certain criteria which encourages the game designers to completely ignore feedback.

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Now it is every company's prerogative to pick and choose which feedback they want to pay attention and it could be argued that people who are on the verge of 'Rage Quitting' are not the best people to pay attention to.

But let's look at what we're being shown here: people who (apparently) are a minority who are speaking very loudly about something they are unhappy about.

Let's just take a moment and ask ourselves; "why are these people reacting this way?"

Is it because they're spoilt little children who just don't like change? Or is there more to it?

I read these posts and I see people who are passionate about a game, and the reason why their comments are so explosive is because they are so passionate about it.

Are these really people who you want to be ignoring?

I am not saying that anyone who shouts loudly should be followed 100%, that would just be silly, and a lot of the time it's doing just that which cases all manner of real world conflict.

No, I'm saying give them a little bit of time.

We're all supporters of a product here, none of us want to see the product fail, quite the opposite.

What we want is to feel (rightly or wrongly) that our opinions matter and being told that because we're in a minority or because we may have trouble tempering our passions, that our opinions matter less than people who are blasé about the product.

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Just last week I personally experienced something very similar and ever since I have noticed this on quite a few topics, where someone comments or suggests something that is not very popular (for whatever reason) and they are greeted by systematic suppression by certain people.

I'm not going to go into details here, but for those who are aware of my own experience and actively engaged me in a discussion of opinions, I thank you.
- Sadly however there are always a few bad eggs who think that their opinion is law and that simply saying "you are wrong" is an argument to make you shut up.

So what am I saying?

I'm not really sure at this point, for I too am someone who is extremely passionate about the game Malifaux and so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot, if not everything I write falls into the 'biased-ignored' group.

All I know is here are people who care, yes they may struggle at putting their thoughts on page, but that is because they care, not because they're deliberately trying to screw with feedback results.

Ignoring them while lavishing praise on those who are busy currying for favour is not going to help things.

In fact I wonder if many of these people would even have needed to resort to shouting their opinions across if they didn't feel ignored and suppressed/bullied in the first place?

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley