Great Expectations, Part Three: Coordination
By Sanya Weathers
It seems so obvious. Don’t tell your customers about features that aren’t going to be a part of your product. The resulting failure in expectation management creates endless complaints that take the time of your forum moderators, your community personnel responsible for fansite relations, and your customer service representatives fielding petitions/appeals. That adds up to serious money.
And yet nearly every MMO studio in existence has had feature announcement misfires. And not just once, but multiple times. The problem is one of coordination.
When there is a disconnect between the community team, the marketing team, and the production team, miscommunication happens. Sadly for the people who like filling out forms in triplicate, the solution is not to be found in paperwork. Endless CC: chains aren’t the solution, either. Neural network implants might help, but the FDA is so picky about approving cybernetic interfaces.
How to fix it?
– Decide who drives product announcements: Marketing, or Production? If your answer is “it depends,” that’s fine, but mistakes will happen. Ever see a car with two steering wheels that can simultaneously receive input? No, and you’re not going to see one, either, because that’s insane. It’s just as insane as having two drivers on your publicity machine.
– Check with the people executing the feature, not just the boss. No matter which team is driving the process, production will have to sign off by saying “yes, this feature will be there on X date.” Somehow, it rarely is. But that’s management’s problem, not community’s. Why point fingers after the fact? Before the announcement, send your community manager informally into the cubes to find out how the feature is coming along.
– Let the patch notes be the first channel. Unless the feature is truly a game changer, let the advance patch notes be the first announcement. If you save promotional campaigns for after the feature is launched on your test platform, you’ll never jump the gun.