This whole 'Thou shall not communicate' thing is very bizarre.
I sort of get it from the dev/publishing perspective where you want to keep your cards hidden much of the time, secrets you prefer to keep in house etc, but for a project that started out as a crowdfunded thing, meant to 'involve' that community that backed it, it does feel off doesn't it?
I used to get an insight into a AAA games company, that developed a very toxic working style, part of which was to kill communication, even within it's own departments, and that was all down to a number of influencial middle managers and their particular personality disorders (a couple of classic cases of sociopath) and the way that ended up shaping whole departments.
I was on the outside looking in, so avoided all the real 'grind' it became for many of the people working there, but i was close to a number of people and the stories they would tell, of bullying, stress, wasted working days etc were legend. In the end they did a big review after i contacted the CEO in person about it, and after about 9 months one of the people that had been causing a lot of issues left, but in general the others closed ranks and over the next six months it became obvious nothing was really going to change, so slowly people started to leave.
They lost a lot of good people, hard workers, those that cared to do a good job etc, and ultimately that big AAA is now on the verge of bowing out of AAA completely. All of that probably down to the simple fact they were 'anti communication', so much so it became a non-functioning company as they could not even communicate properly between themselves to make sure they were doing their jobs properly.
I offer this cautionary tale in the hope that it is not the case for Frontier, but just in case it is, that someone senior enough can maybe see the problem and do something about it before the wheels fall off, if they are indeed in that process.
Talking about your work is not a negative, properly involving your passionate and loyal (for the most part) fan base is not a negative, but stopping your employees that are good at communicating IS a negative and will have wider repurcussions within your organisation. You can hire some professional work coaches if you need to, if this is all part of a deeper seated problem?
Communication is King in any media business, and most companies spend fortunes on promotion and generating buzz and all that, so please don't kill natural communication, you have a player base chomping at the bit to help you promote the game and improve it, it is an assest of the highest quality, use it, embrace it, talk to us (we only bite sometimes!)
My exact feelings.....great post Zak
+1 rep to you
Last edited:
