Dear Frontier,
The following is said from a place of respect and of love for the game, its community, and the talented and lovely people at Frontier Developments. With a desire to see Elite Dangerous improve as a game, and to see Frontier-Community relations to be as harmonious, vibrant and strong as possible.
I would like to draw attention to widespread serious concerns about Frontier Developments lack of communication with the Elite community, of Community Management. Especially in connection with the exploration community in the game.
Background
Let's set the scene with some important facts and information.
Central points
CMDR Yanick
Lead organiser: Apollo 11 Expedition (A11X), Lightning Strike Expedition (LSE), Minerva Centaurus Expedition (MCE), Mercury 7 Expedition (M7E)
links:
The following is said from a place of respect and of love for the game, its community, and the talented and lovely people at Frontier Developments. With a desire to see Elite Dangerous improve as a game, and to see Frontier-Community relations to be as harmonious, vibrant and strong as possible.
I would like to draw attention to widespread serious concerns about Frontier Developments lack of communication with the Elite community, of Community Management. Especially in connection with the exploration community in the game.
Background
Let's set the scene with some important facts and information.
- Elite: Dangerous is Frontiers most prestigious and profitable game
- The Elite gaming community is widely recognised as probably the best full stop, even by fans of other games
- Elite community events provide FDev with masses of free content
- Community generated content is largely what keeps people playing Elite, especially with the large gaps between updates
- Event organisers and staff spend a massive amounts of their own time doing what is in essence a full on extra job
- Like their Content Creator colleagues, Events staff ultimately contribute to Frontiers profits
Central points
- Frontier did virtually nothing to cover the Apollo 11 Moon Landing Anniversary. Which for a space simulation game is strange, verging upon the inexplicable. It's unimaginable for say a Football game not to cover the Football World Cup in any meaningful way.
- The Apollo 11 Expedition was not covered once by Frontier CM staff. Even though it was by far the biggest event in game at that time, being the third largest expedition in the games history (behind only Distant Worlds & DW2). It had 670 participants, across all platforms, and was open to everyone. Including many who were delighted to have their first exploration expedition experience with us. Its gaming media coverage included: ObsidianAnt, Lave Radio, Distant Radio, Sagittarius Eye and many others.
We were not asking for the 'Moon on a stick'. Just even a small amount of coverage maybe via Galnet, or a quick mention would have been excellent.
So many members of the expedition have said to me how shocked they were that despite our high profile nature we were not talked about by Fdev.
The same expeditioners were even more taken aback by not being offered a commemorative ship decal for the expedition.
- The Community Management staff at Frontier are dedicated and genuine people. However the scale of the failures to communicate with the Elite community would indicate a failure of systems, policy, and/or resources for CM by Frontier. The Frontier model of CM works well for games like Planet Coaster, and Jurassic World, but it's just not sufficient for a game of the scale and complexity of Elite: Dangerous. A CM recently linked a PC Gamer magazine article that described a CM role as 'embed yourself in the community, serve as liason between publisher and community'. This is exactly what CM activity should be about. At the moment, to the great majority of Elite players, it feels often very surface...very distant.
- Content creators are rightfully acknowledged by FDev for their contributions to the community. But with the exception of Distant Worlds 1&2 events staff and their events have been treated either poorly, or ignored totally. This is not helpful to the community in putting on and advertising these events. And makes event organisers question whether they want to put on future events too.
The efforts needed to put on such large and complex events may not be well known or understood, by Fdev. Including preparation time it can run into more than a thousand hours per expedition over many months.The amount of calculation and planning to get hundreds of CMDRs thousands of light years, all to the same point that simulates the Earth-Moon system, all to simultaneously land...to the second (50 years exactly after Apollo 11), in a window of daylight so short that it allows for no margin of error at all.
Now, after all that frankly extraordinary gut-busting effort by all the Apollo 11 Expedition organisers to do work for this community...it's both painful, and insulting to be ignored to the degree we have by Frontier. So many of our participants have told us that they feel the same way, about the expedition being ignored.
Ultimately, this appeal isn't just made on behalf of A11X, but on behalf of all the events staff and participants on virtually every major expedition that was ignored. And of all the events that were also ignored across the game, in every major play style too. To give such a small amount of attention and effort to these events would be easy for Frontier Developments, but reap rich rewards in not only better community relations, but that in turn is better for Frontiers long term business too.
CMDR Yanick
Lead organiser: Apollo 11 Expedition (A11X), Lightning Strike Expedition (LSE), Minerva Centaurus Expedition (MCE), Mercury 7 Expedition (M7E)
links:
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