Stirring the hornets’ nest.

Some communities are already very vocal and you only need a prod to get things moving, gaming communities are notoriously responsive and demanding of companies. But gaming companies are only getting better at interacting with them, whether it is running competitions, circulating fan made content or announcing new developments to fans first. Any feedback is immediate and thorough, an ever available soundboard for new ideas but also a harsh mistress if you upset them as demonstrated by Bethesda recently.

Game Producers Bethesda are responsible for acclaimed role playing games such as the Fallout and Elder Scrolls franchises their Game Director/Executive Producer Todd Howard made the unusual step of announcing they would not fix entertaining bugs or glitches in their games at this year’s PAX gaming conference.

"We try to solve most of it, we're sensitive to a lot of it. There is a subset of that where we say 'Well, that's what can happen.' If there's entertainment value in that, whatever it is, we'll leave a lot of it. If it's gonna break the game, or unbalance the game in some way, we do try to solve it. If the solution is gonna make the game less fun ... well, hey, leave it in,"

As a company already notorious for bugs in their games, not many of which were entertaining, they knew they were going to provoke a fierce debate between fans that enjoyed exploiting every loophole and those fans who were disappointed with the breaks in game immersion.

Perhaps Bethesda were knowingly looking to provoke as much discussion about their new game as possible ahead of its imminent release, or perhaps they were looking to cover themselves from potential game glitches claiming some of them were deliberate. What they have succeeded in doing however, is to propagate their reputation for unpolished games and created doubts about quality around their highly anticipated release 'The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim'. It also seemed an unusual step in a very large and conventional marketing campaign for what is expected to be a massive release. It’s unlikely to harm their sales from a very passionate and loyal fan base and perhaps the game will be widely praised. If it is found to be lacking, Bethesda’s words will come back to haunt them.

Perhaps there is something to be learnt from Bethesda however. Their statement at PAX made waves in lots of online forums and received widespread coverage in the midst of a very crowded launch season. They have demonstrated how extolling your product's virtues is not going to provoke much debate in a community; people will quickly tire of saying how much they are looking forward to a new feature and often not be very vocal about it ahead of a launch. Draw attention to something people have an opinion on and perhaps get valuable feedback from your customers while there is still time.

Source: Joystiq