10 Comments so far ↓

• Jon Shafer // Jul 25, 2007 at 7:10 pm

  Sorry, no clue.

  Jon

• MikeO // Jul 25, 2007 at 7:57 pm

  The BF forums have been full of attack-dog fanboys since the CM beta demo was released. Too bad, since the CM forum was pretty great for a long time — I read it off and on almost from the day it went online, but I gradually stopped reading it when it became apparent that the developers tacitly endorsed all the flames that even mild criticism would bring.

  I was planning on buying this one, even though I wasn’t wild about the move to modern combat, but I’ll be holding off now, at least for the time being. I’ve too many games to play as it is.

• JonathanStrange // Jul 25, 2007 at 9:14 pm

  I am a registered member of the Battlefront forum but my membership # is so low that my “Troy Goodfellow seems a reasonable chap” comment would carry very little weight. And it would lead to the inevitable, “And who are YOU, JS?”

• Troy // Jul 26, 2007 at 12:49 am

  “I read it off and on almost from the day it went online, but I gradually stopped reading it when it became apparent that the developers tacitly endorsed all the flames that even mild criticism would bring.”

  A lot of official forums are like that, and the more indie the developer or niche the genre, the more likely they are to resist criticism. Battlefront’s is not really unique in this regard. I can’t speak for the developers, who I am sure have better things to do in the weeks before release than say that there is a remote chance that I know what I am talking about. Being told that people don’t know who I am is fine with me. No one reads bylines anyway.

  This defensiveness is common in wargame communities, partly because there is this awareness that the genre is in decline, and there is no clear way to stop it. So people will champion not great games like Crown of Glory or Salvo or whatever new tank battle John Tiller has found because it is a wargame, even if it’s not a good one. And Battlefront has the advantage of having made some of the greatest wargames in history. So they must know what they are doing, right?

  And they may be. Apparently the review code mailed out wasn’t release code. But you can’t blame a guy for reviewing what he’s told to review.

• Kalle // Jul 26, 2007 at 5:00 am

  Who does this Troy Goodfellow think he is?

• Andrew // Jul 26, 2007 at 8:12 am

  Sounds like a fake name to me.

• Scott R. Krol // Jul 26, 2007 at 12:29 pm

  Eh, you see rabid fanboy-ism in any genre and any game. The difference in wargame communities though is that as a smaller group, the vocal minorities come across as a majority sometimes.

• Troy // Jul 26, 2007 at 12:39 pm

  Oh yeah, fanboys are everywhere. There are different types, too. People who only like a certain game (Fallout) or a certain genre (wargames) or a certain machine (PS3). And there’s anti-fanboyism, where a community exists to mock or deride popular alternatives.

  But this enthusiasm (which isn’t necessarily malicious) takes on a special sort of defensiveness in some genre communities where people who critical about something are either corrupt, stupid or ill-informed.

  And you’re right, the size of the community matters, as I noted in my earlier comment. Awareness of decline leads to retrenching, instead of reaching out. Simulation communities are even more defensive, I think. Not sure about adventure gamers.

  It’s nice to see a community evolve beyond that though. I think the Paradox forums have done that in the last year. Though I like EU3, many Paradox fanboys didn’t, or at least not as much as they had hoped. And that changed the culture of the forums ever so slightly where now there is greater diversity in discussion about the core game design. It’s still a place where you have to watch your step a little, but it’s nowhere near as hostile to criticism as it was a couple of years ago.

• Scott R. Krol // Jul 26, 2007 at 7:30 pm

  Re: “Not sure about adventure gamers.”

  Wait, there’s still some of those around? :) Poor adventure gamers…if there’s one genre that has had it worse than wargaming, it’s that one.

• Alan // Jul 29, 2007 at 2:36 am

  Now you’ve got me all paranoid and searching for my name in the Battlefront forums.