Hi all for this week’s Video Game Tuesday I’m going to talk about what a good Game Dev needs to do with their communities. It’s all about Community Interaction!

What not to do: Don’t advertise patch notes that are incorrect for weeks in advance of an upcoming patch and claim things are working as intended and that it was merely a misplaced decimal point. The Auto Rifle Buff in Destiny is the most recent example of Bungie’s latest fuck up and their handling of the situation was absolutely terrible. They claimed that it was working as intended, and the next day edited the notes to show what actually took place. It was a .07% increase to auto rifle damage rather than 7%. I don’t need to tell you how fucked up that is, not to even mention that such a small increase is so pointless as to make the entire change meaningless. Another thing not to do is blame your poor server structuring and maintenance issues on the players when it’s clearly not their fault. Another thing Bungie did this past week with the Oryx Challenge mode. There is a reason Public Relations is such a huge part of the business model of Game Developers and Bungie has been forgetting this for the last year on a regular basis. It’s disappointing that they have fallen to become a joke of what they once were.

Another thing not to do is to break your own rules that you set for yourself months ago, Square Enix did that with the latest Relic Weapon quest line in Final Fantasy XIV and it’s a disappointment after the wonderful way they handled A Realm Reborn and the launch of Heavensward.

What to do: Act like Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P) and be forthright in admitting your mistakes. Make up for it with earnestness and you will earn a lot of good will from your customers. In fact the way Yoshi-P has handled Final Fantasy XIV is such a good example that I’d love to see every game developer lead by such a person. It’d do the industry a ton of good.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday, check back next week for my Best and Worst of 2015!