Post by Blargaliscious on Mar 8, 2017 6:55:15 GMT
I’m not a Privateer Press employee, and while I am a bit of a fanboy, I try to be realistic and objective about what I think about things. This includes what recently happened with the Privateer Press forums. I have seen a lot of posts about “Why did PP change the forums like they did?” and “I don’t understand.”
You know what? I’ll be *that* guy and give you a cold, hard explanation from my perspective. I’m not looking to stir the pot, and I’m not looking to apologize or do anything like that for Privateer Press. But, I am looking to change your perspective for looking at this change to the PP Forum.
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Privateer Press is a business.
As a business, Privateer Press only has one purpose. It is not to give you a forum that you can connect with other like-minded gamers. It is not to provide you with a good, balanced set of tournament rules. It is not to even sell a game and collection of miniatures for you to paint and use in the game. These are not the purpose of Privateer Press, they are the methodology for achieving the purpose.
For you see, the one, only, and sole purpose of the business known as Privateer Press is to make money.
Making money is not evil. It is not a bad thing. It is intrinsic to living in a capitalistic economy. If Privateer Press were to not make money, it would eventually fire workers, shrink in size, lose capability to produce more new product as we would like, and eventually close down. Eventually we would no longer be able to entertain ourselves with their product.
Now, before you start getting angry and drawing parallels between Privateer Press and their competitors who do the same thing (like Games Workshop) think about what you like and dislike about all of these companies. The biggest problem with GW was not that they were trying to make money, but how they went about making that money.
GW used a forced obsolescence strategy supported by sterile marketing campaigns that always explained away their mis-steps as “not their fault” and utilized a continuous price creep. Privateer Press’ initial strategy was to do a populist oppositional strategy, tapping into a *deep* well of dissatisfied GW customers. It worked.
Now that PP is a company with some size to it, that has a substantial impact on the lives of more than just the original founders, they need to actually do things like a business. That includes looking at everything that they do and characterize it as something that makes money or something that loses the company money.
One of the things that a gaming company can spend money on is marketing. Let’s be honest: marketing that doesn’t convey the message of “Our stuff is great! By it!” in some way or another is not effective marketing. Advertising, setting up booths at gaming conventions, a website, and marketing campaigns on social media are all forms of marketing.
So is an online forum that people can log into and talk to each other. They can talk about how wonderful they think the game is, what they have done to have fun with the game, and ways that others can have the same kind of fun that they are having with the game. When all of that discussion about how great the game is gets diluted by enough discussions that have *any* negative tone or connotations there’s a reduction in the effectiveness of the forums as a marketing tool. If the positive discussions get too badly diluted by the negative discussion then the forums become a waste of money as a marketing tool.
So what should PP do if their marketing tool becomes compromised? They re-launch it. Privateer Press followed the same model that radio stations follow when they change ownership or format. But instead of playing Led Zepplin for a week straight, PP just put up a notice saying that their forums were down for maintenance.
OK, so now you’re thinking “why didn’t Privateer Press just tell us this?” Because PP would have been asking for more trouble had they done that. They’re reasoning would have broken down to 3 basic arguments:
“You guys b/#ched too much.” – This would have gotten 2 different responses from the forumites: “It’s your fault, you wanted our feedback!” and “You can’t tell me what to say!” Yeah, that’s going to go over well…
“The forums stopped being an effective marketing tool.” – This would have gotten the response from the forumites of: “the forums aren’t a marketing tool, this is a community!” Truth be told, no, the forums are a marketing tool. And to that end Privateer Press pretty much said: “If you want to set up a community then go somewhere else and set one up.”
“The forums have become a waste of money with all of the policing required.” – Considering that PP’s chief competitor has become synonymous with money, disbanded forums, and money this argument would have just landed them in the same league with GW. There goes all of that early marketing and goodwill down the drain.
<<< --- >>>
Look, I know we are butt-hurt from what just happened. Yeah, it sucks. But PP does have to protect itself and manage their business. I’m not surprised by what they did, they did the right thing, and they did it right.
Oh well…
But, hey, that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.
You know what? I’ll be *that* guy and give you a cold, hard explanation from my perspective. I’m not looking to stir the pot, and I’m not looking to apologize or do anything like that for Privateer Press. But, I am looking to change your perspective for looking at this change to the PP Forum.
<<< --- >>>
Privateer Press is a business.
As a business, Privateer Press only has one purpose. It is not to give you a forum that you can connect with other like-minded gamers. It is not to provide you with a good, balanced set of tournament rules. It is not to even sell a game and collection of miniatures for you to paint and use in the game. These are not the purpose of Privateer Press, they are the methodology for achieving the purpose.
For you see, the one, only, and sole purpose of the business known as Privateer Press is to make money.
Making money is not evil. It is not a bad thing. It is intrinsic to living in a capitalistic economy. If Privateer Press were to not make money, it would eventually fire workers, shrink in size, lose capability to produce more new product as we would like, and eventually close down. Eventually we would no longer be able to entertain ourselves with their product.
Now, before you start getting angry and drawing parallels between Privateer Press and their competitors who do the same thing (like Games Workshop) think about what you like and dislike about all of these companies. The biggest problem with GW was not that they were trying to make money, but how they went about making that money.
GW used a forced obsolescence strategy supported by sterile marketing campaigns that always explained away their mis-steps as “not their fault” and utilized a continuous price creep. Privateer Press’ initial strategy was to do a populist oppositional strategy, tapping into a *deep* well of dissatisfied GW customers. It worked.
Now that PP is a company with some size to it, that has a substantial impact on the lives of more than just the original founders, they need to actually do things like a business. That includes looking at everything that they do and characterize it as something that makes money or something that loses the company money.
One of the things that a gaming company can spend money on is marketing. Let’s be honest: marketing that doesn’t convey the message of “Our stuff is great! By it!” in some way or another is not effective marketing. Advertising, setting up booths at gaming conventions, a website, and marketing campaigns on social media are all forms of marketing.
So is an online forum that people can log into and talk to each other. They can talk about how wonderful they think the game is, what they have done to have fun with the game, and ways that others can have the same kind of fun that they are having with the game. When all of that discussion about how great the game is gets diluted by enough discussions that have *any* negative tone or connotations there’s a reduction in the effectiveness of the forums as a marketing tool. If the positive discussions get too badly diluted by the negative discussion then the forums become a waste of money as a marketing tool.
So what should PP do if their marketing tool becomes compromised? They re-launch it. Privateer Press followed the same model that radio stations follow when they change ownership or format. But instead of playing Led Zepplin for a week straight, PP just put up a notice saying that their forums were down for maintenance.
OK, so now you’re thinking “why didn’t Privateer Press just tell us this?” Because PP would have been asking for more trouble had they done that. They’re reasoning would have broken down to 3 basic arguments:
“You guys b/#ched too much.” – This would have gotten 2 different responses from the forumites: “It’s your fault, you wanted our feedback!” and “You can’t tell me what to say!” Yeah, that’s going to go over well…
“The forums stopped being an effective marketing tool.” – This would have gotten the response from the forumites of: “the forums aren’t a marketing tool, this is a community!” Truth be told, no, the forums are a marketing tool. And to that end Privateer Press pretty much said: “If you want to set up a community then go somewhere else and set one up.”
“The forums have become a waste of money with all of the policing required.” – Considering that PP’s chief competitor has become synonymous with money, disbanded forums, and money this argument would have just landed them in the same league with GW. There goes all of that early marketing and goodwill down the drain.
<<< --- >>>
Look, I know we are butt-hurt from what just happened. Yeah, it sucks. But PP does have to protect itself and manage their business. I’m not surprised by what they did, they did the right thing, and they did it right.
Oh well…
But, hey, that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.