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新兴独立开发者的PR策略之语言与情感

发布时间:2013-12-26 10:59:44 Tags:,,,,

当我们创建Mode 7时,PR策略的理念还有点傻:没人关心独立开发者以及他们所说的,所以PR策略的目标只是不断地高声喊出任何可能的内容。

这是一个全新时代:独立开发者不断接受访问,并被要求对当下的游戏新闻故事做出评价;这是件好事!在更大的公司中,我们通常都不存在PR过滤器和限制,所以我们能够更多地说出自己的想法,并让人们关注我们的游戏。

在本篇文章中,我主要要谈论以下内容:

关于做出声明与进行访问的想法

发行游戏内容

一般哲学内容

谈论某些内容

我们中的很多人都认识新闻记者,并且私下很喜欢与他们谈论一些内容;这是受到媒体的尊重,并且保持一切顺畅发展的主要元素——更别说基本的个人利益。但是有时候,妥善地选择朋友也很重要。

我认为,我们有时候总是很容易掉进一个聊天模式中,并忘记祸从嘴出。为了进行说明,我将以虚构的GameHerbert主机和GameHerbert产业为例。

“等等等等,独立开发应该这么说,不是吗?”或者

“每个人都知道这个:闭嘴”

在我开始前要先明确两个要点:

1)在此我并不是要告诉任何人我认为他们应该说什么,他们应该谈论什么主题等等。你可以做你想做的事,你当然需要表现出自己的个性。我想要做的是当某些事情发生在公众面前时哪些反应是我们所期待的。

2)我所掌握的一点是,人们在理解这些过程的直觉性会出现很大的变化。对于某些人而言,我所说的一切都是再明显不过的,但对于其他人而言,这可能是他们第一次仔细思考这些内容。也许你正致力于一个项目中,但却从未发布过任何有关这一项目的信息或接受过反问:那么本篇文章将对你很有帮助。

你所说的任何富有争议的内容都将成为前景,即使你只是将其当成悄悄话,并且这一内容也非与你有着直接关系。

Frozen Endzone(from pcgamer)

Frozen Endzone(from pcgamer)

让我们假设我接受了一次有关《Frozen Endzone》的采访,在最后我说道:“它永远都不会出现在GameHerbert上:这是一个很难瞄准的平台,所以我们可能没有足够的时间耗在上面”

如果说我不是期待着看到“独立开发者说很难面向GameHerbert!”的大标题,那只能说我误解了媒体。

我可能会抱怨道:“他们将整个采访全部集中在我最后说的那句话上!”但事实上他们有什么理由不这么做的?为什么我要期待着他们别这么做?

显然新闻记者始终都在想办法吸引别人去阅读自己写的采访内容。实际上,任何独立开发者(除了Notch或像Jonathan Blow这样的人)很难凭借自身因素成为新闻:你所说的才是访问中唯一的吸引力。如果你说了一些有关GameHerbert的有趣内容,这将会比你的作品更加受欢迎,并更有可能出现在头版上。

为什么媒体这么热衷做这些事?主要是因为资深的开发者会因为上述原因而抵触对于任何与自己的游戏无关的内容做出评论。

并且,你也可以坚持“不评论”直到问题结束。你可能会觉得在一开始这么做很愚蠢,但你真的可以这么做。我便听过有人说:“他们一直问我问题,所以最后我觉得自己应该说些什么才行。”

当然,我并不是说独立开发者应该拒绝做出更多“评论”。我只是说如果他们想这么做的话也是可以的。

任何具有争议的要点的说明或调整都将被删除或埋葬

这很重要——但总是被遗忘

以下是一个虚构的访问摘录:

“GameHerbert是一台出色主机:带有嵌入式USB风扇,发光的猴子控制以及可伸缩的轮子。但我的意思是,它看起来就像一块沾了粪便的钻块,对吧?(每个人听了都会笑)。话虽如此,有时候我将GameHerbert放在包里只是因为我想要在上班路上玩《Super Rowing Boat Madness GT》,所以这真的是一个带有很多面的可靠产品。说实话,我认为它看起来不错。”

我只是提供了一个引用:“GameHerbert看起来就像是一块沾了粪便的钻块。”这是一个很棒的引用,但如果我并不希望它成为新闻上的醒目引文的话,我便不知道自己到底是怎么了。这个世界中的任何新闻记者,不管是否友善,都将争抢这个话题。不过他们也有可能不会从“话虽如此”这句开始引用。他们也许会在正文中添加有关GameHerbert是一台优秀主机的内容,这么做只是为了表明你是在适当的环境下说出这一内容。

1)醒目引文是没有环境的

2)没人在乎意外事件的前言或附言

我并不是在批评新闻记者:这是新闻的运转方式,这也是我们需要接受的方式。我们需要看到简短,易消化,古怪或有趣的点才会去阅读某些内容。

我也不是在批评易做出突发事件的开发者:就像我之后会说道的,有时候需要发生些事情让某一问题更加鲜明,从而帮助更广泛的社区进行理解。同样的,我们有时候也需要一个突发事件将问题带到最前线;有些人需要成为讨论这些问题的先驱,并对此做出批评。而他们从中获得的利益有时候还会超过其它结果。

丢下炸弹

当我第一次在公众面前讨论游戏时,我是与杰出的Jason Wonacott一起参加了一个座谈小组。他提供给我一个有关公共演讲的建议;我认为这也能应用于采访中。这一建议如下:

“思考你想要说的内容,然后想出一种有趣的方式去传达这一内容。避免过长。在开始说话时,稍微停顿下,然后开始说话,并适时停止。这是你能够多方面受用的方法。”

你甚至不需要做太多事:只要事先想出传达自己想说的内容的有效方法便很有帮助了—-不管是对于你自己还是新闻记者。

信息控制?

现在我们所面对的文化是,来自独立开发者口中的“内容”越来越多了。

我们处于一个非常拥挤的派别中,为了让别人注意到自己,我们就需要讲更多话。再一次,这的确蛮棒的:我想要听到那些创造着我喜欢的内容的人说更多事。有时候这真的很有帮助;这不仅能够让许多开发者收益,同时也能够带给普通用户更多好处。

在Twitter上我们能做的最重要的一件事便是刊登许多新闻;不管你刊登的内容无不无聊都不重要。在Facebook上也是如此。我阅读过著名的Destiny关于自己如何吸引用户的博文,而这都是一些再平常不过的内容。

个性也很重要:人们之所以会频繁引用Jon Blow 或Phil Fish的话语是因为他们所说的内容都具有很强的煽动性。这对于他们也有很大的积极影响:对于他们来说出名也不是什么坏事。

临界物质

有时候,个人体验将帮助你更好地理解事情的发展。

去年,因为沉迷于改变游戏故事结局的理念,我在有限的时间内改变了《Frozen Synapse》的结局。我在Twitter上提到了这点,有些人鼓励我这么做,所以我便继续。最终这一行动引来了大量的关注。

其背后的灵感在于游戏粉丝强烈抗议《质量效应3》的结局,但我并不想评价这种情况的对与错。

我的想法是:

粉丝与游戏的关系已经结束了,特别是在很少人会去看结局的游戏中。

创造者的想法是去破坏他自己的作品;而我在自己并不满意的结局中也进行了效仿。

《Frozen Synapse》的结局没有多少评论—-而我之前在编写这一结局的时候还觉得它很有煽动性。

我遭遇了来自《质量效应》粉丝接二连三的怒火。我很难理解他们的论点,但他们主要都是围绕着我是强烈支持或强烈谴责Bioware的想法展开。我快速统计了“支持”和“反对”Bioware回应的比例,结果大概是50:50。

最近Ian告诉我,我犯了一个“巨大的错误”;我不知道从一个备受关注的问题中获取灵感会让人们认为我是在对此进行道德评判。

我从未玩过《质量效应3》,也不知道有关结局改变的具体情况,除了谣传的那些:可以看出我真的对此并不感兴趣。

在人生中我第一次收到了个人攻击信件,对方的言语非常激进;他们想要搞垮我;他们会侮辱我所写的内容;他们告诉我这代表憎恨我自己的用户;他们骂我是“白痴”。

我想从这次的经历中自己真的学到了许多:

情感优先

当我变得更加成熟时,我认为如何交流的最重要元素是我们怎么煽动别人的情感。最近我在Twitter上与Nicholas Lovell谈论了我们共有的特征:我们会非常强烈且武断地讨论一个要点并刺激反论观点;如果反论观点是正确的,我们便会仔细思考片刻,并在得知自己错误之后回头。

这在某种情况下是可行的,但通常都算是一种糟糕的交流;这么做只会赶走别人。同样地,当你证明自己的观点是错误时你也可以长久坚持这个观点—-这只是一种糟糕的行为罢了。我总是想搞明白为什么人们在争吵的时候会如此容易生气,产生消极情绪或进行自卫—-“如果他们是对的,他们便能够证明我是错的;那为什么他们还要低落呢—-难道他们不相信自己吗?”

持有正确观点或足够聪明通常都不是传达你自己的想法的重要元素。

从个人偏好出发

我改变的结局让一些人生气;所以他们立刻将愤怒的矛头指向我;他们尝试着说一些攻击我的话。很幸运的是没有一条评论真正让我感到失落;我可以想象处于相同情境下,即被一些消极的关注置于一种极其糟糕的状态下的人会是怎样的。这也是我们为什么能在网上看到这么多疯狂的个人敌意的原因:某些事情会触发人们的愤怒按键,从而将其变成攻击模式。因为情感优先因素,他们并不会去攻击内容:他们很少会真正了解到内容。他们会攻击人是因为这是避免接触论点的最直接方式。大多数人都害怕出错;而这能帮助他们避免这种担忧。

不存在情境

所有能够让我感到惊讶的事物都是那些缺少情境感知的事物。没人在最初事物的情境中看到新的结局;没人在最初事物的情境下告诉我新的结局;别人只是让我对某些内容做出评价,而这种解释必定是独家的;我猜作者已经过世了。

为什么我要一直讲这些?主要原因是:

控制并不能代表一切

我并不是真的觉得这是一种错误;当我们接收到负面关注时,我想大多数人都知道这是不合理的,并且是关于一个宏大计划中一个并不重要的主题(我的意思是,在任何人开始评论前,“叙述”并不等于《质量效应3》!)。如果这是关于具有社会煽动性的问题,那么直到今天我可能仍会收到来自网络的愤怒攻击,尽管我并未对任何事情做出明确的声明。这就是令人震惊的现实。

如果过多地受控于“信息”,你便会停止做任何事。当我们开始运行Mode 7时,我们的政策便是可以“说任何事”;之后,当我们意识到自己的言语的影响力时,我们才开始有所收敛。当你的一条tweet出现在Eurogamer(游戏邦注:一个位于英国布莱顿的网站,其以电子游戏的新闻、评论、预展和采访为主)的头条,你便会开始专注于按压Tweetdeck上的蓝色小按键。不过我认为我们似乎走过头了;对于如何进入对话,我似乎担心太多。

所以我想看看,当在面对早前所引起的一些问题时,我们仍否变得更加开明。在公共场合讲话的进化是你如何与其他人交流的进化的一个子集;我认为这种进化是一辈子的过程,也是所有人都应该重视的过程。

有时候,所有人都会做错:我敢保证自己有时候真的也是如此。这是常有的事:如果你对于别人的回应报以理智的期待,那么你传达自己想法的能力也将有所提高,并且不会担心做错事。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Words and Feelings: The New Indie PR

The New Indie PR

When we started Mode 7, the idea of a PR strategy was a bit silly: nobody cared about indies and what they had to say, so the objective was just to constantly shout as loud as possible about anything.

It’s a new era now: indies are getting interviewed and asked to comment on gaming news stories with great regularity at the moment; this is a great thing!  We often don’t have the PR filters and constraints of those in larger companies, so we’re able to speak our minds more and get people to pay more attention to our games.

In this post, I’ll be talking through:

Thoughts on making statements and giving interviews

Releasing game content

General philosophical stuff

Talking about THINGS

Also, a lot of us know journalists personally and are happy chatting off-the-record about stuff; this is almost always completely respected by the press, as it’s vital to keep everything flowing…not to mention basic personal courtesy.  Sometimes, however, that respect isn’t there: choosing your friends wisely is important.

When on the record, however, I think it’s sometimes easy to fall into the mode of chatting and forget a few of the inevitable things that will happen when your words are published.  For the purposes of illustration, I shall be using the fictitious GameHerbert console and GameHerbert Industries.

“Wait…wait…indies should just say stuff, right?” OR “Everybody knows this stuff: shut up”

Two points before I start:

1.) I am not here to tell anyone what I think they should say, the topics they should talk about or anything like that.  You can do what you want and you absolutely should express your own personality.  What I am attempting to do is discuss the reactions that should be expected when certain things happen in public.

2.) One thing I’ve learned is that people vary massively in their intuitive understanding of these processes.  To some, everything I say will seem blindingly obvious, but to others it might be the first time they’ve thought about any of this in detail.  Maybe you are working on a project but have never released any info about it or been interviewed yet: this might be useful to you.

Anything controversial you say will be foregrounded, even if you say it as an aside and it is not directly relevant to you

Let’s say I do an interview about Frozen Endzone and, in passing at the end, I say, “Oh, it’ll never come out on GameHerbert: it’s pretty hard to develop for as well, so we probably don’t have time.”

If I’m not expecting the headline to be “Indie developer says it’s too hard to make games for GameHerbert!”, I am fundamentally misunderstanding the press.

“They based the whole interview on this one thing I said at the end!” I might complain, but actually…why wouldn’t they do that?  Why was I expecting them to do something else?

Obviously journalists are trying to get people to read your interview.  Virtually any indie, with the exception of perhaps Notch or someone like Jonathan Blow, isn’t news in their own right: what you say is going to be the only draw in the interview.  If you say something even slightly interesting about GameHerbert, which is inevitably more famous than anything you are working on, that will be the headline.

Why do the press leap on this so much?  It’s mostly because experienced devs will furiously no-comment anything that isn’t about their specific game…for the above reason!

By the way, you are allowed to, literally, say “No comment” until a question goes away.  You might feel stupid doing it the first time, but you are allowed to do it.  I have heard people say, “But they just kept asking me a question so eventually I felt like I had to say something.”

Am I saying that indies should “no comment” more? Absolutely not.  I’m saying that they can if they want to.

Any clarification or modulation of a controversial point will be removed or buried

This is important – but hard- to remember.

Here is a transcript from a fictitious interview:

“GameHerbert’s a good console: it’s got the built-in USB fan, the light-up monkey control, the retractable wheels.  But, I mean, it does look like a mottled brick with a turd coming out of it, right? [Everyone has a good old laugh].  Having said that, sometimes I’d put my GameHerbert in my bag just because I want to play Super Rowing Boat Madness GT on the way to work, so it’s a really solid product that has a lot of good sides.  And honestly, I think it looks ok.”

I’ve just given the quote: “[GameHerbert] looks like a mottled brick with a turd coming out of it”.  That’s a pretty good quote, so if I’m not expecting it to be a pull-quote…I don’t know what’s wrong with me.  Any journalist in the world, friendly or no, is going to jump on that.  Secondly, what they might do is just not quote the sentence which starts with “Having said that…”.   They might put in the generic stuff about GameHerbert being a good console in the body of the piece, in order to represent what you said in an appropriate context, but…

1.) Pull-quotes don’t have context

2.) Nobody cares about generic preambles or postscripts to bombshells anyway

I’m not being critical of journalists by the way: this is how news works and that is something that everyone needs to accept.  We need short, digestible, quirky or interesting hooks to make us read something; it’s that simple.

I’m also not being critical of bombshell-prone developers either: as I’ll discuss later, sometimes things need to happen to make the extent of an issue clear enough for the wider community to understand.  Also, we occasionally need a good bombshell to bring an issue to the forefront; some people have to be pioneers in discussing issues and take a bit of flak for it.  The benefit they get (“This is someone who speaks their mind!”) can sometimes outweigh other consequences.

Dropping the bomb

The first time I spoke in public about games, I was on a panel with the ebullient and brilliant Jason Wonacott.  He gave me a great piece of public speaking advice; I think it can be applied to interviews as well.  Here it is:

“Think about what you want to convey and then come up with a really interesting way of saying it.  Make sure it’s short.  When it comes time to say it, pause slightly before, say it, and then shut the hell up.  You will almost always get quoted on it.”

You don’t even have to go that far: just simply coming up with a relatively eloquent way of saying what you want to say in advance can be massively helpful, for both you and the journalist.

Message Control?

We’re now in a culture where the net output of words and (yes I’m going to use that horrible word) “content” from indie developers is increasing.

We’re all at a very crowded party, so we have to speak more in order to get people to pay attention to us.  Again, this is great: I want to hear more from the people who are doing things which interest me.  Sometimes this is massively helpful: look at this great post about Fingle’s sales figures; that’s going to benefit a lot of developers as well as being interesting to a slightly more general audience.

One of the most important things to do on Twitter is post a lot; it doesn’t especially matter if your posts are boring.   Similarly Facebook.  I read a blog post by famous game streamer Destiny about how he established an audience…shock horror, it was all about doing things regularly.

Personality is important as well: people quote Jon Blow or Phil Fish a lot because they say out-there things which seem incredibly inflammatory.  This almost certainly has a net positive impact for them: being infamous certainly hasn’t caused them any problems so far.

Critical Mass

Also, sometimes it takes personal experience to give you a good understand of how things really work.

Last year, I changed the ending to Frozen Synapse for a limited period because I became fascinated by the idea of changing the end of a game’s story.  I mentioned it on Twitter and a few people encouraged me to do it, so I went ahead.  The action generated a fair amount of publicity, and  I wrote up the process and the responses to it here.

The inspiration behind this was the fan outcry to the ending of Mass Effect 3, but I had no intention of commenting on the rights or wrongs of that situation.

I was thinking about:

The relationship fans have to an ending, especially in a game where very few people have actually seen an ending

The idea of a creator vandalising his own work; I parodied my own ending, which I had never been entirely happy with

The lack of comment on Frozen Synapse’s ending, which I thought would be quite inflammatory when writing it

Instead of anyone paying any attention to that, I was met with an amazing barrage of anger from Mass Effect fans.  It was difficult for me to understand the points they were trying to make, but they mostly revolved around being certain that I was either heavily supporting or heavily criticising Bioware.  I did a quick tally of the “pro” and “anti” Bioware responses and they came out roughly 50:50.

Ian told me recently that I had made “a massive misjudgment”, which was definitely true; I had no idea that taking inspiration from a popular issue would incite people to emphatically believe that I was making a moral judgement about it.

I’ve still never played Mass Effect 3 and don’t know all that much about the ending change beyond the fact that it was rumoured to be happening at one point: I wasn’t really interested in it.

I got significant personal hate mail for the first time in my life, much of which I documented in the post:  I was told to “eat a dick”; people wished bankruptcy upon me; people insulted my writing; people told me that this represented hatred towards my own customers; people told me that I was a “fucking moron” and that I was being culturally elitist.

I think I learned a few things from the experience:

Emotion FIRST

As I get a little tiny bit more mature, I think the most important thing about how we communicate is the emotion we incite in someone else.  I talked to Nicholas Lovell on Twitter recently about a trait we both share: we argue a point incredibly strongly and dogmatically to incite counter-arguments; if the counter-arguments are good we think about them for a while and then back down if we were wrong.

This can work in certain contexts, but it’s often terrible communication; it just pisses people off.  Also, you can hold on to a point too long way past the time when you have obviously been proved wrong, and this is just bad behaviour.  I’d often struggle to see why people become defensive, irritated or upset by the way I was arguing – “if they were right then they’d just be able to prove me wrong; why are they upset – don’t they believe in their own points?”

Being right or clever often isn’t important relative to how you are communicating your points.

Ad hominem

My changed ending made people angry; so they immediately became angry with me; they tried to say things that would deliberately hurt me.  I was very lucky that none of the comments personally upset me in any way; I can imagine someone in an analogous situation being put into a pretty bad state by that level of negative attention.  This is why we see so much crazy personalised hatred online: something pushes someone’s button and they go into ATTACK MODE.  They don’t attack the content because EMOTION FIRST: they are barely aware of the content.  They attack the person because it’s the most direct thing they can do to avoid engaging with the argument.  Most people are terrified of being wrong; this dodges that completely.

There is no context

Of all the things that surprised me most (and I now consider that response pretty naive) was the lack of contextual awareness that people displayed.  Nobody saw the new ending in the context of the original one; I was basically TOLD that I was making a comment on something, and that interpretation had to be the exclusive one; I suppose the author really is dead…poor author.

Why am I banging on about this so much?  One major reason:

Control isn’t everything

I don’t really feel like it was a mistake to do it; while we received vocal negative attention, I feel like most people were aware that it was unreasonable and also about a relatively trivial topic (I mean “narrative” not “Mass Effect 3″ before anyone starts up in the comments!)  in the grand scheme of things.  If this had been about a more socially inflammatory issue, I think I would still be receiving internet hatred daggers to this day, despite not making any kind of emphatic statement about anything.  The reality of this is shocking.

Struggling to stay in control of your “message” too much will stop you doing anything at all.  When we started Mode 7, our policy was basically “say anything”; we then swung towards caution as soon as we realised the impact our words could have.  When one of your tweets shows up as a Eurogamer headline, you really start paying attention to hitting that little blue button in Tweetdeck.  I think this is a step too far; I think I have worried too much about entering conversations.

So, I want to see if it’s possible to be more open while still being aware of some of the issues I raised earlier.  Evolving how you talk in public is a subset of evolving how you relate to other people; I think this should be a life-long process and something which everyone takes seriously.

Sometimes, everyone will get it massively wrong : I’m certain I will do this personally at some point.  That’s just par for the course: if you have sane expectations of how people will react to you, your ability to express yourself properly should increase rather than being subject to a fear of doing something wrong.(source:mode7games)


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