SuperSonic1305
Member
Makes sense. PS4 sells itself. It doesn't need shills.
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Sony Cancels Playstation MVP Program
- Thread starter aristotle
- Start date
DarkConfidant
Member
Yep. First, the Gamer Advisory Panel, then the Vita, and now, the MVP program.
Sony don't love me no more. :,(
In this day and age of widespread internet proliferation, it's probably much easier to get market feedback, or to market yourself on social media, without having to constantly NDA some small group of randos on the internet. This was going to end eventually, like the GAP.
They also are simply selling really well.
They also are simply selling really well.
right? I wonder how Microsoft's MVP works, last year they had a huge posse up at E3.
Banjo-Kazooie
Member
Those were not MVPs, those were just fans.
There are/were lots. There was a thread where a ps4 firmware update leaked (I can't remember which one) and several MVPs showed up.
petethepanda
Member
I always meant to apply for that and never did. Oh well.
Still have my GAP card lying around somewhere. Getting PS2 betas in the mail was rad as hell.
Still have my GAP card lying around somewhere. Getting PS2 betas in the mail was rad as hell.
funkystudent
Member
There where 2 kinds of PlayStatioion MVP's
- people who just used it to get into every beta
- patronizing assholes who made it sound like they where talking directly to Andrew House and knew all the secrets just because they filled out a survey every few weeks.
- people who just used it to get into every beta
- patronizing assholes who made it sound like they where talking directly to Andrew House and knew all the secrets just because they filled out a survey every few weeks.
exmachina64
Banned
Were they not pursuing legal action against those that broke the NDAs?
Neuromancer
Member
The writing had been on the wall for awhile. The support MVP stuff is cool though and I'll keep doing it, I've been able to help out one or two fellow GAFfers that way.
Me too but the more I do it, the more I feel like I'm working for Sony for free and I have no desire to do that.
Neuromancer
Member
What kind was I? You seem to be an expert.
EmeraldSwords
Banned
Program kinda died when they recruited 1000 people who had no business joining in the first place.
Yup, tons of people got accepted with no background at all just open to the public. It caused a ton of leaks and various other issues.
Negotiator
Banned
I wonder who is responsible for this clusterfuck? Some higher ups should be fired as well...
Air Zombie Meat
Member
My only experience with mvps (other than the ones on gaf) was going to the support forum and seeing a bunch of rude mvps attacking people with problems and falsely flagging issues as solved. Glad the program is dead.
The MVP support program is a different thing and is not dead.
Air Zombie Meat
Member
Oh joy. They need to reign in some of those people then. Infuriating when you're trying to fix a problem thats no fault of your own.
This is most likely what happened. As a (former) MVP, it was pretty ridiculous seeing how many kids would take inside off from the forums and then literally come to NeoGAF and post BRRAKING NEWSSSS in an effort to look good in GAF's eyes despite their being several soft NDAs on various info. Oh well.
So this was like an official Sony sanctioned pseudo astroturfing program? ffs.
Lol Fuck out of here with that. It was nothing of the sort. Disseminating information is different than astroturfing. Some people just took it over the limit.
enoki
Member
I knew our time was coming to a close, but I didn't expect it to happen this way. It's really unfortunate that Sony chose to leave us in the dark for so long, especially while other MVP'ers continued to work without direction.
I had a lot of fun as an MVP, and I've met a lot of cool cats along the way.
o7
I had a lot of fun as an MVP, and I've met a lot of cool cats along the way.
o7
I don't actively participate in it and never post on the official PlayStation forums(minus the private MVP boards), I just try and help here and there when I see gaffers experiencing a problem.
However, you may have been going to the wrong place to get your problem solved. The phone or chat support is where you probably should have been going.
The support forums were more for simple stuff like
Problem: I moved my PS3 to a new tv and all I'm getting is a blank screen
Answer: Are you connecting to the new TV with a different cable? Does the new TV have different resolution? try holding the power button for 5 seconds when you start it.
Not resolving a user specific issue.
I don't really pay attention to the support forums so I can't really comment on them. I have not seen anything that suggests Sony rewards number of issues marked solved or anything like that, but it wouldn't surprise me if some MVP's did that anyway just in case.
Actually we were required we disclose the fact we were MVP's and any perks we received through the program.
Air Zombie Meat
Member
I realise that krae_man. I went to the boards as a last resort after their phone support proved useless.
My own personal experience is phone support and chat support are different. Chat has way more accesses and abilities. I don't know why, I asked them once if phone support was outsourced and email/chat was internal and they refused to answer.
But in general I agree. Sony's customer service leaves a lot to be desired. If your problem is not perfectly resolved by a pre existing script or process they have in place, everything falls apart and service goes to shit. 99% if they don't know what to do they just say no and end the conversation to keep their AHT low.
Air Zombie Meat
Member
Right, that was basically the case. They just made me go through all the database rebuilding, power cycling nonsense when I knew that wasn't going to fix it. Then when their script ran out they passed the buck and insisted it must be my isps fault. In the end I found out it was sonys ddos protection that was blocking my ip address from connecting. Thanks for the tip though, I'll try chat support next time.
Alex Stroud
Banned
Where will we get our exclusive, not-at-all-made-up insider info now?
@Tidux
thus why I said insidish and not inside
I will be clear that I was a MVP from basically the beginning (i think I was part of the second wave) and at no point did I claim to have inside info on these forums so we weren't all bad
there were a number of things that the MVPs were actually told a while in advance, but pretty much all of them leaked with in an hour (I think the only thing that made it a day or two was the fact that sony was going to show their conference in theaters)
Most I ever claimed I could do was post a question on the MVP forum about X incident in hopes to bump someone's issue up (which did work the couple times I did it) beyond that it wasn't a big deal as I am not one to pump stuff through social media for token hand outs
.Either way the big thing playstation MVPs did was beta test updates, and sony already moved towards the correct way to do it and just is letting anyone that wants to beta test the update do so now (more people is a good thing for that)
not that I know of, but I didn't follow it close.
as far as I saw it was just a "they were kicked from the program" type deal.
enoki
Member
Not even close, and I'm not sure how you would even make that connection.
During the time I've been apart of the program (years), MVPs beta-tested OS updates, held tournaments, gave feedback on aspects of games and the PS3/4 and Vita, and pretty much engaged with the PS Community on the PS forums. We were able to attend some Sony events, and some of the larger gaming events (E3). Just about all MVP activity was within the Playstation community.
Towards the end of its life, the program was almost exclusively a social network for MVPs. There were no updates, no events, and no communication with Sony. From the beginning to the end, the MVPs were just Playstation power users.
EDIT: Anyone making posts on social media were also required to state that they were an MVP, or risk being removed from the program.
Pejo
Gold Member
I was an MVP for I think a couple years now, I always forgot to log in and sign up for the freebies and betas though. I didn't even get my free tickets to PSX, even though I went, because they didn't announce the free tickets until after I bought them. I think a better system than those awful forums would have made it a better experience and more widely used. It was just confusing on what exactly you could do/receive.
Liberty4all
Banned
Liberty4all
Banned
I still have all their emails.
Movalpolos
Banned
Were the "MVPs" the same people on the forums that would completely dismiss anyone having issues in the playstation eco-system as being "xbots"?
I literally never found any helpful info from members of those forums.
I literally never found any helpful info from members of those forums.
Program was garbage teh day I joined 2 years ago. They did away with us by implementing events into the console itself and allowing Devs to handle it. We had no communication from the community manager and no support. We basically were no different then folks running a fucking fan site. I gained nothing from the MVP program and honestly..........due to how bad the Sony forums are. The program could have never existed and it wouldn't have effected anything.
Also the forums had become a joke in the MVP section too, it was gimme gimme gimme, wheres my beta, can we have a beta for this, or this. All it was, was a beggers paradise of people asking for free shit (We are talking MVP's with the only post of how can I get beta keys or free games). It had turned into such a joke. Outside of some of the cool people I met and got to help out at the live PlayStation Theater event in Chicago for E3 two years ago.....It really needed way to much work.
Also the forums had become a joke in the MVP section too, it was gimme gimme gimme, wheres my beta, can we have a beta for this, or this. All it was, was a beggers paradise of people asking for free shit (We are talking MVP's with the only post of how can I get beta keys or free games). It had turned into such a joke. Outside of some of the cool people I met and got to help out at the live PlayStation Theater event in Chicago for E3 two years ago.....It really needed way to much work.
Liberty4all
Banned
The weekly email things was actually true and went to a number of people at SCEA and SCEE. It was more or less a "heads up" sort of thing to point out active threads where discussion about PlayStation was happening.
While not exactly a hotline, it definitely helped keep some in the loop Re GAF discussions.
I was never really active on the actual MVP boards. GAF is my home, I enjoyed trying to get our feedback directly to a number of exec staff. Which was the general idea I proposed to the former head of the MVP Program at the time.
I'll still email them feedback if they still want it.
CrispyBoar
Banned
Far from it.
ComputerBlue
Member
I was an MVP, no idea how I got the title though. Just logged into ND forums one day while playing some UC3 MP and noticed the platinum trophy by my name. Occasionally got emails to enter closed betas but other than that I never bothered with it. Didn't even know there was a special MVP forum until reading about it in this thread, lol.
Funny thing, I moved to the same small town as one of the head MVP leads Shane B. He seems really bummed that it's cancelled. The city is so small that I'm constantly running into him. He use to have the sickest job with Sony, poor dude.
Interficium
Banned
Nobody's forgotten the PSX 2014 posts, Bamelin.
Haha, apparently I have. What's this?
Who says they have to do anything?
My assumption is that when/if PS+ "free" games are cancelled, we lose access to them, period. I would expect this to happen on a per-platform basis, like if PSN for PS3 shuts down.
I highly doubt anything came from those emails. I can only think of two things ever that occurred as a direct result of something I did.
1)MVP meetup at the first PSX(I chewed out the old CM for not doing a meetup at PAX Prime earlier that year).
2) Getting the US $5 PSN vouchers Sony screwed up and gave to people at the Canadian E3 Theatre Experience events switched to Canadian PSN money(Which took like 6 weeks to happen for some reason).
Everything else didn't seem to go anywhere. I can't even think of feedback I saw other people give that resulted in much either.
Similar threads
- Poll
- Locked