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Randy Pitchford only has time for Colonial Marines praise, [losing money on Aliens]

Because he should just take personal insults and threats of bodily harm, right?

See this post:

The whole purpose of a public Twitter account is to communicate with his fans. By sticking his fingers in his ears and crying "I'M NOT LISTENING, I'M NOT LISTENING," he insults anyone who has legitimate concerns with the game by COMPLETELY dismissing them.

I've always profited from criticism and, thankfully, I have never been in short supply.

Har har Randy.

If he didn't want the heat, he shouldn't have maintained an active, public Twitter account in the first place.
 

kitsuneyo

Member
how little respect he has for the game industry's long-term credibility

I'm not sure how Randy Pitchford's silence affects the long-term credibility of the game industry. I mean, when a bad film gets released with no press previews, and then the studio and director refuse to acknowledge they've shat out a stinking turd, does that harm the film industry? Nope. So what's the difference?
 

Espada

Member
Wow, this is pretty crass of them. What did they hope to accomplish with this anyway? They're not fooling anyone with those accounts.
 

DaBoss

Member
Because he should just take personal insults and threats of bodily harm, right?

lol, this is pretty ironic with your avatar, but yea I agree with what you said. He shouldn't just take personal insults and threats, but valid criticisms is something he is ignoring which shouldn't be done.
 

Ponn

Banned
Fake twitter accounts wouldnt be surprising. We had that PR account from them posting here on GAF when the first Borderlands came out.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Seriously, why should game makers have to publicly apologize for or explain shortcomings with their products when writers, musicians, and movie-makers don't?

Not every game turns out great, no matter how much its hyped, and yet we have idiotic demands like this being dished out! What are people expecting Pitchford to say?

And, above all else, the question is mistargeted. if you have an issue with the quality of a game, you should deal with the publisher. Because they were the ones who decided that the title was marketable in the state it was sold as. The buck stops with them.
 

jaxpunk

Member
But the Twitter accounts look fake as hell. Hardly any tweets, no profiles, it's really quite pathetic.

My twitter account has barely any tweets and I believe it's still the egg icon. I'm clearly a shill account for gearbox right?
 
Seriously, why should game makers have to publicly apologize for or explain shortcomings with their products when writers, musicians, and movie-makers don't?

Not every game turns out great, no matter how much its hyped, and yet we have idiotic demands like this being dished out! What are people expecting Pitchford to say?

And, above all else, the question is mistargeted. if you have an issue with the quality of a game, you should deal with the publisher. Because they were the ones who decided that the title was marketable in the state it was sold as. The buck stops with them.

Faking an entire press demo (aka deceiving critics AND consumers) deserves a bit of an explanation, don't you reckon?
 
Seriously, why should game makers have to publicly apologize for or explain shortcomings with their products when writers, musicians, and movie-makers don't?

Not every game turns out great, no matter how much its hyped, and yet we have idiotic demands like this being dished out! What are people expecting Pitchford to say?

And, above all else, the question is mistargeted. if you have an issue with the quality of a game, you should deal with the publisher. Because they were the ones who decided that the title was marketable in the state it was sold as. The buck stops with them.

Most writers / musicians / directors don't publicly taunt their naysayers by dismissing criticism.
 

Dance Inferno

Unconfirmed Member
LOL. People are being so ridiculous about this.

Why is that ridiculous? If someone was really looking forward to A:CM after all the lies and "in-engine" video that we were shown, and then ended up getting an outsourced turd, why shouldn't they boycott Gearbox?

Personally I look at it from a different angle: Gearbox proved with Borderlands 2 that they're willing to sell you a season pass, then later tell you that a bunch of DLC won't be included with the season pass, then outsource the DLC chapters that are included, then release an Aliens game that was 80% outsourced and turned out to be a piece of crap. Why should I reward that kind of behavior? How do I know they won't pull the same crap with Borderlands 3?
 

Geoff9920

Member
It's seems he is very personally invested in the project and is too close to it to step back and look at it objectively. I think the best course of action for him in this case is to just stay quiet about it - good or bad - and move forward with other projects. However, considering how vocal he can be about all their projects I'm not sure that'll happen.
 
Come on, guys.

Of course he's not going to answer negative stuff, at least not this early after the game's launch. Anything perceived as negative can be a potential sale loss, and I know that is business talk but Randy's PR control is one of their points of business at this point. He's not going to say yeah, "hey, yeah we completely fucked up with Aliens," a week after the thing comes out.

Wait for a year to go by or so, and then we'll see an honest answer in a proper publication.

^ This


On a larger audience level, and for Marketing, what he is doing makes perfect sense. There's no 100% honesty in selling any product so... yeah.

On a hard core gaming demographic level. a.k.a GAF or other public gaming communities online: this comes off as insincere.
 

Burger

Member
HlbeHFY.png


I wonder what lessons Randy is learning?
 
^ This


On a larger audience level, and for Marketing, what he is doing makes perfect sense. There's no 100% honesty in selling any product so... yeah.

On a hard core gaming demographic level. a.k.a GAF or other public gaming communities online: this comes off as insincere.
It doesn't, since the larger audience will not read Pitchfords tweets and comments anyway. No one is blaming SEGA or Gearbox for putting ads out for the game which are aimed at the mainstream consumer.
 

Izick

Member
The whole purpose of a public Twitter account is to communicate with his fans. By sticking his fingers in his ears and crying "I'M NOT LISTENING, I'M NOT LISTENING," he insults anyone who has legitimate concerns with the game by COMPLETELY dismissing them.



Har har Randy.

If he didn't want the heat, he shouldn't have maintained an active, public Twitter account in the first place.

Listen, I agree that it's shady, but the purpose of the Twitter account is really to just create as much good PR and free advertising for their stuff. I know we hear about all this social-networking shit all the time, but it truly is one of the biggest forms of advertising these days.

If the Twitter account only retweets/responds to good stuff, then the people who follow that account will thing the general reception of the game is positive.
 

ChristianSpicer

Neo Member
An explanation isn't needed but one should be offered. He says he doesn't like being called a liar, then don't act like one. A little honesty in situations like this can create a lot of good will.

My take in silly video form (there's one thing re Destiny before I talk gearbox...but the vid is only a few mins total): http://youtu.be/8ZpmgDBSYTY
 

Schnozberry

Member
HlbeHFY.png


I wonder what lessons Randy is learning?

Probably learning that bullshitting people in the internet age catches up with you a lot faster than you may have anticipated. I don't think the worst of Randy, but it's obvious he made promises he couldn't keep and is now making it worse be refusing to come forth with a mea culpa.
 
Listen, I agree that it's shady, but the purpose of the Twitter account is really to just create as much good PR and free advertising for their stuff. I know we hear about all this social-networking shit all the time, but it truly is one of the biggest forms of advertising these days.

If the Twitter account only retweets/responds to good stuff, then the people who follow that account will thing the general reception of the game is positive.

The problem is the account is NOT just a PR mouthpiece.

These comments Randy made...demonstrate the issue here:

FZOu6lU.png


He's insulting people. That's way out of line.
 

Izick

Member
Oh and can anyone give me a quck rundown on what is wrong with the game? I haven't been following that much since everyone agreed that it unanimously sucked.

The problem is the account is NOT just a PR mouthpiece.

These comments Randy made...demonstrate the issue here:



He's insulting people. That's way out of line.

He shouldn't have said that, he should just have just done what he said in that post.
 

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
https://twitter.com/samuel_dezeng

This guy signed up for Twtter just to send gushing praise to Randy. How nice!

While it's not impossible that this could be legit, it comes off like Randy created the account just to send himself fake praise, which is pretty hilarious to picture.

His response: "Thanks for the kind words - you're a hero to me :)"
 
How can he say even accept a thank you given the state the game is in? Astounding.

What state? I have played the first 3 levels on PC and I havent had any problems yet. It might not be evryones cup of tea, but it isnt broken like a lot of games are these days when they come out. Obviously it isnt at the ridiculously high standards of a game like Borderlands 2, but it doesnt seem anywhere near as bad as the internet would have you believe.
 
If the Twitter account only retweets/responds to good stuff, then the people who follow that account will thing the general reception of the game is positive.

If the only person you followed was Randy Pitchford you might be fooled. Might. Instead of using this time to promise to rebuild goodwill he's gone full 'ACTIVATE SHIELDS' and is talking to sock puppets who love his game. It's pathetic.
 
Is there more to this than the game sucking?

I know people are annoyed that it's shit, but why are Gearbox getting extra flack over other teams that put out shit games?

Other than these supposedly false Twitter accounts and demo that had better graphics than the end product (not unheard of), have they actively deceived anyone?

Just trying to work out if I missed anything here.
 

Izick

Member
The thing with Twitter people always misconstrue is that it isn't like a forum. The people who create the twitter have near-complete-control (besides very extreme circumstances) over what's said, done, or seen. People can block others, and make a little cult of personality if they want to.

Once again, I want to make it completely clear I don't agree with what he's saying or doing, but from a business standpoint I completely understand it. The guy is in damage-control mode because the game is, well let's say a lot less than stellar, and so he's trying to make everything look nice and dandy on his twitter so he doesn't drive anymore business away.
 

codhand

Member
Damn, ruthless.
It's a bad game, just dont buy it.
He will "learn the lesson", in the meantime, he's not gonna sabotage opening month sales....someone worked hard on this game, even if it wasn't him. The hot potato aspect of the failure isn't helping, but I'm not gonna threaten the guy on twitter, I'm just not buying a game I thought I might otherwise, and I'm a huge Alien fan.
I'll probably just play Infestation on DS finally.

What he tweeted sounds bad, but I'd wager he got youtube caliber comments.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
I'm sorry guys, but to me this simply boils down to Gearbox/Sega putting out a sub-par game.

Whoopity-doo,

Shit happens. The world's an imperfect place. etc. etc.

I'm not saying people if they are disappointed shouldn't be unhappy about it, just that... well its not that remarkable or unexpected an outcome! Point is, most movies in the Alien franchise aren't particularly good either. Yet I don't recall this level of anger when Fox dumped Alien 3 or Resurrection onto our screens, let alone the rank turds that are the AVP movies!

Sorry but I just find the reaction weirdly excessive. And as for (supposedly professional) critics demanding explanations... seriously? The obvious, perfectly safe and reasonable answer is: "We did the best we could do under the circumstances. Sorry that you didn't like it."
 
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