Believe it or not, I actually want Fallen Earth (FE) to be a great MMO. It seems to have a number of things on offer that aren't being put forward by any other developers out there. It's using a "show, don't tell" philosophy of releasing information for the most part, with only occasional incidences of "you know what we told you before? Well, we've changed it" that tends to infect the MMO PR industry.
But with that said, there are some pretty basic traps that Fallen Earth has fell prey to and one of those is using GoogleAds to offset the cost of their official forums. While I understand the rationale, it just makes things look unprofessional. Especially when you come across these kind of ads:
(And yes, I had done a search on "Tabula Rasa official forums" just to see what would come up for a different forum argument.)
"Aha!" you might think, "that was on the old FE forums! They've just got a facelift and this kind of thing won't happen any more!"
Well...
I couldn't get the WoW ad to reappear, but there were certainly other interesting ones. Personally I don't know why the GoogleAds I see the most of keep relating to dating services (which I don't need) but this one made me laugh:
I can't help but wonder what the heck GoogleAds is picking off the page of a MMO forum if it chooses a BBW dating service as the most appropriate ad to display!
Tiggs has just joined FE / Icarus in a community management role. Let's hope she sees the sense in dropping the ads so the official forums doesn't resemble a fansite.
User Comments
"I can't help but wonder what the heck GoogleAds is picking off the page of a MMO forum if it chooses a BBW dating service as the most appropriate ad to display!"
I can... it's the word MMO. There is a stereotype that makes it synonymous to fat people.
You’re picking on an independent game developer as if they were AAA funded game studio.
Nice.
Yup it doesnt look pro but they are like it has been said, an Indie studio!
If this allows them to save some coins in order to produce a better game....then i dont care if they have adds about penis enlargement, Purple pills, and other adult oriented materials!
or something like that....
If you feel the need to knock Icarus Studios, find a better way to do it than a troll blog about google ads. So far I'm very impressed with what they have so far. Ads on a site doesn't really slap me in the face with "OMG!! N00BS!!".
If Icarus can't do it right, they shouldn't be doing it. The market doesn't care if they are indie or in the pocket of the publisher when it looks at the quality of the title.
This is the industry where the mantra is "polish". This applies to official forums too - while the facelift looks great, it is very disappointing to see the ads still there.
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