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.
"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.
Wed Sep 17 2008 12:43AM ReportYou’re picking on an independent game developer as if they were AAA funded game studio.
Nice.
Wed Sep 17 2008 1:05PM ReportYup 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....
Wed Sep 17 2008 5:47PM ReportIf 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!!".
Wed Sep 17 2008 6:53PM ReportIf 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.
Fri Sep 19 2008 11:29AM ReportUnSub. In one word. Wrong.
Fri Dec 05 2008 8:10AM ReportIndependent developer or not, the website should at least attempt to appear professional. The argument "she's doing this because she needs money for med-school" doesn't work all that well.
Again I'm not saying that she (the game) doesn't look pretty and neither am I questioning her intelligence. Perhaps she does have a lot to offer, but I will never approve the way she made money to get to where she is.
Did I stretch the metaphor too far? Anyway, I’m sided with UnSub, and I firmly believe that everything should be subjected to constructive criticism, or at least being poked fun at.
Tue Jan 20 2009 6:43AM ReportMMORPG.com writes:
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