So you want to have a some type of a organization huh? Well I dont think it will work..Shall we talk about Darkfall?

When the house is divided it will not stand..It is the same with the gaming community.Lets say for a figure of speech..There  are 500K players with 500K different wants and needs and problems..Sorry One guy leadership will not work or be the voice for the 500K Players..I don't need the middle man when i can go to the main man my self...

 The best a Gamer's Union could hope to accomplish would be articles regarding MMO design practices.  But the quality of such articles would wildly vary, and would need clear delineation of where each article is appropriate.

For example, an article about world immersion will be significantly different between an exploration-focused game (EVE/UO/EQ?) and a gameplay-focused game (WOW/Planetside.)  I imagine such articles would be clear if each article is clearly labelled with icons designating what types of games the article is appropriate for.

Basically:

• a forum of disgruntled, minority MMO gamers will accomplish nothing.  We have that already.  We understand that exploration-focused players have few places to go amidst the gameplay-focused MMOs of today.
• a game design theory site which focuses on "Best Practices" would at least hold some sway over the industry if (big "if") the quality is high enough that it becomes a known repository for supreme design insights.

Which means MMORPG.com is already close to being there.  Just needs to focus its articles towards game design and content creation more.  Personally I get the impression the site is already actively pursuing knowledgeable people for articles, so maybe it'll take true funding for the idea to overcome that quality hurdle -- or maybe a joint link with Gamasutra or similar sites, to pull down some of their articles which might be MMO related?

games are a product. It is something that a group of people or a single person makes. They already have to comply with all the other rating and safety laws by the "government" and its regulating bodies. They don't want to put up with some unions BS in which the people who actually join the union really don't get a say anyways and then only the TOP management people tell the game companies what they want, then we the people who actually wanted change to happen in the first place trusted other people who had no real intention of helping you and only wanted to use you to gain power in another sector of the industry.

But wait, we already have a solution, its called capitalism. Money will flow to trends that produce money. Thus money has produced more games like WoW because lots and lots of money was made with that model. It will always flow towards the thing that will produce the most money, this is because money is the end game objective for companies. By law that has to be one of their goals. They have to produce profits for their shareholders. Either speak with your wallets, convince a whole lot of people to stop liking what they like or get off your lazy arse, join a team, get some skills and start working on the game that you want and quit sitting on some forum and talking "if only>........"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Rich ones are one of the few people who had the balls to go for it.

 Hmmm....

Interesting concept and I've mentioned this before but not in the concise way as the OP, Semper Fi. 

Ok, what your looking to do is getting some representation? I believe that one firt in the air is a rebellion, two fist is action, three fists and you have a movement. No fisting jokes please, lol.

It sounds like a great idea and I would be down. I just want you to know how expansive your audience is, your talking about millions of people. And that is going to be a fulltime job, this is not a 40-200 man guild, I'm not trying to bust your bubble, I'm trying to be realistic. If and when you get this up and running your going to have to make some decisions.

Some Questions:

1) what are you looking to accomplish?

2) Who is going to fund this?

3) How are we all going to become a cohesive group, that means transparency; that means real names, real number. Other than that then we are just an anonymous group of internet yokels. Hey it worked for 4chan, but we want to be taken seriously not just as rebels. Or do we?

4)  Are you ready to make sacrifices for your values, which means if this does work out, your going to sacrifice game (family,school,work) time to run this effectively.

5) How are you going to (I will quote Ivan from 2 Coppers worth, "It'll be like corralling cats together") corral all these wildcats? 

I do have a few suggestions. Start a forum board for it and see what happens, that is free. And if you have a vent, and all GM's have at least one vent rolling around somewhere, talk to people about  It in vent;  also a vent will help to hold meetings over distances and people will take a voice more seriously that a anonymous posts. Maybe make a youtube video, it worked for Obama, LOL!. Here come's the troll...

What else...

Oh yeah, name suggestion: Game Players United (or Union) call letters GPU, and that's the chip that got all this started in the first place.

That's all I got for now. Keep me in the loop, I am interested, becuase if/when this get's off the ground and get's really big enough, it's going to be able to throw around some substantial economic weight in the gameworld. I look at the macro scale, 100,000 players can make or break a small server. 1,000,000 players can make or break a small game company. 10,000,000 will move the industry, slightly. 

Play safe,

~Ink

PS: Sempfer Fi, Do or Die, HOO RAH, HOO RAH!

Originally posted by SimperFi

I've been perusing the forums quite a bit today. I started a thread discussing the decline of interactivity within MMO's. During our discussion one member mentioned a "gamer's union" of sorts to help gamers form their thoughts cohesively and help game developers get in touch with their customers.


A link to that post: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/239469/Sick-and-Tired-not-a-flame.html

 

 

Now I would like to know who would be interested in joining such a union. I'm willing to head it up. I've had about 4 years of multi-game clan and guild leadership experience under a lot of different circumstances. I also was already in the process of developing a website with built-in forum boards and such which could be very useful. (I will provide a link to that site once it's further along).


But for now I would like anyone interested in joining, or anyone with ideas to post here. I think this would be interesting to see how it plays out and we could be pretty influential with proper guidance and enough dedicated members. We could help provide information about games, as well as help developers (indie and big name companies) to connect with gamers. That would be our primary purpose. I have yet to see any group try this.

 

Apparently with MMO's you can divide us gamers into two major factions:

1. the "wow lovers" group (basically generic cookie cutter, exp grinders)

2. then you have the other group that's extremely splintered. With so many sub groups and fractures from within, it's impossible to describe or list them all.

 

We could bring some of these fractured groups together and possibly even find middle ground and help gamers get heard by developers. What do you all think?
 

If you're going to express choices and inject your personal bias into them:

" the "wow lovers" group (basically generic cookie cutter, exp grinders)", you've effectively killed any interest from those that are immediately going to be lumped by you into a second class citizen status.

You'd be the *last* person that should head up something as you describe.

No thanks, bad idea.

A Gamer's Union would only be interesting if it had and USED real power. For instance, when they destroyed UO by changing the foundation of the game overnight, and the same with SWG.

In those cases a Gamer's Union would be able to go on a strike, where all it's members would stop playing the game.

Other strong weapons would be to spread the story on the developers dodgy business ethics, making a true debate on what responsibilities they have towards their inhabitants - the players - who have invested alot in their game, and was the reason for it's initial success.

And believe me, a strong Union WOULD be listened to. If it for instance had a million members, and it had a lot to say in the debates, and if it would call out the developers on dodgy behaviour, and finally if it went on strikes.

Originally posted by Rasputin

A Gamer's Union would only be interesting if it had and USED real power. For instance, when they destroyed UO by changing the foundation of the game overnight, and the same with SWG.

In those cases a Gamer's Union would be able to go on a strike, where all it's members would stop playing the game.

Other strong weapons would be to spread the story on the developers dodgy business ethics, making a true debate on what responsibilities they have towards their inhabitants - the players - who have invested alot in their game, and was the reason for it's initial success.

 

And believe me, a strong Union WOULD be listened to. If it for instance had a million members, and it had a lot to say in the debates, and if it would call out the developers on dodgy behaviour, and finally if it went on strikes.

And the streets will be made of rainbows, and the sky will rain cookies, and all farts will smell like roses :)

Originally posted by Rasputin

A Gamer's Union would only be interesting if it had and USED real power. For instance, when they destroyed UO by changing the foundation of the game overnight, and the same with SWG.

In those cases a Gamer's Union would be able to go on a strike, where all it's members would stop playing the game.

My first post in this thread was basically "It won't work."

After reading your post, I feel even stronger about it.

Because basically what you're saying is 60% of the 500,000 Gamer's Union players playing game X decided that patch Z "ruined" the game -- so the remaining 200,000 players who still think the game is fine must boycott the game.   Yeah...right.  Like that's gonna happen

HAHA Imagine the power if you got 50-70% of all gamers world wide to join this union. you could make and break games at your will.

Example one: ho NO we wont play your game, to the Blockade Lads... game tanks

Exampel two: okey we suport this the game and it gets a sick amount of subs.

The Power sush a union could have is just sick, would be seriously fun tough to put  badly done games out of business haha and say bye bye we are shutting you down now.

but as others have pointed out I dont think it would ever work..

Originally posted by Zlayer77

HAHA Imagine the power if you got 50-70% of all gamers world wide to join this union. you could make and break games at your will.

Example one: ho NO we wont play your game, to the Blockade Lads... game tanks

Exampel two: okey we suport this the game and it gets a sick amount of subs.

The Power sush a union could have is just sick, would be seriously fun tough to put  badly done games out of business haha and say bye bye we are shutting you down now.

but as others have pointed out I dont think it would ever work..

This is all dependent on gamers having a reasonable level of loyalties and allegiance to the Gamer Union.

ok, so gamer's union comes out, companies listen, mmo comes out, I don't like it.  you said it's what gamers want.  awesome, lawsuit time against the union and each person heading it up (and it's not something you can hide your real identity from the public if you're looking to represent all gamers as an official special interest group) for defamation of my character as a gamer or false representation.  The legal system's so screwed ppl'd win suing over it too.

it's a bad idea.

I think there is a direct correlation between a users age and his opinion posted in this thread.  The younger (less experience, more naive) the poster is, the more likely he is to think this is a super rad idea!

While I do think a gamers advocacy group could do a lot, its also a lot of work for something that, on the players' end at least is for many just an amusing entertainment.

That being said, I've got my own rules for dealing with mmos: Don't try one til its at least 6 months past launch AND comes with a free trial, and if I ever don't like the game, I stop paying and quit.

I think a site that is a cross between a gamers advocacy portal and Metacritic could go a long way. An online portal that includes user reviews implemented like Metacritic, interaction with publishers and developers and also employs one or two professional staff that actively contact game developers and publishers regarding issues raised by its members could work out. MMORPG.com offers many of these features, but as the staff take the impartial 'press' role, it is hard to label this site a MMO gamer's advocacy portal.

A section could be added on this site that provides all of the said features, however. The success of such a venture depends of course on excellent marketing and a very detailed 'business plan' for operating the organization. Nobody will sign up to a half-assed gamer's advocacy, as if the execution and professionalism isn't top notch, the organization will fall apart as neither the gamers or the developers will take the group seriously.

If someone is willing to take a risk and invest their time and money into this, I'm with them. However, if you do not do a superb job, the whole operation will just crash and burn.

Originally posted by madeux

I think there is a direct correlation between a users age and his opinion posted in this thread.  The younger (less experience, more naive) the poster is, the more likely he is to think this is a super rad idea!

Nice little theory you got there, but consider it falsified.

If you are looking for correlations; Think politics :)

I have to stop using words like "homogeniety".  I try to take part, and I get ignored because I used a word that started with "homo".

Originally posted by madeux

I think there is a direct correlation between a users age and his opinion posted in this thread.  The younger (less experience, more naive) the poster is, the more likely he is to think this is a super rad idea!

Incorrect.  Age-correlated, yes.  But it's only those of us who grew up during the 80s who are likely to call an idea "rad".   :P

(or is "rad" coming back in style?  I have been using it a bit more often lately just for kicks ;)  I assumed I was being predictably silly and old, like the adults when I was growing up who used the word "groovy".)

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by madeux

I think there is a direct correlation between a users age and his opinion posted in this thread.  The younger (less experience, more naive) the poster is, the more likely he is to think this is a super rad idea!

Incorrect.  Age-correlated, yes.  But it's only those of us who grew up during the 80s who are likely to call an idea "rad".   :P

(or is "rad" coming back in style?  I have been using it a bit more often lately just for kicks ;)  I assumed I was being predictably silly and old, like the adults when I was growing up who used the word "groovy".)

If this is how the comment style on this topic is supposed to be, then let me say that the idea to form a "Gamer's Union" needs a FORK!  FORK!  FORK!

Originally posted by madeux

The idea of putting everyone into two groups seems to be naive and indicates that you have not spent a lot of time reading these forums.  Opinions and tastes are far too varying to be lumped up like that.

The other problem is that these forums do not represent the market as a whole.  Developers want games that will make them money, not games that will cater to a few losers who insist on calling themselves hardcore in order to make up for insecurities relating to their small penis size.

Well I'm getting opinions. I don't think that starting a flame is going to help Madeux. And the only one to mention penis size so far is you. So I'm beginning to understand your insecurities. Thank you for sharing that with all of us Mad, I'm sure we'll all be very sensitive to your needs. I'm sure SOMEWHERE they make millimeter condoms for millimeter peters

My first motion for the Gamer's Union is for the ejection of anyone who disagrees with my view of how MMORPGs should on the ground that they are not True Gamers and therefore do not belong in the Union.

Originally posted by Torik

My first motion for the Gamer's Union is for the ejection of anyone who disagrees with my view of how MMORPGs should on the ground that they are not True Gamers and therefore do not belong in the Union.

Excellent paradox ;)

Originally posted by SimperFi

ok fair enough, I appreciate the criticism. I'm just hearing peoples' opinions so I'm not saying I'm starting this yet or anything like that. I just heard it and wanted to hear what other people think.


And don't governments speak for all people? With so many voices in a crowded room, it can be very helpful to have one, concise, strong and clear voice rather than a rampant mess of things.


But as I said the criticism is welcome, let's hear what others think.

 

I'll speak up on the government part first.  The answer is no.  The government doesn't speak for everyone, it just happens to be a controlling body that gets heard.  Some may argue that it's  the same thing, but the truth is, dissent only lasts so long before it foments into something worse.

 

I know of several people in the last US election who indicated that if one candidate one, they were moving to Canada.  This also pertains to that in that some people do not agree with the government in the slightest, however for financial and economic reasons, they cannot remove themselves FROM that government.  I think in many cases it's a similar situation in MMOs, where trends occur and the gamers are unable to do anything about them because the trends exist across multiple MMOs.  This leaves the gamers in a position of either not playing at all, or deciding which MMO has the lesser amount of evils to contend with that will impact their gameplay negatively.

 

Insofar as a Gamer's Union..it's just not going to go very far.  The reason for that is multifold.  First, you have no leverage and won't against big-name companies, such as SOE, or Blizzard, because these companies operate on the fast-food employee principle.  Turnover is high, but that's fine because you've spent cash for at least one month, and the moment you leave, some new player is going to subscribe for the first time to take your place.  This is indicative of why you hear in many MMOs that all the "veterans" have gone.  The game has turned into a cycling turnstile of players, with only a small contingent that either like the MMO with changes as it currently stands, or are simply hoping for better days and weathering it out while potentially looking for another MMO themselves.

By leverage, I mean the capacity to impact their decisions to MMOs currently in production, or those already gone to retail.  Short of possibly..and this is tentative at best, but short of potentially producing such a mass amount of negative feedback for a game that it makes a noticable decrease in profits, then the only thing you could do would be to provide a "hang-out" for any developer that might come along and whatever gamers come along that are interested in this "hang-out".  And likely, if you were to create that amount of negative feedback anyway, they aren't going to change their minds, they're simply going to have their attorneys call you, or go ahead with legal action.  

 

Until such a point occurs that a official body comes into existence that regulates MMOs with the power to actually apply sanctions against MMO companies utilizing unfair or disreputable business practices, and with the nod to the fact that this official body will have the consumers' (read: gamers) interest in mind, it's pretty much a pipe-dream, at very best.

The idea is nice, but the idea of unionizing any particular set of interests requires that those that run said union are impartial to making decisions based off the feed back of mature and well thought out ideas, that being said; "impartial", "mature", and "well thought out" are traites very few community active gamers posess.

Originally posted by CulannHS

Originally posted by SimperFi

ok fair enough, I appreciate the criticism. I'm just hearing peoples' opinions so I'm not saying I'm starting this yet or anything like that. I just heard it and wanted to hear what other people think.


And don't governments speak for all people? With so many voices in a crowded room, it can be very helpful to have one, concise, strong and clear voice rather than a rampant mess of things.


But as I said the criticism is welcome, let's hear what others think.

 

I'll speak up on the government part first.  The answer is no.  The government doesn't speak for everyone, it just happens to be a controlling body that gets heard.  Some may argue that it's  the same thing, but the truth is, dissent only lasts so long before it foments into something worse.

 

I know of several people in the last US election who indicated that if one candidate one, they were moving to Canada.  This also pertains to that in that some people do not agree with the government in the slightest, however for financial and economic reasons, they cannot remove themselves FROM that government.  I think in many cases it's a similar situation in MMOs, where trends occur and the gamers are unable to do anything about them because the trends exist across multiple MMOs.  This leaves the gamers in a position of either not playing at all, or deciding which MMO has the lesser amount of evils to contend with that will impact their gameplay negatively.

 

Insofar as a Gamer's Union..it's just not going to go very far.  The reason for that is multifold.  First, you have no leverage and won't against big-name companies, such as SOE, or Blizzard, because these companies operate on the fast-food employee principle.  Turnover is high, but that's fine because you've spent cash for at least one month, and the moment you leave, some new player is going to subscribe for the first time to take your place.  This is indicative of why you hear in many MMOs that all the "veterans" have gone.  The game has turned into a cycling turnstile of players, with only a small contingent that either like the MMO with changes as it currently stands, or are simply hoping for better days and weathering it out while potentially looking for another MMO themselves.

By leverage, I mean the capacity to impact their decisions to MMOs currently in production, or those already gone to retail.  Short of possibly..and this is tentative at best, but short of potentially producing such a mass amount of negative feedback for a game that it makes a noticable decrease in profits, then the only thing you could do would be to provide a "hang-out" for any developer that might come along and whatever gamers come along that are interested in this "hang-out".  And likely, if you were to create that amount of negative feedback anyway, they aren't going to change their minds, they're simply going to have their attorneys call you, or go ahead with legal action.  

 

Until such a point occurs that a official body comes into existence that regulates MMOs with the power to actually apply sanctions against MMO companies utilizing unfair or disreputable business practices, and with the nod to the fact that this official body will have the consumers' (read: gamers) interest in mind, it's pretty much a pipe-dream, at very best.

 

That was very well-written. So let me get one part straight. If I (and this gamer's union, should it be formed) were to give negative feedback to a company that isn't supposed to care in the first place, then they will sue me? Or worse? Quite frankly, if it ever reached that point, I assure you attorneys would do them no good. Words would become a thing of the past.

And as far as the government thing, fair enough that's your opinion and probably the opinion of others. But that does seem to be how it plays out with MMO's and I would like to change that. In the end, if a gaming company sued me for sharing my opinion  about their faulty product, I'd laugh. Because I'd never even BE ABLE to give them any money if I even wanted to. and secondly, they'd have to sue every website like this one or any author of review articles.

Originally posted by AllNewMMOSuk

Originally posted by SimperFi

Originally posted by AllNewMMOSuk

A gamer's union is a terrible idea and game companies won't listen to such a group.

 

Ok thanks, for that too 8). Maybe you can elaborate a little rather simply saying it "sucks"? Give some more constructive criticism on how it might be acomplished if one were so inclined to go about it?

 

First of all it's not like there's one type of gamer and one type of gaming style. Secondly you're not part of any gaming company so the term union makes no sense. Third it wouldn't come close to representing actual gamers, since the only people who would read about/participate in such a thing would be the same minority of gamers that post on forums, and those gamers don't even come close to representing actual gamers.

 

Most of the game companies out there are making a lot of money, because they know what they are doing. So to have some group of mostly kids sitting there and whining to them about how they want a game to work, when that group has no idea what it takes to make some of their ideas happen and how much it would actually hurt the money making process, would just irritate them or make them laugh at you.

 

If you want to change the gaming industry then get into it and make some games that you think will change everything. But don't get a group together that will whine and make all gamers look like idiots all while accomplishing nothing.

+rep if i could.

Im guessing it would mainly be the most vocal hardcore gamers whining who would ruin it all anyway. There seems to be a small knit of people who throw around the old cliches like 'living breathing world' and 'sandbox' without actually having any real idea of how it would all work or exactly what the player would be able to do.

And imagine a company did come along and take all of those ideas and put them all into a game. Would any of the whiners play it? God no, theyd all be complaining about everything and anything they could.

The general idea is nice, like a focus group for anyone to input, but it just wouldnt work.