Thursday, April 10, 2008

New York, New York

I was away from BS most of last week trying to clear work before by my trip. After almost 24 hours in the air and transit (managed to practice some 日本語 on the flight since I flew ANA), I'm in NY. I'm stay just a few blocks away from the bull. Would be really convenient to get posted here considering you can stay a block away from the financial district.



I had a discussion with friend who is a marketing consultant (the kind offers practical advice doesn't just spew crap about 4Ps). She commented that it's rather impractical to allocate resources to provide the close communication with the players as our user base grows (much less hire a communications director for 4000 USD /month to do PR for a free game). I'm also behind on my studies for my exam in June so I going to be on the BS forums a lot less often.

Someone will probably say I used the earlier paragraph just as an excuse. I just want to piss him off by doing that which he hates so much.



Eating like this everyday could quickly turn into a health hazzard but I thought I should indulge just a bit before I go to Europe. Damn record high Euro.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Heh, she's got a point there. You don't have to be on all the time... all we really want (because obviously I know what everyone thinks) is to know that you are "available" and pretend to care about our suggestions. I think most players on the boards can moderate it themselves as long as nothing extreme occurs, so don't worry.


PS: Welcome to the USA. Hope you fun in New York, Leonard! <(`.'o)

Cervantes de Leonard said...

I do look at constructive feedback but basically "Leonard" is still just 1 guy and he's not exactly scalable.

There's an upper limit to how many players I can communicate with effectively and I think we're at that limit with approximately 30,000 active players.

NY is great, I'll think about doing my masters degree here or getting the bank give me a position here (though that seems improbable).

Anonymous said...

Nonsense! Leonard does not suffer from the law of diminishing returns! <(^.^)>

There's no need to clarify yourself to little ol' me. At least you do care and consider; I'd look at the "Suggestions" area as the "Complaints/Whining" forum and ignore all of it. Yes, I'd make a very bad developer and be proud of it.

One thing though: 30k active players? Where did you get this number from? Are you talking about the other 15k that plays Episode 1, because all I see on the website is 15k active for BattleStations.

Gary said...

I suppose I'm not surprised that game designers would like big cities. Comes with the nerdiness =P

I'm confused by a few things though. If by "close communication", you mean facebook boards, I would say that most posts are hardly relevant to you.

Also, how on earth does the Euro factor into your trip??

Haha, hope you had an awesome time in NYC though =)

Cervantes de Leonard said...

@Kirby > thanks! Actually, not caring too much might make you a good developer; that way you focus on developing instead of whining.

30K active is an estimate because quite a number of players do wait 3 days for their AP to max out to play the game.

@Gary > I don't know about game desginer/nerdiness. It think I like NYC because I'm a finance guy and I'm staying near Wall Street (which is pretty exciting for me).

My finance work and game design work both involve alot of quantitative work so yeah there's quite few similarities.

I'm heading to Europe on Wednesday.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm, i've been to chicago but not the NY. I hated the "big city" too many people that do too many stupid things. Not enough good in the city to cover the bad, only if you have money can you do anything fun. I am a simple man, these little internet games, television shows, and movie theatres are all I need. But, there again I am a sucker for a good book or a play/musical. Hope you had a lot of fun LL, so does this mean that someone is getting fired on TYLER? Seems to be that the close relationship should be kept with a few.

Cervantes de Leonard said...

Yeah it was fun, but I totally agree with the "only fun if you have $" part.

My sarcasm was for someone on the BS forums not in TYLER.