Mark Jacobs on the NDA Violation

Mark Jacobs stopped by the Developer’s Round Table today to repsond to the recent NDA violation by one of the beta testers.

Original Poster: I have to agree with Brontus. This Letter is NOTHING compared to the crap Mythic will get when this game goes live. They better grow dinasour thick skin or they might as well give up right now.

Mark Jacobs: Thanks for the information! We’re raising the white flag over our headquarters as we speak.

Original Poster: Calling people assholes however is not the answer. I do KNOW the answer to all their problems – LISTEN TO YOUR BETA TESTERS.

Mark Jacobs: As always, I love to be yelled at, especially by the uninformed. As to your two points (which you make a lot in your calm and rational post).

1) Calling people assholes is not the answer.
Depends on the question. If the question is “What do you call someone who (a) breaks an NDA; (b) who after breaking the NDA tries as hard as he can to harm Mythic’s reputation; (c) who doesn’t have the courage to use his real name or turn in his beta account; (d) didn’t spend any time writing up his own critique but rather stole someone else’s words and thoughts; (e) lies about the game with his own few poorly chosen words? I think the word asshole is not only correct but far too kind. It is once again important to note that we didn’t call the original poster of the message an asshole (that person is well-respected within Mythic even if we don’t agree with everything that he says) but rather the person who took his message and tried to spread it all over the Internet to hurt us.

2) LISTEN TO YOUR BETA TESTERS
Two points on this. First, who do you suggest we listen to? I guarantee you that there is no such thing as a consensus among any product’s players (let alone a beta product) as to what is right or wrong with every aspect of the product. So, if we took a poll and 50% of the people wanted one thing, 30% wanted another and 20% even something else, what should we do? Now, what if what even the majority of the players “say” is the total opposite of what we want to do? Should we always listen to the majority? Nope, the development of the game is not by the democratic process or even by simple majority rule. History is replete with examples of when the majority was very, very wrong as well as when it was right. Thus, we can’t really rely on the majority in all cases. BTW, the people who post on our beta boards only represent a minority of those players in the game. In the end it is our butts on the line if the game fails. Unlike those who want to take pot-shots at Mythic from afar, if this game fails, Mythic is in deep trouble. Thus, it is in our interest to develop the best game possible to ensure our survival. In order to help do this, we come to point #2.

We do listen to our players. We have proven time after time that we pay attention to what they say even if we don’t agree with them. As our BTers will tell you, we have spent more time interacting with them, tweaking the game, changing the game based on their responses. For some reason you are taking the voice of a potentially disgruntled member of the BT community (I have my own theories on why the message was posted) and elating it to a status which it doesn’t deserve.

As has already been pointed out in other topics, we paid great attention to what the original poster said. Based on some of his comments we found problems in the game that we truly did not think existed. We took immediate action on some of them (the ones we agreed with) and fixed them. We are also planning to continue to make tweaks and further adjustments as time goes on. Once again, this is a beta product that is five months out from being live. Anyone who expects perfection at this point is living in another world.

Original Poster: There is one undeniable truth Mythic, and that is I don’t care how many computer science degree’s you eggheads have, or how many atari 2600 games you played when you were 12, or how many hours you spent programming – YOUR BETA TESTERS KNOW MORE ABOUT THE GAME THAN YOU DO.

Mark Jacobs: Untrue. Some beta testers may have spent the time to really know the game inside and out but not all of them do. Also, even assuming that they have that amount of knowledge you once again cannot assume that their opinions are automatically right. Almost everybody who is at Mythic is or was an avid gamer. It is not our CS degrees (I don’t have one for example) but rather our experience in designing, programming and playing games that gives us our credibility. Throwing stones at us from afar as you can (especially when based on inaccurate information), gives you none.

All there for you in black and white. Draw your own conclusions.