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I offer you advice and an interview, and you decline for reasons you won't mention but specifically state that I should "take it as I will" and that it would "likely cause flamewars". Next time you should be clear when a person asks you if you want to interview them. Also, the fact that you declined me yet claim to be searching for interviewees seems to promote the point that you're not looking for people of all opinions but only a select few opinions, namely those who either agree with you and Jeff on at least a small level or those who have quit the game (read: people who can make your game look better). By taking in the facts in I conclude that I'm not the person you're looking to interview because I say things you don't like. Of course clearly stating your intentions would clear that up but fine, hide behind obscurity.Like many of the members of the community here, you have oversimplified many of the things I have said and drawn assumptions from them. Better qualified does not mean underqualified, which most people learn once they start seeking higher-up jobs or even applying to universities. So I'm sorry if that's what you took it as.
Also if you don't want start a flame war 1) dont call me under qualified 2)Don't respond to every post that tries to correct flaws with statements such as you dont care because its not the information you're after or it doesn't matter because you're exclusively looking for negatives. 3) Don't post a 90% negative interview about a game in it's own forum and then argue it's validity with the members.
Final point: I never said I was in complete disagreement with Jeff either, I just think he was a poor source (see: 75% of posts not by you in this thread).
You've turned down my advice. You've turned down my offer to interview. You have insulted me, intentionally or not, with many passive aggressive posts like the one above. As such I'll continue to watch this thread and may comment on other people's posts here, but I will not offer you any more help in any form, and I will not be playing your game. I may even discourage friends from playing the game now that I have seen developer's actions towards the competition, developers poor response to criticism, and poor research tactics.
This. If anything, statistics have shown that talking about other games on a forum for a particular game keeps people part of the community for this game and on this forum.I'm inclined to agree, although I believe the original concern was that since this is a game forum it might pull users away or something.Various other forums have similar sections for such discussion, and I haven't seen problems with them (Not to mention we already have had several threads on Off-topic about other games). I don't think drawing users away from Elements will be an issue.
But I think discussion of other games happens often enough that we mind as well give a place for it.
While I suppose the legality of the issue exists, by "foresite" I meant you could have a)let the interview continued when he obviously had more to say and b) come prepared with more questions, not that you should have taken any information without his prior permission. I call foul on your statement that interviews are steered by the interviewee and not the interviewer. Proper question writing and devoting enough time to the interview are important. If, for example, your first question to me is "What is bad about elements" and I give a 10 minute response with you interjecting for small elaboration questions, and say "thats all the time we have" then I haven't fully expressed my views. Obviously Jeff had other points, did you end the interview and chat more? And if he gave more information, you could have easily asked "May I use this information in the interview as well?"The information he gave me was pretty much a reiteration of what I mentioned in the interview as positive points. We then talked a bit about Magic and card games in general. As you might can guess, he didn't find many positives with Elements.
Again, critiquing your skills as a researcher and an interviewer. I suppose your statement of not being against interviewing me is an invitation to be interviewed, since I didn't really get a clear answer. Give me a medium and some times you are available (not so good with time zones, Im on whatever Indiana is on) either here or via pm and I'll give you a full interview. And I expect you to be prepared with sufficient questions. If i dont have an answer, I'll say so. If positive or negative aspects are to much of a focus, I expect there to be some extra questions added to bring out more information. Your research needs to be important to you; it's a means to make your game grow.If I didn't send you a PM (I've mentioned in this thread I've asked others for interviews) or otherwise ask you specifically for an interview, then that implies I am currently uninterested in interviewing you. You can take my unclear response as what you will, but you must take the facts into consideration as opposed to assumption. I won't state why I did not ask you specifically for a follow-up interview as that could possibly incite a flamewar, but by stating I am not averse to interviewing you doesn't mean I specifically want to interview you. I am after a certain kind of information here, and if I feel there are better qualified people to give that information, I will seek them out first.
I just read the article and have looked through some of the comments. Thought I'd add my two cents here:Thanks for your feedback. As mentioned earlier, I am interested in doing follow-up interviews. It is good to see some people agree with points in the article, as well as disagree with some points, as opposed to what appears to be an attempt at complete shooting down by most of the community here.
-He brings up some good points on balance, such as weapons and untargetable creatures. But some of it is definitely off.
--One example: with the exception of creatures that also bypass shields (none start off with both so this usually takes planning and time to pull off) several shields can kill or disable even untargetable creatures in combat.
--It is also possible to prevent their attack, redirect the damage, and even hide your own creatures from their abilities, so most elements have some form of counter.
-His comment about lack of duo or trio decks is off: pendulums were in when he started. I know because I started before him in '09 and they were available back then.
-- On the flip side though, I do concede that anything trio and higher is quite tricky to pull off.
-I think his most relevant point is that not every element can "answer" some major threats. I do have to agree with this to some extent. Even considering indirect methods this can sometimes be an issue. Eg mono time cant do jack about weapons and shields.
--This is changing as others have noted, however, so hopefully that will be better.
In my opinion, the article has its faults, but as the saying goes Rome wasn't built in a day. It is very good start though.
I think what you need to do is to gather more information than just a single interview. There are a lot of different facets to this game, so you probably won't be able to catch them all in one or two interviews.
Do more interviews. Try to get as wide a range of interviewees as you can to avoid bias. Then take some polls based on what is discussed. Then you will have some good support to work from.
After that you can make a solid thesis and provide a useful source of information. Not just to help you build your game and improve this one, but also to help others who are trying to break into the industry as well.
I look forward to seeing what you come up with and trying out your game to see how it matches up to elements.
Comment on how the interview naturally went or whether it was steered, etc.: You've said a couple of times that Jeff spoke with you after the interview about the positives of the game. Now, I don't know how much after this was, but it seems as though this could have easily been added to the interview with a little foresite. Additionally, the job of an interviewer is to be prepared with questions prior to the interview to address all the information needed. If the interviewer isn't prepared as such it becomes more of just a persons opinion on the spot; whatever he/she remembers is what he/she says, without being sparked by questions to mention other points.Once an interview is 'finished', any comments added after are not allowed to be added back to the original interview. This isn't a personal choice, it's also legality (a respect issue as well) and also why virtually every interview has comments made after airing is done, and yet none of these comments are made public or released with the interview.
I'm not trying to sound like I love elements or anything, I'm trying to critique your research so that you can develop your game better, which I'll likely play (especially if it winds up on Kong with badges). You need to just do more interviews with more credible sources, including people who have quit the game. And I still want to say Jeff just wasn't very on it for the posted interview based on facts brought up.I'm not against doing an interview with you. The only thing is that I will let you steer the interview as that's how interviews are run. So while I would like you to talk about all aspects (positive, neutral, and negative), you obviously will have a preference towards one of the three as no interviewee can talk about each part with equal feeling and that's what will drive the interview. I've said this multiple times, and yet there are still posts being made on this thread about how not enough time was devoted to the positives. The simple fact of the matter is that's not how interviews are run, not even in the real world.
If you want to interview me, I am fully available almost anytime. I am a casual player of the game and an active member of the community, if that influences your decision. And if you want me to talk about negatives I will, so long as I may talk about positives and neutral aspects as well.
Since it's clear all interviewees are biased in some way (quitters toward negative, long-time players toward positive) why not make multiple interviews? You could, for example, take 3 interviews with:I'd be willing to do follow-up interviews.
- Someone who has left
- An experienced and long-time player
- A newbie that is just exploring Elements
This way you could have a much better picture of the pros and cons of the game - from different viewpoints. The quitter can tell about his reasons of leaving, the loyal player can tell about what keeps him/her playing the game, while the newbie can tell about what caught his attention and what his initial feelings are about the game. And other things.
Of course, this takes more time and work, but if you truly want to get a whole picture of a game it might be worth it.
This is largely true. But the problem once again is that the best person to interview would be someone who has left Elements, and that has the problem of being an outdated source at some point or another. Regardless of the age of the source, the fact is that the player still stopped playing a game and through that can give me reasons (whether biased or not) as to why they left and how to capture the attention of a similar audience.As for my information not being good, I disagree. I don't need 'up-to-date' information on Elements. That doesn't make sense as a developer of a game in the same genre, because my target audience is going to be the people who left Elements to find something else. Clearly at some point they were interested in the concept of an online card game, but something about Elements made them leave and I don't want to have that same problem - I want to attract the players who left Elements by "fixing" what they hated about Elements.Yes you will need up-to-date information on Elements for the following reasons
1) Games have pros and cons. To attract the players who left Elements you will need to match or improve the pros of Elements while fixing the cons.
2) Sometimes a false con (something that is seen as a con but is not) is observed. This is usually due to lack of sufficient analysis (which would be a common trait).
3) Games change and usually improve. Up to date information will let you see what new pros and cons emerged and how effective/ineffective the solutions to previous cons were.
In short: You will need to look at more recent information to have obtained all the lessons that using EtG as a example would provide.
