Valve PR sucks

[Myself]

Quote of Chris Bokitch: "Fragmaster is so eloquent. I don't like to talk bad about other websites, especially ones claiming to be fan sites, but PHL is really becoming the Fox News of the gaming news scene."

Well what is he trying to say? That PHL is the most popular and fastest growing entity in the gaming news scene? Or perhaps he is saying that it is the most accurate and least biased? Either way all he is really showing is that he is ignorant. Valve, fire your PR man and get someone with a clue.

 

[BlumenKohl]

Valve is crap at communication. Period. Unprofessional.

 

[silent]

It don't matta what he's tryin to say
He's just kissin ass after a bad day
Sun fried his brain
Now he ain't okay

...Long as he aint gay?

 

[Chris D]

He's actually trying to point out that Fragmaster is; rather than being a proper fan jounalist; an arrogant, opinionated and biased.

Just look back at the delay stuff. Yes, he was right, but did he go about things in the right way?

 

[not28]

He's implying that PHL is accurate and extremely biased. Watch the O'Reilly Factor.

 

[Myself]

Great show, a voice of reason amid the miasma of crappy news, and what he was really trying to do as far as I can tell is appeal to the uninformed that assume that Fox news is a poor network because liberals say so.

 

[BlumenKohl]

Fox is awesome. (Uber-conservative I am)

MSNBC has someone like O'Reilly, Joe Scarborough.

 

[not28]

Originally posted by BlumenKohl
Fox is awesome. (Uber-conservative I am)

MSNBC has someone like O'Reilly, Joe Scarborough.

Every time I see that guy I think he's a cross between Matthew Perry and Bill O'Reilly.

(edit) somehow I get the feeling this is going to turn into a big liberal vs. conservative mudslinging event. For the record, I'm a moderate.

 

[Myself]

Yeah it is

 

[theneb]

http://news.valvesoftware.com
If ONLY!
I'd wish they wud clear all the mess up. If all the game got out say "Yeah We got got" and "We need to do this, this and this. It'll be ready <insert date>"
CLARITY Valve CLARITY.
And I thought I was bad with communication.

 

[Spiffae]

I'd like to address what he said though. My job is not to keep the community up to date with the latest rumors and speculation (which is really all that's available at the moment) and hacker doings, nor is it to post my editorialized thoughts of recent events, nor is it to leak news about an on-going criminal investigation (you can probably imagine the trouble that would lead to).

Ironically (is it really? or is that just an overused word?), my job was hardly affected by recent events. I've continued working on Half-Life 2 mod resources and other internal projects with only a slight loss in time due to checking my own network security (I work off-site and I appear to be clean). So, I'm doing my job just fine.

read that. ongoing criminal investigation. If Valve says "oh, yeah, we've got James B. Smitty under suspicion for going in to our network through port 27993, and we're going to make the game just as soon as we can figure out if anyone else is currently perusing our network", that wouldn't help the FBI. Or the community.

Be patient.

 

[Spacemonkey]

Fox news is putrid infortainment. Its biased, its overtly go American. Its shallow and editorialises. Its also demeans the news by showing seriousl issues in a mtv fashion.

Valve has crap pr. Most game companies do. Its not the way programmers think. Its not the way those companies are historically structured. I bet they have a crap hr department to.

Fragmaster is an idiot. Journalists are not meant to editorialise. Nobody cares his opinion. Its redundant and irrelevant to the news. If he wishes to voice his opinion, then I would sugges the tries something:
- informed
- in his own column, away from news.

Thankyou

 

[khaos4004]

Bad PR??? What are you smoking? Did it completely erase your memory?

Before all of this happened, Gabe Newell answered almost every e-mail that was sent to him about HL2. The man gave away his home phone number even! I cannot say the same for any other lead designers working on projects this large. It was unique and I loved it, felt that he was really interacting with the community. Now that they are keeping tight-lipped (and sometimes not so tight-lipped), people come down on them like their the biggest baddest developer on the planet.

They are keeping quiet and not releasing a ton of info because

1) It is a legal investigation and they don't want to tip the guy off by saying anything stupid.
2) They are running on a very limited internet right now for security reasons.
3) Comments about frag, were probably said out of frustration. I'm sure their running very long hours right now doing damage control.

Lets not foget two more things. I call it, why VALVe doesn't hate the community.

1) Counter-Strike. They've kept it alive for 4-5 years with updates.
2) Gabe's e-mail's to fans of HL2.

 

[zitbug]

There's no doubt about the commitment Valve have put in into the gaming community. Big bucks aside, they have given us more than we can ever repay.

 

[Democritus]

The bad PR is the following:
1. Not having an official news / Press Release page so that every time there is news it takes 24-48 hours to tell if that was REALLY Gabe in the email or some fak0rz.
2. Promising the last 3 e3 vids after Steam beta ended and not delivering
3. Promising the benchmark and not delivering
4. Promising the game and not delivering (see PHLs 2nd Delay movie)
5. No HL2 Official Website with stuff on it? Hello?
6. Just, in general, being incommunicado during important times in HL2 development (i.e. waiting till Sept 26th to tell us the Game's delayed??)

Answering mod questions thru email doesn't quite cut it for "good PR" for the rest of us who don't care about " will thex function in the y module will allow you to flip the whatzahoozit like it did in HL1 or is it different this time" kinds of questions. We want to know (1) Where's the game at? No really? (2) What's MP like? (3) Can I have some FRESH media (of the non-hacked variety) so I won't get kicked off the board for discussing it.

 

[Spacemonkey]

Perhaps you are mistaking answering fan email on an independantly run board as Public Relations.

Press Releases. Talking to News Outlets. Thats PR. Talking to you is something to do between compiles and reaches a very limited audience. The information released has to be focused, accurate and controlled. Thats PR. Not Gabe typing witty remarks to inane emails on his doughnut break.

 

[BlumenKohl]

Originally posted by zitbug
There's no doubt about the commitment Valve have put in into the gaming community. Big bucks aside, they have given us more than we can ever repay.

Just remember, you pay 170% more than the actual value of the game.

 

[Viper118]

Originally posted by Democritus
The bad PR is the following:
1. Not having an official news / Press Release page so that every time there is news it takes 24-48 hours to tell if that was REALLY Gabe in the email or some fak0rz.
2. Promising the last 3 e3 vids after Steam beta ended and not delivering
3. Promising the benchmark and not delivering
4. Promising the game and not delivering (see PHLs 2nd Delay movie)
5. No HL2 Official Website with stuff on it? Hello?
6. Just, in general, being incommunicado during important times in HL2 development (i.e. waiting till Sept 26th to tell us the Game's delayed??)

Very nicely stated. I couldn't agree more.