According to the blog, Mark wholeheartedly supports the gamer's right to be upset or disappointed about a product as a whole, or an incident. He doesn't, however, support people expressing those frustrations in hateful and abusive ways. This is a big part of the reason that Mythic chooses not to use official forums for their MMOs. I asked Mark if this was a decision that they were still happy with, given that the GOA situation gave rise to a number of player complaints about the lack of forums.
"Thrilled, overjoyed, enraptured," he answered enthusiastically. "Look, here's the bottom line. What I said in my blog, and what I've always said publicly is that I respect the player's right to be disappointed, to be angry, to be frustrated. We are supposed to provide a service. If we don't provide the service then you have, as a customer, every right to be upset with us. What I don't support, what I'll never support is what some people see as their right to not only cross the line but then to erase it and draw a whole new line miles in the distance. You can't say the things that some people say. That's wrong. You can't make the threats that people make. That's wrong. You can't heap abuse on other people. That's wrong. Be angry, be frustrated, absolutely. Complain? Absolutely. I get it. But the stuff that some of those people are saying... the death threats, the vulgarity. No one should have to put up with this. I am still 100% behind the stay away from the official forum bit."
Just speaking with him for a few minutes on the topic really gives you a sense of how passionately Mark feels about this particular subject.
"... I think that when you do what we do with the Herald, which is a tremendous flow of information. When you do what we do with in-game feedback, when you do what we do with community outreach... there is no need for an official forum. People point to some games and say 'look, there's a game that had official forums and succeeded.' Yeah, but there are also games that had official forums and failed. Then there are companies like us that never had official forums, and we succeeded with Dark Age. I don't believe that official forums contribute at all to their success and frankly, when people say that it contributes to the community... No, in some cases it contributes to a mob not a community. They're very different things."
From there, I asked Mark what he could say to people who complain that not having an official forum is a way to escape accountability for the company and for issues with the game.
"What is accountability?" Mark asked. "Is accountability the fact that you can get a community manager who has nothing to do with the game development (not saying Mythic but at a lot of companies the CM has nothing to do with the game other than being community managers)... to go on the forums and have abuse heaped on him? That's not accountability. That's like putting out a goat for the Tyrannosaurus in Jurassic Park. Accountability is when the players vote with their credit card. That's accountability. If they players feel we aren't doing our job, they should cancel. I've always said that. We are accountable that way."
"In terms of reaching out to the community," he continued, "nobody in this industry does it better than us. Not on the large scale. I can't talk about the smaller games, but if you look at EverQuest and WoW and LotRO or any of those games, we spend more time reaching out to the community than any other development team. I'm on the boards, other people are on the boards and we will continue to be going forward. We are accountable that way, but we're more accountable to the players by their use of their credit cards. If they don't like the job we're doing, they should cancel. That's the best way to send any developer a message."
He rounded out the answer by saying that, "If people think that accountability is just their need to vent their spleen at some community manager, that's not accountability. That's just people heaping abuse on somebody in order to feel better."
