Re: Map Generator....

From: gherbert@crl3.crl.com (George Herbert)

Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Following myself up a bit...
George Herbert <gherbert@crl3.crl.com> wrote:
>Marketing clearly covers both sides of the coin.  Denying that the
>consumer-oriented design and presentation side of it are consumer
>friendly is idiotic.  Denying that the push-to-sell is in the company's
>benefit and not in all cases to the customers benefit is also idiotic.
>There are both natural tensions and natural cooperations between
>producers and consumers, and marketing is involved in both.

After posting this, I thought of a few examples within the
gaming industry of where marketing type research has done
a company specific good and not necessarily led to the
company becoming overly push-to-sell oriented.

I would take the evolution of Steve Jackson Games as the
best example of this effect.  SJG is one of the great old ones
in the gaming industry... not continuously as a company from
the very earliest, but Steve goes back a long ways prior to
his forming his own company so we can see the continuous
evolution of what his work and then his companys' work
have been.

Steve goes back into Metagaming's Microgames era.  Remember where
the origional Ogre came from?  Tiny maps and counters, hard to
work with (and always getting lost, darn it).  Well written but
not really excellently laid out rules.  GEV improved somewhat.
Steve's other games from that era show other user friendlyness
improvements as time goes on.

Track this forwards through SJG, early Car Wars, then GURPS,
later editions of games, etc.  Clearly evolution guided by
market research... SJG has been in the forefront of well laid
out well written well indexed game publishing for some time
now as a result of it and is continuing to adapt and improve
a bit over time, though there's not much to complain about in
any of their relatively recent work.

Despite this obvious paying attention to marketing's research
and customer user interface and customer experience happyness,
SJG has not been participating in the sort of push marketing
which is decried by Henry and others.  Far from it, as anyone
who's been around for a while has seen.

-george william herbert
gherbert@crl.com

References

Re: Map Generator....
Ilya <ilya@spam.free.gamecommandos.com>
Tue, 18 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Map Generator....
Carol Mulholland <Carol@flagship-uk.demon.co.uk>
Sun, 23 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Map Generator....
htp@mac.com (Henry)
Mon, 24 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Map Generator....
gherbert@crl3.crl.com (George Herbert)
Sun, 23 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

Re: Map Generator....
Ilya <ilya@spam.free.gamecommandos.com>
Tue, 18 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Map Generator....
Carol Mulholland <Carol@flagship-uk.demon.co.uk>
Sun, 23 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Map Generator....
htp@mac.com (Henry)
Mon, 24 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Map Generator....
gherbert@crl3.crl.com (George Herbert)
Sun, 23 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000