Gee, where to begin?
I guess I'll start out by saying that I don't give a darn about TWO or its success. EA Sports is its own giant and has a huge corner on the market when it comes to sports games. Even if they put out a halfway decent product, they'll do fine with revenue. My experiences over there were pretty good, not great, not awful. The best part about it, surprisingly, was the ability to chat to developer personnel in real time while I was playing the game, giving and getting feedback. They knew who I was, in terms of being the top gun over here at WGT for a long time, and they really seemed to value my input. I say I'm surprised by that because they are such a huge gaming giant, and I never expected that such a giant would be so active and transparent with its development.
That being said, we move onto WGT. Now, I've been playing some form of World Golf Tour game for nearly 2 years now. I've spoken personally many times with the co-founder, and many of the staff over the years. The relationship used to be a good one, but over the course of the last year the business practices here have become terrible in my opinion.
I get little to no response to the feedback I provide, and it's not a stretch or a boast to say that no one has played this game more than I have. I've questioned the direction that they have taken on many occasions and given them fair warning as to the consequences of being so secretive and non-responsive to legitimate and factually based concerns and questions of their patrons.
For instance, for months there was an issue with the 7 irons not functioning properly. If you do a search for 7 iron you'll find the threads I'm referring to. At any rate, so many of the players agreed, noticing the exact same problems. Error report after error report got filed not just by me, but by so many of the top players here. After months of no response, I finally took it upon myself to video 16 or so consecutive clips of the 7 iron malfunctioning on both courses, and sent them in to WGT via email. The response? "Oh, we'll have to look at this on the test server and see if we can duplicate your results.". I mean, come on, this had been going on for months and months and only now they were getting around to looking at it on the test server? What was the point of all of those error reports that had been sent in? I am the test server, hello? A few thousand shots with a 7 iron....yeah, I think I know when it's not working right.
Being treated like some noobie who doesn't know anything about the game when in fact the very opposite is the case is pretty bad business. If anyone knows when something becomes out of whack with this game, it's me. I've played so many rounds through all of the changes they've undergone, and I'm talking upwards of an additional 1200 rounds beyond the 1250+ I've actually recorded, that I can tell when things aren't working. My continued success at this game speaks for itself, it's not just about having a good clicker-finger you know. I know the game.
So now, what do I get from WGT? Emails that go unanswered. Telephone calls that go unanswered. Bug log threads that go unanswered, like here, and here, and here, and here. One of those is almost 6 months old and has been bumped 3 times. Meanwhile I watch the forums everyday and the admins replying instantly to some topic that has been replied to in some shape or form dozens of times over. It's quite ludicrous, and as I stated above, it's very bad business. If you look at those bug reports I listed above, they happen to cover quite a bit of the operation of the game. They aren't some obscure minor details to be trifled with and ignored.
I was asked to play this Beta, be involved in the forums, point out the errors, help guide other players, and I've done all of that. However, for my observations and opinions I've been ostracized, attacked, and hung out to dry in more ways than I'm even allowed to speak of without being banned. It's no way to treat any player, never mind your virtual poster boy for the game.
So, I'm still here, doing what I do, playing and testing the game, pointing things out as I see them, helping people along on occasion. Fortunately there are other good people on this site who are equally adept at helping new players out, and am happy to share the load.
This game is in Beta, and I am the most experienced Beta tester they have. It's not the job of a Beta tester to blow happy smoke rings about things, it's our job to try and break the game and/or point out where it is broken. There is more in Beta than just the testing of the game itself, however. This is a massive undertaking involving social networking, forum administration, developer transparency and interaction, tournament organization, ranking systems, etc. You can see for yourself that in many of those areas, it is clear that the administration here are very new and inexperienced at how to manage those elements. I've pointed out those shortcomings as well over the years, and as I said above, for that I am a virtual outcast.
Make no mistake about it, I want this game to succeed, i always have. So many of us have wanted to be more involved in the game, but we've been held at arms length and given virtually no information as far as transparency with development. It's been suggested to them to sign non-disclosure agreements to do advanced Beta testing before product is released. Nope, they don't want it. We're the Beta team, but we can't know what the plan is? We can't talk to the developers themselves and provide real-time examples of our observations? That's really not a good idea at all, in fact it's a terrible way to develop something, and helps explain why things move at a snails pace around here. This isn't National Security, it's a golf game.
Part of the learning curve for them must be to learn from mistakes, and I can honestly say how I've been treated is a mistake. My continued presense here on the forums, what I write about, and the criticism/critiques I give are all direct consequences of those mistakes.
So if you sense a sour tone to my posts, you'd be correct in doing so. I'm not giving up on the game nevertheless. I enjoy playing it and will continue to so long as I'm not banned out of existence. I still am here to do Beta testing, to point out glitches and bugs and flaws, to give my input as to how the game could be made better, etc. If my suggestions and reports fall on deaf ears, then so be it. Just don't expect my loyalty and 2 big thumbs up for WGT if that's how it's to be.