1. Find a recent Incident where the actions of a company led to a severe backlash
online or in sales. Document the incident and the backlash
2. Clearly Define the Problem that led to this incident
3. Imagine a scenario where you had both the responsibility, authority, resources and
100% foresight before the Incident. Define the Goal that the company was trying to
achieve when this all blew up.
4. Come up with reasonable alternatives that would have averted or prevented the
problem and present this as Strategies that would have achieved the same Goal while
avoiding the problem
Incident:
The game development company “Hello Games”, released the game “No Man’s
Sky” on August 9th, 2016
As usual with games at launch, it was full of bugs. Some of the bugs made things
look weird, some of them caused the player to not be able to progress, but most
importantly some customers weren’t even able to start the game because of bugs. Not
only were the bugs obvious, but after some patches players began to notice how much
of the promised content was missing. The game did not live up to all of the hype and
anticipation surrounding it, making the situation worse .
Along with multiple patches, they responded with a post on their website:
Hello,
Over the last few weeks since No Man’s Sky released we’ve been
inundated with feedback and discussion about No Man’s Sky.
No matter what feedback you gave us, you have been heard and we are
listening carefully. Thank you.
Here’s what we’ve been busy with in the weeks since release:
• A community/support management team has been brought on board.
• Support issues raised have been categorized by that team, and we are
fixing them in order of priority.
• We’ve released a bunch of patches for PC and PS4.
• We’ve written up patch notes for all those patches. You can find them
here.
What matters now, as always, is what we do rather than what we say.
We’re developers, and our focus is first on resolving any issues people
have with the game as it is, then on future free updates which will improve,
expand and build on the No Man’s Sky universe.
This is a labor of love for us, and it’s just the beginning.
If you have suggestions please mail feedback@hellogames.co.uk
Thank you,
Hello Games
The public saw this as the right thing to do as a game company, own up to your
mistake and fix it. Many were still unhappy with the content of the game, which is what
the developers focused on in the following years of the game’s release. They released
multiple free updates that each brought a new wave of content and features going
above and beyond initial promises.
Problem:
Due to marketing decisions and early promises, the game had gigantic
expectations to fulfill before a fully working demo was even made. The game was
announced at E3 in 2014 with Sony as the publisher. From the start it got people
excited, too excited. The development team was not as experienced as other developer
teams making similar sized competing games. This resulted in a massive under delivery
at launch, both in the lacking promised content as well as the number of bugs making
the game unplayable.
Goal:
Hello Games wanted as much excitement as possible, pouring all of their ideas and cool
features into their initial trailer to release at E3 in 2014. They wanted as many
pre-orders as possible to maximize profit and make the game they wanted to make.
Strategies:
1. Delay Game for fixing: The Developer team could have decided the game
wasn’t ready, and depending on the rest of the company they could have delayed
the release date.
This would have given the dev team more time, allowing them to fix more
bugs as well as deliver a product closer to what they promised earlier.
The goal of pre-release hype remains unchanged and is still achievable,
although there might be less hype than if there were no delays.
2. Announce Game Later: This may be hard to do, and you will lose some money
compared to announcing earlier, but you would have a much better idea of what
the actual released game would look like. You would still be able to make an
awesome trailer and announce at E3 (just not 2014), while not over-promising
content for inevitable dissatisfaction from customers
The goal of pre-release hype remains unchanged and is still achievable,
although possibly less hype would be generated. In turn this would decrease
dissatisfaction from customers.
Links:
- Post by Hello Games:
- https://www.nomanssky.com/2016/09/development-update/
- E3 2014 Announcement Trailer
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLtmEjqzg7M