An open letter to CCP

Dear CCP,


It's become pretty apparent to many of us over the last few days that when it comes to crisis management, your company, quite frankly, sucks. A lot of the anger/ disappointment/ hurt / outrage you're seeing could have been avoided by handling this whole thing properly from the get-go. A lot of it is in direct response to the way you've handled things - people who are not particularly upset about NeX prices, the Incarna expansion destroying other people's hardware, or even the possibility of 'pay 2 win' in Eve are upset over the piss-poor response of CCP to these issues being raised by others. 


Now, I get that people who are focused on producing an Internet spaceships games, sorry, complete scifi simulator, are not necessarily people who have a lot of experience in what to do when the shit hits the fan corporately. However, many of your players have a wide-range of life experience and professional backgrounds, and mine is in precisely this area. 


Here's a few tips for the next time you find yourself in this kind of situation:


Inoculate, inoculate,  inoculate.


Put your umbrella up before the shit starts raining down on you.  


Now, I get that you might have been taken by surprise by the reaction of a large section of the playerbase to the Incarna expansion. In fact, from the various comments by the CSM members, it looks like you deliberately insulated yourself from any possibility of finding out that the response was going to be negative. Don't do that. Even if you have no intention of deviating from your plan one iota, finding out that people don't like it allows you to pre-plan your response strategy, have releases pre-approved and ready to go, engage trusted communicators in selling your message about why your plan is the right one, soften up the ground through staged leaks and limited information release, and manage expectations.  


If people had heard a month ago that there were probably going to be some problems with CQ for even high-end machines and many players would have to turn it off, but CCP felt they couldn't solve those problems through SISI testing alone, so were going to release it on schedule, then they would have been prepared to monitor GPU temps on startup, and when their graphics cards started spiking dangerously high temperatures, their response would have been 'Cool looking room and avatar, glad CCP is on the job of fixing it'. Instead of, as it was, "WTF do you seriously think this is release ready it just ate my GTX 580". 


Likewise, if people had heard a month ago that the NeX store was going to pioneer a whole new concept in micro-transactions, i.e. that they not be micro, by including items that cost as much or more than their IRL equivalents, and that these would be all that was available on release due to concerns over PLEX prices and the ongoing difficulties of bedding down a new currency in the game, then when they logged in for the first time, their reaction would have been 'Huh, they weren't kidding about the prices, hey?' Instead of, as it was, "WTF are you guys thinking, clearly my sub fees are being spent on crack for the Bizdev team."


People react badly to surprises. This is not new in human nature. We all have expectations about the future - if I go to sleep tonight, I'll wake up in the morning; when I drive to work, I won't get in a fatal car crash; if the price of a litre of milk yesterday was $2.05, tomorrow it will be that or close to it. Now, I get that you have a corporate culture of taking great pride in flying in the face of expectations. However, successfully doing so requires clear communication that you know what those expectations are and have clear reasons for defying them. Neither of those things has been present in any CCP communications either pre or post Incarna deployment. Thus, you don't look revolutionary, cool, ground-breaking or edgy. 


You just look out of touch.


This is not good for any company, but it's particularly problematic for a company whose business is technological. 


So next time, inoculate, inoculate, inoculate. 


Get on the front foot.


Leaving aside the problem that you really should have known what was coming, let's assume you were genuinely blind-sided by the reaction.  You may well have been genuinely blind-sided by the leak of your internal newsletter, although I will point out that 'two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead' is still as true as ever in the Internet age. 


You need to respond.


Yes, big corporations have complex management structures, multiple layers of approval, and processes that slow things down. However, well-run big corporations have clear plans for who does what when those established, day-to-day processes won't cut it. They have people who are authorised to speak, even if only to issue holding statements. They have people authorised to make the high-and-wide calls - often with the understanding that if they get it wrong, they'll be personally hung out to dry. And, if all else fails, they have a CEO. 


The silence from CCP over several days here has made everything worse for you. When unexpected problems arise, you need to get out in front of them, and fast. Seize the momentum of the discussion - and make it clear to everybody that you are, at the very least, aware of the nature and magnitude of the problem. 


This isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. Getting on the front foot doesn't mean immediately agreeing with all criticism, nor does it mean doing a backflip on policy. It does, however, mean fast and honest responses: "We understand there is a problem, we are talking about it internally, let me explain to you how we made the decision that has upset you."


Treat people and their feelings with respect.


I appreciate that if you're looking for respect, the Eve-O forums isn't exactly the first place you'd go. I also appreciate that, as is clear from the tone of pretty much all communication from your company either on the forums, through DevBlogs or on twitter, the over-riding reaction inside CCP to all this is 'lol get a clue n00bs'.


I, also, have on many occasions in my professional life been faced with complaints and criticisms that I think are unjustified, unreasonable, and just plain dumb. 


However, regardless of how wrong I think they are, I have never considered it acceptable to treat them with contempt. Apart from anything else, this makes any bad situation worse.


Please let your employees know that snide remarks, ill-timed humour and general flippancy is not appropriate when dealing with people who are upset / angry / saddened. If they're angry, and you're laughing, they will experience that as contempt for their feelings and themselves, even if you don't mean it. 


Even simple statements of acknowledgement can go a long way. CCP Zulu's Devblog would have been incalculably improved with the inclusion of the sentences, "We realise that many of you do not agree with the strategy we've chosen.  We, however, think it's the right one." Instead, the whole tone is 'What do you not get about this, morons?' 


Address the real issue.


This is a bit of a subset of both 'get on the front foot' and 'treat people with respect'. One of the most damaging things to CCP's brand over the last few days has been the non-response responses. When you say you're 'responding' but don't address the key concern that's been raised with you - in this case, 'pay 2 win' possibilities - you look like you either don't have a clue about what people are thinking, or don't care. And given the multiple threadnaughts on your forums about this very issue, not having a clue translates into not caring anyway. 


It may be the case that all you can say about that particular issue is, 'Changing business models is something every responsible company has to be open to. We will involve the community in any decisions we make about this in the future.' That doesn't commit you to taking or not taking a particular course of action, but it does let people know that you have realised what they're upset about. And that goes a long way - most people, even on issues they feel very strongly about, are willing to accept decisions they disagree with so long as they feel that their disagreement has been heard and respected.  


I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you both hear and respect the opinions of the very many players who have written, posted, blogged and tweeted about this issue. You need to let them know that's the case.  It's okay to also let them know you disagree with them: do not, however, ignore them. 


Own your decisions.


If you are passionately convinced that a controversial decision is the right one, you should be prepared to passionately defend it. If you feel it's publicly indefensible, you need to re-examine the decision.  


If no-one below the CEO is authorised to defend and own the decision, the CEO needs to be the one in public. Sending out people to say 'I can't say anything' makes the problem worse. If you're not sure about the decision and you don't want to commit the whole company to dying in a ditch for it, send out the people inside the company who agree with it to make their case as individuals why they think it's the right thing. People respect honesty and commitment even when they disagree.


The inability of CCP to put forward strong, immediate arguments in favour of their strategy very much gave the impression that no-one in the company cared to defend the decisions - either because they didn't care what players thought of them, or because they didn't feel the decisions were defensible.


Either of these is a real problem.


Perception is reality.


I get the feeling from a lot of your corporate and staff communications that you think what you have here is a perception problem. There's been a lot of stuff about 'we should have communicated better' and so on. 


There is no such thing as a perception problem in business. If you have a perception problem, you have a problem.


Protecting your brand.


I am assuming that there are people in your corporation who understand the importance of branding. 


CCP and Eve have an enviable brand. Brave start-up, defying expectations, visionary, the game for people who like hard-mode, the game where the devs grief the players and everyone laughs, etc. 


What I think your marketing and BizDev people (and if the leaked email is real, your CEO) have forgotten is that this brand is not solely created and maintained by CCP themselves. As any clothing company which gives free samples to celebrities and refuses to make sizes above 'small' knows, the identity of your customers is part of your brand.  


One of the very successful things Eve has done in the past is protect its 'elitist jerk' brand while actually opening up the game to more players. Everyone wants to be one of the special ones: no-one wants to be one of the consumerist cattle. Persuading people that behaving like consumerist cattle makes them one of the special ones is at the heart of all successful businesses in modern consumer capitalism. (c.f. Apple)


This illusion breaks down when people start to feel that purchasing your product marks them out as one of the cattle. 


Now, I get that you were trying to do the opposite with monocle-gate. An item that only 52 people out of 300k would buy? How special must those 52 people be to have it, right?


The problem is, your success is based on the illusion that everyone who plays Eve is one of the special ones.   We're too hard-core for WOW, or so we tell ourselves. The infamous learning curve, the HTFU ethos, the 'can I have ur stuff' response to people who are quitting, it's all part of it. You are selling membership to a small and exclusive club, or rather, you are selling the illusion of membership to a small and selective club. 


That is the Eve brand. 


When you put out public messaging that 99.9% of your players are not part of the club, and that you don't give two shits about that, you have immediately damaged that brand. And let's be clear, what you are selling is a brand, not a game or an experience. There are a lot of those out there. You are selling the idea of 'being an Eve player'. The minute 'being an Eve player' starts to mean, being an idiot willing to be fleeced by a corporation that doesn't care about them, you have reduced the value of your product.


One way you could have avoided damaging your brand, while still maintaining the strategy of exclusive, high end  items in the NeX store, is actually something you have done in previous expansions: give existing players a shiny. In the past, those have been free ships. They are markers of membership to the club of 'people who were playing when X happened.' You could have created a special vanity item for Incarna and given it to every player, a visible 'I played Eve before you could leave your pod' badge. 


For future controversial decisions, for example if /when you introduce game-affecting items in the NeX store, you should strongly consider that as an option. It will enhance, rather than damage, the brand that has made you successful.




In conclusion


I have not here put forward any of my own opinions on the actual content of current or rumoured strategies at CCP. I have made those opinions known on the forums, but I accept that like any company, you will make both long and short-term decisions based on your own priorities, which may not agree with mine as your customer. I understand, too, that you may have decided to chase a new customer base, and so don't really care that your decisions risk alienating many of your existing customers.


However, it is not actually necessary to chose between these two options. Attracting new and different players does not require trashing your existing brand. Following the simple steps above will allow you to shift and even radically change your corporate direction with a minimum, rather than a maximum, of collateral damage. 


As someone who enjoys your product and would like to see your company continue to grow and succeed, I hope that you will handle future controversial strategic decisions with a bit more finesse. 


Remember:

1. Inoculate
2. Get on the front foot
3. Treat people with respect
4. Address the real issue
5. Own your decisions
6. Perception is reality
7. Protect your brand.