Well, I’ve finally given in and decided to start blogging. It’s something I’ve tried to resist over the years. I’ve also not posted directly on the forums, and it’s mainly because it takes so much time. Many of the issues discussed on the forums are deep and complex, and the arguments well put and compelling. Writing considered and persuasive responses that really deal with the issue is time consuming, and that is time I can’t spend working on the games.

It is not Mr. Simpson's job to write considered and persuasive responses to our pleas for better AI. It is his job to make sure the dev team delivers to the community what is needed to have a working game. It makes no sense that before this time when people complained there was no time to respond but now there is.

I can now add more quality to the games by talking to the community than I can by fixing issues.

This is actually the no brainer, because without communication you don't know what to fix. It makes no sense that there was no time to talk before, but now that you are hard at work on NTW you have time to discuss the problems with ETW. This is very suspicious.

Quite simply, the quality of what we produce depends directly on how much we get to spend on developing them. How much we spend depends directly on how many people buy the games. The user feedback on sites like IGN directly impacts sales, and that impacts how positively our publisher views the future of Total War, which determines how much we get to spend on the games.

In the movie, The Running Man, we would be seeing the flashing text saying, "Killian is lying to you!!!"

A) The quality of a game does not depend on how much you get to spend on the team. It does effect how many team members you get to hire which in turn determines how long it will take for a product to get completed. That's like Cheverolet saying, "The quality of car you buy from us is directly related to the amount of money you pay us." Who would buy a $12,000 car? You would then expect lower quality because you aren't paying $30,000. You would expect that the $30,000 would have better brakes, tires, windshield wipers, engines, harnesses, and body construction. You would expect the $12,000 care to be a death trap. Why? Because quality is related to cost. No sir. Quality is based on the commitment to excellence of the team putting the product together. Value is when I get more than what I paid for. Quality is what should come with everything I purchase.

B) If how much you spent was directly related to the game then the game should grow by leaps and bounds, not take steps backwards as has been the case with RTW up to now. NTW should almost be a different game because the engine should have been so completely overhauled and made to be some kind of a beast that pummels Shogun as like a pre-historic piece of grass. The games have sold in the millions of copies at $50 each, plus $30 for the expansions. That's $80+ million for each Total War title. Movie studios don't enjoy such elaborate successes. But as you are finding out, consumer purchasing is directly related to part A. You just told us that if we don't part B, you can't part A. This is an incorrect business model. You deliver qualify FIRST. Then we deliver our money.

C) If feedback determines how much you get to spend on the game, then you have been in trouble for a long time. You just didn't know it because everyone was being nice. Now people aren't being nice anymore. NTW is in danger of not selling and you have been asked to try and smooth things over with a community that is abandoning the marketshare.

Normally it’s a virtuous circle, and that’s allowed us to be very ambitious with what we try to deliver. We were not entirely happy with the state of Empire: Total War when it went out, and are only now getting to a point where we are broadly speaking happy with the game. Our own threshold for how we’d like the game to be is much higher than the commercial threshold required by our publisher. We are, like our community, hardcore fans of our own products, and any imperfections drive us nuts.

That's funny. Perhaps that guy promoting Napolean didn't get the memo that as a compay you guys weren't happy with the state of Empire, because that guy said he was very proud of Empire. And what do you mean ambitious? What are the primarily ambitious additions to Empire? Siege works? Been done before. Real time battles? Been done before. Turn based strategy? Been done before. Tech trees? Been done before. Naval comabt? Been done before. Diplomacy? Been done before. Guns? Been done before.

There is not a single thing I can think of about ETW that hasn't been done before either by you in the TW series or by a competitor in a different game. There is no ambition here. Only addition. By the way, I love how you threw the publisher under the bus and will later make a comment on how you won't say anything that will get you sued or fired. It's a huge red flag that the company knows you are writing this and has approved you bashing the parent to reach the masses.

With Empire: Total War, the virtuous circle turned a little vicious. The community used user ratings and user comments on sites like IGN and Metacritic to highlight weaknesses in the game, to try to encourage us to fix existing issues before working on anything new.

I’m not saying that we didn’t deserve to have a fair number of verbal bricks thrown our way.

However overdoing the criticism (For example I think a 67% user score on Metacritic is unfair), has the opposite effect to what is intended. Gamers (and reviewers. retailers, marketeers and publishing execs) will be put off Total War. That could mean fewer sales and less money to spend on adding quality to the games.

Now Mike... I know you are a smart guy. You wouldn't be in the position you are unless you had some sort of university degree. But let's be realistic, ok? It is basic rule of life that if you don't receive criticsm you don't grow. If everyone tells you how great things are, you won't change anything. The problem here isn't people being unfair, it's CA being deaf. I have not read a single complaint on these boards that I did not hear about M2TW or RTW. So this is game three. You have to expect the voices not being heard to get a little louder if you aren't going to listen to them. For a game I have repeatedly heard as "beta released", you are lucky to get a 67%. And if you will take a moment to look at the job you have now been assigned you will see that just the opposite of what you said has occurred. We haven't damaged the game, we've damaged the wallets of the powers that be. We accomplished our goal, and because of that your team may just deliver a better product. It sounds to me like we are winning the battle. And it's about damn time.



The reason I have responded thus is two-fold. Being an actor and reading scripts has taught me a few things. People have a thing called "sub-text". It's what you aren't saying but you really mean. We don't realize how often our subtext comes out in what we write. It's difficult for the company proof reader to catch (ie. "...we have higher standards than our publishers... i won't say anything to get myself sued or fired..." um, if you're my employee and i didn't give permission for you to say such things, you're fired). This is why I know that you aren't writing to tell us what you are spending your time and our money on. You're doing it to try and rebuild consumer confidence in your product. Bad reviews, sagging sales, and flame wars brought on by the announcement of Napolean with weak pre-order outlooks have the PR and AD campaign teams scrambling to put the piss back in the bladder. CA has been evacuating on us for three games now and the community finally said enough is enough.

Secondly, I am also a student of the bible, which means a student of ancient literature. When it comes to ancient literature you have to know things like who the author is, who the audience is, why is the author writing, what time frame is it, and what is going on with the audience at the time of the writing. This establishes historical context so we can understand what the writer meant. Obviously this is helpful not just with ancient literature, but all literature. It will help people to read what I have written and divulge why I wrote it. This is why I know that you are not writing to prove that you are listening to the community. You are writing to SAY that you are listening to the community. If you were listening to the community it wouldn't have taken three games for it to come to this point. You would have fixed it a long time ago. Action is what will show us you are listening. Less talking, more fixing.

That said, maybe you should go back to what you said at the beginning. If you are talking, you aren't fixing. That's what I see. That's what I read. It's good that you mentioned patch 1.5. It's the only thing that makes your post worth reading. It's the only thing that might show you really are listening.