Emergent Future

Company Blogs

Tuesday, 09 September 2008

It appears that Mark Jacob's, General Manager of Mythic Entertainment, has caused a bit of a stir through his blog. There have been numerous responses to this, but the situation does beg a few questions. I believe Cuppycake , the community manager for Metaplace (look! I'm highlighting a major point!*) , covered one of those points, but I'd like to look at something else. Are blogs for developers a good thing at all? How about blogs for a company?

I do believe that blogs are good things, and I believe that they can be a good thing for both game developers and for their companies. Of course they can also be horribly bad things as well. First off, a blog tends to be more informal, less ridged, and it shows a great deal more personality than official news posts. They also have a tendency to be updated more frequently, and can potentially serve as a way to help form a bridge between the community and the company. They really can be used in interesting ways.

The Metaplace site shows a certain amount of potential because of its blog. However, I have a very difficult time calling it that. Really, it isn't terribly different than the news page for any other website. They post infrequently and talk about the same things that most websites would in their news pages. That said, there is some potential there. This post , for example, talks about the team and some of the craziness they had over a weekend. This post gives the reader some insight into the culture of Areae. It makes them seem, well, human and fun. It brings the community closer to the developers and the company as a whole. This is a fantastic post that shows how useful a blog (not a news page) could be for a company. It just isn't utilized nearly enough, in my opinion.

Sigil Games Online (defunct as they are) did something similar with a daily picture of their office and, more often than not, the employees doing something crazy, decorated desks, and people hard at work. It created a certain connection to the company and the people who worked there, as well as displaying some of the culture of the company.

Of course, that isn't the only possible use for a company blog, but I do think it is a good use. Blogs are versatile. I read quite a few. Some are rather serious blogs that cover rather serious topics. Others are whimsical and fun. They're a major part of the Internet these days, so utilizing them just seems to make all kinds of sense to me.

However, blogs can go bad. The Mark Jacob's fiasco (which is an over-strong word, really) points this out fairly well. He created a personal blog - which is great, another developer's blog for me to read - but then said things directly related to his company and the game they are working on. The problem with this is, he's Mark Jacob's. He's the General Manager of Mythic Entertainment. Personal blog or not, that is gospel.

*Note: Cuppycake runs a personal blog, however I still refer to her full title, because if she states anything about Metaplace or Areae, I'd take it as gospel from their community manager, too.
Tags: metaplace mark jacobs warhammer online mythic

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