The Daily Grind: When do NDAs get counterproductive?

So they invited a bunch of people who talk about the game a lot for a sneak peek of the game's future and then forced them to not speak about it? OK, which PR guy came up with this brainwave?

I do not think the point is whether the NDA is counter-productive. Maybe in the case the author describes the whole PR stunt was useless : if the company does not want to show/publish details of their development yet, then do not show it.

That example is opposed to what is happening with the player council elected in EVE Online, the CSM, I think. The Council is bound by an NDA, too, and there is quite a lot of whining about it. B u t the big difference is that they are not simply shown new features to drool over them, but they are a stakeholder d u r i n g the development process. That means they are invitedby the development studio to exercise i n f l u e n c e.

So while in EVE Online the players whine that reports of the Council are not detailed enough, we can essentially be sure after all that the player base's opinion has still been brought to the developers. Not a question of the NDA, but how the process is set up.

The situation in the article, again, is not a farce n o t due to the NDA, but due to the producers not wanting to show off, but show off, but secret. So my guess is that business development said : we cannot give away the idea yet, the risk of IP theft is too big at this stage. While the marketing guys said : but, but, we m u s t start our campaign to build momentum for the launch. Corporate schizophrenia.

I sometimes think companies are so precious about their secrets, they don't even consider secrecy as being counterproductive.

WAR is hardly facing stiff competition for anything other than its dedicated fanbase and whilst people get grumpy if they look forward to a feature that doesn't make it, it might help people stick around if there's cool stuff on the horizon.

I sometimes look at "unofficial" information about TOR and I'm often bemused as to why they couldn't at least release more environment screenshots than one a week.

I think that Open Betas with NDAs work against themselves.

Unless they wanted to get a "third" opinion (designers and testers as one and two) on the quality of the content / features. Sometimes having a fresh set of eyes looking at something gives a good Sanity check on what you are doing. Inviting people who are passionate enough about the game to host a blog seems like a good, opinionated group to get feedback from, does it not?

If they get a pile of negative feedback then they have to make changes and that NDA means that feedback doesn't get back to the rest of the community. If the feedback is overwhelmingly positive then you can always release them from said NDA.

That's my take on it anyway.

NDAs are only a bad thing when the company uses them to prevent the consumer from knowing about the product and this only happens when they know that the product isn't good enough.

This isn't the case with the WAR thing or with many instances where NDAs come up.

Those times when the game is in beta and you have people around the web saying things like "this game is sucks i cant say more 'cause of NDA". If you don't lift that NDA soon and show that you are not hiding something horrible and that in fact you appreciate feedback you are just going to prove every one of those right.

Well I don't blame them I mean look how badly things turned out for ArenaNet after they let Bloggers visit their offices - the public learned all sorts of new stuff about the game and the anticipation level increased noticeably. Warhammer Online is a different sort of product I guess, maybe being forgotten and left for dead works for them.

As for them being paranoid about excessive negative feedback - if that is a real possibility maybe it's time to hire some new designers. Figuring out what the community would like after many years of the game being live shouldn't be a 50-50 shot kind of challenge.

Are we talking about the game whose last press release was on December 3, 2009?
It seems coherent from Mythic, they don't seem to be willing to talk about their game: maybe they fired their PR staff and forgot to hire someone new.

3rd faction, free to play and Borg Skaven. Nah, just kidding, no idea. Shame really, thought that's what blogs were for, to tell people stuff from a personal perspective. It's like inviting tailors to a nude beach.

Didn't APB's NDA last a week after launch? Probably not counter-productive to the publisher since they would have fooled a lot less customers if it were taken away earlier than that.

There is only one company that know's how to keep secrets, It's called Valve. I hate and love them for it.