User talk:Relyk/Game Newsletter

Staff Changes, August 2014

I realize these newsletters are, in effect, a personal view of what's going on and usually I don't think they require comment or explanation. In this case, think the staff changes are open to a completely different interpretation: one is neutral or perhaps good for ANet and the game; I'm hopeful the other will be very good.

"Kate Welch and Martin Kerstein leave ArenaNet. This hits hard on ArenaNet doing livestreams, as Kate was popular on Points of Interest and related content. Martin released a tweet during the GuildMag riots. This is likely due to internal politics on handling the reaction, where being the community manager means he had to deal with all the issues whether or not it was his fault."

Welch's leaving is going to annoy her fans, but is unlikely to affect the quality of livestreams (her detractors would argue it's already improving them). (Personally, I love her enthusiasm and I also wish she wouldn't interrupt so much.)

Kerstein's leaving... From my viewpoint, he's done a horrible job of managing the community. ANet has had so many releases tarnished by something secondary or something completely unrelated. If he learned anything from his 8 years of experience, he wouldn't have let a some fanzine publish any interviews verbatim without a chance to edit/comment/follow-up (that's standard in the publicity industry) and he shouldn't have allowed the devs to interview without some company-line answers to questions they would likely be asked, e.g. "what's up with SAB" and "are you working on hard mode for dungeons." Those guys were deer-in-the-headlights against some lite-weight interviewers — no wonder they got misinterpreted up the wazoo. Perhaps more importantly, it was his job to notice the increasingly shrill responses on Reddit and the forums and that maybe ANet's decision to just about stop all-but-essential communication with NA/EU fans might be reaching a tipping point. He wasn't prepared for the community's overreaction and he absolutely could have & should have been.

Yes, of course Kerstein is left holding the bag for things that are and aren't his fault; that's part of the job of the CM, to take it for the team. In this case, however, whether the "handling of the reaction" was not his choice, the events leading up to there being a reaction were.

Like Kerstein's tweet, there's nothing incorrect about the quote above. But, again like Kerstein's tweet, it leaves an interpretation with which I disagree.– Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:27, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Not that I really care about your viewpoint much, or that I really want to discuss this anyway, but I would like to remember you that you don’t know anything. All you do is speculate, and you assume that a community manager has the power to decide about these things. poke | talk 12:36, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

(that probably came across harsher than you meant it) -Auron 13:30, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

There's plenty I'm not saying because the purpose is to only give a general feel of what's going on and we barely know anything about the circumstances. When I say internal politics, I'm talking more about the reorganization of the teams and how they might be conflicting with each other. We know that ArenaNet wasn't very committed to gamescon and they likely didn't have much choice on the developers that could be made available at gamescon. Most likely, Kerstein wasn't responsible for who went to gamescon or simply didn't have a choice otherwise in the matter. I'll reiterate that trying to manage the Living World and everything else, things slip through the cracks. I'll refer to the other post about unrest from lack of updates due to Living World. This is further supported by the fact they changed the pricing for the commander tag, the cause likely from miscommunication between teams. I don't blame the developers though, they gave answers to the best of their knowledge and people purposefully misinterpreted and cherrypicked the interview to match their arguments and complaints. WoodenPotatoes made a point that ArenaNet never delivers information like this through interviews and that's how they have always operated. I'm not buying the interpretation that someone who worked at ArenaNet for 8 years was suddenly fired for mishandling a single interview. I much prefer the scenario where he decided he simply needed a change of scenery after 8 years in the same company, like we've already seen happen in some high profile cases. As the community manager, this gives him the opportunity to bring heat off of ArenaNet at the same time.--Relyk ~ talk < 13:53, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Apologies for late reply; I didn't see this until today. Bigger apologies for my original post; I somehow hijacked my own post and pressed save before before I was clear on what I wanted to say, which was: we don't know anything except that Kerstein's gone. His tweet doesn't help explain it, but it does fuel speculation. And, around the time I posted, I was annoyed that hyper speculation was fueling a kind of hysterical response among (some) players and it was getting out of control. I'm not sure why I thought your post was adding to that or that changing the newsletter will make any big difference, but somehow I did. Had I thought it through, I would have asked you if you thought it was really necessary/helpful to include the tweet. Or maybe not posted anything.

I did want to respond to a couple of other points: I didn't think Kerstein got fired (not sure how I left that impression); I think Relyk probably has it right that MK might have been ready for a change. If true, it wouldn't surprise me if he told his bosses about it ages ago, to allow them time to prepare. It seems more likely to me that his last week being a rough one for ANet was entirely coincidental.

And, finally, Auron also has it right, Poke: you did come across as harsh and I'm not at all sure why. Of course I was speculating; we don't have any facts to work with. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:01, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for that then, but to give you my reason by quoting yourself: “around the time I posted, I was annoyed that hyper speculation was fueling a kind of hysterical response among (some) players and it was getting out of control”. Speculation about reasons or even about what certain people were doing or responsible for serves really no purpose other than making it all worse by giving it more attention than it should get. poke | talk 02:46, 6 September 2014 (UTC)