As you know, CheesyRamen and I spend a lot of time in the community. To be honest, it’s pretty addictive, coming back every day and seeing what new threads, replays, goodies, puzzles and reviews have been posted. I’ve also learnt a lot from you, and as always, we’re continually thinking of new ways to improve it.
In fact, our entire team (all 4 of us) get together pretty often to brainstorm what cool things we can do. With CheesyRamen having just come back from vacation, and another project on the go (nope, I don’t know when we’ll announce it, either), even keeping up with the community and consistently putting out content is a product of our fondness of you all. We’re certainly not working a straight 9 to 5 
But you know, I wouldn’t have it any other way. In one of the conference talks I did this year, I referred to something I really believe in — I hope to always dabble in the community, even if the company grows to such a size that I certainly don’t have to. With information being so easy to find and opinions of other players now becoming far more important than cold, official corporate websites, taking a constant pulse and interacting with the community is definitely at least as important as big budget marketing. Or you could say, it’s a welcome addition to the marketing repetoire. Microsoft sure knows it. Nintendo sure knows it. Not so sure about Sony, though.
Thoughts?
Yea, that’s what I think as well. I always try to be as close as I can to the community/fans. Even if I was the head of a big company (haha), I’d always try to like, post threads in the forums or news or something.
I also like sites even more if the people that are behind, like, show themselves and also interact with the community and not just update the site (like miniclip.com does).
Comment by molkmizzle — October 12, 2006 @ 3:03 am