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Originally Posted by Simo Sakari Aaltonen
I was responding to Fienepien's comment that it is "part of the publisher's *job* to keep other people informed about what's going on". The definitions of publisher and publish do not include doing publicity or PR [...]
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...except that they do. Even if there's no specific contractual obligation, it is most definitely part of a publisher's job to handle PR - because their job is to
sell the product, not just publish it, and that means making sure that it attracts as wide an audience as possible. No offence, Simo, but you're not going to understand the publishing business just by looking up the word 'publish' in a dictionary. Try Googling for articles on 'publishing' instead - such as
this one at Wikipedia - and you'll see that marketing is indeed considered an integral part of the publishing process:
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Publishing includes the stages of the development, acquisition, copyediting, graphic design, production – printing (and its electronic equivalents), and marketing and distribution of newspapers, magazines, books, literary works, musical works, software and other works dealing with information, including the electronic media.
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As for why we should be entitled to expect PR from developers/publishers, the answer is simple: They are trying to sell us a product, not the other way round. Jane Jensen and her team are lucky enough to have a very enthusiastic pre-existing fanbase, but whether or not they realise it, they're actually squandering that goodwill with their dismissive attitude towards fans. Not to mention that Jensen made her last AG nearly ten years ago; there are plenty of younger adventure fans (such as myself) who have never played the GK games, and aren't going to instantly rush out to buy GM just because it's OMG JANE JENSEN.
Just take a look at the comments in the thread I linked to in my last post. Nico spent a good deal of his(?) own time setting up a fan website for GM - providing the developers with
free advertising and publicity, in other words - only for them to ignore his questions and not even bother responding to his emails. Short of the entire development team being struck down with the Ebola virus, I fail to see why they can't at least reply to emails from a loyal fan - if only to say, "Sorry, but we can't tell you anything at the moment." Whatever the reason, it leaves an extremely sour taste in the mouth.
