April Fool's from DICE regards Wii U *spawn

[Deleted member 13524]

That boss is trying to keep them from burning bridges with an industry partner

If a couple of tweets for April Fools is enough to burn bridges then IMO there wasn't much of a bridge to begin with.

Do we know it's not some random intern that wrote the tweets?

Please clarify. What positions or paycheck levels should a leader be able to trash?

We obviously follow different values. I was taught that you don't publicly trash your team, even less so if you're in a position of leadership or representation.

You seem to think that if the position in the hierarchy isn't above a certain threshold, then the person/team is subject to public trashing by their boss.
I think that's an example of terrible leadership.

I don't follow, trashing an industry partner IS stupid and unprofessional.

I don't consider those three tweets as "trashing", and 99,99% of April Fools jokes are about stupid, obviously-unprofessional stuff.
We'll just agree to disagree.

 

[3dilettante]

If a couple of tweets for April Fools is enough to burn bridges then IMO there wasn't much of a bridge to begin with.

That's part of the problem. EA is in a very awkward position with Nintendo right now, as many publishers are.
As strained as things are, Nintendo is still a deeply respected name, and it isn't bankrupt yet, so it might still be a good development partner down the road.

There's also the desire to put forward the apparently not entirely true appearance that the Frostbite engine is in the hands of mature and professional employees and leadership worth working with: a group that is capable, responsive, and not incredibly tone-deaf.

Please clarify. What positions or paycheck levels should a leader be able to trash?

If it was a random dumb intern, the rest of the studio might not feel that bad about that person being chewed out by corporate central.

We obviously follow different values. I was taught that you don't publicly trash your team, even less so if you're in a position of leadership or representation.

Someone used an official account, not their personal account, to disparage an influential industry partner EA might someday want to have a healthier and profitable relationship with.
That's a PR problem, because it's not just a person saying things, it's the face of a group and is taken more seriously because everyone's job and everyone's day is just a little bit on the line when you take up that megaphone.
The value of the group's reputation and ongoing relationships with respected firms is something a good executive is expected and required to protect.

You seem to think that if the position in the hierarchy isn't above a certain threshold, then the person/team is subject to public trashing by their boss.
I think that's an example of terrible leadership.

I suggest not putting the organization and the leader in the position where they have to choose between doing their job or protecting your feelings.
If there is some niceness about it, it is that I haven't seen a story where they hunted down the employee or employees and made a spectacle of their punishment or firing for all the world to see. That would be unprofessional.

All that's left, then, is to say those specific comments were stupid, but not saying who the stupid individual was. The dirty laundry is handled in-house, but the mud thrown in public has to be clearly disavowed.

I don't consider those three tweets as "trashing", and 99,99% of April Fools jokes are about stupid, obviously-unprofessional stuff.
We'll just agree to disagree.

If someone wants to do things in poor taste, they can have the fortitude to do so under their name, and maybe have the taste to pick on somebody closer to home.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That's part of the problem. EA is in a very awkward position with Nintendo right now, as many publishers are.
As strained as things are, Nintendo is still a deeply respected name, and it isn't bankrupt yet, so it might still be a good development partner down the road.

I don't understand this. As a games console maker, Nintendo are dependent on the third parties in the same way Sony and MS are, unless N. want to remain a niche only serving Mario and Zelda fans. If N. release a new console, they aren't going to snub EA over a (what'll then be forgotten) tweet - that'd be business madness. Hell, real, professional business sees companies sue each other for gazillions with damning arguments besmirching each other's company name, and then work together on new projects. There's no such thing as animosity in business. It runs on its own amoral principles of making money, for which human misdemeanours count for little. The symbiotic partnership between console makers and content creators means they're all trying to get along and have to let little incidents not be a problem. No-one but a rich indie is going to throw away millions of dollars over a rude tweet or open letter.

EA's awkward position with Nintendo started with a promise to provide Wii U content that was never kept, because the platform was a bust. That's Nintendo's fault and they should be running around like crazy people to give 3rd parties, whom they already have alienated in a large part over 3.5 generations, reason and opportunity to publish on N.'s platforms. If they'd disavow EA over an April's Fool tweet that poked fun at their system, they'd be shooting themselves in both feet and suffer the consequences far more than EA would who don't need N. to make a living.

Edit: As an example, Gabe Newell was very openly condemning PS3. "It's a waste of time," he said, not as a joke. He also called XBox Live policies 'a train wreck'. Has Valve been banned from publishing on either platform? Nope. Valve's software is too important. Newell may get some corporate execs' backs up, but the repercussions aren't serious business concerns.

 

[Grall]

If they'd disavow EA over an April's Fool tweet that poked fun at their system, they'd be shooting themselves in both feet

Both feet, both hands, c*ck, possibly head as well. EA is not an insignificant bit player, also, others would of course take note of Nintendo snubbing EA over something as ridiculous as a stupid april fools' tweet and react accordingly. It's not as if Ninty has any pull whatsoever left in the console business these days when it comes to home consoles; portable they are still a factor to be reckoned with, for a while longer at least. They can't just arbitrarily punish third parties anymore when it suits them like they could during NES/SNES era.

Interesting aside. I saw a young teen pull out a 3DS on the bus a couple days ago. That's the first time I've seen anyone use a Ninty portable in public in ages, while cell phone gaming is incredibly commonplace these days. Even I play a few iOS games now and then (Monument Valley is incredible!)

 

[Goodtwin]

If Wii U sells a lot and EA wanted to release games on it, Nintendo would support them. They're not going to refuse a (large) publisher because of a April Fool's joke - that would be unprofessional.

AFAICS, DICE pranked Wii U/Nintendo fans with false claims, which is typical for an April's Fool, and they got upset. If someone leaked a game saying Halo was coming to PS4, or MS was releasing a VR headset next month, or somesuch, no-one would grumble when the fool was announced. The only real unprofessional aspect IMO was claiming 'Wii U is most powerful Gen4 platform' which is kinda taking the piss, but the Nintendo fanboys so want to believe it anyway that to give them this hope and then say, "April Fool", is rubbing their nose in their own fanishism. If they were realistic, absolutely no-one would have fallen for this April Fool because the opening tweet is an obvious falsehood. "Wii U is most powerful Gen4 console? Yeah right. Oh, look at the date. Ha ha, try harder DICE. Not falling for that."

Let's just list the tweets here:
They're even ribbing themselves with the mention of netcode (actually that's the most unprofessional aspect of the whole thing! DICE need to get their game working rather than make jokes, although maybe it is now?).

Obviously not, Nintendo isn't going to refuse EA, but at the same time, if the relationship is good, EA would stand a good chance of negotiating favorable royalties percentage. Obviously the "joke" was unprofessional, the CEO said it was. Its bad business to poke fun at one of your business partners, especially when your business model doesn't currently include that partner, but perhaps the plan was to reintroduce some sort of support in the near future.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Its bad business to poke fun at one of your business partners...

April's Fools are all about poking fun. There's always a sap as the butt of the joke who are the people who fall for them. People shouldn't be so serious that they get hurt feelings when someone makes a very mild joke at their expense. (Some 'April's Fools' are cruel, but this wasn't)

What exactly was wrong with Dice's tweet that Nintendo should take offence at and hike up royalty charges for EA? That Dice sarcastically noted what everyone knows, including Nintendo, that Wii U isn't the most powerful console this gen? Is EA going to be charged an extra 50 million quid for it's sports games on N. HW because of this? If so, that makes Nintendo remarkably petty. I'm fairly confident Valve didn't have to pay unfavourable terms to get their software on PS after Newell's dissing Ps3.

 

[NRP]

IMO, it's just poor form on DICE's part. I think Moore was right to call them out on it.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

IMO, it's just poor form on DICE's part. I think Moore was right to call them out on it.

Calling them out on it internally, ok. Doing it publicly makes him a scumbag of a boss.

 

[3dilettante]

April's Fools are all about poking fun. There's always a sap as the butt of the joke who are the people who fall for them. People shouldn't be so serious that they get hurt feelings when someone makes a very mild joke at their expense. (Some 'April's Fools' are cruel, but this wasn't)

This was done on an official account used for marketing. EA or a portion of it was, if only mildly, producing marketing hostile to a partner. It's also not necessary to pick on a third party, or to be more graceless about it.

One could argue that if someone can't, they shouldn't be doing it.

The base problem is that every year professionals and corporations that should know better continue to think the first day in April is a day where they can be unprofessional without consequence, worse when they use a platform as truncated as Twitter.
Then when they step on a landmine on a mass-media scale, it's supposed to make everything better.
This was generating media attention, so it's not just an internal matter anymore.

There are daily reminders about being careful with social media in particular, so this really does fall to the point that professionals should know better, and not use the public face of an organization for their personal flubs.

If the studio FrostbiteEngine is linked to is lucky, this might be treated as mostly an internal learning moment about the value of PR accounts, but the person in charge of it is likely going to get some heat if they are in a marketing position. If there is no marketing person acting as gatekeeper, there's probably going to be one, as there should.

What exactly was wrong with Dice's tweet that Nintendo should take offence at and hike up royalty charges for EA? That Dice sarcastically noted what everyone knows, including Nintendo, that Wii U isn't the most powerful console this gen? Is EA going to be charged an extra 50 million quid for it's sports games on N. HW because of this? If so, that makes Nintendo remarkably petty.

There are plenty of ways a lack of respect can cause problems at a personal level, and these multibillion dollar corporations are full of them.
A few tweaked contract terms or a few extra rounds through certification might be minor blips at the scale of EA or Nintendo, but at this scale it's possibly worth more than the position and salary of a few wayward employees.

Maybe the COO got an angry phone call from a Nintendo manager or exec, or he got a call from an EA exec.
Maybe EA's on thin ice with some of its obligations from its earlier "unprecedented" partnership with Nintendo, and the lawyers don't need public evidence of bad faith for some internal contracts.
Maybe since he's been around the industry, he apologized for the sake of people he knows or works with--using his own account.

What's the big deal about the responding tweet saying some stupid tweets were stupid? Why is calling out a dumb tweet such a big insult, it's not like it's an individual's account--or does that indicate that the PR face of a product makes things more significant than they would otherwise?

Calling them out on it internally, ok. Doing it publicly makes him a scumbag of a boss.

He said the tweets from FrostbiteEngine were unprofessional and stupid. He didn't say the studio or any particular team was stupid, or are you making my point that trying to address a PR account unavoidably puts everyone on the line?

 

[Goodtwin]

April's Fools are all about poking fun. There's always a sap as the butt of the joke who are the people who fall for them. People shouldn't be so serious that they get hurt feelings when someone makes a very mild joke at their expense. (Some 'April's Fools' are cruel, but this wasn't)

What exactly was wrong with Dice's tweet that Nintendo should take offence at and hike up royalty charges for EA? That Dice sarcastically noted what everyone knows, including Nintendo, that Wii U isn't the most powerful console this gen? Is EA going to be charged an extra 50 million quid for it's sports games on N. HW because of this? If so, that makes Nintendo remarkably petty. I'm fairly confident Valve didn't have to pay unfavourable terms to get their software on PS after Newell's dissing Ps3.

Im not disputing that in the scheme of things, this wasn't a big deal, but it was still a bit tasteless. Its kind of like having a coworker that you haven't been getting along with real great lately, and then choosing to make them the brunt of your April fools joke and expecting it to be "all in good fun." You can poke fun at your good friends and its no big deal, but when you have a relationship that has seen better days, its probably not the best move. I don't believe Peter Moore called out any individuals by name, so no shame was brought to any single person. Lets put it this way, if Nintendo was making April fools jokes about how EA has broken games like Battlefield, and rips off consumers with yearly roster updates for their sports games, I don't think anyone would be saying Nintendo did nothing wrong. It goes both ways. Not to mention its EA who stands to lose even more respect from gamers, they are already voted the worst company every year. Peter Moore would love for Wii U sales to expand to the point where there was an opportunity for EA to make money on the platform. What if Wii U's userbase is over 12 million by the end of 2014? Do you think Peter Moore wants to be stereotyped by that audience as a Nintendo hating publisher? It was tacky guys, and I think if this was Activision giving the X1 similar treatment, you would have a different view.

 

[Commenter]

Get over it you blowhards, it was just a crappy joke.

 

[Grall]

It was a crappy joke yes, which is why it's ridiculous Moore spazzed out so much over it, calling the makers of one of their most important franchises idiots over it.

 

[3dilettante]

It was a crappy joke yes, which is why it's ridiculous Moore spazzed out so much over it, calling the makers of one of their most important franchises idiots over it.

No he didn't.
He said @FrostbiteEngine made stupid and unprofessional tweets, that's just one account.
It shouldn't apply to the whole team unless you think anything dealing with @FrostbiteEngine involves collective blame or organizational responsibility.

If that's the case, then maybe the repercussions of inflammatory comments that had been picked up by the gaming media have more import than a random person's jabs.

 

[Commenter]

It was a crappy joke yes, which is why it's ridiculous Moore spazzed out so much over it, calling the makers of one of their most important franchises idiots over it.

P Moore is just a company man. It is to be expected. He's thinking of all the customers EA might potentially lose if they have to admit they were wrong to abandon Nintendo's platform.

 

[idsn6]

I don't understand this. As a games console maker, Nintendo are dependent on the third parties in the same way Sony and MS are, unless N. want to remain a niche only serving Mario and Zelda fans. If N. release a new console, they aren't going to snub EA over a (what'll then be forgotten) tweet - that'd be business madness. Hell, real, professional business sees companies sue each other for gazillions with damning arguments besmirching each other's company name, and then work together on new projects. There's no such thing as animosity in business. It runs on its own amoral principles of making money, for which human misdemeanours count for little. The symbiotic partnership between console makers and content creators means they're all trying to get along and have to let little incidents not be a problem. No-one but a rich indie is going to throw away millions of dollars over a rude tweet or open letter.

EA's awkward position with Nintendo started with a promise to provide Wii U content that was never kept, because the platform was a bust. That's Nintendo's fault and they should be running around like crazy people to give 3rd parties, whom they already have alienated in a large part over 3.5 generations, reason and opportunity to publish on N.'s platforms. If they'd disavow EA over an April's Fool tweet that poked fun at their system, they'd be shooting themselves in both feet and suffer the consequences far more than EA would who don't need N. to make a living.

Blackberry (née RIM) just recently announced that it will pull its phones from T-Mobile in a huff over the latter's Blackberry-to-iPhone trade-in offer. Granted, the campaign was hilariously successful, but I guess the lesson is to never underestimate the reactionary umbrage of outdated companies in the middle of a free fall from relevance.

 

[3dilettante]

T-Mobile was actively marketing and at one point incentivizing Blackberry owners to trade in for competing phones.
That's an even more egregious example of hostile marketing and bad faith, even without the level of pettiness on the part of the executives involved.

 

[Grall]

He said @FrostbiteEngine made stupid and unprofessional tweets, that's just one account.
It shouldn't apply to the whole team unless you think anything dealing with @FrostbiteEngine involves collective blame or organizational responsibility.

You're nitpicking. Everybody knows Dice makes frostbite, the two are joined at the hip. Frostbite is not its own separate entity.

 

[3dilettante]

Last I saw, Repi had tweeted that the Frostbite team had been split off from DICE and into its own internal studio, but that doesn't change my argument that there is no direct mapping between @FrostbiteEngine and a single person.

Either it is not an insult because sounding off about the tweets on that account don't go back to a single person, or it is an insult to the team because the account has official and collective significance.

Unless we're talking about some scenario where every Frostbite studio employee took turns adding one letter to each tweet, one or a few users took an official channel that put the whole organization's credibility on the line and hit a land mine.

Why would those not involved in sending the tweets feel insulted?
If they feel insulted, why aren't they angry that someone else put words in their mouths?

 

[repi]

Frostbite is indeed fully separate from DICE nowadays, we even have our own office and we work with _a lot_ of teams within EA.

And no I will not comment about the tweets.

 

[Sonic]

Im not disputing that in the scheme of things, this wasn't a big deal, but it was still a bit tasteless. Its kind of like having a coworker that you haven't been getting along with real great lately, and then choosing to make them the brunt of your April fools joke and expecting it to be "all in good fun." You can poke fun at your good friends and its no big deal, but when you have a relationship that has seen better days, its probably not the best move. I don't believe Peter Moore called out any individuals by name, so no shame was brought to any single person. Lets put it this way, if Nintendo was making April fools jokes about how EA has broken games like Battlefield, and rips off consumers with yearly roster updates for their sports games, I don't think anyone would be saying Nintendo did nothing wrong. It goes both ways. Not to mention its EA who stands to lose even more respect from gamers, they are already voted the worst company every year. Peter Moore would love for Wii U sales to expand to the point where there was an opportunity for EA to make money on the platform. What if Wii U's userbase is over 12 million by the end of 2014? Do you think Peter Moore wants to be stereotyped by that audience as a Nintendo hating publisher? It was tacky guys, and I think if this was Activision giving the X1 similar treatment, you would have a different view.

As doubtful as it is that Wii U will hit 12 million units sold by the end of 2014 I don't think this little April Fool's joke would hurt the relationship in the long term. At this point Nintendo could use all the help it could get and if the company had proper business sense they'd be courting EA to make games.