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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreyLord" data-source="post: 5424442" data-attributes="member: 4348">I disagree with this guy.  Perhaps that's the difference between Indie and not so Indie?You have to take the good and the bad, the love and the hate...but LEARN NOT TO TAKE IT PERSONALLY.  Divorce yourself somehow from taking it personally, because THAT'S when it actually affects you.Forums are important for various reasons.  First, if you are there on your personal forums and they see some sort of presences, it shows that you care.  It doesn't matter if you actually care or not, the fact that it APPEARS that you care is what is important (I suppose that puts me as Lawful Evil in this context?).Second, apart from surveys and market studies, forums are feedback.  If the crowd hates what you've done, you get immediate response and feedback.This is important if you release a product.  The immediate response will be from hardcore fans...but many times these fans will relay their feelings of a game or other item to the world at large.  Once this is done, this portrayal will stick unless something else has already been done.I remember a computer game series a few years back called Star Fleet Command.  Star Fleet Command 2 was known to be buggy, but still had decent gameplay.  People stuck with it.  Star Fleet command 3 was created ignoring any of the fans inputs, their responses to changes in the system, and basically telling the forum fans that the new way was better then the old.  The game was reviled overall by the hardcore fans (a few liked it, but a majority did not) and word of mouth sent the game to the dumps.  It's worth a decent sum these days in the right circles...but the events of that game meant that it may have made money, but not enough for the company to continue the game line or even give it decent support.  SFC III kind of was the end of the line you could say.Word of mouth is a powerful thing, and if you don't pay attention to what your hardcore fans want or at least say, it can end up biting you.In many ways you don't even have to heed what they say, much like Activision did with SFC3.  What you DO need to do is to be aware of it and be able to find ways to counter their bad press they will undoubtably give you (there I go again, showing the colors of a LE character).  If you can do this, bonus to you, and even better for being aware of it and countering it before damage was done.So, unlike the author of the article, I think it's actually VERY important for the creators to pay attention to their forums and heed what the general mood and attitude of those forums are headed and what is occuring in your own community.</blockquote>

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