what do you think, folks, is it tomorrow? And what would you expect would be the release date for the actual update they are about to show us?
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My expectations are that they give us the penance stuff in July and the crafting 3.0 attempt in November. Both will probably fall short of what they should be.
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Actively manifesting FS to post a banger post tomorrow, need as much spiritual support as possible to physically realize it into our plane. 
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bless
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ouch.
I’m going to hope for the best ay? They make me want to scream in frustration, but I’m still hoping.
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Just remember that when it comes to Fatshark, even if you set your expectations impossibly low they will nevertheless fail to meet them. Better to just not have any expectations at all.
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Catfish when/if she posts tomorrow:
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I feel sorry for fatshark’s CMs having to deal with angry fans. Can’t be easy to deal with so much negativity in such a constant basis
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100% agree. I never take out my issues and anger on employees. Doesn’t matter if it’s in person, on the phone or over the internet. They are 99.999999999% not responsible for the issues you are having their product or services.
So me giving them crap for that, is not only pointless, but cruel. And it will not bolster their customer service attitude/spirit to help me. If anything, it will be quite the opposite.
Let’s hope for some good news and maybe people won’t be too upset with her. 
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A Community Manager is a person that willingly takes the position of dealing with the community.
It’s in the name.
It’s a job. Employment. Work.
Not a punishment, not torture. A paid position within an otherwise lax and liberal industry. Enough with the sympathy already.
I get the “not mad at Catfish personally” take. Alright, fair enough. But feeling for the position’s job description and reason for existing is silly, childish and naive.
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yeah that’s all well and good, but not all CMs have to deal with this level or presistence of negativity from a community, and that’s why I feel sorry for them. I wouldn’t want to be in such a position myself.
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I certainly feel for it. I lived it. CMs are often stuck between a rock and a hard place and otherwise need to balance company needs with player needs. While you know you will deal with the community, getting told constantly “you’re not doing your job right” or “you’re not listening” by the players you truly do want to help, is taxing, all while you’re dealing with internal comms, information, things changing, etc. etc. I’ve seen what this job can do to people. I’ve seen what it did to me. I have the utmost respect and empathy for anyone who does this position, dead stop.
Customer service and PR in the games industry is a whole other breed.
Just because a CM signs up to handle the community does not give players the right to mistreat them.
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What boggles me is the fact that Catfish seemingly has to fight for every scrap of info, wrangling any news from the cold dead hands of developers and execs.
Why on earth is the CM the one having to drag info out of the studio? This game has a credited Chief Marketing Officer and a Director of Public Relations and some other marketing higher ups. For those folks, an Office-Space-esque “what is it ya do here?” questioning is in order, because they don’t appear to be doing…squat.
They certainly aren’t marketing the title. They aren’t making videos about features or playthroughs. They aren’t hyping upcoming releases.
They clearly have zero interest in interacting with the game’s community and userbase. They’re not on here, Discord, Reddit, etc. They don’t appear to care that the current state of community affairs has descended to where the bulk of the conversation is no longer about player interactions or class balance or bugs or weapons builds, but now about competitor titles and whether Darktide has been abandoned or not. The fact that the game can’t even get one half of one percent of its sales base online doesn’t seem to bother anyone.
Likewise the Devs, why does a CM have to Thunderdome these guys to talk about their own game? Why aren’t they excited to share their efforts and labors? Where is their interest in feedback?
When the repeated tale is that we only get things because the CM’s pull teeth to get it, it doesn’t inspire confidence in the title. If the people in charge and those actually building it aren’t interested, why should the customer base be interested? I cannot imagine how frustrating that must be as a CM.
Particularly when a half hour walk away there’s a studio doing all those things and pulling in orders of magnitude more players for their competing prodcut on the daily.
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first time dealing with fatshark? they generally don’t finalize information until it’s essentially finished on their end and going through approval to avoid having to go back and say “turns out we won’t be able to do that after all”. the CMs don’t have anything they can share until it’s approved even if they DO hear something in the studio chats.
That’s like saying that some poor bastard in the third world who dies due to unsafe work conditions, only have themselves to blame for taking the position. The ol’ “pull yourself up by your boot straps”-argument.
Granted, Catfish probably has it a tad better than the person in the third world, and she most likely has options to take other jobs. But that’s no excuse for accepting that which is unacceptable. Unacceptable, counter-productive and pointless.
I’m all for the “not feeling all sad” for someone (because I know what true suffering is), but I can empathize. Even when it’s someone working a cushy first world internet job in a nice office.
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I hope and assume (based on my own corpo career) that these individuals receive some form of onboarding and training prior to being fully deployed. I’d also assume that the position comes in with a lengthy description and lots of observable history.
From a purely professional standpoint, the product being poorly received and the community being rowdy, obnoxious and even threatening should be an expected scenario for a professional. And a CM having access to internal communication pipelines and resources should, by the same professional margin, even serve a forewarning.
A CM would also have all the tools needed to address out of line or extreme feedback. Timeouts, bans etc.
That’s quite literally the definition of the position. To manage the community.
Before I come off as talking out of my posterior - I spent nearly 10 years in one of (if not) the largest IT company in the world, taking up several positions and coming up to an operations level, before I called it a career. I’ve seen and done essentially everything there is to do in a corporate environment. I’ve trained people for managerial positions, hired people, fired people, and represented the company during critical situations directly facing Fortune 500 clients.
I completely realize what a stressful environment it can be. And based on this I’ll conclude that:
- If you took the job, you work the job. If you can’t, let it go. Or improve.
- If you make a statement, you’re beholden to that statement. If you can’t keep it, manage expectations. If someone else mucks your statement up, you keep it internal and resolve boundaries internally.
If Catfish was a volunteer, I’d never write any of this. Were she a poor intern who got thrown in the thresher a week after release, I’d even repeat the above sentiments.
But I’m fairly certain she applied for that position, went through interviews, received onboarding, training, shadowed and then got to it.
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No, that’s not saying that at all.
I said precisely what I said. It’s written up there.
Unfortunate third-world miners in a cobalt pit somewhere digging the earth for a dollar a day to produce the chipsets we use to leave mean comments on a forum are a different topic, and I don’t believe I even alluded to this.
Holding a person to the standards of a professional engagement does not equate to abuse or unfair treatment. A position within a corporate structure comes with responsibilities, requirements and a degree of professional expectation, which one invests their time into and is compensated for.
This idea that you’ll run into belligerent forum posters or Discord chatters, while working a community-facing position of a western entertainment software company, shouldn’t really be a surprise. It’s certainly not pleasant, but it’s definitely not exceptional.
And to once more return the point to where I left it - we’re talking about feeling sorry for a professional who has to do the job they signed up for. I call this naive.
I’d say - be glad that Catfish is doing the job she is and consider that after a year of CMing for FS, that resume would be impressive. To a professional, this kind of work is pure gold in terms of affording subsequent career opportunities and advancements.
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Catfish has managed quite possibly one of the worst scenarios for a company’s PR - a bad product that doesn’t get fixed for a huge length of time - essentially on her own, with her colleagues often making the problems worse.
Darn right that’s impressive. It’s only after this massive 4-month silence that the mood has begun to really sour, until then she’s managed to stay on top of things despite essentially zero support from the higher-ups.
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That’s a really interesting comparison.
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So interesting in fact one might say it’s made of straw… a straw man. Hmm.
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