I’ve been told I’m an old-fashioned guy because I firmly believe in keeping my word once I give it, even if sometimes that makes my immediate life harder. This premise makes serving as a community representative under NDA an interesting challenge because it is not just the puerile letter of the law that governs or limits me it is the spirit of the agreements I have made in adopting the role. Being a CPM is not a VIP pass to inside access and information for a game, it requires an awareness that the input you provide be as accurate as possible because it has the potential to impact the jobs of many people and the fun of even more and in that context personal ego is a liability.
Communication is often complicated enough when everyone is on even footing, but holding active discourse with people while not being able to share the full scope of your information can be a difficult and even frustrating thing. I have seen community representatives – myself included – struggle with this, coping by shutting down their interaction with the community, or by playing “Do you want to know a secret?” and lording their access to restricted information over others. On occasion there are even those who – mistakenly or with intent – let slip things they are not entitled to share yet.
For someone like me, a devotee of communication and interaction, it is hard to know something of import on a subject and not be able to offer it for discussion. Even so I cannot pretend there are never reasons to delay announcing a new feature or change, one prime example is simply not knowing if the idea in question can functionally be perused. Anyone who has participated in gaming forums knows how overwrought portions of the gaming community can become when they feel they have been promised something which doesn’t materialize. It is understandable that disappointed hopes cause frustration, which leads to the rational conclusion that many features and ideas require review both technical and conceptual before general public release so as to minimize that sense of dashed hopes which can arise among players.
The “trick” then – and it earns those quotations because it is not designed to fool anyone – is to be proactive. Ask questions on a subject of interest rather than try to avoid giving answers that are out of your hands to release. Put yourself in the position of someone who has never heard the particular piece of information and ask how you would see things from there, then address then within their own context. Much of the time people desire the opportunity to make informed decisions and to give their input on the course of events that will effect them. While under NDA you often have no discretion to define how informed they are, but you can take steps to gather their input and make best efforts to ensure it is part of the internal process even if that process retains NDA status. To do this effectively, and to avoid misleading others when you talk to them, it is vital that your own personal perception be clearly defined and labeled whenever it is presented. An example of this in my case was the recent changes made to Myofibril Stimulants, I noted early on that I had a certain bias with regards to the subject and as such refrained from providing input on it to the development team until after gathering input from the community via Skype, forums, e-mail and in game. When a clear picture of that feedback emerged I presented those findings – not my personal bias – to the developers.
The hardest part about the NDA is playing the actual game. Being in squad with someone who is distressed and knowing a fix is coming but being unable to tell them. Or listening to someone make enthusiastic plans to leverage something that may very well be going away before to long. The desire to be helpful, to due your friends a good turn, is keen but in-actionable. And when that extra knowledge separates you from the trends of conventional wisdom it can be a struggle to try and explain why you hold a radically divergent point of view, while not revealing information you are required to keep to yourself, on the other hand if you are present for a conversation and do not dispute something many people take that as confirmation that whatever the topic is happens to be accurate and you are confirming that by not speaking. There are often moments in game play where certain players will adopt an “us vs. them” mentality about the development team of the game they are in. As a community representative you are functionally neither a developer nor “just a player” in those contexts, often having to explain to certain individuals that your role in providing community feedback to the team does not come with the ability to “make them” do any specific thing, misreading your role as declaration rather than annotation.
But I started this article with a title asking you if you wanted to know a secret, so here it is, the Rosetta Stone of speaking to those under NDA, learn to read the negative space.
Understanding the statements of someone who is under NDA is much like understanding the merits of a movie or literary reviewer. You do not need to agree with them, only grasp the context and biases within which they operate and then paint the general picture around what they say and do. Don’t get tripped up by the pitfall of attempting to confirm a specific detail, look instead for trends, and you can actually gain a decent sense of what is going on, but to do that you have to surrender your emotional attachment to your own point of view because when you’re trying to ascertain patterns via ‘dark spaces’ the confirmation bias endemic in emotional self validation becomes a toxic liability.
No one is perfect, no event that has not transpired is certain, and neither things changing nor secrets may be legitimately considered “lies”. But for those who want to know more, to gain a wider insight into what is happening in the games they enjoy, there is quite a bit that can be figured out or understood by taking a dispassionate look at not only what is said but also what isn’t.
Cheers,
Cross
