Is this game your entire life? I hope not. While you are waiting for updates to this game, DO SOMETHING ELSE.

Okay, my post was probably too harsh and angry. Sorry.

I just get tired of seeing countless threads along the lines of, "Why has OOO introduced new accessories, when what they really need is new content?" We all know that, when the new boss is a week old, we'll all have played it tens of times, and we'll be tired of it, and asking for new content already.

Three Rings simply cannot produce content as fast as we want it. I wish they could, but they can't.

Yeah, something like a devblog could solve it. Of course you guys don't need to share every little project since most of them get scraped during the development but at least something not to let the community in the dark for too long.

Yudrig, I barely see people complain as such at real updates.
Real updates = Updates with gear rebalancing or even content
Now, if we were to get things such as "What's in Development", that would be great.*
I think that satisfaction > surprise in this case
They are preparing for summer when the masses come

*I tried making a thread about this and got no replies :o

-----

The real secret is that they're too busy counting money to program.

"How frustrating would it be to hear that we did have something planned-and then have it delayed longer than you anticipated?"

OOO: Sorry the planned feature has been delayed another month
Player: Awww damn, I was all ready to try it out. I guess I'll have to wait another month.

OOO: (Silence to preserve Surprise)
Player: When is new content coming out?
OOO: (Silence)
Player: You are planning on releasing new content right?
OOO: (Silence)
Player: Seriously when the HELL is new stuff coming out?
OOO: (Silence)
Player: Are you even working on anything new!?
OOO: (Silence)
Player: (Stops buying CE Packs, CE Prices go up)
OOO: New update released, accessories with purchase of CE Packs
Player: Accessories? Well I'm thankful you released something, where's the new content?!
OOO: (Silence)

"Or that it turned out it simply wasn't possible to do and the idea had to be scrapped altogether after you've been looking forward to it for weeks or months?"

OOO: Hey sorry guys, we really wanted it to work as much as you guys but in the end we couldn't get it to work
Player: Damn! $!$@#!
Player: Well at least they told us straight, they got guts
Player: aw man, sad face
No Player: You did that on purpose, you can do it....you just don't want to! You're just feeding on our tears!

OOO: (Silence to preserve Surprise)
Player: Hey any new content planned?
OOO: (Silence....Planned Content didn't work, scrapped....Silence)
Player: Seriously you even working on anything?
OOO: (Silence)

-----

What happens when they do surprise me? Yeah it's great and all, out of the blue......but the rest of the time listening to silence sucks and doesn't instill confidence they are do much of anything.

If they had the guts to tell us straight about what's going on, I could respect them and think they're treating us fairly by keeping us appraised of what's going on.....good or bad.

Silence and secrecy is cowardice in my opinion, that's looking down on us from a position of superiority. Think of any relationship where one party keeps secrets in the false notion of "we're not telling them because they can't handle the truth and/or they'll look down on us if they knew", those aren't very good relationships and certainly not treating the other party as an equal nor fairly.

"That's usually where their focus is-actually programming rather than writing about what they are hoping to program in the future!"

Does OOO not have a marketing person or PR person? If not, stop being cheap and hire one....it's hurting your product. If so, why aren't they doing their job and instead making the programmers do it? Reprimand or fire that marketing/PR person.

TL;DR: Secrecy is Cowardice, self serving, and damaging. Openness is respectable, courageous, and fair. I do not believe their stance of secrecy to preserve the surprise as a benefit to us....they think it's more of a benefit to them by only showing us their successes and none of their failures.

Edit: If secrecy is to preserve the surprise....what's with Stealth Patches? Changes that are never listed on the patch notes nor ever admitted afterwards. It's happened before on numerous occasion. Was those for surprise too? Yeah right....

+1 Blitz.

I can understand not wanting players raging and criticizing upcoming updates, but saying absolutely nothing is much worse.

I enjoy seeing devs post, but every minus they spend on the forums is a minute less spent on actually developing stuff.

And on a small team, that's a big loss.

"Blitzwingoo knows more about marketing video games than a video game company does? I don't know Blitzwingoo, so he might --- but I doubt it."

I think that would depend on the video game company, I'm sure out there somewhere there's a video game company with an atrocious marketing department that I know better than, and I'm sure there's some video game company that knows more than me. As for OOO's marketing department, I can't say for sure without knowing what's going on in that department, but from what I can see.....they're not the best video game company marketing dept and the secrecy isn't helping because at this point I don't even know if they have one if their programmers are supposedly doing it.

"Many companies keep their plans secret until they come to fruition."

Many companies doing something doesn't make it right or the best way. Many companies used to refuse to provide their products online for digital distribution, one company (Valve) decided to make Steam. Were the other companies more right or better than Valve?

Look at Google, they often release new products before they come to fruition and many of them fail. Remember Google Wave? Did this stop Google from being up front with the public? I don't think so. Did it discredit or hurt Google more than the publicity or goodwill they got from it? I don't think so either, I think they're brave for being so open, and I respect them.

"Blitzwingoo plays poker, does he simply lay his cards on the table, for everyone to see? I doubt it."

Actually when I play Texas Holdem, I rarely bluff and I'm a very tight player. All the other players are nervous when they go against me, I'm guessing because they know I'm very likely not bluffing and have strong cards. I'd like to think they respect my playing style because I don't bluff (lie) about what I have too often. I usually make it to the top three so I get payout money. Does this make me the best player? Probably not, but I usually do better than most of the other players that bluff all the time. If you're curious, I learned from watching a Howard Lederer video that teaches what cards are good to hold, and which cards suck and should be folded. That and some other pointers in the video and learned the rest from experience.

However I'm not sure what relevance my poker playing style is, so draw whatever conclusions you wish.

I'm not sure why people seem to be thinking that SK isn't getting frequent updates. Maybe because it takes less time to play a game than it does to make it...

Ever taken a look at all the releases in a calender?
http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Release_calendar

I'll admit they aren't all massive, major releases... but at the same it takes a long time to produce a massive gameplay update. You can't expect them to finish it overnight.

"You play poker regularly, but rarely bluff? That surprises me --- poker without bluffing seems like a boring exercise in probability..."

I'm not sure if you play poker....but poker is not exactly about bluffing, it's about how likely you believe you have a better hand than the other people. Bluffing is a risky/foolish move to try and make it harder for other people to guess if they have a better hand than yours. If the other people knows you almost always have a strong hand, you don't need to bluff. Also excitement in poker is not about winning most of the time, it's about those rare times somebody wins when they shouldn't have. The reality is most times people just lose in those situations which isn't exciting either.

Your poker analogy doesn't exactly fit the situation anyways because the game company will always have to "show their cards" eventually, where as in poker the winner doesn't always have to. The only way I can think of a game company bluffing and never having to "showing their cards" in the end is if they keep promising something like "the opening of the core is coming, major update!" over and over again, and then in the end the company shuts down it's servers without releasing the major update.

"I keep my passwords and bank account information secret. Is it because I'm a coward?"

Your passwords is not the same context as OOO telling people what they're working on. The same context would be telling people who need to know that you have a bank account.....people like your wife, employer who needs to deposit your paychecks, companies who you do monthly payments with, credit card companies who you need to pay back, etc. Hiding the fact that you even have a bank account to people who need to know, mean you no harm, that you do business with is disingenuous....possibly dishonest.

"The companies that pre-announce.....Google and Intel are like this.....Companies that are closer to end-consumers, such as Apple, have less need to pre-announce....."

It's their attitude towards their consumers....Take Apple storing iPhone locational data for their GPS function as an example. People were upset with Apple over this, why? Because they didn't tell anybody and tried to keep it a secret. You might think the upset is about the locational data, but it's not. Google does the same thing on Andriod devices, why were people not upset with Google? Because Google told people straight up from the beginning.

There's a Extra Credits Video that talks about this and Sony trying to keep their customers in the dark when one of their services got hacked. It shows why the attitude of keeping customers in the dark is really a terrible practice. There's lots of elements that relate to our situation here.

" If a promise is serious, then that's great; if it's not, then that's unethical. In this sense, Three Rings may be simply cautious, in not over-promising. I would rather have them under-promise and over-deliver than the reverse."

I would rather them honestly tell me what they're working on without any promises than to promise me something but never telling me what they've promised nor what they're doing at the moment.