Are Simmers just a bunch of whining little panzies?

[Mike T 68]

/SoapboxMode=OnOkay, so its getting kind of dramatic around here. Why are so many simmers upset about the way Microsoft is handling Flight? After all its just a game right? Chill out and go drink a beer and don't worry about it right?Well, not so fast. For thousands on this board MSFS is a HOBBY. Who cares you say? Well let's see. Hobbies are hallmarked by the dedication spent on it that is measured in both time and money. Time? Thousands of hours of two decades. Money? For many of us, thousands and thousands of dollars in hardware and software. As a hobby it is an investment in time, energy, money, time away from other things and is a big part of thousands of peoples lives. When you have invested as much time and effort in this hobby, passion is the end result. I mean, if you spent decades building your dream home would you care if someone walked by and burned it down? It's just a house right?To that point, lets talk a little more about passion. A passionate minority of this hobby is what keeps this hobby alive. Hundreds of thousands of people have purchased FSX but only a few thousand hobbyists are still keeping the title alive and keeping the third party developers in business. What happened to the other few hundred thousand who purchased FSX? They installed it a few times, flew upside down into a bridge to impress their friends one evening, uninstalled it and are now playing Call of Duty 3 full time. If the few thousand people who are passionate about this hobby did the same, the hobby would be DEAD. No Flight, no 3rd party developers, no Avsim. Nothing. Microsoft needs to get a clue that not only do they want to attract NEW customers to Flight, they want to make those new customers PASSIONATE about Flight.But let's talk a bit more about that. Microsoft wants to EXPAND the appeal of Flight beyond the audience of FS9 and FSX. How do they do that? Well, lets look at World of Warcraft and Bilizzard Entertainment. Role Playing games have hardcore, medium and casual followings just like Flight Simulation only to a larger extent. So how has Blizzard kept growing the franchise over 7 years? - First and foremost Blizzard knew that they had to keep the hard core people engaged by thickening the lore, making the game more engaging and challenging. To do this they had to embrace the hardcore community and deeply take into account what these people were telling them. This is called locking your base customers in place. As in Flight Simulation the hard core are the base customers that you don't want to ever leave.- Second, is to cultivate the medium core fans so that they move up the chain to become hard core fans. This means making the lore interesting so that people would dive deeper. Blizzard fostered, encouraged and helped grow the Guild culture which paired the hardcore and the medium core together in groups to quest and learn together. This is called expanding the base of customers. The more customers you have becoming hard core about your game the more loyalty to the franchise, the more they play, the more money you make.- Third. Attract new players to WOW and engage casual players to become more deeply entrenched to move up from casual to medium core. To do this, Blizzard expanded the game but at the same time made it easier for new players to quickly get up and running. They didn't dumb down the game or the lore but made it easier to level up to where you were powerful and knowledgeable enough to move up on your own. They added things to excite the new comer as well as things to make casual gamers want to play more and move up the chain.- Forth. Get deeply involved in the community by sponsoring forums. Engage with the community. Now, if you have ever seen an unpopular change made by Blizzard voiced on their own forums, it makes the forums at Avsim look like we are on Valium at a charm school reunion. They know that angry customers are PASSIONATE customers. They know that ideas are not always expressed with the civility of tea time in charm school. Sometimes comments are raw and off the cuff. You can either whine that your feelings are hurt and go cower in the girls bathroom or you can use that energy to make your product better. Blizzard knows that the community is passionate about THEIR game.By THEIR I mean that if a franchise is truly successful then the product stops being only the property of the developer and becomes the adopted property of the community. The community supports it, nurtures it, has a say in its growth and direction. The community makes it their own and has a vested interest in keeping it going. This relationship that companies like Blizzard, Bioware and others have with their community is something that Microsoft is sorely lacking and that is very sad. The best ideas and suggestions don't just come from a handpicked elite group of beta testers and developers but also from the newbies. The newbies represent the people who have little experience your title but you are expecting to draw in as a long term customer. Microsoft has had and still has no concept of this. And THIS fiasco in this forum is the result.What I do think though is that some people on this forum should stop mocking things they don't understand. Just because YOU don't understand it or agree with it doesn't mean that it doesn't ring true. The same thing happened upon FSX release and we were told to stop whining and complaining, everything's fine, FSX is great. Well everything WASN'T fine and WASN'T great and it was the outcry from the "whiners" that caused Aces to release two service packs AND that compels Flight to be "optimized for performance." Sometimes someone has got to stand up and declare that "the emperor has no clothes" and go from there./SoapboxMode=Off

[WotanUK 289]

I don't think i understand what you are saying:"What I do think though is that some people on this forum should stop mocking things they don't understand. Just because YOU don't understand it or agree with it doesn't mean that it doesn't ring true"True enough, but then directly underneath that:"The same thing happened upon FSX release and we were told to stop whining and complaining, everything's fine, FSX is great. Well everything WASN'T fine and WASN'T great and it was the outcry from the "whiners" that caused Aces to release two service packs "So now you want people to complain and dare i say mock. Perhaps you don't understand why M$ made the choices they did, perhaps M$ didn't care one way or the other. I doubt that FS was a massive money spinner for them.I have to say i agree with a large part of the intial part, but not sure how that would transcripe to FS, Flight sim doesn't really have a "lore", the old Microprose games were very good at setting the scene and drawing you in; i remember Gunship 2000 and F117a, but these were really games in the broadest sense of the word. Add-ons like FSCaptain do try to reward and keep people playing, but fall into an inconvient category, truely hardcore simmers assume that this makes it a game and wouldn't go near them, causual simmers don't like the restriction so don't bother.It remains to be seen what M$ do with Flight, i was one of the few people who actually welcomed M$ bining Aces and moving away from Flight SImulator, i felt that we may finally get some new blood into the scene, perhaps X-Plane 10 would get the 3rd party developers, maybe the Aerosoft sim would appear, now it seems like great companies such as PMDG and Orbx are on hiatus waiting for the release of Flight.I am not sure about your ideas from newbies. in my experience there would be people asking to fly with a 360 controller, and those god awful quicktime games, C B B B A A C A C D D D D to land etc.Now i need to fire up my Amiga emulator, i feel like a game of Gunship 2000!

[simmerhead 884]

Read you loud and clear Mike! Microsoft could have made FS a bigger success if they wanted to, but like most large corporations they are held back by management with no passion beyond their own paycheck and stock options... If Microsoft keep it up they'll end up like Kodak before they know it.

[SamYeager 204]

/RantCan we please once and for all give up on the M$ garbage? If any company deserves the $ symbol now it is Apple however they are irrelevant with respect to flight sims nowadays.Please, please use Microsoft or MS and not that infantile, pseudo sneering abbreviation.Thank you./Rant off

[jcalder 25]

- Forth.

Don't you mean "fourth"?You people are far too dramatic. It's a game, it's a hobby, it's a way of life... Who cares, it is what it is.Only thing I agree with is I think people should drop the "M$" thing. Fellow above me got it spot on.

[CVEP 13]

I don't think whining about Flight only covering Hawaii etc. will make MS put in any effort to improve things. The tone in this forum of some people is really retarded. I'm sure they improved FSX after user feedback, but not from people in this forum. If I don't even take the whiners seriously, why would MS? In fact I'm going to stop checking this forum, because most of what I read here is a waste of time.

[JSkorna 137]

Bye ya.

[pmanhart 176]

These forums are becoming a soap opera.I wish there was a way to filter out the Flight (and two months ago the PMDG) forum in the left hand column when viewing new content.

[Bread Hammer 1]

I just wanted to wish you both good luck.... we're all counting on you.

[pwc1 0]

I liked FS2004 and FSX, and I'm pretty darn sure I'll like MS Flight as well.

[nudata 10]

I liked FS2004 and FSX, and I'm pretty darn sure I'll like MS Flight as well.

I agree... Ego enriching speculation, denigration of Microsoft, etc. are unfortunately typical of people who easily become upset at rumors or misconceptions. They are in a constant state of turmoil striving to gain the "leave It To Beaver" life style of the 50's and 60's. Yes, Microsoft is self-serving. But that is a normal corporation. Flight will be what it is when released. Endless egos and over-stressed Western World workers will rant and moan, all to no avail which will stress them, and their families, more.For some the end is near. No not the World, but a delay in purchasing Flight as their feeble protest to a perceived inadequacy in the product. By 2012 we will have a choice between two well done flight simulation products. I believe that all but the usual minority of overly vocal types will adopt one or both. For a few months the rational debate and exploitation of new features and functions will be drowned out by calls for a jihad against the vendors. Eventualy they will fade and the real hobbyists will "develop" the products into their full potential as has been done for 20 years.

[simmerhead 884]

I liked FS2004 and FSX, and I'm pretty darn sure I'll like MS Flight as well.

Sure did too, but hadn't it been for the many addons I'd uninstalled them after a month or two...

[HoratioWondersocks 4]

I don't think whining about Flight only covering Hawaii etc. will make MS put in any effort to improve things. The tone in this forum of some people is really retarded. I'm sure they improved FSX after user feedback, but not from people in this forum. If I don't even take the whiners seriously, why would MS? In fact I'm going to stop checking this forum, because most of what I read here is a waste of time.

AH Sir!!What a little ray of sunshine you are.

[mmann 72]

Eventualy they will fade and the real hobbyists will "develop" the products into their full potential as has been done for 20 years.

Let's hope that Microsoft hasn't changed the rules. Will it be business as usual so that developers can continue to develop and distribute product for Flight as they always have?

[simmerhead 884]

I agree... Ego enriching speculation, denigration of Microsoft, etc. are unfortunately typical of people who easily become upset at rumors or misconceptions. They are in a constant state of turmoil striving to gain the "leave It To Beaver" life style of the 50's and 60's. Yes, Microsoft is self-serving. But that is a normal corporation. Flight will be what it is when released. Endless egos and over-stressed Western World workers will rant and moan, all to no avail which will stress them, and their families, more.For some the end is near. No not the World, but a delay in purchasing Flight as their feeble protest to a perceived inadequacy in the product. By 2012 we will have a choice between two well done flight simulation products. I believe that all but the usual minority of overly vocal types will adopt one or both. For a few months the rational debate and exploitation of new features and functions will be drowned out by calls for a jihad against the vendors. Eventualy they will fade and the real hobbyists will "develop" the products into their full potential as has been done for 20 years.

Yes, let’s end the passion, the commitment, the joy and the fun. Let's strive for mediocrity, the average, the kitsch and the 99 cent products of the world. Let’s sell everything we own, quit our jobs and go change the world, or become one with the gray mass of comfortably numb nitwits and carenots. Let’s stop talking about everything we can’t empirically prove, end all religion, gossip, art and fictional literature and movies. Creativity, curiosity and strive for progress is all futile. In the end a meteorite might strike the blue planet upon which we whine and extinct all human life. We might as well seek shelter and prepare for the end while we’re still able. Tomorrow might be just a dream…