RAWA is our new community manager

[J'Kla]

From what I see we are saying is RAWA is rubbish when it comes to responding and that there are lots of others at Cyan we would trust and lots we admire but when it comes to responding Chogon has been open and clear referring us to others for particular answers. For me notably that's been two occasions where Chogon suggested I contact RAWA directly on both occasions I have heard nothing.

From what I can gather this is typical.

So unless he surprises us with a glowing opening posting I see the community just sinking into the "Slough of Despond" generated by unanswered questions. While I am quite happy to be proven wrong on this prediction I see almost anybody at Cyan being better at community than RAWA. If you have ever watched any of the Myterium web cam stuff we tend to get more from Rand than about anybody else.

I don't think that we will ever see Rand doing the Community manager role and the only way I see RAWA producing the goods would be a determined member of the community regularly poking him with a pointy stick every time he ignores the community.

Now can we have a list of suggestions for pointy stick wielder (My first choice would be Tomala but I think we would need a second volunteer with a mop and bucket to clean up )

[Jamey]

One thing I am curious about is, how did RAWA end up being the new community manager?

I mean think about it;

Did Chogon pick him?
Did Cyan vote on it?
Did RAWA himself volunteer?

If RAWA volunteered for this position, then that makes me even more eager to see what he will do next

If Chogon or someone else @ Cyan picked RAWA for the job, I'm sure they had a good reason for choosing him. RAWA is usually quiet, and I'm more than confident Cyan would not pick someone unqualified for the job.

(I'm not trying to shoot down RAWA in any form here, I'm just saying that I'm sure that if RAWA was put into this position, it was for a good reason)

[Nalates]

That "RAWA is usually quiet," might make him a great fit...

But we can hope he will break that pattern.

[BAD]

I love flawed logic......

One argument, Rand plus one set of others created a good company and successful games. So it is reasonable to assume that Rand plus a completely different set of people could also be successful. Yet when Rand is coupled with a certain set of people, he creates well made games, but his company fails. So it's not clear whether Rand matters in the equation at all. What you need to prove is that the group that Rand was successful with cannot be successful without Rand. Then you would be able to prove that Rand is needed to make good games.

However, if Rand left the company now with this set of employees and the company becomes successful once again, you can make the argument that Rand was the problem that was keeping that set of employees from being successful. However, if someone replaces Rand and the company succeeds again, then you only prove that the replacement for Rand is much better at making games and running a company, not proving that Rand cannot run a successful company.

So I agree with ddb174, that Rand should leave. He still owns the place so it's not like he will lose money. It would be the best way to see if his direction is causing the issues they are having. If nothing changes, then he knows it's not his doing.

Back on topic......

I am glad to have RAWA as our Community Manager. It will be fun trying to figure out all the puzzles he leaves for us....

We'll be running around sniffing at every non-existent clue we think we dug up.

[Jamey]

That "RAWA is usually quiet," might make him a great fit...

But we can hope he will break that pattern.

Perhaps I should have left that part out of my previous post.

We've never seen RAWA as our community manager before, maybe he won't be so quiet now that he is in this position. It's been said before that he is usually quiet, but maybe this job will help him break out of that mold. Only time will tell

And as I said before, if he himself volunteered for this job, I highly doubt he would just choose to not communicate often with us. It would make no sense to take a job as community manager and just choose not to communicate.

Which brings me back to Cyan. If they did indeed chose him rather than RAWA himself volunteering, if they thought he was not qualified for the job, they would not have picked RAWA in the first place.

It's VERY unlikely RAWA's name was drawn out of a hat.

As for wanting Rand to leave, I hope no one here is forgetting that Rand is NOT the president of Cyan Worlds. He is the CEO and Executive Producer. The president of the company is Tony Fryman. The CFO is Mark Klamner if I remember correctly.

It's not fair to just point fingers at Rand. In fact, I'd perfer we'd not point fingers at anyone at Cyan Worlds right now.

Regardless, there's nothing anyone here can do about it regardless if you want anyone @ Cyan Worlds to leave or not. Nothing so far indicates that Rand will be leaving Cyan anytime soon thankfully

[Darien]

No, I'm saying that he *never* ran it well. Did you even read the link I gave? I think you think Rand is great, simply because you want a figurehead for the Myst/Uru games you've enjoyed, and don't want to deal with the underlying complexity.

I think that the real "underlying complexity" is the financial failure of Uru. The article you linked to mentions that Riven was created without any money from Broderbund. Cyan created Riven solely from their profits from Myst in order to maintain complete creative control. Riven was a great success. Whether or not it was because of this we'll never know. However, when it came to Uru, Cyan needed some money and Ubisoft was there to help. That help came at the cost of Cyan's total creative control and many changes were made to Cyan's vision of Uru Live. Uru, in every incarnation, was a financial belly flop. Whether or not it was because of Ubisoft's interference we'll never know. If I were Rand, I might think that I must have total control for things to be a success. I'm willing to give him some slack. All Uru fans are frustrated by it's financial failure, but none as much as Rand Miller.

[/me drags post back on topic] As for RAWA's new position, I can't help but feel that Cyan's communication with the fans can't get much worse. I'm honestly starting to feel that the open source release will never happen. As stated above, I think Rand Miller doesn't like the idea of giving up control. I hope I'm wrong. RAWA, say it ain't so.

[Dakro]

First, I really think we need to understand things from Cyan's point of view. They've crossed their deadlines for MQO, they're under a lot of pressure right now. I don't think they have much time to work with Uru right now.

Secondly, its only been a day, and you're already giving up on him. I know RAWA is infamous for being quiet, but, before he was community manager, he really didn't have a reason to speak up to begin with. Before we make assumptions, I really think we should give him a chance first.

Who can you guys trust at Cyan anyway?

[The stranger]

then you only prove that the replacement for Rand is much better at making games and running a company, not proving that Rand cannot run a successful company.

It really doesn't work like that. It's not 1o1 with humans. It's not that Rand is stupid, or his employess are stupid- pick one (yes I know you didn't say stupid but you get the point). Not at all. It's a case of pressure. During Myst production when they most probably didn't have a lot of pressure on them, they functioned well. On Riven- they had lot's of pressure but since Rand had many others with him they functioned well. Now there aren't a lot and you can see what happening. Does it mean Rand should leave? no, because the past shows he can do better. There needs to be a change, but kicking him out isn't reasonable.

[J'Kla]

It has all the look and feel of put the names in a hat and draw one out because we need Chogon working on the open source thing. as for RAWA I draw attention back to the pointy stick method

[Dhelayan]

Who can you guys trust at Cyan anyway?

Right now, pretty much no one, since nobody says anything there...

Did Chogon pick him?
Did Cyan vote on it?
Did RAWA himself volunteer?

Easy to answer: they had no other person to do it...