"Alienating your market [Privateer Press]" Topic

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I'm confused. Amongst all the flaming and trolling, I was one of the first PP supporters to post with a level head and in a civil manner. I did not attack anyone nor did I break the codes of conduct (or perhaps I did when referring to the rude PP rep in Meiczyslaw's post, and for that I apologize). Yet I got put in your 'dawghouse' for vulgarity?

How does that work?

Many others here used language that was much more adversarial than mine, were ruder and less willing to articulate their point and generally just looking to cause a ruckus, yet sanctions were not placed upon them. Why?

I'd hate to think this is what happens when new posters disagree with veteran forum members. I poked around some other threads here and I can tell you this looks like a pretty cool place, it would be a shame to have such a seemingly nice BBS turn out to be an Elitist's Paradise.

Sorry to dump this on you guys, but I just don't get it. I don't really have anything else to say about the main thread that hasn't already been said by myself or anyone else.

I'll check back here in an hour or two to see if I've been put in the 'dawghouse' again...

Smedley

The sad part is all this "professional" stuff.

You do not play like a professional, you play like a person having fun.

Its very easy to read part of 1 line, writen on 1 page ina whole book, turn it into what you want, then blasting a company about it.

politicians do it all the time.

Here are some facts:

It doesn't matter that your wife is offended by this 1 line.

It doesn't matter who they target.

It only matters to them that thier bottom line is covered because thier TARGET audience is buying the game.

If you had that bad of an expierince, then take it into proper channels. Crusading against a company because you paraphrased a line in one of thier books is foolish.

Its sad that a few people are this worked up over a small group of words, that where quite obvilosly, meant in jest.

The miniature gaming world has been dominated by GW for a very long time, and this thread is an exact embodiement of that.

Its like when White Wolf first started to print games, and offended the hyper sensetive D & D crowd.

It completely sounds like the words of a GW fan boy, smearing PP's name, a feminazi, or a person who generally stirs up trouble over trivial things.

Here is something, send an email, and post it here with the resolution. Have your wife get in here and post.

Use the PP official boards, but what ever you do, stop this foolish crusade.

If you wanted to play the game, you would, regardless of this little paraphrases sentence.

At least have the decency to post the entire line, and paragraph, so would be readers who are not in the know, can see what the whole paragraph was about.

BTW. there is a 12 year old girl in the l;eague at my LGS here in Michigan, even she understood the lone to mean that you can't complain, whine and rules lawyer and enjoy this game, its a shame that a child has more sight that you and your wife.

nerf spelling, lone = line

Smedley, you got dawghoused for the term you used to describe the rep, not for your position. We aren't supposed to use naughty words; can't even use the ast***ck ploy. Also no direct attacks on people - which you didn't do but a couple of others on this thread did do.

The dawghouse thing is new for us. Less than a week. You were keeping company with some of our "veteran forum members" in fact. I think your time overlapped with Scurvy, who has more posts on this site than anybody but the editor and one other fellow. If you have any concerns about being doghaused, why not email Bill. I am sure he will answer any questions you might have.

Glad you have joined us, and I hope you do stick around.

-Michael

So I guess Red Dwarf discussions are out of the question, then?

Smedley

It's a smegging garbage pod!

I LOVE Yorkie bars! Much more than the Cadbury bars. Sadly, it's the Cadbury bars rather than the Yorkie bars that you can find here in the states...

look I would like to belive you if you had there names. This way they could defend themselves. If what you say is true Privateer Press would take care of it.

Haunch, PP aren't going 'to take care of it.' From their POV, they've done nothing wrong.

[How does that work?]

Smedley, I tried to get in contact with you, but since you had no email address on file in your membership, the best I could do was launch the "Message for Smedley" topic ( which you never responded to ) .

For the forum rules, see TMP link

As an aside here - look at the most offensive posts on this topic - look at the member info on those that made those posts. You find that they are all people who joined TMP within the last 36 hours, after this thread got linked to the PP forums.

This tells me that they are all PP fans who leaped over here to defend the game/company/owners. That they came to the defence of the game/company/owners is fine. That they choose to do so by being juvenile, offensive, condescending and rude (with a couple notable exceptions) is not fine. I have had zero interaction or familiarity with PP or its products before this. I had no opinion on the "he said, she said" nature of the original post. But I have developed quite the negative opinion of PP after reading the posts of those who are drawn to it. If I ever do get a look at PP products, they will be starting with 2 strikes in my book - based solely on the level of discourse shown by some of their fans here.

My apologies to Smedley and ChudleyOne and Christopher Fowler, who have shown themselves to be a cut above the other PP posters.

I would like to address part of M.'s original comment:

"Basically, the Warmachine rep said this (but not in so many words): "Our market is 16- to 24-year-old males. We don't want your business because you're a girl. Go away.""

Its the 'Basically' that irritates me the most. It takes any of the authority/fact from the comment by paraphrasing it.

There's simply too much paraphrasing for me to take any of this seriously. Maybe your wife/you had a negative encounter, but the vitrol you've been throwing around really isn't necessary.

"Go away" please.

For those keeping score at home, take note that "Snowdog64" and I are not the same person.

Meiczyslaw, it's unfortunate that your wife's concerns were handled so brusquely. However, it might be that the ad campaign isn't offensive to WOMEN, it's just offensive to HER. It seems to be working on those other women. In which case, she has a couple of options:

1. Raze Privateer Press to the ground, plow salt into the soil, seek out and destroy all warmachine-related matierial wherever it might be found, and spay/neuter anyone affiliated with PP and all people who play warmachine.

2. Go play something else.

Now, while righteous indignation and cleansing by fire are quite a bit of fun, I wouldn't know if it was worth the hassle to you and the Mrs. or not. That's something y'all would have to discuss betwixt yourselves. It just seems to me that option #2 would be a lot simpler.

When I first read Meiczyslaw's post I thought it was just bad luck meeting a rude rep and thougt no worse of PP.

That PP fans leapt to their defense should have been a plus. A simple "we are sorry she felt badly treated by the PP rep but PP is a business and the marketing strategy works" may or may not have satisfied Meiczyslaw but it sure would have satisfied me.

Instead I see too many posts attacking Meiczyslaw which will inevitably affect the way I view PP products in the future.

Harliquinne got it right.

Wow, aren't people touchy. Oh, a rep wasn't exactly polite to someone at a con? This is somehow news?

Folks, reps are not always 100%. Corporate slogans aren't always to everyone's liking.

Know what? Too bad. There are many things in this world that offend me. Nothing I can really do about that.

Know what I think happened? Mrs. M went there looking for a fight. The rep was tired and didn't want to get into it. End of story.

My wife is 4'11". She thinks my gaming is silly, but understands that I really enjoy it. Does she get offended at slogans like these? No ... she knows most advertising for games is aimed at late teen boys and is intentionally sophomoric.

I would also argue that words as relatively mild as these are not damaging towards women. It is the women in question who allow themselves to be damaged. There ARE words that are damaging to people ... just not these.

I think a lot of people are missing the point. You can "play like you got a pair" whether you actually DO have a "pair" or not. The slogan exhorts the player to play in a certain manner. It doesn't imply that women, eunuchs, or others not in possession of a "pair" can't play the game in that manner. It's the way you play, not what's in your pants.

w.

Quite frankly, I would not put much stock in the original posters claim. Not that he (or his wife) are lying or anything, but this is one of those instances where it is unwise to do a snap, knee-jerk decision without seeing the other side of the story.

Facts: We don't know his wife and we haven't heard the conversation. His wife may be touchy about certain subjects, and reacted innapropriately to something the reps said. Or perhaps certain things were misconstrued in the conversation ... whatever.

OR, perhaps the original poster's claim is completely acurate. Maybe they were being insensetive jerks to her. Fact is - how can we know? Folks need to step back and take some deep breaths, before they swear off Warmachine or whatever else. We don't have the other side of the story.

Oh, that's what it means! I thought they meant a pair of dice.............

Not particularly related but I went down to comicon and the Privateer Press guys were really cool to me.

The only real problem I have with them is their scale is wrong , 28mm??? Come on guys take it down to 15's at least 8)

The slogan "Play like you've got a pair."

Is a shortened innuendo with the intention of drawing the following completed sentence in your brain:

"Play like you've got a pair of testacles."

The slogan doesn't actually say that though. But it is implied.

Further analysis of the implied slogan results in silliness. How can the presence of a component of the male human endocrine system effect how I use a product?

By the way, did you know that the controls for the X-Box game DOA3 Volleyball can be fully played with only one hand? The designers wanted to keep the players other hand free - for what purpose I can only imagine...

~mArK

Whilst one might argue to and fro as to whether Privateer Press's marketing is in good taste, and their behaviour one hectic day beyond reproach, their apparent lack of reaction here saddens me. I do not believe, especially considering this has been brought to Privateer Press's attention on their own discussion forums, that they are now not aware of the issue.

A public apology would cost them very little; and, from the activity this thread generates, a fair number of people here seem to be disapointed by their attitude.

Hmmm...maybe they're not back from the convention yet. There are plenty of companies who post here who shut down during convention cycles. Maybe PP's simply not available at the moment. Again, jumping to conclusions about their intentions.

I've played sports though high school and into college. I still play sports 10 years after college. I can be fairly honest in saying that "Play like you've got a pair" is not meant to be slanderous toward women, its just another way to say "suck it up" or "play harder." If you want to spin it into something else, then thats your deal.

However, that PP con rep should be fired (or whatever). That was stupid.

It never ceases to amaze me how many band wagon jumpers post on this list. Getting all indignant and swearing never to buy any more War Machine figures because some guys wife got into an argument with a sales rep and felt slighted is going a little too far don't you think? Did you stop to think that perhaps wassisname's wife wasn't in the mood to listen to what the sales rep had to say? Perhaps she misunderstood his explanation? Does 'We don't need your business' sound like something a sales rep would say to an angry customer? Before getting on your soap boxes with wassisname why don't you find out the other side of the story? Send an email to Privateer Press, ask for an explanaition, then decide. If PP get enough emails asking what went on (and be polite or they'll ignore you) then they will have to make a public statement because of the threat of lost business. Before you start baying for blood remember that there are always two sides to a story.

Sounds like the rumors of PP taking on a big business attitude toward its market (ala GW!) are possibly true.

gunslinger that has to be the dumbest thing written thus far.

[A public apology would cost them very little; and, from the activity this thread generates, a fair number of people here seem to be disapointed by their attitude.]

Do they have anything to apologize for? We don't know. That's the thing. All we have is one side of the story ... AND, that side was paraphrased.

Frankly, I sincerely doubt it was as bad as it has been claimed.

Let me add ... I interpret their slogan to mean "play fair, play hard".

Most folk wouldnt know what giving good customer service is.
(I have been working in customer services orientated things for over a decade. I know what good customer service is.)

Gamers are even worse than normal people in this respect. (and a small amount are WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY better. You know who you are!)

In this situation if I was Meicz's wife I would of said the magic words of "take me to your supervisor please." I would of then repeated verbatium what the rep had said to me, then asked his manager if this was company policy or one bad apple.

Then smiling I would of accepted whatever the super had to say and walked away happy knowing that soon after the annoying fellow wouldnt be playing like he had a pair cus his boss would of kicked em in.

If your a rep you'r polite to everybody

Simple reason why

They are paying you to be.

The simple solution would be to employ people who have sales/CS skills insted of gameing skills. I could train each and every one of my customer service girls to play warmachine and teach em the background etc. I on the other hand cannot teach certain people good CS skills. Its a thing you either have or you dont.

All that being said I like Warmachine and when I finally get my soviet type ones painted up I intend on having a game and playing like I have a pair. :)

Oh where oh where has Meiczyslaw gone? oh where oh where can he be?! his absence is suspect..

the fact that people here wont ever play warmachine just because of this thread is sad..

the fact that TMP put this on the front page is sad..

the fact that some Game Stores want to pull their advertising from TMP because of both issues above is sad..

*anathema*

Well, were I to *want* to play Warmachine, the inability of a number of its (note the proper use of the term rather than the contraction "it's") adherents to spell or use grammatically correct English certainly would turn me off of the game. My foreign students show better grasp of the English language than some of the Warmachine players represented here. Perhaps the oft-referred-to "pair" really refers to neurons? Sizzle does sell, though .....

Note that I had no interest in the game at all previously but am simply rubbernecking at this trainwreck. :-)

The whole thing is stupid.

lets call a spade a spade.

I'm a 38 year old male....I fall outside their marketing target. I'm glad I spent my $300.00 last week on Flames of War stuff.

LOL...what a bunch of fools. Did they hire that family-member/sock puppet poster/consultant from Black Tree Design???

"Are we still allowed to call a spade a spade in the UK..wouldnt surprise me if we wasnt."

Who are PP and what the hell is warmachine? lol,,

Smedley sounds like a sock puppet

This whole thing has gone past ridiculous. I just want to comment on one thing that Meiczyslaw feels hadn't been addressed.

"Y'know, no one's answered this question as far as I can tell:
Would it be acceptable to say, "Play like you're white?"
It's the same thing, folks."

The above phrase is racial.
War Machine's slogan "play like you've got a pair," isn't.
It's gender oriented.
And furthermore, in this day and age, it seems to apply as much to females as males. I think this is simply a case of someone's sensitivity meter needing a little calibration.

Kevin

Well, this is an interesting thread. Took me days before I could pull it up because it strains the TMP board system so much.

I play warmachine and have been a member on these boards for many years - long before Bill even had this domain name.

I find the most interesting post are the ones that attack Meiczyslaw's wife. Classy. How about attacking her argument instead? I can understand why people won't do that though. Much of Privateer's marketing is overtly sexual. "like you have a pair" is overtly sexual. It could be softened considerably by several means. I don't think its really necessary to have an exclusive approach or even wise. There are other ways of presenting the same message without excluding people of gender.

Some posts talk about women being part of Privateer. Well that doesn't mean their marketing isn't offensive to women. Nothing is offensive to everyone as well. That said, I've found the marketing and some of the fluff text to be off color. Just like you can indicate anger without swearing, you can indicate other emotions without being sexual. In my military experience I've heard guys use the term "get your dick up" (and they weren't talking about your cousin Dick who is sleeping too long.) Would that be an appropriate advertising slogan for, say, a box of Trenchers? "Get your dick up and purchase a boxed set of Trenchers - they get in there and get the job done!" Hmmm, that does sound compelling! Saying "Play like you have a pair" is not any different. "Pair" in this case is the same level of innuendo as "dick."

I am not going to boycott Warmachine. I love the game. In spite of what people say about page 5, the game is rules lawyer heaven. I've never played a game where someone didn't call someone else on a rule or two. Its very rules intensive. The argument that you shouldn't play the rules and play the game instead are unfounded. The rules are quite gamey. It is still a fun game though.

The fact is PP uses sexual inuendo in their marketing. Is this a good thing? I don't think it is. Is it turning some people off? You bet. PP doesn't have to "tone it down" - but they can be less sexual and still get the message across. They shouldn't let pride get in the way of being smart. I don't even think they need to make some apology - just think about the appropriateness of their marketing. The game isn't R rated so neither should their marketing or fluff material be.

Just my opinion. I've got a pair... their big and fuzzy and they hang off the mirror in my truck.

I really have to point people here for some idea of what customer relations could be like

actsofgord.com

Really I can't understand what all the fuss was about in the first place. I guess I'm a person B kinda guy, I like my life to not be stressed, if something p's me off I walk away, I don't seek to get into arguements about it unless it actually effects me. The actual quote from the book is telling you how to play the game ( no holds barred, full on, kill or be killed ) not who can play the game.

I'd like to pull a part of a post from the PP boards from another person that was demoing at the booth (I did remove a refernce to Satan's domicile cause better safe than sorry.)

QUOTE: I was surprised to see that anyone could have posted so much unfounded concern on TMP. Unfortunately, I couldn't read it because the link kept timing out.

I remember someone describing a tall person with blonde hair. Well, Brian Snoddy is not so tall and his hair is more brownish than blonde to be sure. The only person at the booth with Blonde hair is Sherry! (and she is on the short side and clearly not a guy)

At one point, while stuck in the middle of a demo I heard Brian explaining something about our target group. I can tell you that what he said was answered in a purely professional manner in the same way that Mattel would say that their line of Spiderman toys were targeted for preteen~teenage boys.

If you don't know your target audience, how the HECK do you plan on marketing a product????? ENDQUOTE

Well, here is a second side to the story that puts the situation in a different light. I've correpsonded with Michael quote a bit and know that if any of the above stuff happened the any of the 4 ways it's been described, he'd have mentioned it.

Food for thought. Chad

Actually, their response was brilliant.

Not that I condone attempting to turn off/alienate potential customers with a macho attitude.

I agree that attempting to maintain the macho image, while playing with small, metal/plastic toys is almost impossible to swallow for most of society.

However, while alienating a customer, or two, they have gotten more free press than they probably would have been able to afford in several years. So........ the controversy is helping to spread word about their company and game(s) to the masses.

I had never heard of them prior to the controversy.

Effective Guerrilla Marketing 101

I do have one question for you guys. I am a new player of warmachines, but I hold a BA in business, specializing in marketing. Any of you guys ever think about the fact that women have a pair too. theirs just happen to be inside, so thus this remark could be translated more as such, play like you have a functioning reproductive system, though this could be seen as an offense to those persons who do not, it is by no means an insult to them. try to be a little more open minded about these things.

Once again another n00bish poster wanders over from the PP forums, however in this case I'll keep my words to a minimum and give a simple link.

PDF link

This file is a low res PDF web-zine. On pages 2-3 of it Matt Wilson explains what Page 5 is about. Perhaps it is wiser for us to make our own interpretations, but I'd think its still worth a read : )

This is probably one of the dumbest overreactions I've ever seen in my life. Seriously. I can highly imagine, solely from reading the original post that the comment about "we don't want your business because you're a girl" was, at the very least said tongue firmly planted in cheek. If the woman didn't take it that way then maybe it is better that she "went away" because people like that do NOT need to be playing games. It sounds like she was offended by the slogan and decided to take issue with the company NO MATTER what they had said to her. I don't think Privateer has much to worry from the overreactive crowd, though. For every 1 person they "may" convince into going to a different game system, we bring in 2, and in many many cases, a lot of them are women who do know how to "play like they have a pair".

This is a tempest in a teapot. Your wife did deserve the brush off for making an issue of this silly slogan. Did she expect them to change their whole marketing strategy over her hurt feelings? Thin skinned people and lawyers are ruining the fun for the rest of us. I will be buying a "pair" of Warmachine blisters this weekend.

Er a bit late on this one but my daughter who is 28 and plays games, would have just ed him. Nuff said

I've met the Privateer folks, and worked on the company side of this industry, as representative, creator or company, for eight years now.

First, I find the original poster's cast of the Privateer chaps to be very out of character. I simply can't believe it, and really, I don't.

Second, as many have pointed out, they indeed went in looking for a fight. I'd imagine they heard what they wanted to in the PP rep's response- I strongly doubt there was ever a chance they'd walk away friends, whatever the response, going in with the initial attitude they did. People are people.

Third, and I mean this in the worst possible way, don't take anyone's word for anything, especially where disgruntled gamers are concerned. Everyone's got some kind of an axe to grind, and in my experience, I've met more chaps with an irrational dislike for Company X than I can readily explain without a degree in Psychology. Hell, I've even fallen to that level, myself- griping about former associates, belittling competitors, whatever. And it wasn't until I saw other people acting in such a fashion that I realised just how distasteful and immature "anti-company" railing really is, certainly in an industry as tightly-knit and (honestly) unimportant as this one.

We're all in this gaming business together, players and manufacturers. If you'd like to rail against the injustices inflicted against consumers by those on the other side of the curtain, really now, the game industry is a very, very silly place to start.

Cheers!

-Scott Leaton

16-24 year old males?

So me being 42 puts me in the 4% bracket of their target!

Now I know I am getting old, but I still have a pair of dice to play with.

Heh.

Wow can't believe I missed all this. Personally I am surprised that the fellas at PP haven't made an official response. I have always been very impressed with their responses to concerns or complaints made on the PP forum.

Ignoring whether you or your wife feel that you were dealt with in a suitable manner, I personally disagree with your complaint. Am I male, yes, 16-24 - I wish, do I play like I have a pair? Well I try, but I find I get spanked at warmachine an awful lot. I am too cautious and Warmachine is about being rash, charging in and leaving a bloody hacked up corpse on the ground. =]

It's not anti woman - its anti whiner. it's against people who stack troops/characters/items in such a manner that it sails as close to cheese as possible. It's against people who complain about army x having troop y. Everything is horribly overpowered and broken in some way - which is why it works.

I believe that you misinterpreted the intent of the slogan and I think that you may also have misinterpreted the response from the demo fella (albeit, this is without being there so I could well be wrong).

I hope, however, that PP post on here anyway as I don't like to see a company, who I admire for their way of doing business getting slandered.

Cheers

Lp

Wow... this was a waste of my life....

For what its worth i'll give my take.

First the term "playing like your white".This is a perfectly innocent term meaning to move first(as in chess).

Playing "like a white man".This is a real term meaning to play fair or by the rules.It is not now used and is seen,fairly in my opinion,as offensive.

Playing "like you have a pair".This refers to male sexual organs.It is also obviously anti-male sexually biased.The presumtion being that males are by nature more aggressive than females.This term seems acceptable in our language because men don't complain about biased views.

Men talking over women.This is true but there is a caveat.Waiting for a break in conversation takes statistically three times longer if your waiting for a woman to stop talking.

NB.I have felt free to make up the last statistic but it feels about right.