i don't understand this - the internet is a medium for 2 way communication - I assume all games deisgners are online and want as many people as possible to play and enjoy their games as much as possible.

If i had a game out there I'd be checking the forums every night to find good questions, and updating the FAQ regularly to keep on top of things. Hell, I'd have a blog for each game full of hints, tips, clarifications, expansion ideas.

I'm not talking about hours of work a day here - doing this would make that designer an automatic fan favourite. i have a couple of times got into ciommunciation with writers of RPG campaigns i was running, and being able to get feedback and clarifications of the creator made for a great gaming experience, and the authors enjoyed being able to help make their work run smoothly.

Can't FFG facilitate this? Host blogs for their designers themselves?

ChiddlerNZ said:

There's your error!

FFG's designers do not watch over "a game" but "a lot of games". If they would look up all feedback, every day, on each forum, they could not get any work done.
Wouldn't be that much of a problem if they would not need money. But, frankly, they need to create new games as well as updates for existing ones.

But when a deisgner brings out a NEW game, surely in the first few months of that game's life they would want to spend a little of their time talking about it with the players, seeing where they went right, where they went wrong and correcting misconceptions?

I'm not talking about hands on support for mature products, I'm talking about wanting to get their new games played by as many people as possible.

Some designers do this, but many seem to have no online presence at all - I just don't get that and think they are genuinely missing a trick.

Look at this game - theres only a handful of new posts a day - one a week the deigner could spend 20 minutes seeing what was worth addessing

Because game designers have a busy schedule, and they have personal lives, too. They aren't slaves.

I guess twenty minutes a week just won't be enough. It could easily be one or two hours, and more if the FAQ should be updated regularly. This would eat up a lot of time and I can understand, as much as I would love it, that this just can't be done. Besides that, some people might even complain if they had to get a new FAQ every month just to be up to date.

ChiddlerNZ said:

I bet your girlfriend/boyfriend would have something to say about that.

I think if a FAQ were adjusted too often, there would be more of a tendency for game balance to creep one way or the other. I guess the game companies have to find a balance between game cohesion (playability) and making sure update documents are as bulletproof as possible before releasing them. FFG did move pretty quickly with a FAQ for MoM, and we've just had an update in something less than three months. Not bad if you ask me.

Having said that, Arkham Horror is WAY overdue for a FAQ update. I know it would be a mammoth task with all the expansions now available, but it would be a tremendous help. If not for the efforts of people like Universal Head at BGG, AH would have an almost insurmountable learning curve.