Listen and Talk to Fans
Listening to angry fans isn’t always the easiest thing to do, but you need to at least show that you care. If there’s anything more disastrous than the reception of Battlefront 2’s loot boxes, it’s the AMA that EA held on it. In November, EA and DICE put three developers forward on Reddit hoping to answer fans questions and “repair the bridge.” Unfortunately the opposite happened, and fans left feeling more frustrated than ever, even to the point where they felt that DICE didn’t even acknowledge some of the complaints they had with the game. This is troubling to say the least, and ruins EA’s already shaky image even more with fans.
Moving forward into 2018, EA has to find some way to show fans that it’s listening and communicating. Even games that do moderately well at release are going to lose their fan bases quickly if it feels like EA just doesn’t care about them. Constant communication is going to be a must, and we need to be updated on how Battlefront 2 and other games are being expanded or improved upon. EA will also need to be openly communicating about its future releases and how microtransactions are going to feature in them. Considering we didn’t know about Battlefront 2’s loot boxes until right before release, fans are going to be skeptical of big releases like Anthem in the future.
