Re: (Nutaku) Milenium War Aigis (English Version)
Well. There are two aspects,
The web page update & design is a Nutaku thing. Has nothing to do with Aigis. I find the updated page nice, better than the old.
Clearly Nutaku is trying to improve their own part of the business (Publishing, WebPage, CS) which is good.
Then there is the Aigis aspect.
If we accept Nutaku's answers, then they are on a pure publishing contract for it, no influence or even contact at all, they simply supply the server side and likely has some contractual agreements over support, webpage banners etc.
Within that framework, they are sort of screwed. Because it has their name on the page so they take the beating that the devs deserve.
Their "sin" within the framework is that they are a bit on the backfoot in terms of information.
Take AW, Anniversary and Valentine.
Now any Aigis player could see that was going volano mode. Nutaku saw it once the volcano made it to facebook and sacrificed the AW news into the volcano.
What they should have done was to build buzz and head off the eruption.
The simplest approach would have been to,
- Put out Banners right BEFORE or on anniversary date, that it would be celebrated in March with AW.
That would have created some complains over the delay but it would have been drowned out in "heck yeah AW cries" from the majority.
- Put the current contest out as a NUTAKU valentines event for Aigis
This would nicely have swatted two flies in one blow.
(1) Show that while the devs didnt have anything and thus didnt give a *bip*, Nutaku does. So even if we dislike the devs, we like Nutaku, they care etc. So, no one slamming door on Nutaku even if they do on Aigis (Customers kept, more payers, Aigis who? /snicker)
(2) Taken any steam out of complains over, hey, where is the Valentine event and left any complaints being balanced by "oh hey waifu contest".
Now that might seem a bit cynical, but I consider it good Customer Handling. You know things are going south, so you make sure to cushion any rough patches and allow your loyalists to build positive buzz and momentum to drown out complaints. You fullfil your contract, but make it clear, that you are the moving part and you care about players that, and that they are "your" players* .
You'll have more players and payers afterwards and it will not have cost you a dime more. In fact, you'd have done exactly the same thing as now, just in a way better order and effect relationship
* See this is a touchy but critical point. Nutaku want players at them, a Nutaku player base, spending at Nutaku. The games are the drivers of that, but it is not critical what games drive it, as long as they do. The game makers and Nutaku has a common goal, but with a critical difference, the gamer maker wants the player at their game, Nutaku wants the players in general.