Is the community wrong?

[Dzian]

Someone who is upset is far more likely to complain than someone who is happy is likely to commend. I heard a statistic one time that on average 7 out of 10 people who don't like something will tell others whereas 3 out of 10 people who like something will tell others. I don't know how accurate that is but I think there is truth to it.

there's 2 angles to this. firstly the business angle.
generally speaking though for every person that doesnt like something and complains there are 26 people who also didnt like it but did not bother to complain.
yet for every 14 people who do like something only 1 will commend you.

this is why its wrong when people spout out "vocal minority" crap. like here on the forums for example. people assume that because only a fraction of players use the forums and complain about things that everyone else is happy and loves the game. which is never the case. because statistically for every person whos come to the forum and made a complaint about the game. 26 more have just stopped playing and not bothered to tell the devs why.

in more recent times its widely accepted that the once dubbed "vocal minority" is actually an accurate representation of consumer opinion of your product. this is exactly why 1.0 tanked because the complaints were originally shrugged off as vocal minority and most players loved the game... which simply wasnt true.

it also happened with the division which had a record breaking successfull launch and an incredibly quick demise (well i say demise its still going to some extent) because everyone shrugged off the complaints as vocal minority. and the player base numbers plummeted incredibly fast. so much so the devs issues a massive apology and even invited players to go to the studios and help them make it better and paid all there expenses. shame it didnt work so well..

what this means then is the overall forum view isn't the hyperbole and drama players often make it out to be. as its proven that those people who will express there opinions actually represent significant numbers of consumers that won't.. so if the forum is mostly percievedas negative then you can bet your bottom dollar that the average consumer opinion isnt much different. player numbers kinda indicate this. over 10 million players and yet only a fraction of them still play. if the forums were hyperbole and everyone else thought the game was great. then the active portion of that 10 million would be significantly higher..

the other angle is more public interest (there's a buzz word for this but i cant remember it)it's basicall public opinion and word of mouth and stuff.

and this is where numbers on both sides can go exponentially. for every person that doesnt like something they will generally tell 6 people.
and for every person that does they will generally tell 8 people. and that can grow exponentially if each of those 6 people tell 6 more and 6 more and 6 more etc etc. or 8 in the case of commends. it varies a little depending on the nature of business but in a general sense the numbers arent to far off.if you go to the cinema and see a movie and its amazing your more likely to tell your friends about that than if you went to a coffee shop and had an amazing coffee for example.