Community Expands: Team Fortress 2 Has a Blog

The Internet has given us a communication mechanism which allows developers to better understand their audience. You can use community sites to market your content and your brand but you can also use them to better understand your market and bring your strageties and progress to your fans.

Valve Software has taken their latest successful franchise title Team Fortress 2 and followed it up with a website or “blog” which can keep their fans “in the loop.” Teamfortress.com will, no doubt, be the launch pad for much hype, community offerings and up-to-date news about the TF2 game and any updates.

“Now that we’ve settled into regular releases of content, we’ve found ourselves wanting a better way to talk directly to the TF2 community about the state of the game and some of the reasoning behind the choices we’re making. Our hope is that this blog will accomplish that, and give everyone some better insight into our development process as well.” (teamfortress.com)

Now, there is a great chance Valve will use their new launch pad to talk about upcoming games and lead you to demo’s and downloads to the TF2 title; they already link to the valve store to purchase the game. But, blogs bring in users searching for fresh content about the game and give official word to kill any bad rumors.

Call it marketing, call it journalism or developers notes, there is nothing wrong with having one more resource which represents the voice of Valves TF2 development team. Congradulations guys!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Episode 279: Wii YouEpisode 279: Wii You

This week’s Gaming Podcast once again lacks Paul S. Nowak, which is a shame since the price for the Wii U has been released. Paul as the resident Nintendo representative would have been nice to have in the episode to give his views.

This week’s podcast includes the following news items:

  • Wii U priced at $300 for basic, $350 for deluxe
  • Dragon Age III: Inquisition officially announced
  • Obsidian unveils Kickstarter title Project Eternity, raise $1M in 24 hours
  • Cliff Bleszinski wants to see “no disc based games” next-gen
  • Guild Wars 2 surpasses 2 million units

We also announce the winner of the Borderlands 2 contest. This week’s Question of the Week, “What game(s) have you been playing this week?”

Guitar Hero: On Tour – 300K Units SoldGuitar Hero: On Tour – 300K Units Sold

The little DS title Guitar Hero: On Tour arrived with a hand-held attachment for playing guitar on the go. Some reviewers found it cramped, annoying and too damn small to really feel any comfort. Other reviews found it exciting, fresh and a break from standard DS games.

Reviews aside, 300,000 people are willing to bet money that the DS title was going to rock the house. The concept hit the mark for the DS because the game system is for on the go “touch and feel” style games; Guitar Hero: On Tour is definitely a touch and feel game.

Although we’ve not played it, we’re not too surprised that 300k people purchased the title, considering the install base for the Nintendo DS device itself. With such a large install base, even if only 25% of the target audience buys into the product they’ll be rolling in the dough.

Will this inspire a Rock Band style ‘drum game’ for the future from the Activision competitors or was this nothing but a fluke?

(Thanks, GameSpot)

Episode 744: Even More Switch 2 StuffEpisode 744: Even More Switch 2 Stuff

The guys discuss a ton of topics off the cuff. They talk about the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct airing on April 2, the PSN crash, lots of negative Civilization 7 reactions, Phasmophobia hitting 22m total sales, PlayStation and Steam quietly removing shovelware, Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D remake selling and Dragon Quest 12 confirmed to still be in development.

Let us know what you think.