What’s the best way to announce a game?

My guess is not to have your CEO confirm it and then for the community manager to deny that it ever happened! Well that’s what BioWare has done. In my first blog I linked the Portfolio.com interview with Electronic Arts chief executive John Riccitiello where he gives a definite yes to the question: “Does Riccitiello mean the oft rumored Knights of the Old Republic Online?” Now, if you go to the BioWare official forums you will see 30 pages worth of comments regarding the “announcement” where Chris Priestly, the Community Communications Coordinator states:

“There have recently been rumors about the BioWare MMO. Once again, these are just rumors and we do not comment on rumors.”

Interesting. What the heck is going on?

Now as it happens I know someone from a forum I frequent who says that he served the CEO of an independent gaming company at the restaurant he works at and they got talking about games. During the conversation he mentioned that he knew that KOTOR MMO was being worked on. Now this was back in November and I suppose the same sort of thing happened with Portfolio.com, the only difference being the interviewer from Portfolio.com is an interviewer from Portfolio.com!

If I was working on KOTOR MMO, I’d love to tell everyone what I was working on, especially the long time fans. Unfortunately, games companies usually have to do things by the book in the form of official announcements and Non Disclosure Agreements (NDA).

So where do BioWare go from here. Well they definitely need to do some crowd control. Speculation and distrust is going to keep going up when people on the forums specifically ask if the Chief Executive was a liar and the community coordinator says no comment over and over again. How can they not release an official statement?

Anyway, I'm going to keep blogging as though it still is official, even if it is denied. The game is too perfect not to be made into a MMO.