More From Capcom Europe on Twitter

Following the outpouring of comments yesterday to Capcom Europe’s remarks on Twitter, I thought this might do better with a new post.

After I called it a night last night, Capcom Europe returned to Twitter and has been responding to fans left and right, trying to smooth things over. Did they succeed? Well, you be the judge.

(Aside: I’m mostly foregoing screencaps for now, since a: I have a prior commitment I need to get to soon, and b: it seems Capcom Europe isn’t trying to cover their tracks, so capturing them doesn’t seem necessary.)

Click the links to see the original tweets.

@CapcomEuroSeems I upset some of our friends across the pond. Sorry. We’re not blaming anyone. Especially those that worked so hard on the Dev room

@CapcomEuroApologies again. The original comment was in relation to the interaction in the Dev rooms NOT the fans who have been nothing but supportive

@NickWonderling tweeted “You shouldn’t rely on fans to make a game for you. Even more so since most of us just want to play to game. Not make it.” They responded:

@CapcomEuro @nickwonderling But the idea of MML3 was of fan input on an game. Is that not of interest or would you have just prefered a game delivered?

@CapcomEuro @Thomas_Light @Aedesyr no I didn’t I said it was a shame more people didn’t get involved with dev rooms

@CapcomEuro @You_Spoony_Bard This incident has shown there is very passionate group Mega man fans. It will be passed on.

@chradnev tweeted “Obviously because he’s not a ‘priority’ at Capcom, which is the real reason this game is canned. Not the fans.”

@CapcomEuro @chradnev @carlosoporto not true, we just need the right game for megaman

@KeeblerKong says “There were over 400 concepts sent in from fans for enemy and boss designs for the Reverbots, where is this lack you speak of?”

@CapcomEuro @KeeblerKong 400 is great and concepts were amazing but its a tiny proportion of Mega Man fans

@CapcomEuro @chradnev Thats part of the problem I guess, we allowed fans to get involved at very early stage, so no wonder they’re upset

@CapcomEuro @Dionkey we havn’t blamed the fans

@LizSama asks “Is it even remotely possibly the cancellation can be reversed? or are you guessing since you’re CapEuro and you know essentially only Capcom of Japan can call the shots?”

@CapcomEuro @lizsama @Dertek 🙂 join the facebook page I sent around. Show you care. Bit like you are doing on twitter

(As an aside, I didn’t see any link to a Facebook page during all of this. Maybe it was Direct Messaged? Strange thing to do, if so…)

@Hank_Jertrude asks “Why didnt you at least release the prototype?”

@CapcomEuro
@Hank_Jertrude it’s not finished 🙁

@LizSama returns with “Sir, bit.ly/o6st4x <~ that post made it very clear what you meant. :/ "

@CapcomEuro @lizsama yes that was a flippant answer, it was a shame lots of people didn’t get involved in Dev room to devleop the game was my point

@Virus92 tweets “You did. You said it was a shame more people weren’t involved. That puts responsibility on the fans, most of whom had no idea.”

@CapcomEuro @virus92 Thats not blaming the fans thats expressing dissapointment in something we did

@CapcomEuro @ZSBeardsley @JustApollo I was expressing dissapointment with a Capcom marketing tool rather than blaming fans

@CapcomEuro @ZSBeardsley @JustApollo that’s how some have interpreted it. But really we’d never ever blame fans

@CapcomEuro @Thewallcrusher I didn’t. I said it was “a shame more fans didn’t want to get more involved” when discussing our Dev rooms = Blaming Capcom

@CapcomEuro @ZSBeardsley @JustApollo I said “it’s a shame the fans didn’t want to get more involved” when talking about Dev rooms. Thats Capcoms fault

@KaiserDarkCode asks “What kind of hoops can we jump through to help MML3 back on track?”

@CapcomEuro @KaiserDarkCode You’re doing a pretty god job at the moment

@Rablazone puts forth “You’re ignoring me but i’m going to try again: What if you guys finished making the demo, and used that to gauge interest?”

@CapcomEuro @Rablazone That could be an option. I’ll put it forward

@ZSBeardsley tells them “Your statement conveys that the efforts made by the fans of the game were insufficient. Not that the product was lacking.”

@CapcomEuro @ZSBeardsley No it conveys that the dev room website and concept wasn’t as good as we wanted it to be

@ZSBeardsley retorts “The first clause states that fans weren’t interested enough. “Shame” implies that a better effort could have been made by us.”

@CapcomEuro @ZSBeardsley or disappointment in ourselves that we couldn’t get more people interested?

@jackal27 states “What you said felt l like a slap in the face to those of us who did help out. It makes you guys seem really out of touch.”

And the last tweet as of this writing responded with a link to a post on Capcom Europe’s forum, which states the following:

We tweeted in a conversation with a user

“it’s a shame the fans didn’t want to get more involved 🙁 if we saw there was an audience for MML3 people might change minds”

The joy of twitter is that 140 characters messages have to be short and to the point, but they do risk being interpreted as meaning something else entirely. This message meant to highlight our own disappointment is seeing the title red lit, and our own attempts to pull people through the Dev Rooms into MML3 not working as well as we hoped.

So we were surprised to see reports we we’re ‘blaming’ the fans for the cancellation of the title, this was never the case or the intention of the tweet.

I can however understand how it might be misinterpreted so apologies to anyone that thought we we’re being criticial, we wern’t.

We’ll try and be clearer in future.

And finally, I would be remiss if I did not post the following from Protodude, an exchange from somewhere amidst all that chaos which certainly left him displeased:

Of course, there are many, many more exchanges, and if you so desire, you can look through them via Capcom Europe’s responses here (for the ill-Twitterate, just click “in reply to ____” to see the original, of course).

Call it damage control or call it sincere, it seems that the line being delivered now is that while Capcom is not blaming the fans, they are blaming the Devroom concept itself and how they utilized it, which still leaves itself open to questioning when we look at the outcome. While it was great to have a way for fans all around the world to participate (unlike the relatively insular Robot Master and NetNavi contests of the past), perhaps the Devroom concept would have been better applied to a new, unknown game, one which fans have not been eagerly awaiting for over a decade.

Or heck, Mega Man Universe, if they had to use an established property.

In any case, that’s where things sit as of this writing. Draw your own conclusions, and discuss in the comments below.