Wurm Needs You! Public Relations Assistant Recruitment Thread

[Wossoo 1,915]

I am currently looking for Public Relations Assistants! (as of 23/07/2012)

This is a voluntary position, similar to many of the other positions on the Wurm Team, but you will recieve credit for your work.

Public Relations Officer (PRO) is a brand new position, and they work to support the PR Manager in his or her tasks. It may be a demanding position at times but it's going to be important to Wurm's success and will be an opportunity to learn or enhance some new skill while helping the game at the same time.

You can find the full job description here as well as information on how to apply. If you can't open that site let me know and I can send you an alternative version.

There's no closing date for applications, but I will say I am looking to find 2 or 3 good candidates to help me out.

Don't be afraid to apply! If you are not successful I will keep a record of your application and will try to give you feedback on why your application was unsuccessful at this time.

Good Luck and thank you

-Ross

P.S: If you have any questions dont be afraid to email me (poseidon@wurmonline.com), send me a forum message or reply to this thread.

[Acurapassion 54]

I'm still not entirely understanding about what exactly you're expecting of the PR Officer, how often will you expect them to 'work'? Make posts, inform, things like that, etc.?

Thanks

[Wiro 370]

Sounds a bit like a one-man job to me...

EDIT: What Wurm could use is transparency from Rolf, unless your goal is to have multiple people help you torture him to get this information I don't think this will change anything about the fact his paying customers are usually left in the dark. Rolf should realize this and put a stop to it, open up the borders he created. Once that is done it is possible for other people to support this connection.

Edited July 23, 2012 by Wiro

[Perryn 79]

EDIT: What Wurm could use is transparency from Rolf, unless your goal is to have multiple people help you torture him to get this information I don't think this will change anything about the fact his paying customers are usually left in the dark. Rolf should realize this and put a stop to it, open up the borders he created. Once that is done it is possible for other people to support this connection.

Are you asking for full transparency and disclosure from Rolf?

If you can show me any game developer that discloses full details on all its current projects involving game advancement I would be curious to see it. Does this mean that the lines of communication in the past on certain topics have been five star? I would agree there is room for improvement there... but I see this as the ground work to bring that up to satisfactory levels.

Your post is a bit confusing in regards to what you want and what is being created here... which is directly related to fixing your complaint.

Edited July 23, 2012 by Perryn

[Wiro 370]

You named one extreme (full disclosure), I named the other. I'm pretty sure most people expect somewhere in between, as do I. There's really no use arguing that Rolf is at least somewhat transparent, he seems to pride himself on the fact that Wurm is mysterious and up to the players to figure out. It's sorta Wurm's "thing". (Which is also why there's so often bug/feature discussions on the forums and possibly why people think the suggestion forum is being ignored.)

[Pingpong 1,070]

More PR could be terrific in that more info is passed on to the players (my hope). So long as it doesn't become just a mouthpiece to tell players, you're playing wrong and we're "fixing" it now, we'll be good.

[Perryn 79]

Which is why I believe the PR position that was newly created was assigned to Wossoo... to address everything you are saying here and now.

The fact that movement is being made by that department in a direction that addresses those concerns should be encouraging instead of met with skepticism imho.

Edited July 23, 2012 by Perryn

[Wiro 370]

Which is why I believe the PR position that was newly created was assigned to Wossoo... to address everything you are saying here and now.

The fact that movement is being made by that department in a direction that addresses those concerns should be encouraging instead of met with skepticism imho.

I'm not criticizing this though.

[Pingpong 1,070]

Well the previous PR position didn't work out , that being said I have high hopes for wossoo. Sometimes it just takes a bit of a feeling out period to know how to use a position to it's full extent. Bring us the info Wossoo

Edited July 23, 2012 by Pingpong

[Wossoo 1,915]

I'm still not entirely understanding about what exactly you're expecting of the PR Officer, how often will you expect them to 'work'? Make posts, inform, things like that, etc.?

Thanks

I'd say a PRO should do as much work as a CA at least but probably more towards how much a GM does. How much they make posts and stuff like that sort of depends on how much we have got to give the players. PR is a constant thing though and Wurm's reputation is always going to need maintenence.

When I get PROs appointed I am going to delegate suitable things to each so they will get a pretty clear understanding of how much they have to do and when. Some may be passive concerning emerging issues and others might be more active.

[Vetarnic 41]

I have never been a fan of for-profit organizations looking for volunteers to fill what is, in your own words, "a demanding position at times". If you want a PR officer, my guess is that you should hire one; at the very least, you should offer that person premium time, but I'm not even reading that here. Instead, you might well get at best a dilettante, at worst what you pay for.

Also, appealing to people's sense of worth by offering them credit isn't really something I like. I have seen it happen in journalism, which is far more glamorous a profession than public relations, under the guise of "citizen journalism".

(For my part: no thanks. I much prefer to retain my editorial independence, and it would be hypocritical of me to apply for this after having criticized the game elsewhere very recently.)

[Wossoo 1,915]

Sounds a bit like a one-man job to me...

EDIT: What Wurm could use is transparency from Rolf, unless your goal is to have multiple people help you torture him to get this information I don't think this will change anything about the fact his paying customers are usually left in the dark. Rolf should realize this and put a stop to it, open up the borders he created. Once that is done it is possible for other people to support this connection.

Rolf and the developers (and GM) never intend to hide things from the players, but they may not have the time or not consciously think enough about communicating with the players. My role and the PR Officer role is not about pestering Rolf and the rest of the team for information. From my experience they want their work publicised and communication more open, they just dont have time for it or they dont know what channels are available. My job is partly to fill in that gap.

[Wossoo 1,915]

I have never been a fan of for-profit organizations looking for volunteers to fill what is, in your own words, "a demanding position at times". If you want a PR officer, my guess is that you should hire one; at the very least, you should offer that person premium time, but I'm not even reading that here. Instead, you might well get at best a dilettante, at worst what you pay for.

Also, appealing to people's sense of worth by offering them credit isn't really something I like. I have seen it happen in journalism, which is far more glamorous a profession than public relations, under the guise of "citizen journalism".

(For my part: no thanks. I much prefer to retain my editorial independence, and it would be hypocritical of me to apply for this after having criticized the game elsewhere very recently.)

I'm personally not at liberty to offer premium time and other rewards as standard but any team member who commits significant time and effort into the game is rewarded with substance. Credit comes as standard though.

The PR Officer position is meant as an assistant to me. I am not paid in any way for the PR Manager role either (however I do recieve rewards for my service as a moderator over the last 3 years and premium as a GM).

[Pingpong 1,070]

After reading the hand out twice I had a few questions. None of them are personal in any way but simply for my clarity of mind. Will the PR folks be reading the forums/irc/fb/twitter feeds and reporting to Rolf/devs what's being said/felt/experienced in game? Will we the players be losing our voices to address the devs through the forums/irc? What assurances can we the players be given that if that's true the PR folks won't attempt to "filter" what's being reported to the devs? On that note, would it be possible for the PR folks to write the blog postings? Rolf's way of putting things... is odd and I believe PR folks could really help the wurm community understand what Rolf is saying without being aggravated by how it's said. If the PR department is not meant to provide the players with more info why does it exist? We can simply try and gues what Rolf means by cryptic/non existent patch notes/blog posts as we currently do. Zcul's twitter feed atm is the best PR wurm has (props to him for it). Please add more "helpful" info about wurm and what's being created! Thanks

Pingpong

[Suntzu 644]

Rolf needs to spend money on advertising, then get a PR manager...

[Wiro 370]

Make sure someone's updating the change logs, that's an important point. As it is now they might as well not exist.

[Perryn 79]

Rolf needs to spend money on advertising, then get a PR manager...

*points to Wossoo's forum signature*

[Guest Docterchese]

Looks cool, I've emailed you with a couple of questions.

[Wossoo 1,915]

After reading the hand out twice I had a few questions. None of them are personal in any way but simply for my clarity of mind. Will the PR folks be reading the forums/irc/fb/twitter feeds and reporting to Rolf/devs what's being said/felt/experienced in game?

Hopefully in part yes. It's very useful to know what the players are talking about and what they want.

Will we the players be losing our voices to address the devs through the forums/irc?

Not at all, you can still contact the devs through the forums and IRC, but it may be more effective to do that via the PR channels if those devs arent around when you have questions for them.

What assurances can we the players be given that if that's true the PR folks won't attempt to "filter" what's being reported to the devs?

We have no interest in doing that and I would not be happy to find that any PRO would filter what is reported to the devs based on their own personal biases.

On that note, would it be possible for the PR folks to write the blog postings? Rolf's way of putting things... is odd and I believe PR folks could really help the wurm community understand what Rolf is saying without being aggravated by how it's said.

That is part of what I am going to be doing yes but Rolf will still do much of the blog posting. If it's any consolation I will suggest I edit his posts for clarity if that would be helpful

If the PR department is not meant to provide the players with more info why does it exist? We can simply try and gues what Rolf means by cryptic/non existent patch notes/blog posts as we currently do. Zcul's twitter feed atm is the best PR wurm has (props to him for it). Please add more "helpful" info about wurm and what's being created! Thanks

Pingpong

While communication between the staff and players is important, it's not all that PR is about. Building up a relationship with the press is a big part of PR and it's not something Rolf should be spending all his time on (its very very time consuming) and the same for other Dev. Its good to have a specific person for that. We're also far more concerned with identifying PR problems than other staff will be.

The PR department is useful because we will be centralising information and making it easier to get at. We'll also be using all of our communication channels which other staff may not have the time to update. Basically the PR team will be amplifying what other staff are saying and filling in any gaps.

[Wossoo 1,915]

Rolf needs to spend money on advertising, then get a PR manager...

We are not going to advertise fully until Rolf considers Wurm v1.0 which should be after character customisation / visible armour and multi-storey buildings are implemented or pretty far along. In the mean time I think improving the PR situation before an influx of new players means that we can develop a good PR infrastructure with our current population in preparation for an increase.

[Pingpong 1,070]

The PR department is useful because we will be centralising information and making it easier to get at. We'll also be using all of our communication channels which other staff may not have the time to update. Basically the PR team will be amplifying what other staff are saying and filling in any gaps.

Hmm sounds like a great plan . Thanks for answering my questions.

Pingpong

[KellyTxX 614]

I wanna help ;D

[Rudie 1,479]

You're too young.

[KellyTxX 614]

Only by a year man ;( and i can be a special circumstance right wossoo i already advertise the game more then rolf does

Edited July 23, 2012 by KellyTxX

[Crusader 114]

I don't really think a banned account user is also a great PR image.