I nominate Chris Roper for official GT Community Manager

  • Thread starter Devil240Z
  • 52 comments
  • 3,291 views
862
United States
Olympia, Washington
Devil240Z
Short version:
He is a huge GT fan. He already works for sony. He used to be a community manager for Zipper Interactive and did an amazing job. Maybe just maybe if we vocalized this to sony it could be within the realm of possibility.
Full version:
If you don't know who he is. He was the head of the playstation team at IGN for a long time and the host of Podcast Beyond(the playstation podcast). He loves GT, He's a huge fan of the series. Then, he got downsized by IGN during a series of mass layoffs. But he landed on his feet as a community manager for Zipper Interactive, the makers of the SOCOM series. He co-hosted the Zipper podcast which was a great source of regular info about the games they were making at the time going from MAG to SOCOM 4. He was great at interacting with fans over twitter I think he probably responded to every question I ever asked. Now regardless of how those games were received, he wasn't on the dev team so you cant place any of that blame on him there. After SOCOM 4 bombed Zipper got shut down. Now I am not sure what hes doing now but his twitter profile says he does stuff for Playstation.com so he still works for sony. Alot of things seem to line up here. I know most of us are just begging for anyone to represent the GT community in an official capacity. I think Chris Roper would be a great fit.

Does anyone else here think that this would be a good idea? If you do please like this post!

EDIT: Some people are mistakingly thinking that I am suggesting that Chris Roper replace Jordan as Head of GTP I am in fact suggesting that Roper as a sony employee be tasked with interacting with the GT fanbase on an official level feeding us information and interacting with us ect.
And others would suggest that Jordan be given that role which would be great too but I think that he is doing great work operating this wonderful fansite.
 
Last edited:
I take it we've fired Jordan now? Staged a coup? Formed the New Democratic Republic of GTP?

<Mumbles something about carts and horses>

(Might want to check with the site's owner/founder before we start nominating people for key staff positions.) ;)
 
To be honest, I nominate @Jordan
Well Jordan runs GTP so I guess he could quit and do that but I don't know why he would leave his creation.
NA
I take it we've fired Jordan now? Staged a coup? Formed the New Democratic Republic of GTP?

<Mumbles something about carts and horses>

(Might want to check with the site's owner/founder before we start nominating people for key staff positions.) ;)
Not talking about GTP... I mean an employee of Sony who is paid to interact with our community.
He meant for PD not GTP I believe :D.
THIS
 
Well Jordan runs GTP so I guess he could quit and do that but I don't know why he would leave his creation.

Not talking about GTP... I mean an employee of Sony who is paid to interact with our community.

THIS

Ok, fair enough.

I take it we've fired Kaz now? Staged a coup? Formed the New Democratic Republic of PD?

<Mumbles something about carts and horses>

(Might want to check with the game's creator/founder before we start nominating people for key staff positions.) ;):P





BTW. Just having a little fun with this. Speculate away. :gtpflag:
 
NA
Ok, fair enough.

I take it we've fired Kaz now? Staged a coup? Formed the New Democratic Republic of PD?

<Mumbles something about carts and horses>

(Might want to check with the game's creator/founder before we start nominating people for key staff positions.) ;):P





BTW. Just having a little fun with this. Speculate away. :gtpflag:
I understand you're joking. But its probably not really upto kaz I'm sure sony could make that decision for him and kaz sure isn't doing that job or at least hes pretty bad at it. It would be so nice to have someone on the inside who could at least try to calm the unruly hoards of fans tired of PDs silence.
 
I'd be inclined to agree. Someone friendly on the inside to communicate on a regular basis would indeed be helpful, and I'll leave your thread alone now in terms of further such posts. :sly: Scout's honor.

I'm just in a really weird mood tonight. My 70 year old mother just survived months of chemotherapy, and today's 8 hours of surgery to remove her appendix and gall bladder, re-sect her bowel, and remove portions of her colon. At last check she was doped to the gills on morphine, and giving the hospital staff hell over wanting some water, but expected to make a complete recovery. There's a bit of a celebration going on around my house at the moment amongst the relatives. :cheers: Cheers.
 
Whos that? does he have a history with GT?

Greg Street. He was a lead systems designer for World of Warcraft and famous for discussing game design with the community on forums and twitter.

Wikipedia:

Street became well-known in the World of Warcraft community during the public beta test for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, during which he was frequently communicating with beta testers on the message boards. He was often on the message boards announcing changes to the game or discussing them with players.[11] Because "game balance is one of the most controversial aspects of any multiplayer game... I benefit from being able to engage the community directly."[10] Apart from discussions on the Blizzard forums, Street also interacted with theWorld of Warcraft community regularly via his Twitter account

I don't know how interested he is in the racing genre though...
 
Greg Street. He was a lead systems designer for World of Warcraft and famous for discussing game design with the community on forums and twitter.

Wikipedia:



I don't know how interested he is in the racing genre though...
oh. sounds like a smart guy!
 
Oh I remember Mr Roper from the IGN days. He's a great guy, and definitely a fan of GT. I think he would make a great GT community manager.

The roper report still lives.
 
:) I thought that name seemed familiar. I remember him from when I was playing Socom 4. If he could do what he did with a dying game franchise, imagine what he could do with a more secure one like GT. I hope Sony took note of what happened with Socom. Socom's direction was changed by Sony businessmen who wanted quick easy cash for a short period of time. They were delusional that they could try to gain part of the Modern Warefare non-tactical shooter player-base so they screwed their long term tactical shooter model and changed the hardcore formula that made the series such a success. They turned the game into an arcade shooter: it was fine wine and they changed it into cheap beer. They didn't win over enough secure fans and lost most of the ones they originally had. Zipper should have been left to do what it knew was right and now I'm sure they see that they should have fought against what the businessmen wanted, but it is too late.

For those who want examples of what Roper did:
- If a glitch was found, he would enter threads and state 'we are aware of this' and he would state whether or not it was a priority or they were working on it.
- Sometimes he would explain what the intent was behind certain design features like the design of a map.
- When patches were coming he would say things like 'the programming is done and they were only waiting for Sony to finish testing and sign off on it.'

I really hope that PD realizes that SRF is one of those features that will end up killing their franchise, just like easy nades did in Socom.

I'm not saying Roper himself should be the GT Community Manager, but that someone could learn a lot from such a manager. Naughty Dog tended to have good informative community managers too on their forums.
 
I hope everyone here realizes that a CM that works for a corporation does nothing more than follow his NDA orders and strict communication guidelines that leave everyone guessing and waiting at best. Much like Kaz is today. The world does not need more corporate yes men, we are already plagued by them in modern day society.
 
I nominate Devil240Z. Why not?
I nominate me. :D Then, not only would you have someone used to the constant flow of napalm from here, but also a proactive gamer who might possibly nudge Kaz and the team to produce the Gran Turismo of our dreams.

But... I don't speak the language. "Nani baka demo ramen, ne?" is about the extent of my Nihonese.

However, I agree with Lambob. I really don't think a corporate spokeshuman would satisfy anyone, or last very long with the angry mobs that habit this place.

"Course Maker II will be coming... eventually. I saw some great demos--"

"🤬🤬🤬🤬 CAPSLOCK 🤬!!@11!"

"Carp... someone shoot me. No, that hurts... I quit effective at the end of this sentence."
 
I loved Socom. He killed it with Socom 4. So I'd pick Jordan.
I clearly said... Roper didn't make S4. He was a community manager and he did a phenomenal job at it. the podcast, the twitter responses. if GT had someone like that to communicate with the community. we would be in a much better place right now with or with out 1.05.
 
Community Manager ? What the hell is that?
Is that the man who will tell us why we don`t get the promised contents? Why we don`t get Updates? Why PD is working so hard on the development of GT-7 and therefore has no time left to support GT-6? Why we should patiently keep waiting?

I don`t need a "Manager". I need more tracks, more cars, more races, a real ingame community, the B-Spec mode, a course maker... that is what I need.
 
Back