Pictures and After-Action Report: GE PH Mini-Community Meeting

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The date: 6 September 2008, a breezy Saturday afternoon

The place: Fandom Cafe at the ground floor of the Regalia Park Towers in Cubao, Quezon City, the Philippines

[Fandom Cafe is a PC shop, a coffeeshop, and the headquarters of the New Worlds Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, click here.]

The participants: Selected members of the Granado Espada PH players' community a/k/a GE bloggers; and from IP e-Games, the new GE PH Community Manager, plus some of the GE marketing staff

The event: Granado Espada PH Mini-Community Meeting, a/k/a Meet and Greet CM Aethrin. Also, as a side-event, NineMoons's advanced birthday party


Discussions at the Fandom Cafe during the GE PH Mini-Community Meeting. That's Fiksdotter in the white shirt with his back to the camera; next around the circle are Blacksword, Donna and Joan from IP e-Games [and one of them revealed herself to be the Grantoza family!], Rivendel, Kincaid, CM Aethrin, NineMoons [me], and Rosso. Not in picture: Nate Reclusion [who took the picture], Mena [seated next to Blacksword].

One of the major topics under discussion at this mini-community meeting was the upcoming anniversary of Granado Espada in the Philippines. The game was launched in the country last year on 15 September - and that date is just about a week from now.

CM Aethrin asked for suggestions for marking the anniversary, and one of the good ones was an event to be held at the Game Frog PC shop in Ortigas, where previous events had been held with success. We also suggested side events such as a trivia contest, a PVP tourney, allied events in Visayas and Mindanao, etc.

Since the 15th is a Monday, the general consensus was that the anniversary would be marked either during the weekend of the 13th-14th, before the actual anniversary date; or on the weekend of the 20th-21st, after the actual anniversary date.

We also devoted a lot of discussion time to the need for promoting Granado Espada; we especially stressed the need for installers, posters, and ads. The IP e-Games people admitted that most of the budget for promoting games had indeed gone to the recently released CABAL Online, and the other e-Games titles had suffered as a result.

[Shocking to think that RAN Online, which had been THE top MMORPG in the country for a long time, suffered an abrupt drop in concurrent users to CABAL. Cannibalization anyone?]

A related question was the topic of GVCs in the country. G-Points, as I and the other bloggers have noted, are EXTREMELY hard to come by in the Philippines. Apparently, a means of converting e-Games's own ePoints into the GE G-Points is still under development as of this time; while it's still not in place, the need still has to be filled. We suggested making the 70,000 G-Points GVC available in the country since it DID bring greater value for money spent:

Highest denomination of GVC in PH: PHP750 = 18,000 G-Points
Highest denomination of GVC in SG: SGD59.90 = 70,000 G-Points.

Singaporean players pay roughly PHP2000 for 70,000 G-Points.
Filipino players have to pay roughly PHP3000 for 72,000 G-Points! [Four of the PHP 750 = 18,000 G-Points cards.]

Look at that discrepancy!

I also had to ask, since I was already invested in this particular turn of events, about the fate of the GE Gamer Girls initiatives. Yes, RCM Hrin has put together the current run of interviews with actual gamer girls, sponsored by a major cosmetics company. But the fact remained that it was the previous GE PH CM who started the ball rolling. CM Aethrin assured that the GE Gamer Girls would not be abandoned.

At some point, Rosso laid out the terms of how the relationship between the bloggers and the new CM might take place: the bloggers provide free publicity and put together events for the community; the CM provides news and details of events and especially support for the promotions.

Another hot-button topic was an animated discussion centering on the growing dichotomy between two of the major populations of players in Granado Espada: the players from the Philippines and the players from Singapore. Fiksdotter and Nate Reclusion, both being in an international faction, said that SOME Singaporean players were behaving badly towards Filipinos, and was there some way to deal with that?


SEATED: Front row, left to right - CM Aethrin, Grantoza, NineMoons; second row, left to right - Nate Reclusion, Fiksdotter; third row, left to right - Rivendel, Kincaid, Blacksword. STANDING: Mena.


From left to right: Nate Reclusion, Fiksdotter, Mena, Grantoza, CM Aethrin, NineMoons, Blacksword [seated], Rivendel, Kincaid.

Well, it looks like we'll all get to see each other again very soon, just as soon as the GE PH first anniversary event rolls around. Until then, happy leveling, Pioneers!

Special shout-out to Paolo Jalbuena, owner of Fandom Cafe. [He plays in Cervantes server.]

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Fiksdotter: GE PH Community Welcomes CM Aethrin
Blacksword: Meet the New CM / GE Mini Community Meeting