Remember when the motto of any successful business was, “The customer is always right”? Kiss that one goodbye.
Let me vent about this while I have a few minutes between assorted medical errands. For years, one of my favorite forms of relaxation was to visit Pogo Games and play a harmless little game called “Mahjong Garden.” I went to the same chat room every time, and over the years made many friends there. Nothing could be more soothing than moving the tiles around while chatting with my friends.
Recently, because the technology had changed, Pogo found it necessary to make changes in many of its games, including Mahjong Garden. All right, we understand. But they also made a whole raft of changes that they didn’t have to make, for no reason at all. They changed the appearance of the tile sets to make them hard on the eyes, changed the names of all the chat rooms, and moved the chat to the bottom of the page instead of the side so that you can no longer play and chat at the same time. I must stress that none of those changes I have mentioned was at all necessary. It was just change for the sake of change.
Mahjong Garden was one of Pogo’s most popular games, and for no reason anyone can see, Pogo trashed it. Sort of like Microsoft getting rid of Windows 7, although at least they thought that making a successful Windows obsolete would make them money. I can’t imagine what Pogo was thinking.
Many, many of the players are disappointed, disgusted, or even totally fed up. I’ll be astounded if Pogo doesn’t lose customers because of this.
Oh! And because so very many players complained about the New Improved “Traditional” tile set (the one I used) and wanted it back the way it was, Pogo announced that it would do that for us.
Lie! All they did was change it some more. There’s nothing of the old familiar look about it. They must think we’ve all got amnesia. They pee on your leg and tell you that it’s raining. Was it so hard to do what their customers wanted them to do? Having injured us, why did they decide they might as well insult us, too?
When car companies do that, they wind up losing boxcar-loads of money.
So why do the tech companies keep on doing it?
I want my freakin’ Mahjong Garden back!
I want it back as well. The new game gives my head-aches and hurts my eyes. Miss the laugh as well.
I think we have to keep complaining till Pogo listens–if they’ll ever listen.
We can try.
Even Coca-Cola finally brought back the “Classic” Coke after people wouldn’t drink the “improved” stuff. What are these Pogo people thinking of? Oh, I used the word “thinking.” Pardon me.
Actually, the only explanation I can think of is that whoever designed the original interface left the company and managed to take his (or her) intellectual property copyright along. Then the company would be forced to use a different look to avoid copyright infringement. But why they couldn’t come up with something better is the question — to which the answer may be talentless designers. Oh well.
If that were the case, or something like it, they could have told us.
I play an on-line hearts game and have for several years. Fairly recently, one of the player icons was replaced with a black icon. Originally, all four “players” were white, 3 males one female. Nobody much cared. You could change your OWN icon if desired (mine was male) but I didn’t bother. Why the need for “diversity” in a game? As noted, the individual could design his or her own icon. All I know is that I found it disturbing that something as pointless as a card game on the internet required diversity.
“Diversity” (everybody saying, doing, and thinking the same thing) is always required as an end in itself.
Somehow, in the software world, there seems to be change for the sake of change. I hate it.
I used to play a game as well, but it got cancelled… 🙁