Greydog Software

[jbergey_2005]

I just wanted to thank this company for their great customer service and ability to code a game the correct way. I never had realized how superior this company was until dealing with the fiasco with the new OOTPBB2006 game, SIgames whom has purchased the once great OOTP, has hurt Markus's credibility with their poor customer service. Its remarkable that I have 5 GDS games and have NEVER had problems with memory leaks, instability, or poor customer service. The first game Markus puts out AFTER switching to SIgames has all 3 and I dont feel its his fault. Anyway, thanks to GDS and your fabulous customer service.

[panix04]

i think you are right about GDS being very good, i have TEW and Adam is always lightning quick to remedy problems. However i think you may be a little harsh on si-games, speaking as a football manager fan i have never had any problems with there games, i also have EHM and i have never had any problems with that either. Mind you i must admit i have never had to use there customer service department.

[hurricanendp]

i too am a SI user, fair enough only throguh Championship Manager and Football Manager, but those are what made the company famous. as a former FM webiste owner, i can honestly say that they are nice guys, but only when need be. I contacted one worker (wont name him, simply because i personally like the guy) to see if he could do an interview for the site, after 2 weeks eh agreed, i sent the questions off to him, and have yet to recieve the answers. No doubt if you were to do the same with a GDS employee, you wouldnt have to wait so long for a response

[Tara Clover]

Thanks for the positive feedback. We truly appreciate it.

[Marc Duffy]

[QUOTE=jbergey_2005]I just wanted to thank this company for their great customer service and ability to code a game the correct way. I never had realized how superior this company was until dealing with the fiasco with the new OOTPBB2006 game, SIgames whom has purchased the once great OOTP, has hurt Markus's credibility with their poor customer service. Its remarkable that I have 5 GDS games and have NEVER had problems with memory leaks, instability, or poor customer service. The first game Markus puts out AFTER switching to SIgames has all 3 and I dont feel its his fault. Anyway, thanks to GDS and your fabulous customer service.[/QUOTE] Cant excuse the first two points which we're working on for patch2 but I would say that our customer support is excellent and we provide a comprehensive post sales support service.

[Marc Duffy]

[QUOTE=hurricanendp] I contacted one worker (wont name him, simply because i personally like the guy) to see if he could do an interview for the site, after 2 weeks eh agreed, i sent the questions off to him, and have yet to recieve the answers. No doubt if you were to do the same with a GDS employee, you wouldnt have to wait so long for a response[/QUOTE] To be fair to Sports Interactive, we are incredibly busy and sometimes things like interviews have to be put on the back burner

[jbergey_2005]

Marc, It simply could be the fact that your company is too big, I am just used to the service like they have a GDS. I post a message and know I will get a personal response from one of the creators of the game, otherwise a very educated response from a veteran. Since OOTPBB2006 came out, my posts dont usually get a response, I have no appx time table when I can look forward to ACTUALLY playing the game, and until recently Markus hadnt even made a post. You were very helpful to me with EHM so its not you per say that I am disappointed in, I think you are doing the best job possible in getting this issues to Marc. I just miss the "smaller" more customer friendly feel OOTP used to be. Too be fair to SI, right after I wrote the initial post SI games and Markus(posting again) have been MUCH improved in their support. I should be fair and mention that!

[Marc Duffy]

[QUOTE=jbergey_2005]Marc, It simply could be the fact that your company is too big, I am just used to the service like they have a GDS. I post a message and know I will get a personal response from one of the creators of the game, otherwise a very educated response from a veteran. Since OOTPBB2006 came out, my posts dont usually get a response, I have no appx time table when I can look forward to ACTUALLY playing the game, and until recently Markus hadnt even made a post. You were very helpful to me with EHM so its not you per say that I am disappointed in, I think you are doing the best job possible in getting this issues to Marc. I just miss the "smaller" more customer friendly feel OOTP used to be. Too be fair to SI, right after I wrote the initial post SI games and Markus(posting again) have been MUCH improved in their support. I should be fair and mention that![/QUOTE] Since our games have a lot of customers, sometimes it's impossible to get a personal response to everything. I'm sure as companies like Grey Dog get even bigger they'll face similar issues. Part of the reason for the board hiatus was the fact that we had to take some time off to recharge the batteries, it's just a consequence of putting your heart and soul into something for six months solid.

[Nutlaw]

SI/OOTP is actually doing fairly well from a customer service standpoint at the moment, in my opinion. It took them a few weeks to get there, but they seem to be rapidly tackling the issues they need to tackle right now. While they may not respond as often or as quickly, they usually post in a polite and professional manner, and I'm pretty confident that they are both capable and willing to patch their game as quickly as possible. I'm a huge fan of Grey Dog, and Adam Ryland is unparalleled in his ability to fix his code promptly and make those fixes available to his customers. I've bought all of his games and plan on continuing to do so, but even I'll admit that his annoyance with some of his customers tends to show through somewhat strongly now and again. I was pretty excited about Arlie Rahn's Total Pro Football when it came out for .400 Software Studios. That game had similar issues to OOTPB 2006 when it was first released, and many of those issues were repaired fairly quickly. Maybe a month and a half after that release, however, we were told that the final patch was released and that any other bugs would have to wait for the next version. Those bugs were fixed in a patch more than a year later, right before Bowl Bound was released, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. Bowl Bound updates also haven't seemed to be as prompt as desired. Again, I'm a huge fan of Grey Dog and support everything they are doing, but I don't believe that it is unfair to state that their customer support couldn't improve in some areas or that they couldn't learn something from a larger company like SI.

[btmlltt]

When you're a small developer, it's difficult to continue improving and patching a game, when you'd like to move on to a new project. You bought the product in the box, and while patches are a reasonable expectation, you can't assume that the product will just continually be patched until it's perfect. The industry just doesn't work that way.

[jbergey_2005]

[QUOTE=Nutlaw]SI/OOTP is actually doing fairly well from a customer service standpoint at the moment, in my opinion. It took them a few weeks to get there, but they seem to be rapidly tackling the issues they need to tackle right now. While they may not respond as often or as quickly, they usually post in a polite and professional manner, and I'm pretty confident that they are both capable and willing to patch their game as quickly as possible. I'm a huge fan of Grey Dog, and Adam Ryland is unparalleled in his ability to fix his code promptly and make those fixes available to his customers. I've bought all of his games and plan on continuing to do so, but even I'll admit that his annoyance with some of his customers tends to show through somewhat strongly now and again. I was pretty excited about Arlie Rahn's Total Pro Football when it came out for .400 Software Studios. That game had similar issues to OOTPB 2006 when it was first released, and many of those issues were repaired fairly quickly. Maybe a month and a half after that release, however, we were told that the final patch was released and that any other bugs would have to wait for the next version. Those bugs were fixed in a patch more than a year later, right before Bowl Bound was released, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. Bowl Bound updates also haven't seemed to be as prompt as desired. Again, I'm a huge fan of Grey Dog and support everything they are doing, but I don't believe that it is unfair to state that their customer support couldn't improve in some areas or that they couldn't learn something from a larger company like SI.[/QUOTE] Very well stated! I did make mention that SI had actually improved lately. I guess what really bothered me at the time I wrote it was this, I made a simple request that I would really like to see what is being fixed for the first patch stickied at the top, it was just a crazy mess over there and I didnt want to go through every post just to see what was getting patched.. I get a response "That won't happen.", well if you go there now, you will see that they now do sticky the changes but anyway that is what really bothered me. At GDS that games are playable right away, they give prompt information on a patch if it needs, and I dont get rude uninformative comments back from GDS. I dont expect an answer to my question right away so my expectations arent high. When I first got TEW05, I was confused as to why my game was getting stuck when head booking was loading. I posted this in tech support, about the time I hit refresh Adam had an answer to my question, so I could continue what I was doing.

[Nutlaw]

[QUOTE=Nutlaw;123509]SI/OOTP is actually doing fairly well from a customer service standpoint at the moment, in my opinion. It took them a few weeks to get there, but they seem to be rapidly tackling the issues they need to tackle right now. While they may not respond as often or as quickly, they usually post in a polite and professional manner, and I'm pretty confident that they are both capable and willing to patch their game as quickly as possible. I'm a huge fan of Grey Dog, and Adam Ryland is unparalleled in his ability to fix his code promptly and make those fixes available to his customers. I've bought all of his games and plan on continuing to do so, but even I'll admit that his annoyance with some of his customers tends to show through somewhat strongly now and again. I was pretty excited about Arlie Rahn's Total Pro Football when it came out for .400 Software Studios. That game had similar issues to OOTPB 2006 when it was first released, and many of those issues were repaired fairly quickly. Maybe a month and a half after that release, however, we were told that the final patch was released and that any other bugs would have to wait for the next version. Those bugs were fixed in a patch more than a year later, right before Bowl Bound was released, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. Bowl Bound updates also haven't seemed to be as prompt as desired. Again, I'm a huge fan of Grey Dog and support everything they are doing, but I don't believe that it is unfair to state that their customer support couldn't improve in some areas or that they couldn't learn something from a larger company like SI.[/QUOTE] In all fairness, I'll have to apologize for this analysis. SI released OOTP2006 as a buggy game and spent limited time patching it before declaring that they had fixed everything that they would fix, gave up on reading their tech support, and stated that players would have to pay for any future fixes in the next version. I guess that one would just have to hold Adam Ryland out as giving better than average support and leave it at that.

[Nutlaw]

[QUOTE=Nutlaw;123509]SI/OOTP is actually doing fairly well from a customer service standpoint at the moment, in my opinion. It took them a few weeks to get there, but they seem to be rapidly tackling the issues they need to tackle right now. While they may not respond as often or as quickly, they usually post in a polite and professional manner, and I'm pretty confident that they are both capable and willing to patch their game as quickly as possible. I'm a huge fan of Grey Dog, and Adam Ryland is unparalleled in his ability to fix his code promptly and make those fixes available to his customers. I've bought all of his games and plan on continuing to do so, but even I'll admit that his annoyance with some of his customers tends to show through somewhat strongly now and again. I was pretty excited about Arlie Rahn's Total Pro Football when it came out for .400 Software Studios. That game had similar issues to OOTPB 2006 when it was first released, and many of those issues were repaired fairly quickly. Maybe a month and a half after that release, however, we were told that the final patch was released and that any other bugs would have to wait for the next version. Those bugs were fixed in a patch more than a year later, right before Bowl Bound was released, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. Bowl Bound updates also haven't seemed to be as prompt as desired. Again, I'm a huge fan of Grey Dog and support everything they are doing, but I don't believe that it is unfair to state that their customer support couldn't improve in some areas or that they couldn't learn something from a larger company like SI.[/QUOTE] In all fairness, I'll have to apologize for this analysis. SI released OOTP2006 as a buggy game and spent limited time patching it before declaring that they had fixed everything that they would fix, gave up on reading their tech support, and stated that players would have to pay for any future fixes in the next version. I guess that one would just have to hold Adam Ryland out as giving better than average support and leave it at that.

[still71]

a buggy game with little or no patching and non-existent customer service? hmmm...is OOTP put out by EA!!!! :D I've never played OOTP so I don't know much about this dispute - been a Baseball Mogul fan for years and Clay is awesome with patching his games and providing excellent support. The same goes for all the games I have purchased from here. I followed TPB over, and have played Adam Rylands EWR games for a long long time too. Both Adam and Gary have been awesome with answering questions and fixing problems - in fact everyone at Grey Dog I've interacted with have never been anything but helpful. I wish the mega software giants like Electronic Arts and Take Two had even an ounce of integrity that Grey Dog puts into their games.

[still71]

a buggy game with little or no patching and non-existent customer service? hmmm...is OOTP put out by EA!!!! :D I've never played OOTP so I don't know much about this dispute - been a Baseball Mogul fan for years and Clay is awesome with patching his games and providing excellent support. The same goes for all the games I have purchased from here. I followed TPB over, and have played Adam Rylands EWR games for a long long time too. Both Adam and Gary have been awesome with answering questions and fixing problems - in fact everyone at Grey Dog I've interacted with have never been anything but helpful. I wish the mega software giants like Electronic Arts and Take Two had even an ounce of integrity that Grey Dog puts into their games.

[The Ego]

What i actually like about Grey Dog and A.Ryland inparticular, is how refreshing it is to have someone create a game which im sure they wud play, He knows how to make a game, coz he is no different for any other wrestling sim/game fan.

[The Ego]

What i actually like about Grey Dog and A.Ryland inparticular, is how refreshing it is to have someone create a game which im sure they wud play, He knows how to make a game, coz he is no different for any other wrestling sim/game fan.

[djthefunkchris]

[QUOTE=The Ego;153771]What i actually like about Grey Dog and A.Ryland inparticular, is how refreshing it is to have someone create a game which im sure they wud play, He knows how to make a game, coz he is no different for any other wrestling sim/game fan.[/QUOTE] And that is a huge difference. Bigger companies, that have employed several different people to work on different thing's, might look at the job as "Just a step" to what they really want to do. The feeling at GDS is they are doing EXACTLY what they want to do. There was a post about Adam being a bit confrontational, I am not going to point out the poster, because I know what he's talking about. I think this is actually good for these forum's though. Here you have the developer answering question's about his product. He is obviously very proud of it, and can take thing's a little more personal then what was intended (although sometime's the poster intended to make it personal). Just remember one thing about GDS (at least with Adam for sure, probably true to the rest as well though), when asking question's and getting support, your not dealing with PR folk's. Your dealing with the developer's. This is a HUGE difference then what you get with bigger companies. SO saying something like, "Since I cannot do exactly what I want to do, I think the game suck's". This is going to be very personal to the guy that made the game. If they hired PR people, then you would get a really nice reply, about sorry you feel that way and so on, however, you wouldn't get a solution to your problem nearly as quick (if it's an actual problem, and not just how the game is meant to be played). I am not familiar with the game's in question outside of TEW, but I can tell you one thing... Out of all the game's my son play's, or I have played with my son, there is no one that is better/faster/more thoughtfull of their product, then GDS.

[djthefunkchris]

[QUOTE=The Ego;153771]What i actually like about Grey Dog and A.Ryland inparticular, is how refreshing it is to have someone create a game which im sure they wud play, He knows how to make a game, coz he is no different for any other wrestling sim/game fan.[/QUOTE] And that is a huge difference. Bigger companies, that have employed several different people to work on different thing's, might look at the job as "Just a step" to what they really want to do. The feeling at GDS is they are doing EXACTLY what they want to do. There was a post about Adam being a bit confrontational, I am not going to point out the poster, because I know what he's talking about. I think this is actually good for these forum's though. Here you have the developer answering question's about his product. He is obviously very proud of it, and can take thing's a little more personal then what was intended (although sometime's the poster intended to make it personal). Just remember one thing about GDS (at least with Adam for sure, probably true to the rest as well though), when asking question's and getting support, your not dealing with PR folk's. Your dealing with the developer's. This is a HUGE difference then what you get with bigger companies. SO saying something like, "Since I cannot do exactly what I want to do, I think the game suck's". This is going to be very personal to the guy that made the game. If they hired PR people, then you would get a really nice reply, about sorry you feel that way and so on, however, you wouldn't get a solution to your problem nearly as quick (if it's an actual problem, and not just how the game is meant to be played). I am not familiar with the game's in question outside of TEW, but I can tell you one thing... Out of all the game's my son play's, or I have played with my son, there is no one that is better/faster/more thoughtfull of their product, then GDS.

[wrestlerjrh]

Three Cheers for Grey Dog, well made games, can actually talk to the creators on the message boards. I love that, they don't always take our suggestions, but we at least know they heard them (they do a pretty good job of using suggestions they get though) they are helpful, and make some darn good games that keep getting better.

[wrestlerjrh]

Three Cheers for Grey Dog, well made games, can actually talk to the creators on the message boards. I love that, they don't always take our suggestions, but we at least know they heard them (they do a pretty good job of using suggestions they get though) they are helpful, and make some darn good games that keep getting better.