Madden’s “Equipment Guru” Gets Feisty with Fans
A Madden producer mocks fans, shames women, and embarrasses himself with unprofessional social media presence.
There is one thing that fans of any video game series are desperate for as a new game gets closer to release: Information.
Screenshots. Trailers. New features. Player ratings. Game play videos. Just give us a glimpse of someone’s chinstrap for crying out loud! Fans are sickly mice looking for any scrap the game’s marketing team will fork over.
Dustin Smith — or as he’s better known to the Madden community, Shooter McGavin, the “Equipment Guru” — is a producer with EA in charge of player ratings and equipment for the Madden series. He took over after the “Ratings Czar” Donny Moore left two years ago.
Smith controls one of those scraps of info that fans obsess over most: player ratings. With the official launch of the game less than three weeks away, fans have been antsy to see how the new game will play and how their favorite players will be represented.
Unfortunately for eager fans, EA is taking a different approach to its marketing this Madden cycle. Information has been kept close to the vest. There has only been one official trailer for the game, and it was less than a minute long. EA released two other videos so far: a preview of the Longshot game mode and a dank video featuring rookies that capitalized on the wild success of “The Emoji Movie.” EA’s NHL game has more official video content than Madden, despite having a release date over three weeks later.
The developer blog has released articles laying out the Top 5 players at each position and has covered some new coach strategies and changes in MUT, but the release schedule has been erratic, and the widgets embedded into each post don’t even show relevant ratings (unless you care how agile your defensive tackles are). Fans of the game’s Connected Franchise Mode have expressed concern that a post covering the game’s soundtrack was published before any details about the franchise mode have even been released.
According to a tweet from Madden Creative Director Rex Dickson, game play videos are scheduled to be released “late next week,” which is just a week before customers can get their hands on the game through EA Access. Players who earned MUT rewards could be playing the game before game play videos ever go public. Sports Gamers Online wondered if the lack of game play videos should be a cause for concern — and that was three weeks ago!
With the dearth of official information, the main source of intel for fans has been the social media accounts of the game’s developers, namely, Dickson, Clint Oldenburg, and Smith, the Equipment Guru.
Regrettably for Smith, public relations does not seem to be his strong suit. He even admits that, hey, he is not in marketing; he’s just a ratings guy!
But not having “marketing” in your LinkedIn profile doesn’t mean you magically stop representing your company when you post using your official and public social media accounts. And it doesn’t mean you should antagonize and mock the very people you expect to pay money for the game you are creating.
Smith has always been active and somewhat combative with fans on Twitter, but the hostility increased dramatically in the past week, after a reddit user discovered a way to access the database that was being used to populate the ratings for all of EA’s Top 5 Player blogs. Another user was able to export the entire database into a spreadsheet for easy consumption.
That’s when Smith first hinted that the leaks were not accurate:
This has been Smith’s stance all week, insisting time and again that the “leaked” ratings that were connected to the public database were inaccurate, incorrect, and non final. Many fans flat out don’t believe him; but rather than explain what happened, why the public database that is connected to the live blog posts contains ratings that aren’t final, how the ratings will change or what might cause them to change, Smith lords the power he has as final ratings maker over fans and mocks them for caring about the game.
Smith (known as KANE699 on reddit) is a proud Cowboys fan, and when a redditor noticed that certain Cowboys players were rated higher than their relative draft position, he wondered if Smith’s fandom could have played a role.
In the exchange above, Smith claims that he is on social media to get feedback and improve the game and that the negativity from fans is what drives the developers away from social media. The truth is, Smith’s attitude and negativity is what drives fans away from the game.
Rather than educate fans about how ratings were determined, Smith’s common response is mockery, sarcasm, and defensive name calling.
Fans interact with developers on social media because they love the game and want to know more about it. If Smith or the higher ups at EA don’t want specific information released, then he should reconsider how he interacts with the fans. Rex has the right idea:
Antagonizing consumers is not a smart business strategy. If you follow Smith on Twitter or reddit, you’ll quickly realize that fans of the game he develops aren’t his only target. He has a history of insulting women as well, all from his official company account.
Regarding transgender people:
Regarding “side chicks”:
He also mocked the appearance of a woman on Tinder, comparing her to Peyton Manning and uploading her full profile with her personal information.
Smith’s failure to interact with consumers online in a professional manner is not just damaging to his personal reputation, it is damaging to Madden, EA, and everyone who works for the company. The saddest part of all of these exchanges though is Smith’s attitude.
It doesn’t matter how many people get upset with The Equipment Guru. He admittedly refuses to change. Which is a shame because Madden is a game I love. I play it every day. I want to be involved in the community and interact with the people who are responsible for it. But Smith is changing that for me.
If The Equipment Guru is going to engage with fans as a representative of a product, he needs to be professional. If he can’t give certain information, just say that. He shouldn’t mock or belittle his customers. He certainly shouldn’t be insulting woman from his official company account.
Or maybe he should just take his own advice…
