It's TurboWeevil back with another post, and this one is about a yearly annual event which is not far away. Yes, that's right, it's the Bin BAFTAs. This event was usually treated with the added hype of Bin Weevils players, confident that the game would win the prize. Bin Weevils, as we all know, however cheeky or exhorting they were, unsurprisingly failed to build on their 4 year winning streak of BAFTAs in 2011, 2012, 2013 & 2014, as they deservedly lost the awards in 2015 to Minecraft, who won the category. Many people citied the reason for defeat was the change in the category system - but what's the point of making excuses?
Despite the result, it was greeted with a degree of positivity by players on social media (such as myself), as we hoped that the kick up the backside would finally inspire Bin Weevils to wake up. But, nearly a year on, there still hasn't been any immediately evident improvement delivered whatsoever. Here are 7 reasons that will stop them from winning the BAFTAs for the 5th time:
REASON 1: TOO MUCH FOCUS ON THE BLOG
The previous Bin Weevils Blog had not been updated since 2010 - when it first made its refurbished appearance along with the new game, post-Nickelodeon. I agree with the idea that it needed a change; but did it really need an awful colourful revamp that most of their players don't like? Not to mention the fact that they felt the desperation to rehearse Moshi Monsters' blog layout and use it for their What's New Blog - to cover the fact that they simply do not know HTML, CSS, PHP etc.
Also, they seem to be pampering the blog with a lot more respect than the actual game itself - this is evident with the lack of updates in the game, whilst promotions, WOTW, FAOTW & GOTW are regularly posted about. They say they're working on other things; they clearly do have enough time to create new features players are interested in - they just seem more interested in the blog!
REASON 2: BROKEN PROMISES & LACK OF CONFIDENCE FROM PLAYERS
This is worryingly obvious - whenever Bin Weevils are considering a new update, they never turn to their players for input, nothing (even though they may want to keep some updates a surprise). They seem to have more confidence in their updates than 99.8% of the players do! For example, look at Dirt Valley. Before they released it, they published some sneak peeks on their Twitter. So many of their players were begging them not to release it - but instead of even talking to their players, they went ahead and released their idea of "DIRT" Valley!
You can't have a virtual world without players - and not listening to them is pretty much sticking up your two fingers and saying that you don't need players that offer any constructive criticism - many players on Twitter, for example, have been blocked unfairly for sharing opinions. And if players don't have confidence in the team, where are they going to buy their votes from...?
Also, the other section is about the broken promises on their game. I mean, I have at least 3 examples in situations where they have claimed something would be returning, but they just abandoned development on it. They do have problems with their lack of developers & designers - but why create a deadline that you know you won't be able to reach? An example of a broken promise that angered a lot of Bin Weevils players was the KOTB promise. It all started when Swathe (an ex-Bin Weevils moderator), told a player online in March 2016 that the legendary competition would be returning:
Again, this affected the tempestuous relationship with the players & the team, which obviously means that there will be less votes for Bin Weevils this year. Some golden boys / butthurt Bin Weevils fanboys in the community get the idea to complain about the way we "insult" and "ignore" the **hard work** the team put in. Well, it doesn't take Einstein to work out that Bin Weevils must only have 12 staff members in real life, as team members such as Rod Henwood, Amelia Johnson etc left the company in 2014 - but you clearly don't need a big team to create a loved game; just look atJack's Journey, it's just the fact that they can't be bothered. We did respect the team when the team cared less about money and more about the players...
REASON 3: LACK OF NEW CONTENT
Before I even begin talking about this, I know a lot of people will contradict me immediately just judging by the title by saying that the team released new nest items & promotions. First of all, none of that even qualifies as new content, as 1. Nest items are only obtainable during a limited period of time, whereas the purpose of new features is that you can enjoy it forever. Also, 2. they don't have a choice over releasing promotions - if they do, the game will be in financial conflict as they need the revenue from third parties. This could have easily been avoided though, had they remained with Nickelodeon in the first place!
I mean, when was the last time we had a new update anyone liked? In 2015 everyone got excited when Bin Weevils announced they'd be releasing new Bin Badges. Still, a year later, nothing! They focus clearly too much on their area revamps and childish promotion, whereas this problem could have been avoided in the first place by staying with Nickelodeon - it'd save them the burden of advertisements. In 2008, I don't recall seeing a single advertisement taking over the whole map.
What the players are begging out for is for new content to the game - e.g new mini games, new Bin Badges etc, which were promised a long time ago. However, these projects have all been "abandoned" due to Bin Weevils not bothering to add a path, or move the time portal anywhere - just look at Nest Street - the paths were supposed to lead up to other places in the Bin, but instead they were too lazy to decided to remove paths to add more room for "flash mobs", probably!
The lack of new content coming in is really irritating for older players like myself, where we had grown up used to new features coming into the game - it was like a thank you to the players; now we never get anything new on the game, bar the weekly predictable content on the What's New Blog & childish promotions.
REASON 4: POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE
This is actually relatable to something that recently happened in the community - a Weevil called SPIDY in the community had his Weevil logged onto by a team member - regardless of whether they were doing it for the right reasons, they were breaking their own Terms Of Service.
Anyone getting password recover emails, we had an issue over the past week and they had gotten backed up. So don't worry! ✌□️
— drewbian (@drewbianBW) September 26, 2016
@BwsSPIDY I changed it to check something and sent you an email letting you know why. So your account hasn't been 'hacked'.
— drewbian (@drewbianBW) September 26, 2016
Finally, the last thing I have to add are their patronising replies - if your account is hacked, or chat disabled for no reason, the first scapegoat Bin Weevils find is YOU! Now, if Richard Watney was really a CEO and not some lazy man who spent his entire shifts playing table football & letting the team get away from producing crap, he would at least have a word with a staff member that broke their own Terms Of Service or upset a player by un-necessarily banning them. However, even though Drewbian clearly broke his own company's Terms Of Service, he's can carry on pulling this kind of murder:
A lot of Bin Weevils lovers will say that there doesn't need to be a context to the game for it to be big - but if you just look at when Bin Weevils had things that represented a bin (e.g grime, slime, shoeboxes for Flem Manor etc), that was when the game got popular and newer players started taking interest (2003-2012 era). Here are their statistics from 2004-2012 from Google Trends, showing an increase in site statistics from Google Trends:
This was probably the main exhibit that led to many players leaving the game, especially the ones that carried on for years. The sensation isn't there anymore.
REASON 7: TEAM THAT ONLY CARES ABOUT MONEY
Now, I would love to get paid if I was a team member at 55pixels, but they don't even give any ticks about their players, or when they send feedback - I look at the beggars on the street, and wonder, how grateful would they be to have a job like BW's team members? They'd show a significantly higher level of passion too - the team signify the Conservative party - offended by everything, ashamed of nothing - pence, roubles, money, euros, the lot! What's the point of sticking with a team that you've been patient with for years, but don't deliver?