We're not really talking a lot about this publicly but internally we are doing a lot of... "soul searching" as a company. Many, if not all of our employees really love this company. We work here not because we have to but instead because we want to. We enjoy our co-workers and you all, a lot. What is somehow at odds (at least to us internally) is the public perception of our company. It is far away from the reality we see on a daily basis.

In general we are made out to be greedy, money-grubbing "suits". In reality nothing could be further from the truth. The only person in the office that wears anything near a suit is our CFO and he only does that when he needs to meet with our investors. While dollars play a role in our business (as it does any business) it is not the driving factor behind our being a company. To us, this period of "soul searching" really is to define in words, what the driving factor behind our company is. After we can put it into words it is much easier to put into action. We want to create something where YOU the player can go and look at what we stand for and really judge us on that.

Players paint us as out of touch with our games or community when in fact we literally spend all day in game, on the forums and reading tickets trying to help you all. There is no one here who wants to see players upset with our service or our games. We spend all day every day working to serve you and find better ways to serve you. It can be daunting when there are only about 200 of us and 30 Million of you. Especially when we are trying to collect feedback on what we should do.

I think what many players miss is the fact that you all are actually making the decisions on the game. I didn't make the call to skip 4.5. YOU all did. We heard it loud and clear that you don't like being as far behind the other versions. So we turned around and told imcGAMES we had to do something. We are paying more for the 5.0 patch than we have ever paid for any patch before in an effort to get caught up as quickly as possible. But the reason behind us doing it is because YOU all told us you were unhappy.

People say we don't care about the games we publish when in fact the majority of the company regularly plays those same games. We are constantly talking about what we did last night or last weekend and playing our games is always a part of it. To us, it is more than a badge of pride, it is what we do because we love our games as much as we love our community.

I think the most offensive thing is when people tell us our games suck. It is one of those things where many of us work overtime every day (usually without pay) to make the game better. We are always looking for ways to make it so that our players don't have to go through a negative situation. I think a lot of players like to think that when we say "GamersFirst" that is just lip service. But in reality we actually feel we should be doing anything and everything possible to make our gamers happy.

Part of what thwarts us many times is the fact that we don't have a lot of control over what gets developed. This leads to situations where we cannot deliver on our promise because a third party is taking ownership of what in reality is yours. We have over the past year tried to either claim ownership of those relationships or end them. The new titles we are bringing on are with developers who clearly understand our relationship with our players and want us to have a larger say in what happens with the game's development. That allows you all to have a greater ownership of our games. Additionally we are investigating the possibility of developing our own games which would give us the ultimate authority in the game's progress and development.

In the end we all truly believe the games we publish are not owned by us. They are vehicles for our players to experience "fun" with their friends. The true owners are YOU the gamers. We're just here to make sure you're having fun.