Raya
03-11-2005, 08:00 PM
193The first thing you might notice about Pariath (the 31-year-old Vanguard fan from Phoenix, formerly known as Aatlaar) is his smile. It's big, it's Irish and it can light up a room at 20 paces. You can't see it in the picture, but in person it's unmistakable.
Pariath is the Community Manager for Silky Venom, the new Vanguard fan site. He makes the perfect CM because of his PR background (not to mention his Irish wit, his love of gaming and his caring about people). Par's first excursion into the world of public relations was in the late '90s.
"Around 1998-99 I started to get annoyed by the fact that a lot of bands I wanted to see skipped over Phoenix entirely, and went to California," Pariath told me. "I decided, with no idea at all what I was going to do, to start a concert promotions company. I had been a part of the Goth (hate that word) Industrial scene in Phoenix off and on for at least 12 years. So I talked to a friend of mine who was familiar with the business side of the idea and formed dEAD sOUL pRODUCTIONS with my friend and partner."
After a moment's thought (or perhaps it was just the blank look on my face), he explained: "dEAD sOUL pRODUCTIONS is a homage to a song by Joy Division, and a cover of Dead Souls was made by Nine Inch Nails for the Crow sound track."
I shivered at the thought of starting up a concert production company just like that, without any real knowledge or experience, and asked Pariath about it.
"It was exciting," he said. "The fear factor didn't come into play until our first show."
It seems that their first show was also a BIG show, featuring the band VnV Nation. This was a huge band in Europe and on the EBM scene in America. At the time EBM was still new in Phoenix and growing.
I had to stop and ask him about EBM, since my idea of a wild night of music is Waltz of the Sugar Plum Fairy by Tchaikovsky, played at double time. (Okay, not quite that bad, but from Goth/Industrial/EBM viewpoint, it seems that way.)
" Electronic body music...sub-genre of Industrial," Pariath explained. I nodded my head like I understood.
The fear started when Pariath and his partner started totting up the costs to produce a show such as this…things that neither had bargained for, such as the cost for the band to play the show at $2K, the cost of running special sound equipment into the club chosen for the performance at $1.5K, which hadn't been counted on, and lighting costs at another $1.5K. Gauge that against the cost of tickets for the one-night show at $12-15 each presale and $20 at the door…the fear was definitely there.
Fortunately, the luck of the Irish was with Par regarding advertising. He got a break with his then boss at the "alternative" bookstore he worked at in Tempe, Arizona. The boss had a contract for advertisement with the local independent paper called The Newtimes for 1/4 page B&W. He let Par use that advertising at no cost. Nice boss! And Par's nightclub owning friends handed out flyers at the door.
But the proof of the Irish whiskey is in the drinking, or so they say, and Par and his partner didn't know how they were going to cover costs if the turnout wasn't good. They were scared to death, if the truth be told.
And then the fans, bless them, showed up in force--well over 200, which is insane for that type of music…a huge crowd. To the sagging relief of Par, this turnout paid JUST enough to cover costs, with less than $20 left over. Par bought his soon-to-be wife a T-shirt with his profits and deemed the evening to have been a roaring success.
That seemed a lot of work for less than $20 profit. Yet, dEAD sOUL pRODUCTIONS continued successful through another 70+ shows. I asked Pariath why he had continued after that first show.
He had a number of good reasons. "For that small monetary gain, I made more than 200 people that enjoyed the music happy. The band came back to be our biggest and last major show in 2002."
He and his friends wanted that kind of music, and they were sick of driving all the way to LA to hear it live, so this was his way of having his cake and eating it too.
"Besides," he said, "it was a rush, the planning, the execution…"
I asked him if he had found that he had a knack for PR. He shook his head and replied, "I don't know that I would say that. I think what I did over the course of those 70+ shows with DSP is I found a knack for getting people to come to my events, enjoy it and come back again."
Looking at him in astonishment, I said, "But that is EXACTLY what PR is!" We both laughed.
And dEAD sOUL pRODUCTIONS kept on going strong for another four years, until the government passed a bill to enact the Rave Act, which in an effort to control the use of drugs like Extacy, essentially made club owners and promoters legally responsible for drug-related crimes. This proved too much for Pariath and he regretfully left his PR business, more recently traveling to San Diego where job prospects were more varied and more in keeping with his inner goals.
With respect to being Community Manager at Silky Venom, Pariath said he was very surprised to have been asked to join the team. "To be asked by Oloh to help him with this project was very humbling, for lack of a better term."
I asked him what talents he thought he had to offer the team; he had a hard time answering that ("I'm better at giving compliments, than talking about myself."). "Try," I suggested.
"Well," Pariath said, thinking hard. "I think I am approachable. I make sure people know where I stand and that they can talk to me and not be played with. I'm very direct in my feelings and opinions...as wrong as they often are." And there was that Irish grin again.
Community Manager has always seemed to be a catchall term for me. It has been my experience that the job description changes with the company or organization offering CMs. I asked Par what he thought a Community Manager was.
"A community manager (in the gaming scene) should be a reflection of the players on some level, period…someone who knows the concerns, and feels them as well. Its my job to make Silky Venom a home for the people following Vanguard, and at the same time to make them more interested in it, and in SV..."
That was the kind of answer I liked. But why Silky Venom?
"I was appalled at the maneuvers of IGE of late and thought I might be able to contribute to the community. I was approached by you and Oloh, and after hearing what SV was about...I thought I would fit in here. A real fan site, just about the game, and the fans." He added, "I didn't set out to be here, or 'there.' I just got lucky."
Pariath has an extensive background in MMOs, either as beta player or regular player or both (including EQ, DAoC, AO, CoH, Planetside, EQ2, WoW – all beta experiences except EQ – there were more but he couldn't remember them off the top of his head).
I asked, "Why Vanguard?"
"That's easy," Pariath said. "Brad and company™," and grinned.
He expanded: "Brad created a visual game that took me from Gemstone and into a fantasy world I didn't know could exist. Daggerfall, and many more single player games, had something I loved, but were missing something that I couldn't put a finger on until I heard of Everquest. I stuck with EQ for a long time...through the pains of its growth and modifications. It was my home for a very long time. My best man was my best buddy in EQ."
"Lots of good friends and good times?" I asked.
"To say the least," Pariath agreed. He continued, "So when I heard about Sigil I watched for a bit, then they hired a few people I knew from EQ. And then more people I knew about from EQ....and more...and more..."
That pretty much said it all. I tried to worm some information from Pariath about the direction of the Silky Venom community and forums.
Pariath didn't want to tip his hand too much. "But I can say that SV will have Vanguard news, and related topics to talk about in our forums, that you might not see anywhere else." He gave a mischievous smile (okay, it was an evil grin).
He summed up his goals: "I will do all I can to make SV a home for Vanguard fans, short of losing my pants...that's a gnome's job. The future for this game and community is wide open and I can't begin to express how excited it has me and the entire team of Silky Venom."
I can't wait to see what happens. And has Glip agreed to this?
Thanks, Pariath. Watch for more biographies on the wonderful world of…I mean the wonderful staff of Silky Venom.
(These staff interviews are being done at random, without any real order other than availability of interviewee when I run around with notebook in hand trying to collar SV people for an interview. All of which means, I have no idea who will be next.)
Pariath is the Community Manager for Silky Venom, the new Vanguard fan site. He makes the perfect CM because of his PR background (not to mention his Irish wit, his love of gaming and his caring about people). Par's first excursion into the world of public relations was in the late '90s.
"Around 1998-99 I started to get annoyed by the fact that a lot of bands I wanted to see skipped over Phoenix entirely, and went to California," Pariath told me. "I decided, with no idea at all what I was going to do, to start a concert promotions company. I had been a part of the Goth (hate that word) Industrial scene in Phoenix off and on for at least 12 years. So I talked to a friend of mine who was familiar with the business side of the idea and formed dEAD sOUL pRODUCTIONS with my friend and partner."
After a moment's thought (or perhaps it was just the blank look on my face), he explained: "dEAD sOUL pRODUCTIONS is a homage to a song by Joy Division, and a cover of Dead Souls was made by Nine Inch Nails for the Crow sound track."
I shivered at the thought of starting up a concert production company just like that, without any real knowledge or experience, and asked Pariath about it.
"It was exciting," he said. "The fear factor didn't come into play until our first show."
It seems that their first show was also a BIG show, featuring the band VnV Nation. This was a huge band in Europe and on the EBM scene in America. At the time EBM was still new in Phoenix and growing.
I had to stop and ask him about EBM, since my idea of a wild night of music is Waltz of the Sugar Plum Fairy by Tchaikovsky, played at double time. (Okay, not quite that bad, but from Goth/Industrial/EBM viewpoint, it seems that way.)
" Electronic body music...sub-genre of Industrial," Pariath explained. I nodded my head like I understood.
The fear started when Pariath and his partner started totting up the costs to produce a show such as this…things that neither had bargained for, such as the cost for the band to play the show at $2K, the cost of running special sound equipment into the club chosen for the performance at $1.5K, which hadn't been counted on, and lighting costs at another $1.5K. Gauge that against the cost of tickets for the one-night show at $12-15 each presale and $20 at the door…the fear was definitely there.
Fortunately, the luck of the Irish was with Par regarding advertising. He got a break with his then boss at the "alternative" bookstore he worked at in Tempe, Arizona. The boss had a contract for advertisement with the local independent paper called The Newtimes for 1/4 page B&W. He let Par use that advertising at no cost. Nice boss! And Par's nightclub owning friends handed out flyers at the door.
But the proof of the Irish whiskey is in the drinking, or so they say, and Par and his partner didn't know how they were going to cover costs if the turnout wasn't good. They were scared to death, if the truth be told.
And then the fans, bless them, showed up in force--well over 200, which is insane for that type of music…a huge crowd. To the sagging relief of Par, this turnout paid JUST enough to cover costs, with less than $20 left over. Par bought his soon-to-be wife a T-shirt with his profits and deemed the evening to have been a roaring success.
That seemed a lot of work for less than $20 profit. Yet, dEAD sOUL pRODUCTIONS continued successful through another 70+ shows. I asked Pariath why he had continued after that first show.
He had a number of good reasons. "For that small monetary gain, I made more than 200 people that enjoyed the music happy. The band came back to be our biggest and last major show in 2002."
He and his friends wanted that kind of music, and they were sick of driving all the way to LA to hear it live, so this was his way of having his cake and eating it too.
"Besides," he said, "it was a rush, the planning, the execution…"
I asked him if he had found that he had a knack for PR. He shook his head and replied, "I don't know that I would say that. I think what I did over the course of those 70+ shows with DSP is I found a knack for getting people to come to my events, enjoy it and come back again."
Looking at him in astonishment, I said, "But that is EXACTLY what PR is!" We both laughed.
And dEAD sOUL pRODUCTIONS kept on going strong for another four years, until the government passed a bill to enact the Rave Act, which in an effort to control the use of drugs like Extacy, essentially made club owners and promoters legally responsible for drug-related crimes. This proved too much for Pariath and he regretfully left his PR business, more recently traveling to San Diego where job prospects were more varied and more in keeping with his inner goals.
With respect to being Community Manager at Silky Venom, Pariath said he was very surprised to have been asked to join the team. "To be asked by Oloh to help him with this project was very humbling, for lack of a better term."
I asked him what talents he thought he had to offer the team; he had a hard time answering that ("I'm better at giving compliments, than talking about myself."). "Try," I suggested.
"Well," Pariath said, thinking hard. "I think I am approachable. I make sure people know where I stand and that they can talk to me and not be played with. I'm very direct in my feelings and opinions...as wrong as they often are." And there was that Irish grin again.
Community Manager has always seemed to be a catchall term for me. It has been my experience that the job description changes with the company or organization offering CMs. I asked Par what he thought a Community Manager was.
"A community manager (in the gaming scene) should be a reflection of the players on some level, period…someone who knows the concerns, and feels them as well. Its my job to make Silky Venom a home for the people following Vanguard, and at the same time to make them more interested in it, and in SV..."
That was the kind of answer I liked. But why Silky Venom?
"I was appalled at the maneuvers of IGE of late and thought I might be able to contribute to the community. I was approached by you and Oloh, and after hearing what SV was about...I thought I would fit in here. A real fan site, just about the game, and the fans." He added, "I didn't set out to be here, or 'there.' I just got lucky."
Pariath has an extensive background in MMOs, either as beta player or regular player or both (including EQ, DAoC, AO, CoH, Planetside, EQ2, WoW – all beta experiences except EQ – there were more but he couldn't remember them off the top of his head).
I asked, "Why Vanguard?"
"That's easy," Pariath said. "Brad and company™," and grinned.
He expanded: "Brad created a visual game that took me from Gemstone and into a fantasy world I didn't know could exist. Daggerfall, and many more single player games, had something I loved, but were missing something that I couldn't put a finger on until I heard of Everquest. I stuck with EQ for a long time...through the pains of its growth and modifications. It was my home for a very long time. My best man was my best buddy in EQ."
"Lots of good friends and good times?" I asked.
"To say the least," Pariath agreed. He continued, "So when I heard about Sigil I watched for a bit, then they hired a few people I knew from EQ. And then more people I knew about from EQ....and more...and more..."
That pretty much said it all. I tried to worm some information from Pariath about the direction of the Silky Venom community and forums.
Pariath didn't want to tip his hand too much. "But I can say that SV will have Vanguard news, and related topics to talk about in our forums, that you might not see anywhere else." He gave a mischievous smile (okay, it was an evil grin).
He summed up his goals: "I will do all I can to make SV a home for Vanguard fans, short of losing my pants...that's a gnome's job. The future for this game and community is wide open and I can't begin to express how excited it has me and the entire team of Silky Venom."
I can't wait to see what happens. And has Glip agreed to this?
Thanks, Pariath. Watch for more biographies on the wonderful world of…I mean the wonderful staff of Silky Venom.
(These staff interviews are being done at random, without any real order other than availability of interviewee when I run around with notebook in hand trying to collar SV people for an interview. All of which means, I have no idea who will be next.)