NDA's in MMO's serve only 1 purpose in my opinion... damage mitigation. It has nothing to do with competitors. New games often have a list of features released early in the design stages anyway.
Developers simply dont want testers revealing how awful, disappointing and shoddy their game is at any given stage.
Why you guys next time don't drive a car that is not released for road traffic ?
-----MY-TERMS-OF-USE-------------------------------------------------- $OE - eternal enemy of online gaming -We finally WON !!!! 2011 $OE accepted that they have been fired 2005 by the playerbase and closed down ridiculous NGE !!
"There was suppression of speech and all kinds of things between disturbing and fascistic." Raph Koster (parted $OE)
Early on it is to prevent competitors from knowing what features and capabilities the new game will have. As it gets closer to release it changes to preventing people from hearing about bugs or issues that might give customers bad opinions of the game before development has had time to polish and debug the game. And finally when release is immenent it is to prevent bad news about the shoddy state of the game that might seriously hurt box sales.
NDAs are a joke tbh. Even with WARs enforced NDA its competitors still cought wind of what they where doing and "copied".
All an NDA does is to make customers suspicious of the quality of the game, and send a message that the developers arent confident in their product.
Someone mentioned that it is in place to prevent the potential customers from knowing of bugs and such, and that showing the game with a few bugs would hurt it? If the developers actually fix those bugs, wouldnt that just send a positive message that the devs are polishing and correcting any mistakes that testers find.
If the game is good and close to ready the developers are much better off without an NDA, to show players what their game is about and how awesome it really is.
1. Keeping the pertinent info from competitors. For instance, sure xyz feature can be announced, but the NDA would cover how they actually did it. Source code, design documents, etc are all protected by the NDA.
2. Keeping the devs quiet, and controlling what infomation is released to the public. If everyone was allowed to say whatever they wanted, lots of misinformation can happen.
For instance if xyz MMO wants to have abc feature, but then decides to remove that later because it wasn't plausible. It avoids any problems in the future. Because once somethings announced or found out, it keeps going and is hard to get rid of.
3. Suprise element. This is debatable, but revealing every single area/ability/thing in the game can ruin the suprise.
Now, your probably asking why DFO is using a strict NDA. The reason for that is becuase when you have an NDA that says such and such can be said, but other things can't, it becoms risky.
In fact most NDA's don't really cover what you can and can't say EXACTLY. So..having a full strict NDA is often the safer route. Having a strict NDA insures the info given out is only through one medium, and that's dev updates, press, etc. Not some dev that posted an answer to a question not thinking about what he was saying.
EDIT: This is nothing new, every single company has an NDA. Do you work at McDonalds? Yeah, you signed an NDA. Probably didn't know it, but you did.
EDIT: This is nothing new, every single company has an NDA. Do you work at McDonalds? Yeah, you signed an NDA. Probably didn't know it, but you did.
Gotta protect the Secret Sauce... the public just THINKS it's Mayo left in the sun too long.
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title. "When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
2. Keeping the devs quiet, and controlling what infomation is released to the public. If everyone was allowed to say whatever they wanted, lots of misinformation can happen. For instance if xyz MMO wants to have abc feature, but then decides to remove that later because it wasn't plausible. It avoids any problems in the future. Because once somethings announced or found out, it keeps going and is hard to get rid of.
Its the other way around to be honest. Misinformation is more likely to occur with an NDA in place, because then players will only have the anouncements as a source of info. Anouncements from a company can be interpreted differently by different players, and noone knows more then the other person so there is noone to correct the players that may spread the word around.
If there are loads and loads of info from people who have actually played it, plus videos and screens from testers, few people will get it wrong. And the people who are misinformed can be corrected by fans/testers and pointed to where there is reliable info. Devs wont try to clarify their statements to players who misunderstands them, fanboys do. Isnt it then better if the fanboy has played the game? ;p
Retards who try to spread wrong info out of illwill can also be discredited and corrected by the fans, who can refer to actual playergenerated proof. If the person who tries to correct the retard hasnt played it he probably knows just as little of the game and has equally low credability.
As for changing or taking away something from the game. That is usualy done when whatever was removed didnt work or was broken, which the tasters in that case are allowed to mediate to the public. Removing something bad from the game is a good thing and will also be seen as a positive thing by the potential customers. Besides, things can be anounced and looked forward to by the players, and then disanounced, and the people who looked forward to it will still voice their disapointment, even if they never actually saw footage of it. How does an NDA help that?
If the game is fundamentally good and the devs have confidence in it, there is NO reason to have an NDA.
For the love of God people, go read the forums from AOC back in May. Read all the post from players that were ready to shoot someone at Funcom because they bought an unfinished, broken and bugged game.
The ONLY reason to have an NDA this late in the process is to hide how bad the game is.. no competitors are going to steal anything from Darkfall and have it implemented within the next year. A month of 'head start' is not going to matter at all. (if they hear about it now, or they hear about it Jan 22nd).
There is no way a game focused on PVP is going to be at all balanced without a big open beta.
lol...what do they have to hide from everyone. I mean 1: they do NOT have anything good in the game that any other "competitor" (mainly DnL, mourning, or some other crap MMO that was ever thought of..) would even consider valuable. Pretty much the NDA for them is to hide the broken game they already have. If it was that good there would be proof of it, but theres not. Im sure that one of two things may happen on the 22nd of January.... either it releases and everyone is shocked how crappy it is, or it gets pushed back again just to hide its crappiness. I cant wait to see which card Tasos plays this time.
This is for discussion... so let's try and keep the posts civil... Thanks! What is your opinion of the purpose of an NDA for a MMO in development? It is my opinion that the main purpose of an NDA is to keep information away from the MMO's competitors so that they can't release or update their game with the same Feature or mechanic before the MMO with the NDA has a chance to Release their game. I'd be interesting in hearing other's opinions on what purpose an NDA serves. With my opinion of what an NDA serves in mind, for me it brings up the question... What purpose does DarkFall have in keeping it's NDA intact with just 5 weeks until they release? Does Aventurine think that other MMO's will have the time to code, implement, test, and then release/update their MMO with the information released from DarkFall's NDA? I guess I can't think of any other reason why Aventurine would keep the NDA in place for DarkFall. That's why I decided to pose the question to everyone else here. Perhaps there is something that I am over-looking?
The purpose of an NDA is to keep other devs from stealing your ideas before the game even launches. And off course you don't want people to hear everything about the bad buggs you had in the early beta and think your games suck because of that.
Usually the devs don't drop the NDA until the public beta a week before launch so in this Aventurine is not doing anything odd, most games do the same thing. Spellborn did it recently.
Certain games didn't have a NDA, Wow is the most famous of these games but if I remember correct also Linage is among those. When a company is 100% that their product will be a succes there is really no need for an NDA.
No this is not any reason to distrust Aventurine, if you want something to worry about, think on how they will manage to stress test their servers with only 500 players (who hardly can be online at the exact same time) when they only have a month before launch and the holidays are approaching.
This is for discussion... so let's try and keep the posts civil... Thanks! What is your opinion of the purpose of an NDA for a MMO in development? It is my opinion that the main purpose of an NDA is to keep information away from the MMO's competitors so that they can't release or update their game with the same Feature or mechanic before the MMO with the NDA has a chance to Release their game. I'd be interesting in hearing other's opinions on what purpose an NDA serves. With my opinion of what an NDA serves in mind, for me it brings up the question... What purpose does DarkFall have in keeping it's NDA intact with just 5 weeks until they release? Does Aventurine think that other MMO's will have the time to code, implement, test, and then release/update their MMO with the information released from DarkFall's NDA? I guess I can't think of any other reason why Aventurine would keep the NDA in place for DarkFall. That's why I decided to pose the question to everyone else here. Perhaps there is something that I am over-looking?
The purpose of an NDA is to keep other devs from stealing your ideas before the game even launches. And off course you don't want people to hear everything about the bad buggs you had in the early beta and think your games suck because of that.
Usually the devs don't drop the NDA until the public beta a week before launch so in this Aventurine is not doing anything odd, most games do the same thing. Spellborn did it recently.
Certain games didn't have a NDA, Wow is the most famous of these games but if I remember correct also Linage is among those. When a company is 100% that their product will be a succes there is really no need for an NDA.
No this is not any reason to distrust Aventurine, if you want something to worry about, think on how they will manage to stress test their servers with only 500 players (who hardly can be online at the exact same time) when they only have a month before launch and the holidays are approaching.
There was an NDA for closed beta in WoW. I am unsure about Lineage 2. But I bet you they had an NDA on closed beta as well.
Open beta is just that, open. NDA lifted.
I sign a lot of NDA's, and they do that more than anything "just in case". Sometimes they aren't needed. Movies have NDA's. TV shows have NDA's. The CIA has NDA's. The military has NDA's. Your job has NDA's. And even game companies have NDA's.
Pretty much the NDA for them is to hide the broken game they already have. If it was that good there would be proof of it, but theres not. Im sure that one of two things may happen on the 22nd of January.... either it releases and everyone is shocked how crappy it is, or it gets pushed back again just to hide its crappiness. I cant wait to see which card Tasos plays this time.
as i've said many times over, i predict the so called DF NDA will still be in effect come Jan 22nd...and if that still doesnt cause some questions to come from the tasos fanclub members then they must really be from aventurine lol...
Somewhat off topic - I like the NDA because it means when I get the game, I'm going to know basically nothing about it, and it will be a new and fresh experience. Unlike every other MMO i've played where I get it and already know a large portion of everything there is to know. I'm glad there aren't beta leaks for several reasons as well, the fact that it means the hundreds of people in it are busy playing it instead of bitching about what's wrong with it - guess what that means... it's good.
Comments
NDA's in MMO's serve only 1 purpose in my opinion... damage mitigation. It has nothing to do with competitors. New games often have a list of features released early in the design stages anyway.
Developers simply dont want testers revealing how awful, disappointing and shoddy their game is at any given stage.
Why you guys next time don't drive a car that is not released for road traffic ?
-----MY-TERMS-OF-USE--------------------------------------------------
$OE - eternal enemy of online gaming
-We finally WON !!!! 2011 $OE accepted that they have been fired 2005 by the playerbase and closed down ridiculous NGE !!
"There was suppression of speech and all kinds of things between disturbing and fascistic." Raph Koster (parted $OE)
why you time next speak engrish for car road traffic?
Early on it is to prevent competitors from knowing what features and capabilities the new game will have. As it gets closer to release it changes to preventing people from hearing about bugs or issues that might give customers bad opinions of the game before development has had time to polish and debug the game. And finally when release is immenent it is to prevent bad news about the shoddy state of the game that might seriously hurt box sales.
---
Ethion
NDAs are a joke tbh. Even with WARs enforced NDA its competitors still cought wind of what they where doing and "copied".
All an NDA does is to make customers suspicious of the quality of the game, and send a message that the developers arent confident in their product.
Someone mentioned that it is in place to prevent the potential customers from knowing of bugs and such, and that showing the game with a few bugs would hurt it? If the developers actually fix those bugs, wouldnt that just send a positive message that the devs are polishing and correcting any mistakes that testers find.
If the game is good and close to ready the developers are much better off without an NDA, to show players what their game is about and how awesome it really is.
NDA's are necessary in these cases:
1. Keeping the pertinent info from competitors. For instance, sure xyz feature can be announced, but the NDA would cover how they actually did it. Source code, design documents, etc are all protected by the NDA.
2. Keeping the devs quiet, and controlling what infomation is released to the public. If everyone was allowed to say whatever they wanted, lots of misinformation can happen.
For instance if xyz MMO wants to have abc feature, but then decides to remove that later because it wasn't plausible. It avoids any problems in the future. Because once somethings announced or found out, it keeps going and is hard to get rid of.
3. Suprise element. This is debatable, but revealing every single area/ability/thing in the game can ruin the suprise.
Now, your probably asking why DFO is using a strict NDA. The reason for that is becuase when you have an NDA that says such and such can be said, but other things can't, it becoms risky.
In fact most NDA's don't really cover what you can and can't say EXACTLY. So..having a full strict NDA is often the safer route. Having a strict NDA insures the info given out is only through one medium, and that's dev updates, press, etc. Not some dev that posted an answer to a question not thinking about what he was saying.
EDIT: This is nothing new, every single company has an NDA. Do you work at McDonalds? Yeah, you signed an NDA. Probably didn't know it, but you did.
Gotta protect the Secret Sauce... the public just THINKS it's Mayo left in the sun too long.
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
Its the other way around to be honest. Misinformation is more likely to occur with an NDA in place, because then players will only have the anouncements as a source of info. Anouncements from a company can be interpreted differently by different players, and noone knows more then the other person so there is noone to correct the players that may spread the word around.
If there are loads and loads of info from people who have actually played it, plus videos and screens from testers, few people will get it wrong. And the people who are misinformed can be corrected by fans/testers and pointed to where there is reliable info. Devs wont try to clarify their statements to players who misunderstands them, fanboys do. Isnt it then better if the fanboy has played the game? ;p
Retards who try to spread wrong info out of illwill can also be discredited and corrected by the fans, who can refer to actual playergenerated proof. If the person who tries to correct the retard hasnt played it he probably knows just as little of the game and has equally low credability.
As for changing or taking away something from the game. That is usualy done when whatever was removed didnt work or was broken, which the tasters in that case are allowed to mediate to the public. Removing something bad from the game is a good thing and will also be seen as a positive thing by the potential customers. Besides, things can be anounced and looked forward to by the players, and then disanounced, and the people who looked forward to it will still voice their disapointment, even if they never actually saw footage of it. How does an NDA help that?
If the game is fundamentally good and the devs have confidence in it, there is NO reason to have an NDA.
Actually, I think you meant no reason in having a strict NDA.
There is always a reason for an NDA regarless, even if just to protect the source code.
For the love of God people, go read the forums from AOC back in May. Read all the post from players that were ready to shoot someone at Funcom because they bought an unfinished, broken and bugged game.
The ONLY reason to have an NDA this late in the process is to hide how bad the game is.. no competitors are going to steal anything from Darkfall and have it implemented within the next year. A month of 'head start' is not going to matter at all. (if they hear about it now, or they hear about it Jan 22nd).
There is no way a game focused on PVP is going to be at all balanced without a big open beta.
lol...what do they have to hide from everyone. I mean 1: they do NOT have anything good in the game that any other "competitor" (mainly DnL, mourning, or some other crap MMO that was ever thought of..) would even consider valuable. Pretty much the NDA for them is to hide the broken game they already have. If it was that good there would be proof of it, but theres not. Im sure that one of two things may happen on the 22nd of January.... either it releases and everyone is shocked how crappy it is, or it gets pushed back again just to hide its crappiness. I cant wait to see which card Tasos plays this time.
The purpose of an NDA is to keep other devs from stealing your ideas before the game even launches. And off course you don't want people to hear everything about the bad buggs you had in the early beta and think your games suck because of that.
Usually the devs don't drop the NDA until the public beta a week before launch so in this Aventurine is not doing anything odd, most games do the same thing. Spellborn did it recently.
Certain games didn't have a NDA, Wow is the most famous of these games but if I remember correct also Linage is among those. When a company is 100% that their product will be a succes there is really no need for an NDA.
No this is not any reason to distrust Aventurine, if you want something to worry about, think on how they will manage to stress test their servers with only 500 players (who hardly can be online at the exact same time) when they only have a month before launch and the holidays are approaching.
The purpose of an NDA is to keep other devs from stealing your ideas before the game even launches. And off course you don't want people to hear everything about the bad buggs you had in the early beta and think your games suck because of that.
Usually the devs don't drop the NDA until the public beta a week before launch so in this Aventurine is not doing anything odd, most games do the same thing. Spellborn did it recently.
Certain games didn't have a NDA, Wow is the most famous of these games but if I remember correct also Linage is among those. When a company is 100% that their product will be a succes there is really no need for an NDA.
No this is not any reason to distrust Aventurine, if you want something to worry about, think on how they will manage to stress test their servers with only 500 players (who hardly can be online at the exact same time) when they only have a month before launch and the holidays are approaching.
There was an NDA for closed beta in WoW. I am unsure about Lineage 2. But I bet you they had an NDA on closed beta as well.
Open beta is just that, open. NDA lifted.
I sign a lot of NDA's, and they do that more than anything "just in case". Sometimes they aren't needed. Movies have NDA's. TV shows have NDA's. The CIA has NDA's. The military has NDA's. Your job has NDA's. And even game companies have NDA's.
as i've said many times over, i predict the so called DF NDA will still be in effect come Jan 22nd...and if that still doesnt cause some questions to come from the tasos fanclub members then they must really be from aventurine lol...
Somewhat off topic - I like the NDA because it means when I get the game, I'm going to know basically nothing about it, and it will be a new and fresh experience. Unlike every other MMO i've played where I get it and already know a large portion of everything there is to know. I'm glad there aren't beta leaks for several reasons as well, the fact that it means the hundreds of people in it are busy playing it instead of bitching about what's wrong with it - guess what that means... it's good.