An open letter to game developers

Fuerchtegott

Dear developers,

Last year Mr Jacobs from Mythic Entertainment addressed the online gaming community and stated that the success of their upcoming title Warhammer Online would be critical to the genre itself. Thus, Mr Jacobs pleaded with the customers to lead his product to financial success on the basis of the customer’s love for the genre in general.

For two reasons this seems to be a noteworthy procedure. First, it is rather rare that a company addresses its customers in a time of seeming crisis to buy their product on the sole basis of saving the industry. In order to show my point, I will demonstrate this in the context of the recent economical crisis. Mr Jacobs action is as if the CEO of General Motors asked the customers of automobiles to buy their cars to save the industry solely on the basis of their love for cars.

This will lead to my second point. In very small or young industries with a strong company – customer relation sentiment is actually still a matter of concern and importance. This is for example true with Leica cameras where customers relate tradition, quality, nostalgia and others with the company name.

The PC Gaming industry, even more than the video gaming industry, has traditionally been one where such emotional connections are strong. This derives from its special history where many developers started out as gamers. Surely, there are also psychological reasons which I will not delve into here.

Mr Jacobs effort shows that the intimacy between developers and their customers, us, the community, is still existent and is also recognized on the side of the industry.

In recent times, however, the companies seem to be hypocritical in this regard. The companies are removing themselves more and more from their basis, the pc gaming community, and are becoming more and more corporate-like, utilizing the methods of corporations and, even worse, of politics.

In order to make my point, I will use the two most prominent examples in recent MMO history, Age of Conan (AoC) and Warhammer Online (WAR). I will use AoC as an example for politics and WAR for marketing, however, the arguments are exchangeable, and as I believe, also true for numerous other companies.

Marketing. Marketing equals misinformation. This is the impression a gamer must have had in 2008. A question stated to Mythic regarded the topic of housing. The answer was that housing will not be included in the game because war is everywhere. Thus, a lack of a feature is transformed into a atmosphere enhancing feature. Another issue regards crafting which was promised to be revolutionary (XXX Source) and innovative. The actual game has just two crafts, one of which (crafting talismans) is hardly practical for the lack of items with high bonuses and an additional talisman slot. Crafts like smiths, leatherworker, woodworker, miners and basically any craft that is not related to warfare is non-existent and not intended since war is everywhere. Again, lack of features is praised as atmosphere enhancing feature, for who could think of building a sword when there is war just outside the city walls.

The mechanics of crafting are bland. Collect the necessary ingredients, drop them in one container and click a button, voila, done. This is hardly innovative if one considers the minigame-like crafting of, for example, Vanguard. Please note that my criticism does not concern such issues as not implemented classes or cities since such things are content not features. Content is easy to add, features are harder to implement since they may change the overall system.

Politics. Politics equals denial. Denial of failure that is. For whatever reason AoC was launched too early with an essential amount of content and features missing. So much indeed that approximately 2/3 of the game was unfinished. The gaming community was disappointed and enraged since the responsible people at AoC promised the game to be finished as intended. This was simply not the case. A quick glance at the game box was evidence enough. There was no DirectX 10, no drunken brawling. What followed, however, was simply a scandal. Instead of admitting the failure and bad decision making on Funcoms part, which would have at least given them the dignity of being honest and capable of reflection, and thus, not insulted the community even more, the company adopted a vindicative stance. Does a behaviour similar to the one telling us that waterboarding is not torture and satisfying a woman with a cigar is not sex has a justification to exist in the computer gaming scene?

What are the reasons for the above mentioned issues? Computer gaming as well as video gaming has grown out of its sub-cultural niche and became a mainstream medium. Producing a computer game takes several years, a significant number of people are involved and it takes a budget of several millions dollars, euros, yen etc. to produce one. Therefore, where once the decisionmakers had been gamers/programmers, nowadays its managers who are more capable of dealing with the organizational responsibilities of a multi-million dollar project. The outcome is clear today. More and more games are products of marketing and target group analysis and less of innovative ideas. Even more games are games and not worlds, therefore, the distinction between MMO and MMORPG. A MMO presents a limited set of features which is fitted in the boundaries of the overall goal of the game. A MMORG attempts to recreate a whole world with as many possibilities as possible, regardless of what the goal of the game may be. The goal may even be representation itself. For too many reasons to list here, a MMO is probably easier to produce than a MMORPG.

We play games because they are exciting and give us new experiences only a video game can give. Yes, this may be a virtual reality, but it is nonetheless a reality in which we invest money, time and emotion. If the marketing and PR department of game companies promise us innovation, an endless feature list and new dimensions of gameplay, but the final product is filled with bugs, mediocre content, rare in innovation and with even less features than previous games at their release then the companies should not be surprised if their product fails expectation. Trusting in some sort of emotional attachment of the customers in a new product as compensation for missing, broken or non-involving features is a risky business. If high-profile MMOs or MMORPGs fail and result in the downsizing or even closing of a company it is not due to software piracy or a too strong competition, but bad product management.

It has been proven numerous times now. If the companies release broken unfinished games, they will loose money. Do not release them, implement a wide diversity of features and possibilities of customization, do not settle for the mediocre and do not promise us what you cannot or do not want to give. Tell us what you have done and what you will do for 100 %, not what you probably will do. It is okay to raise our appetite but do not promise us a 500 gramm juicy steak if you will deliver a slim cheeseburger.

Finally, Mr Jacobs, the MMORPG genre will not die, regardless of WARs success or not. The projects might be smaller in the future with less budget. This will make the companies more open to listen to the wishes, advice and ideas of the community instead of trying to sell a lack of something as something good. However, Mythic, Funcom and other companies who blindly pursue this way may not be involved in this genre anymore.

With Regards,

Fürchtegott

 

altairzq

Mark Jacobs knows he is adressing a young audience. And he is very arrogant. Reminds me of those teachers that feel like gods in front of the pupils. They are basically very immature.