A bunch of people running around with lightsabers, outnumbering the non-force sensitives by 3:1. That definitely is an accurate portrayal of the Star Wars universe. Congrats, BioWare. I can easily go play Jedi Knight 2, or even one of the KOTOR games to get the same flavor.
Don't fret, I'm sure you can still hang around the starter area and roleplay that you're a moisture farmer if you really want to.
Isn't the setting at the height of the Republic when there were thousands of Jedi running around the galaxy?
And the setting won't have Jedi outnumbering the non-force using population the game when you include NPCs. Now if all the NPCs were wielding lightsabers as well and using the Force in everyday tasks then that would ruin the setting.
Bioware says players are supposed to represent heroes in the confilct, so it's natural you'd be running into other Jedi, commandos, elite bounty hunters and such rather than interacting with tailors and dancers. I think allowing Jedi/Sith to be playable will be far more appealing to a broader audience. I don't remember too many Star Wars novels about dancers and shopkeepers.
Isn't the setting at the height of the Republic when there were thousands of Jedi running around the galaxy? And the setting won't have Jedi outnumbering the non-force using population the game when you include NPCs. Now if all the NPCs were wielding lightsabers as well and using the Force in everyday tasks then that would ruin the setting. Bioware says players are supposed to represent heroes in the confilct, so it's natural you'd be running into other Jedi, commandos, elite bounty hunters and such rather than interacting with tailors and dancers. I think allowing Jedi/Sith to be playable will be far more appealing to a broader audience. I don't remember too many Star Wars novels about dancers and shopkeepers.
I do, but they were only mentioned briefly or they played a role in the story more important then just selling a power coupler, or an armor suit, or entertaing a character for 4 min.
I dunno where all this Jedi/Sith-hate comes from. This is Star Wars! Hello? I mean, Jedi and Sith just ARE the core myth of Star Wars. In that term I always found the setting of SWG a fundamentally wrong choice. There are just way too many people being SW fans would want to play Jedi or Sith. Its like making LOTRO without Elves, DDO without Wizards or whatever analogy you may want. If you dislike Jedi and Sith so much, why care about Star Wars? Its really beyond me. There are plenty of MMOs already out there and more to come where you damn sure never will meet a Jedi. Play them. If you play a Star Wars MMo you have to suppose and accept that there ARE force users, and that it is totally bullshit to even think you can limit their numbers with any artificial mechanics. If Bioware would do that, they'd doom themselves to make a niche game. Period!
There are going to be other classes, and what does it matter if one is played more? This is no competition. Play what class you like and if you do it doesnt matter a crap who else plays Jedi. On the contrary, isnt it cool to play something maybe NOT everyone else does? So take it as a chance maybe. Really, I dont understand you guys at all. You plan to play a Star Wars MMO and seriously expect no Jedi?
And just as sidenote: its far from certain that in the long run a majority will play Force User classes. Even after the NGE there were plenty other classes played. It may even vary greatly between the servers, there is just no way to predict that. And just to give you some scope: I recall some official source mentioned that the "Order 66" counted about 10.000 killed Jedi in the end. So there just were more than a handful.
The bottom line is: play the class you enjoy and dont care about what others do and don't do.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I dunno where all this Jedi/Sith-hate comes from. This is Star Wars! Hello? I mean, Jedi and Sith just ARE the core myth of Star Wars. In that term I always found the setting of SWG a fundamentally wrong choice. There are just way too many people being SW fans would want to play Jedi or Sith. Its like making LOTRO without Elves, DDO without Wizards or whatever analogy you may want. If you dislike Jedi and Sith so much, why care about Star Wars? Its really beyond me. There are plenty of MMOs already out there and more to come where you damn sure never will meet a Jedi. Play them. If you play a Star Wars MMo you have to suppose and accept that there ARE force users, and that it is totally bullshit to even think you can limit their numbers with any artificial mechanics. If Bioware would do that, they'd doom themselves to make a niche game. Period! There are going to be other classes, and what does it matter if one is played more? This is no competition. Play what class you like and if you do it doesnt matter a crap who else plays Jedi. On the contrary, isnt it cool to play something maybe NOT everyone else does? So take it as a chance maybe. Really, I dont understand you guys at all. You plan to play a Star Wars MMO and seriously expect no Jedi? And just as sidenote: its far from certain that in the long run a majority will play Force User classes. Even after the NGE there were plenty other classes played. It may even vary greatly between the servers, there is just no way to predict that. And just to give you some scope: I recall some official source mentioned that the "Order 66" counted about 10.000 killed Jedi in the end. So there just were more than a handful. The bottom line is: play the class you enjoy and dont care about what others do and don't do.
You've done an extremely good job of boiling it down to the difference between 1st Gen and 2nd Gen Star Wars fans.
All the 2nd Gen (I,II,III) people think that Jedi are the core of the story.
All the 1st Gen (IV,V,VI) people think they aren't.
Example: Luke isn't a Jedi in the first two films, he's just got a glow bat and a ghost that talks to him. And in the third film, when he really is a Jedi Knight, all he does is sit in the Emporers throne room and gets his butt kicked. Sure, he helps rescue Han from Jabba, but really, he didn't even do anything important. Leia kills Jabba, Han 'kills' Boba, Han blows up the shield generator, Lando and Wedge blow up the Death Star. In fact, as far as I can recall, Force People in 1st Gen movies choke slam some folks, kill a few red shirts and one yeti looking creature. The story was a good story and driven entirely by 'average' people trying to do as much as they could, Jedi were the extras. Like Steak and A1, if you will.
The 2nd Gen people get exposed to Jedi who are so uber-super powerful that they are story. There was never a feeling of dread or suspense because 'Use Cool Jedi Trick' was plastered throughout the script whenever there was going to be some kind of conflict. Example: Qui Gon & Obi Wan v. Destroyer Droids ... 'It's a stand off" que cool jedi run trick. Qui Gon & Obi Wan v. Darth Maul no cool jedi run trick when Obi Wan needs to catch up to the fight. Instead, we're made to believe that Darth Maul, argueably the coolest bad guy to watch fight, goes from kicking the sweet stuffing out of the good guys to being so inept and slow that Obi Wan can do a complete flip over the guy. No, that's another 'Use Cool Jedi Trick' to move the story along.
I apologize for the soap box, but the line between the generations is becoming ever more distinct. To equate it to grades, some players want to be 'A' students when the only grade you can get is an 'A'. Some would rather run the risk of getting an 'F' so that getting a 'C' is that much more satisfying.
And the games we choose (or don't) to play and support are starting to show this.
I dunno where all this Jedi/Sith-hate comes from. This is Star Wars! Hello? I mean, Jedi and Sith just ARE the core myth of Star Wars. In that term I always found the setting of SWG a fundamentally wrong choice. There are just way too many people being SW fans would want to play Jedi or Sith. Its like making LOTRO without Elves, DDO without Wizards or whatever analogy you may want. If you dislike Jedi and Sith so much, why care about Star Wars? Its really beyond me. There are plenty of MMOs already out there and more to come where you damn sure never will meet a Jedi. Play them. If you play a Star Wars MMo you have to suppose and accept that there ARE force users, and that it is totally bullshit to even think you can limit their numbers with any artificial mechanics. If Bioware would do that, they'd doom themselves to make a niche game. Period! There are going to be other classes, and what does it matter if one is played more? This is no competition. Play what class you like and if you do it doesnt matter a crap who else plays Jedi. On the contrary, isnt it cool to play something maybe NOT everyone else does? So take it as a chance maybe. Really, I dont understand you guys at all. You plan to play a Star Wars MMO and seriously expect no Jedi? And just as sidenote: its far from certain that in the long run a majority will play Force User classes. Even after the NGE there were plenty other classes played. It may even vary greatly between the servers, there is just no way to predict that. And just to give you some scope: I recall some official source mentioned that the "Order 66" counted about 10.000 killed Jedi in the end. So there just were more than a handful. The bottom line is: play the class you enjoy and dont care about what others do and don't do.
You've done an extremely good job of boiling it down to the difference between 1st Gen and 2nd Gen Star Wars fans.
All the 2nd Gen (I,II,III) people think that Jedi are the core of the story.
All the 1st Gen (IV,V,VI) people think they aren't.
Example: Luke isn't a Jedi in the first two films, he's just got a glow bat and a ghost that talks to him. And in the third film, when he really is a Jedi Knight, all he does is sit in the Emporers throne room and gets his butt kicked. Sure, he helps rescue Han from Jabba, but really, he didn't even do anything important. Leia kills Jabba, Han 'kills' Boba, Han blows up the shield generator, Lando and Wedge blow up the Death Star. In fact, as far as I can recall, Force People in 1st Gen movies choke slam some folks, kill a few red shirts and one yeti looking creature. The story was a good story and driven entirely by 'average' people trying to do as much as they could, Jedi were the extras. Like Steak and A1, if you will.
The 2nd Gen people get exposed to Jedi who are so uber-super powerful that they are story. There was never a feeling of dread or suspense because 'Use Cool Jedi Trick' was plastered throughout the script whenever there was going to be some kind of conflict. Example: Qui Gon & Obi Wan v. Destroyer Droids ... 'It's a stand off" que cool jedi run trick. Qui Gon & Obi Wan v. Darth Maul no cool jedi run trick when Obi Wan needs to catch up to the fight. Instead, we're made to believe that Darth Maul, argueably the coolest bad guy to watch fight, goes from kicking the sweet stuffing out of the good guys to being so inept and slow that Obi Wan can do a complete flip over the guy. No, that's another 'Use Cool Jedi Trick' to move the story along.
I apologize for the soap box, but the line between the generations is becoming ever more distinct. To equate it to grades, some players want to be 'A' students when the only grade you can get is an 'A'. Some would rather run the risk of getting an 'F' so that getting a 'C' is that much more satisfying.
And the games we choose (or don't) to play and support are starting to show this.
What about Darth Vader, arguably the focal character of the entire series? The Sith were powerful throughout the series. I don't want to play Luke. He was a whiny bitch. I want to play Vader. I want to find people's lack of faith disturbing, and accept apologies from Captain Needa over his dead body. Also, keep in mind that KOTOR came about before the EP 1-3 trilogy was complete, and really seems to be inspired by the prospect of an expanded universe in general.
Personally, I've been a huge Bioware fan from the start. I've loved Baldur's Gate 1-2.5, Mass Effect, Jade Empire, and the prospect of NWN. Playing through KOTOR sets the pace for what you can expect in TOR. Jedi are very prevalent, but it is done tastefully. If you play KOTOR 1 and 2, they feel like Star Wars games, to me anyway. Playing a dancer in SWG did not feel this way in my opinion. Mass Effect further enhances my appreciation for Bioware's approach to Sci-FI. It's very original, yet you can see Star Wars and Star Trek influences if you know where to look.
So, if you want SWG 2, you're going to have to wait for SOE to release it. If you want an action-packed Star Wars experience instead, this is your game.
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I dunno where all this Jedi/Sith-hate comes from. This is Star Wars! Hello? I mean, Jedi and Sith just ARE the core myth of Star Wars. In that term I always found the setting of SWG a fundamentally wrong choice. There are just way too many people being SW fans would want to play Jedi or Sith. Its like making LOTRO without Elves, DDO without Wizards or whatever analogy you may want. If you dislike Jedi and Sith so much, why care about Star Wars? Its really beyond me. There are plenty of MMOs already out there and more to come where you damn sure never will meet a Jedi. Play them. If you play a Star Wars MMo you have to suppose and accept that there ARE force users, and that it is totally bullshit to even think you can limit their numbers with any artificial mechanics. If Bioware would do that, they'd doom themselves to make a niche game. Period! There are going to be other classes, and what does it matter if one is played more? This is no competition. Play what class you like and if you do it doesnt matter a crap who else plays Jedi. On the contrary, isnt it cool to play something maybe NOT everyone else does? So take it as a chance maybe. Really, I dont understand you guys at all. You plan to play a Star Wars MMO and seriously expect no Jedi? And just as sidenote: its far from certain that in the long run a majority will play Force User classes. Even after the NGE there were plenty other classes played. It may even vary greatly between the servers, there is just no way to predict that. And just to give you some scope: I recall some official source mentioned that the "Order 66" counted about 10.000 killed Jedi in the end. So there just were more than a handful. The bottom line is: play the class you enjoy and dont care about what others do and don't do.
You've done an extremely good job of boiling it down to the difference between 1st Gen and 2nd Gen Star Wars fans.
All the 2nd Gen (I,II,III) people think that Jedi are the core of the story.
All the 1st Gen (IV,V,VI) people think they aren't.
Example: Luke isn't a Jedi in the first two films, he's just got a glow bat and a ghost that talks to him. And in the third film, when he really is a Jedi Knight, all he does is sit in the Emporers throne room and gets his butt kicked. Sure, he helps rescue Han from Jabba, but really, he didn't even do anything important. Leia kills Jabba, Han 'kills' Boba, Han blows up the shield generator, Lando and Wedge blow up the Death Star. In fact, as far as I can recall, Force People in 1st Gen movies choke slam some folks, kill a few red shirts and one yeti looking creature. The story was a good story and driven entirely by 'average' people trying to do as much as they could, Jedi were the extras. Like Steak and A1, if you will.
The 2nd Gen people get exposed to Jedi who are so uber-super powerful that they are story. There was never a feeling of dread or suspense because 'Use Cool Jedi Trick' was plastered throughout the script whenever there was going to be some kind of conflict. Example: Qui Gon & Obi Wan v. Destroyer Droids ... 'It's a stand off" que cool jedi run trick. Qui Gon & Obi Wan v. Darth Maul no cool jedi run trick when Obi Wan needs to catch up to the fight. Instead, we're made to believe that Darth Maul, argueably the coolest bad guy to watch fight, goes from kicking the sweet stuffing out of the good guys to being so inept and slow that Obi Wan can do a complete flip over the guy. No, that's another 'Use Cool Jedi Trick' to move the story along.
I apologize for the soap box, but the line between the generations is becoming ever more distinct. To equate it to grades, some players want to be 'A' students when the only grade you can get is an 'A'. Some would rather run the risk of getting an 'F' so that getting a 'C' is that much more satisfying.
And the games we choose (or don't) to play and support are starting to show this.
I understand what you are saying, but even in the old trilogy, the story of Luke becoming Jedi and saving the Jedi way VS the two Sith Lords Vader and Palpatine was the central story. Today this trilogy is embedded, and we may not like the way Jedi are depicted, granted, but dont you think its hilarious to make a Star Wars MMO and not include Jedi? I mean, come on, old trilogy or not. I dont get it why people can be so vocal against Jedi when they plan to play a Star Wars MMO. Its not like you are forced to be Jedi or Sith. Its just what the greatest part of SW material is about, the entire stuff, which is more than just the movies. Sure, there are other series which have little to do with Jedi or Sith, but it just IS the central myth of the thing.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Vader was pretty cool. And his redemption was a plot twist in the series. But I don't think that anybody turns off the movie and says, 'I don't really care that the rebels won, I'm just glad that Vader turned out to be a nice guy.' And the reason Vader was cool was because he was the only one. How less cool would he have been if the Stormtroopers were all like Darth Vader?
Exactly, it would've sucked because there wouldn't be a story.
'These aren't the Droids you're looking for.' Obi Wan
The Empire catches the Droids and continues to reign supreme.
But that's exactly the kind of game the 2nd Gen people want.
Elikal is the perfect example. The 2nd Gen people think that Jedi are the story, 1st Gen people don't.
I've played KOTOR I and II. I liked them both a great deal and I'm a huge BioWare fan. But they are single player games where the focus is entirely on my character. I don't think I would've liked it nearly as much if every other NPC spoke 733t and wanted to compare glowbats.
As I said, as soon as your population is greater than one, there is no longer any possibility of uniqueness. BioWare's solution is going to be heavy story and probably heavy instances. So it's either going to be a single player game with a chat room ... or it'll be another NGE and glowbat envy will ensue.
I'm probably still going to try the game for a month ... just hanging on to the thread of hope that it'll surprise me.
I dont know....It just doesnt seem like Jedi should be a starting class.......Jedi should be something that is extremely difficult to obtain....Also wasnt allowing everyone to be a Jedi one of the biggest downfalls of SWG??
A bunch of people running around with lightsabers, outnumbering the non-force sensitives by 3:1. That definitely is an accurate portrayal of the Star Wars universe. Congrats, BioWare. I can easily go play Jedi Knight 2, or even one of the KOTOR games to get the same flavor.
It's totally unrealistic for everyone to be a Jedi or Sith in a MMOG. SWTOR sounds like a single box game the way it is being designed. Bioware needs a clue about MMOG concepts.
I dont know....It just doesnt seem like Jedi should be a starting class.......Jedi should be something that is extremely difficult to obtain....Also wasnt allowing everyone to be a Jedi one of the biggest downfalls of SWG??
It did, but didnt they change a lot of other things about the game other than just jedi? And if you quit SWG just because everyone played Jedi and think that was the only reason why SWG failed .... Then I have to say, that kind of thought process is just a tad bit shortsided. You are not only picking 1 thing that failed for SWG , but you are completely overlooking evertyhing else that went wrong with SWG. And to be perfectly honest, they had A LOT OF ISSUES. One more thing THIS IS NOT SWG!
please read the article below. here is the link..........
Earlier this week, Next Generation published a short excerpt from my much longer discussion of Star Wars Gallaxies and user-generated content in Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. The publication seems to have prompted game designer and theorist Raph Koster to blog about what he learned by adopting a more collaborationist approach to his fans. Here's some of what he had to say:
Some have since decided that it was listening to the players too much that caused some of the design problems with SWG. I am not sure I agree. If anything, I think that many subsequent problems came from not listening enough, or not asking questions in advance of changes. Walking a mile in the players' shoes is a difficult trick to pull off even if you have the best of intentions.
The tensest and most difficult moments in SWG's development -- and they came often -- were when we had to remove something that players really liked. Usually, it was against our own wishes, because of time constraints or (rarely) orders from on high. But we couldn't tell the players the real reasons sometimes. That sucked, frankly, because the open relationship really did matter. As often as we could, we laid everything bare.
These days, it's accepted wisdom that you don't reveal a feature until it's done, so as to guarantee that you never let the players down. Of course, even finished features sometimes fall out for one reason or another...
In any case, I think I don't agree with that philosophy. I'd rather have prospective players on a journey with the team, than have them be a passive group marketed to. Yes, they will suffer the ups and downs, and see the making of the sausage... but these days, that's getting to be an accepted thing in creative fields. There's not much to gain, to my mind, in having the creators sitting off on a pedestal somewhere -- people fall from pedestals, and pedestals certainly will not survive contact with Live operation of a virtual world. Instead, I'd rather the customers know the creators as people who make mistakes, so that when one happens, they are more likely to be forgiven or understood.
One of the challenges of academic publishing is that the world can move out from under year in that long, long period of time between when you finish a book and when it hits the shelves. In the case of Convergence Culture, one of the biggest shifts was the meltdown which has occured in the relations between the players and creators of Star Wars Galaxies, much of which really hit the fan last December. I still think what the book says about Star Wars Galaxies -- Raph Koster, as the comments above suggest, remains a leading advocate for a more collaborationist relationship between producers and consumers; his approach does contrast with at least some of the policies that Lucas has applied elsewhere in dealing with other aspects of Star Wars fandom and so Star Wars represents a rich case study of the uncertain and unstable relations between media franchises and their consumers. If anything, these contrasts are even easier to see when we see how shifts in company leadership impacted the community around this particular game.
I have not been on the inside of that meltdown. Most of what I know came from a close reading of news reports about what happened and conversations with other games researchers, such as USC's Doug Thomas or UW's Kurt Squire. I am sure there are readers who could tell us more about what happened than I can and I would welcome them to share their experiences here. I prepared some reflections about what happened for our Convergence Culture Consortium partners newsletter last January.
THE COLLAPSE OF AN EMPIRE: STAR WARS GALAXIES SHOWS US RIGHT AND WRONG WAYS TO COURT FANS
Shortly after Christmas, a friend and fellow researcher Doug Thomas sent me a link to a fascinating and moving fan-made video by Javier -- marking his decision to leave the massively multiplayer game world, Star Wars Galaxies, and commenting on the mass migration of hard core fans and players from this space.
Some background is needed to be able to appreciate this video and what it might suggest about the nature of fan investments in MMPORGS. In keeping with the cantina sequences which have been a favorite aspect of the Star Wars film series, the game provides opportunities for players to select the entertainer class as a possible role within its world. Javier helped to organize the Entertainer class players to create an extraordinary series of Cantina Musicals -- elaborate Busby Berkeley style musical numbers which required the participation and cooperation of a cast of hundreds of players.
As you watch the video, keep in mind that each character is controlled by an individual player, hitting buttons in a choreographed manner,who may be separated from the other participants by thousands of miles
of real world geography. The potential for such videos is built into the game -- through the capacity to move characters in certain ways,for players to share common spaces and experiences, and for players to
record their own game play activities -- but no one in the game company imagined that the fans would have used them to create Lawrence Welk-inflected Christmas specials or to protest company policies. In
short, the video expresses the power of the fan community both in terms of how it was made and in terms of what it has to say about the experience of playing the game....
Raph Koster saw the Star Wars fans as co-designers in the development of the game: actively courting them from the project's conception, sharing design docs and getting their feedback at every step of the way, designing a game which was highly dependent on fan creativity to provide much of its content and fan performance to create mutually rewarding experiences within the game.
Here are some of the things Koster did right in courting Star Wars fans:
1. He respected their expertise and emotional investments in the series.
2. He opened a channel of communications with fans early in the process.
3. He actively solicited advice from fans about design decisions and followed that advice where-ever possible.
4. He created resources which sustained multiple sets of interests in the series.
5. He designed forms of game play which allowed fans to play diverse roles which were mutually reinforcing.
Here's some of what he had to say about the importance of fans to the franchise's success:
"There's no denying it - the fans know Star Wars better than the developers do. They live and breathe it. They know it in an intimate way. On the other hand, with something as large and broad as the Star Wars universe, there's ample scope for divergent opinions about things. These are the things that lead to religious wars among fans and all of a sudden you have to take a side because you are going to be etablishing how it works in this game."
That said, the policies Koster created were eroded over time, leading to increased player frustration and distrust. In another video, Javier traces a history of grievances and conflicts between the "Powers That Be" within the game company and the Entertainer class of characters. Some casual players felt the game was too dependent on player-generated content, while the more creative players felt that upgrades actually restricted their ability to express themselves through the game and marginalized the Entertainer class from the overall experience. At the same time, the game failed to meet the company's own revenue expectations, especially in the face of competition from the enormously successful World of Warcraft, a game which adopted a very different design philosophy.
Late last year, the company announced plans to radically revamp the game's rules and content, a decision that has led to the wholesale alienation of the existing player base and massive defections. It remains to be seen if the plans will draw in new consumers; it is clear that they have significantly destroyed the existing fan culture. Javier is not alone in seeing these decisions as the end of the road for his community.
The statements made by Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director, at LucasArts to the New York Times illustrates the huge shift in thinking from Koster's original philosophy to this "retooled" franchise:
We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base. There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves.
MacIntyre's comments represent a classic set of mistakes in thinking about how to build a fan community around a property:
1. Don't confuse "accessibility" with simplicity. As Steve Johnson notes in his best-selling book, Everything Bad is Good For You or educator James Paul Gee argues in his new book, Video Games Are Good For the Soul, contemporary media audiences are searching for complexity, not simplicity. The video games that succeed in the market are the ones that demand the most of their players -- not those that require the least. The key to successful games is not dumb content, but complexity that is organized and managed so that users can handle it.
2. Don't underestimate the intelligence of your consumers. Gamers are not illiterate. They are not necessarily simply kids. Industry statistics suggest that the average gamer is in his/her late 20s or early 30s and all signs are that the game market is expanding as the initial generation of gamers ages. Star Wars Galaxies consumers skewed older and as such, they wanted something different from the game play experience than younger Star Wars fans. And if you do think your consumers are idiots, it is not bright to say so to New York Times reporters. The fans do read newspapers and as members of a collective intelligence community, they have an enormous network for circulating information that matters to the group. These comments have come back to haunt the corporate executives many times over and probably did as much as anything else in creating a mass exodus from the game.
3. In an age of transmedia storytelling, don't assume fans want the same experience from every installment of the same franchise. There are many films, books, comics, and games out there which focus on the experience of the central protagonists of the series. Koster wisely recognized that while individual players might want to BE Luke Skywalker or Hans Solo, a world where everyone was a Jedi would be boring for all involved. Instead, he created a game world where there were many different classes of players (including the Entertainer class) and where each of those roles interacted in a complicated ecology of experience.
4. Don't underestimate the diversity of fan cultures. Contrary to what is often claimed, successful media properties do not appeal to the lowest common denominator. Rather, they draw together a coalition of micro-publics, each with their own interests in the material, each expressing their emotional bonds with the content in their own ways. Accordingly, Star Wars has a large, diverse audience interested in everything from the flora and fauna to interrelationships among characters. Given such diversity, why would you assume that the core market only wants to blow things up? The real sweet spot would be to /tap into/ these diverse audiences and sell even more copies. Why, given the richness of fan creative expression around Star Wars, would you assume that Luke Skywalker is the only role people care about? The goal should have been to expand the range of experiences available in the game rather than dismantle what appealed to one audience in hopes of attracting another.
5. Don't underestimate the value of fan creative contributions to the success of contemporary media franchises. Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, the most successful game franchise of all time, has suggested that his success can be traced directly back to player contributions:
We see such benefit from interacting with our fans. They are not just people who buy our stuff. In a very real sense, they are people who helped to create our stuff...We are competing with other properties for these creative individuals. All of these different games are competing for communities, which in the long run are what will drive our sales.... Whichever game attracts the best community will enjoy the most success. What you can do to make the game more successful is not to make the game better but to make the community better.
Conversely, when you alienate your most active and creative fans -- folks like Javier -- then you severely damage the franchise as a whole. These people play valuable roles as grassroots intermediaries helping to build up interest in your property and as performers helping to shape the experience of other players.
6. Don't Sacrifice your existing fan base in search of a totally different market. The kind of robust and creative fan cultures Wright and Koster describe in their comments above are hard to build and even harder to rebuild. To some degree, fans have to find media properties which meets their needs, even though companies can adopt policies of fan relations which will make them more receptive to fans and can help to sustain such communities once they emerge. Koster worked hard to win over Star War fans who were skeptical about his efforts given the history of fairly simplistic action-oriented solo-player titles within the Star Wars franchises. Koster, himself, was fully aware that you could not institute large scale changes in such a game world without damaging the kind of trust he had helped to establish. Here's what he told me when I interviewed him for my book: "Just like it is not a good idea for a government to make radical legal changes without a period of public comment, it is often not wise for an operator of an online world to do the same."
I have just scratched the surface here. I suspect the rise and fall of Star Wars Galaxies will be studied for years to come as a textbook example of good and bad ways to deal with fan communities. Certainly our member companies should draw on it as a reference in framing and evaluating their own fan relations policies.
Hands down fantastic article. If you can, take the time to read this!! It is a very well written discussion on what every MMORPG should be about :: Listening to the "community." I know we all have differences of opinions when it come to what we think a game should or should not be like. However, no matter how you slice it, those of us who do play the game are united as the game community. We make up the driving force that keeps the game going forward. This article touches so many topics about listening to the driving force; it's amazing. As I was reading this I was thinking about the vast number of mmorpg's that are out there. How many of them I have tried and have not tried and the one I am looking forward to trying. I thought, wouldn' t it be nice to play a game again that is so enjoyable I am driven to play it. I look forward to this game, and while I know it's still in early development I am still anticipating it's arrival.
Great read, Proximo521. I really wish more people would read that. I found especially points 4 and 6 of interest.
4. the diversity of fan cultures. It was one of the big boni of SWG to have entertainers, crafters, so many things to do. And that was only partially due to sandbox. As someone who loved to be part of an entertainer group it remains one of the mysteries of MMO gaming why this was never taken into any other MMO. There was such a HUGE entertainer community and some were really popularon their servers. I know for many pure fighter types it was hard to imagine, but so many just had tons of fun as entertainer, but that potential was never tappen into, again. Something I just dont get. Especially Star Wars would offer so many careers and things to do other than combat.
6. The existing fan base... a tragic chapter. I have seen it so often MMOs seemed to try to find the almost opposite of the core fanbase. Take Star Trek Online. So many Trek fans are interested in other things than mere spacefight, and yet, for some unknown reason Cyrptic seems to focus mainly on that part which always had been the smallest in the Trek franchise. Space combat was always the smallest part in Trek and as in point 4 Trek fans are interested in so many other things, so narrowing down STO as some mere space combat game seems so totally out of place.
Now about SWG... I had played it all through pre-CU, CU and NGE, and the one big myth about NGE is that NGE destroyed a healthy, thriving game, and suddenly a booming MMO was destroyed. Thats just totally untrue. Today many vocal SWG advocates still preach the pre-CU dream, and its just lunatic. I was in one of the biggest guilds on my server, and when CU came NO ONE of my guild was unhappy with it, and it was almost entirely welcomed. SWG had many problems when the NGE came, and NGE was a way of SOE they thought to counter the problems. With WOW and other MMOs on the rise, SWG had constantly lost players before the NGE. Partially because what people expected just had changed; many simply had enough of sandbox without quests and stuff to do. Its not that we wanted limitations of the sandbox, but I know many of us were after years of free roaming just bored and wantes stories, quests and tasks to do other than grind mobs. That was why the Kashyykk addon was such a success, it had quests and stories, tasks to do!
Indeed SWG is a big lesson for what is good and what is bad, but it is difficult to read. Too many myth cloud SWG these days, mainly because a vocal minority spread it.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
A bunch of people running around with lightsabers, outnumbering the non-force sensitives by 3:1. That definitely is an accurate portrayal of the Star Wars universe. Congrats, BioWare. I can easily go play Jedi Knight 2, or even one of the KOTOR games to get the same flavor.
apparently you never played the KOTOR series. Jedi and sith were everywhere in 1 and Sith ruled in 2. If you dont like it dont play it no one is forcing you too. Sith rule and I will be playing one.
Personally, I just hope the game doesn't become some sort of version of "SUPERHEROES OF THE UNIVERSE" game where a "mysterious" robed player with a lightsaber can single-handedly destroy multitudes of enemies without suffering a scratch and a handful of them can stop entire battalions and convoys, no matter how heavily outnumbered and outgunned they may be.
Personally, I just hope the game doesn't become some sort of version of "SUPERHEROES OF THE UNIVERSE" game where a "mysterious" robed player with a lightsaber can single-handedly destroy multitudes of enemies without suffering a scratch and a handful of them can stop entire battalions and convoys, no matter how heavily outnumbered and outgunned they may be.
Tbh, I hope it does. I mean, in EQ-like MMOs there has always been this: a group of 5 or 6 heroes hack and bash endlessly on ONE gnoll. Or whatever. It was so un-heroic. Some combat I always had in mind was from Dynasty Warriors. One hero hacking his was through tons of enemies. I always greatly enjoyed that fast-paced, dynamic combat over the slow, dull, pseudo-turn-based one. It seems TOR may have such combat, as they stated TOR combat will always be heroic and you wont hack rats with 5 VS 1 scenarios. I am all for heroic combat, but of course for all classes equal not only Force Users. In EQ-like games it was always so anti-heroic, the higher your level was, the stronger your opponents became and the longer your group bashed on a single mob; it feels just like you grow weaker not stronger. Hopefully TOR combat is heroic and dynamic. I actually prefer to feel like a hero in my games.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
In Kotor, you played a team of Jedi playing through the stories...
What's the difference, if the other Jedi you travel with are controlled by other players???
True. The Star Wars movies weren't all about the Jedi, there were other characters to consider. Han, Leia, Lando, Chewbacca, the droids, and Luke....etc.
Those are all great characters. But i don't want to play them in a game.
In a game...MMO or not. I want to play the HERO, or at least one of them. Maybe you want to be a scout, or scoundrel and use a blaster. and thats cool. those classes are included (and probably needed). Given the choice between a blaster and a lightsaber...Ill take the lightsaber everytime.
I don't want to manage my home, play bills, and run a shop in a game. Thats too much like Real Life.
Personally, I just hope the game doesn't become some sort of version of "SUPERHEROES OF THE UNIVERSE" game where a "mysterious" robed player with a lightsaber can single-handedly destroy multitudes of enemies without suffering a scratch and a handful of them can stop entire battalions and convoys, no matter how heavily outnumbered and outgunned they may be.
Tbh, I hope it does. I mean, in EQ-like MMOs there has always been this: a group of 5 or 6 heroes hack and bash endlessly on ONE gnoll. Or whatever. It was so un-heroic. Some combat I always had in mind was from Dynasty Warriors. One hero hacking his was through tons of enemies. I always greatly enjoyed that fast-paced, dynamic combat over the slow, dull, pseudo-turn-based one. It seems TOR may have such combat, as they stated TOR combat will always be heroic and you wont hack rats with 5 VS 1 scenarios. I am all for heroic combat, but of course for all classes equal not only Force Users. In EQ-like games it was always so anti-heroic, the higher your level was, the stronger your opponents became and the longer your group bashed on a single mob; it feels just like you grow weaker not stronger. Hopefully TOR combat is heroic and dynamic. I actually prefer to feel like a hero in my games.
Sorta, along the lines of city of heroes, where the term mob referred to 4 or 5 enemies standing together not just a single target. Honestly, I never could stand the concept of feeling so week in an MMO, like I did in FFXI. I saved the damn world but a I need a team to take out some trash goblin? The system of many players verses one enemy doesn't compare to me or my party going into a situation out numbered. You felt like you were greater then the average person (NPC) who stood around town and asked for your help.
You know...negative comments wouldn't be so bad if the people making them didn't post them in every single thread as much as possible.
Negative comments are just as viable as positive comments.
Exactly. So once again I'll ask, why is it ok for you to post positive comments over and over but people with negative comments don't have that same right? Double standard based on the person's side of the fence isn't right no matter what you think.
That makes absolutely no sense. This is the plain and simple version. You post about what you like and some people post about what they dont like. There is no double standard based on any part of the fence. You took offense to "You know...negative comments wouldn't be so bad if the people making them didn't post them in every single thread as much as possible." The person that posted that, was fishing for something.... And you bit. Thats all.
You know...negative comments wouldn't be so bad if the people making them didn't post them in every single thread as much as possible.
Negative comments are just as viable as positive comments.
Exactly. So once again I'll ask, why is it ok for you to post positive comments over and over but people with negative comments don't have that same right? Double standard based on the person's side of the fence isn't right no matter what you think.
That makes absolutely no sense. This is the plain and simple version. You post about what you like and some people post about what they dont like. There is no double standard based on any part of the fence. You took offense to "You know...negative comments wouldn't be so bad if the people making them didn't post them in every single thread as much as possible." The person that posted that, was fishing for something.... And you bit. Thats all.
No...I wasn't fishing for anything. I was just stating that repetitive negative comments get old. Sometimes I think certain people on these boards just go around and say this kind of crap to troll. Hey...the same thing goes for over-zealous fanboys. They are annoying as shit.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Guys! I'm hopelessly lost in a mountain of mole hills! Them damn moles!
I didn't say I did not want to be a hero - I just don't want to be an indestructible hero.
How about the jedi in TOR being about as strong as the jedi in the Clone Wars movie (Star Wars 2)? Those jedi were definitely killable - even the main characters, the master jedi, could be beaten. That seems about the right level to me.
You know...negative comments wouldn't be so bad if the people making them didn't post them in every single thread as much as possible.
Negative comments are just as viable as positive comments.
Exactly. So once again I'll ask, why is it ok for you to post positive comments over and over but people with negative comments don't have that same right? Double standard based on the person's side of the fence isn't right no matter what you think.
That makes absolutely no sense. This is the plain and simple version. You post about what you like and some people post about what they dont like. There is no double standard based on any part of the fence. You took offense to "You know...negative comments wouldn't be so bad if the people making them didn't post them in every single thread as much as possible." The person that posted that, was fishing for something.... And you bit. Thats all.
No...I wasn't fishing for anything. I was just stating that repetitive negative comments get old. Sometimes I think certain people on these boards just go around and say this kind of crap to troll. Hey...the same thing goes for over-zealous fanboys. They are annoying as shit.
That's just real Star Wars fans in general. They are easily excitable. I remember the same thing happened when they announced Star Wars Galaxies, SOE’s forums topped out at over 400,000 members before the game launched. Most never played or left because they thought it sucked once it went into Beta. I think you are just seeing the hope for TOR from these same old fans of Star Wars, the same ones that were disappointed by SWG. Nothing to get angry about.
As for the trolls, most are from other games or ex-swg players who have a grudge against the whole IP, and since this game is being so hyped its a natural target. I was mad at SOE at one time myself, not at the IP. Though I'm not a fan of every aspect of it, I do like KOTOR and I expect this game at least won't be as dull as other games can be at times.
Comments
Haha, best way to rise through the corporate ladder I suppose.
lololol I didn't mean it like that. I meant the players are slobbering over her.
Don't fret, I'm sure you can still hang around the starter area and roleplay that you're a moisture farmer if you really want to.
Isn't the setting at the height of the Republic when there were thousands of Jedi running around the galaxy?
And the setting won't have Jedi outnumbering the non-force using population the game when you include NPCs. Now if all the NPCs were wielding lightsabers as well and using the Force in everyday tasks then that would ruin the setting.
Bioware says players are supposed to represent heroes in the confilct, so it's natural you'd be running into other Jedi, commandos, elite bounty hunters and such rather than interacting with tailors and dancers. I think allowing Jedi/Sith to be playable will be far more appealing to a broader audience. I don't remember too many Star Wars novels about dancers and shopkeepers.
I do, but they were only mentioned briefly or they played a role in the story more important then just selling a power coupler, or an armor suit, or entertaing a character for 4 min.
I dunno where all this Jedi/Sith-hate comes from. This is Star Wars! Hello? I mean, Jedi and Sith just ARE the core myth of Star Wars. In that term I always found the setting of SWG a fundamentally wrong choice. There are just way too many people being SW fans would want to play Jedi or Sith. Its like making LOTRO without Elves, DDO without Wizards or whatever analogy you may want. If you dislike Jedi and Sith so much, why care about Star Wars? Its really beyond me. There are plenty of MMOs already out there and more to come where you damn sure never will meet a Jedi. Play them. If you play a Star Wars MMo you have to suppose and accept that there ARE force users, and that it is totally bullshit to even think you can limit their numbers with any artificial mechanics. If Bioware would do that, they'd doom themselves to make a niche game. Period!
There are going to be other classes, and what does it matter if one is played more? This is no competition. Play what class you like and if you do it doesnt matter a crap who else plays Jedi. On the contrary, isnt it cool to play something maybe NOT everyone else does? So take it as a chance maybe. Really, I dont understand you guys at all. You plan to play a Star Wars MMO and seriously expect no Jedi?
And just as sidenote: its far from certain that in the long run a majority will play Force User classes. Even after the NGE there were plenty other classes played. It may even vary greatly between the servers, there is just no way to predict that. And just to give you some scope: I recall some official source mentioned that the "Order 66" counted about 10.000 killed Jedi in the end. So there just were more than a handful.
The bottom line is: play the class you enjoy and dont care about what others do and don't do.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
You've done an extremely good job of boiling it down to the difference between 1st Gen and 2nd Gen Star Wars fans.
All the 2nd Gen (I,II,III) people think that Jedi are the core of the story.
All the 1st Gen (IV,V,VI) people think they aren't.
Example: Luke isn't a Jedi in the first two films, he's just got a glow bat and a ghost that talks to him. And in the third film, when he really is a Jedi Knight, all he does is sit in the Emporers throne room and gets his butt kicked. Sure, he helps rescue Han from Jabba, but really, he didn't even do anything important. Leia kills Jabba, Han 'kills' Boba, Han blows up the shield generator, Lando and Wedge blow up the Death Star. In fact, as far as I can recall, Force People in 1st Gen movies choke slam some folks, kill a few red shirts and one yeti looking creature. The story was a good story and driven entirely by 'average' people trying to do as much as they could, Jedi were the extras. Like Steak and A1, if you will.
The 2nd Gen people get exposed to Jedi who are so uber-super powerful that they are story. There was never a feeling of dread or suspense because 'Use Cool Jedi Trick' was plastered throughout the script whenever there was going to be some kind of conflict. Example: Qui Gon & Obi Wan v. Destroyer Droids ... 'It's a stand off" que cool jedi run trick. Qui Gon & Obi Wan v. Darth Maul no cool jedi run trick when Obi Wan needs to catch up to the fight. Instead, we're made to believe that Darth Maul, argueably the coolest bad guy to watch fight, goes from kicking the sweet stuffing out of the good guys to being so inept and slow that Obi Wan can do a complete flip over the guy. No, that's another 'Use Cool Jedi Trick' to move the story along.
I apologize for the soap box, but the line between the generations is becoming ever more distinct. To equate it to grades, some players want to be 'A' students when the only grade you can get is an 'A'. Some would rather run the risk of getting an 'F' so that getting a 'C' is that much more satisfying.
And the games we choose (or don't) to play and support are starting to show this.
You've done an extremely good job of boiling it down to the difference between 1st Gen and 2nd Gen Star Wars fans.
All the 2nd Gen (I,II,III) people think that Jedi are the core of the story.
All the 1st Gen (IV,V,VI) people think they aren't.
Example: Luke isn't a Jedi in the first two films, he's just got a glow bat and a ghost that talks to him. And in the third film, when he really is a Jedi Knight, all he does is sit in the Emporers throne room and gets his butt kicked. Sure, he helps rescue Han from Jabba, but really, he didn't even do anything important. Leia kills Jabba, Han 'kills' Boba, Han blows up the shield generator, Lando and Wedge blow up the Death Star. In fact, as far as I can recall, Force People in 1st Gen movies choke slam some folks, kill a few red shirts and one yeti looking creature. The story was a good story and driven entirely by 'average' people trying to do as much as they could, Jedi were the extras. Like Steak and A1, if you will.
The 2nd Gen people get exposed to Jedi who are so uber-super powerful that they are story. There was never a feeling of dread or suspense because 'Use Cool Jedi Trick' was plastered throughout the script whenever there was going to be some kind of conflict. Example: Qui Gon & Obi Wan v. Destroyer Droids ... 'It's a stand off" que cool jedi run trick. Qui Gon & Obi Wan v. Darth Maul no cool jedi run trick when Obi Wan needs to catch up to the fight. Instead, we're made to believe that Darth Maul, argueably the coolest bad guy to watch fight, goes from kicking the sweet stuffing out of the good guys to being so inept and slow that Obi Wan can do a complete flip over the guy. No, that's another 'Use Cool Jedi Trick' to move the story along.
I apologize for the soap box, but the line between the generations is becoming ever more distinct. To equate it to grades, some players want to be 'A' students when the only grade you can get is an 'A'. Some would rather run the risk of getting an 'F' so that getting a 'C' is that much more satisfying.
And the games we choose (or don't) to play and support are starting to show this.
What about Darth Vader, arguably the focal character of the entire series? The Sith were powerful throughout the series. I don't want to play Luke. He was a whiny bitch. I want to play Vader. I want to find people's lack of faith disturbing, and accept apologies from Captain Needa over his dead body. Also, keep in mind that KOTOR came about before the EP 1-3 trilogy was complete, and really seems to be inspired by the prospect of an expanded universe in general.
Personally, I've been a huge Bioware fan from the start. I've loved Baldur's Gate 1-2.5, Mass Effect, Jade Empire, and the prospect of NWN. Playing through KOTOR sets the pace for what you can expect in TOR. Jedi are very prevalent, but it is done tastefully. If you play KOTOR 1 and 2, they feel like Star Wars games, to me anyway. Playing a dancer in SWG did not feel this way in my opinion. Mass Effect further enhances my appreciation for Bioware's approach to Sci-FI. It's very original, yet you can see Star Wars and Star Trek influences if you know where to look.
So, if you want SWG 2, you're going to have to wait for SOE to release it. If you want an action-packed Star Wars experience instead, this is your game.
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You've done an extremely good job of boiling it down to the difference between 1st Gen and 2nd Gen Star Wars fans.
All the 2nd Gen (I,II,III) people think that Jedi are the core of the story.
All the 1st Gen (IV,V,VI) people think they aren't.
Example: Luke isn't a Jedi in the first two films, he's just got a glow bat and a ghost that talks to him. And in the third film, when he really is a Jedi Knight, all he does is sit in the Emporers throne room and gets his butt kicked. Sure, he helps rescue Han from Jabba, but really, he didn't even do anything important. Leia kills Jabba, Han 'kills' Boba, Han blows up the shield generator, Lando and Wedge blow up the Death Star. In fact, as far as I can recall, Force People in 1st Gen movies choke slam some folks, kill a few red shirts and one yeti looking creature. The story was a good story and driven entirely by 'average' people trying to do as much as they could, Jedi were the extras. Like Steak and A1, if you will.
The 2nd Gen people get exposed to Jedi who are so uber-super powerful that they are story. There was never a feeling of dread or suspense because 'Use Cool Jedi Trick' was plastered throughout the script whenever there was going to be some kind of conflict. Example: Qui Gon & Obi Wan v. Destroyer Droids ... 'It's a stand off" que cool jedi run trick. Qui Gon & Obi Wan v. Darth Maul no cool jedi run trick when Obi Wan needs to catch up to the fight. Instead, we're made to believe that Darth Maul, argueably the coolest bad guy to watch fight, goes from kicking the sweet stuffing out of the good guys to being so inept and slow that Obi Wan can do a complete flip over the guy. No, that's another 'Use Cool Jedi Trick' to move the story along.
I apologize for the soap box, but the line between the generations is becoming ever more distinct. To equate it to grades, some players want to be 'A' students when the only grade you can get is an 'A'. Some would rather run the risk of getting an 'F' so that getting a 'C' is that much more satisfying.
And the games we choose (or don't) to play and support are starting to show this.
I understand what you are saying, but even in the old trilogy, the story of Luke becoming Jedi and saving the Jedi way VS the two Sith Lords Vader and Palpatine was the central story. Today this trilogy is embedded, and we may not like the way Jedi are depicted, granted, but dont you think its hilarious to make a Star Wars MMO and not include Jedi? I mean, come on, old trilogy or not. I dont get it why people can be so vocal against Jedi when they plan to play a Star Wars MMO. Its not like you are forced to be Jedi or Sith. Its just what the greatest part of SW material is about, the entire stuff, which is more than just the movies. Sure, there are other series which have little to do with Jedi or Sith, but it just IS the central myth of the thing.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
this game is wow/lotro with a star wars skin..move along nothing to see here.
Vader was pretty cool. And his redemption was a plot twist in the series. But I don't think that anybody turns off the movie and says, 'I don't really care that the rebels won, I'm just glad that Vader turned out to be a nice guy.' And the reason Vader was cool was because he was the only one. How less cool would he have been if the Stormtroopers were all like Darth Vader?
Exactly, it would've sucked because there wouldn't be a story.
'These aren't the Droids you're looking for.' Obi Wan
'You silly Jedi .. I'm a Jedi too ...' Vader #84
PewPewPew
The Empire catches the Droids and continues to reign supreme.
But that's exactly the kind of game the 2nd Gen people want.
Elikal is the perfect example. The 2nd Gen people think that Jedi are the story, 1st Gen people don't.
I've played KOTOR I and II. I liked them both a great deal and I'm a huge BioWare fan. But they are single player games where the focus is entirely on my character. I don't think I would've liked it nearly as much if every other NPC spoke 733t and wanted to compare glowbats.
As I said, as soon as your population is greater than one, there is no longer any possibility of uniqueness. BioWare's solution is going to be heavy story and probably heavy instances. So it's either going to be a single player game with a chat room ... or it'll be another NGE and glowbat envy will ensue.
I'm probably still going to try the game for a month ... just hanging on to the thread of hope that it'll surprise me.
I dont know....It just doesnt seem like Jedi should be a starting class.......Jedi should be something that is extremely difficult to obtain....Also wasnt allowing everyone to be a Jedi one of the biggest downfalls of SWG??
It's totally unrealistic for everyone to be a Jedi or Sith in a MMOG. SWTOR sounds like a single box game the way it is being designed. Bioware needs a clue about MMOG concepts.
It did, but didnt they change a lot of other things about the game other than just jedi? And if you quit SWG just because everyone played Jedi and think that was the only reason why SWG failed .... Then I have to say, that kind of thought process is just a tad bit shortsided. You are not only picking 1 thing that failed for SWG , but you are completely overlooking evertyhing else that went wrong with SWG. And to be perfectly honest, they had A LOT OF ISSUES. One more thing THIS IS NOT SWG!
please read the article below. here is the link..........
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/07/so_what_happened_to_star_wars.html
Earlier this week, Next Generation published a short excerpt from my much longer discussion of Star Wars Gallaxies and user-generated content in Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. The publication seems to have prompted game designer and theorist Raph Koster to blog about what he learned by adopting a more collaborationist approach to his fans. Here's some of what he had to say:
Some have since decided that it was listening to the players too much that caused some of the design problems with SWG. I am not sure I agree. If anything, I think that many subsequent problems came from not listening enough, or not asking questions in advance of changes. Walking a mile in the players' shoes is a difficult trick to pull off even if you have the best of intentions.
The tensest and most difficult moments in SWG's development -- and they came often -- were when we had to remove something that players really liked. Usually, it was against our own wishes, because of time constraints or (rarely) orders from on high. But we couldn't tell the players the real reasons sometimes. That sucked, frankly, because the open relationship really did matter. As often as we could, we laid everything bare.
These days, it's accepted wisdom that you don't reveal a feature until it's done, so as to guarantee that you never let the players down. Of course, even finished features sometimes fall out for one reason or another...
In any case, I think I don't agree with that philosophy. I'd rather have prospective players on a journey with the team, than have them be a passive group marketed to. Yes, they will suffer the ups and downs, and see the making of the sausage... but these days, that's getting to be an accepted thing in creative fields. There's not much to gain, to my mind, in having the creators sitting off on a pedestal somewhere -- people fall from pedestals, and pedestals certainly will not survive contact with Live operation of a virtual world. Instead, I'd rather the customers know the creators as people who make mistakes, so that when one happens, they are more likely to be forgiven or understood.
One of the challenges of academic publishing is that the world can move out from under year in that long, long period of time between when you finish a book and when it hits the shelves. In the case of Convergence Culture, one of the biggest shifts was the meltdown which has occured in the relations between the players and creators of Star Wars Galaxies, much of which really hit the fan last December. I still think what the book says about Star Wars Galaxies -- Raph Koster, as the comments above suggest, remains a leading advocate for a more collaborationist relationship between producers and consumers; his approach does contrast with at least some of the policies that Lucas has applied elsewhere in dealing with other aspects of Star Wars fandom and so Star Wars represents a rich case study of the uncertain and unstable relations between media franchises and their consumers. If anything, these contrasts are even easier to see when we see how shifts in company leadership impacted the community around this particular game.
I have not been on the inside of that meltdown. Most of what I know came from a close reading of news reports about what happened and conversations with other games researchers, such as USC's Doug Thomas or UW's Kurt Squire. I am sure there are readers who could tell us more about what happened than I can and I would welcome them to share their experiences here. I prepared some reflections about what happened for our Convergence Culture Consortium partners newsletter last January.
THE COLLAPSE OF AN EMPIRE: STAR WARS GALAXIES SHOWS US RIGHT AND WRONG WAYS TO COURT FANS
Shortly after Christmas, a friend and fellow researcher Doug Thomas sent me a link to a fascinating and moving fan-made video by Javier -- marking his decision to leave the massively multiplayer game world, Star Wars Galaxies, and commenting on the mass migration of hard core fans and players from this space.
Some background is needed to be able to appreciate this video and what it might suggest about the nature of fan investments in MMPORGS. In keeping with the cantina sequences which have been a favorite aspect of the Star Wars film series, the game provides opportunities for players to select the entertainer class as a possible role within its world. Javier helped to organize the Entertainer class players to create an extraordinary series of Cantina Musicals -- elaborate Busby Berkeley style musical numbers which required the participation and cooperation of a cast of hundreds of players.
As you watch the video, keep in mind that each character is controlled by an individual player, hitting buttons in a choreographed manner,who may be separated from the other participants by thousands of miles
of real world geography. The potential for such videos is built into the game -- through the capacity to move characters in certain ways,for players to share common spaces and experiences, and for players to
record their own game play activities -- but no one in the game company imagined that the fans would have used them to create Lawrence Welk-inflected Christmas specials or to protest company policies. In
short, the video expresses the power of the fan community both in terms of how it was made and in terms of what it has to say about the experience of playing the game....
Raph Koster saw the Star Wars fans as co-designers in the development of the game: actively courting them from the project's conception, sharing design docs and getting their feedback at every step of the way, designing a game which was highly dependent on fan creativity to provide much of its content and fan performance to create mutually rewarding experiences within the game.
Here are some of the things Koster did right in courting Star Wars fans:
1. He respected their expertise and emotional investments in the series.
2. He opened a channel of communications with fans early in the process.
3. He actively solicited advice from fans about design decisions and followed that advice where-ever possible.
4. He created resources which sustained multiple sets of interests in the series.
5. He designed forms of game play which allowed fans to play diverse roles which were mutually reinforcing.
Here's some of what he had to say about the importance of fans to the franchise's success:
"There's no denying it - the fans know Star Wars better than the developers do. They live and breathe it. They know it in an intimate way. On the other hand, with something as large and broad as the Star Wars universe, there's ample scope for divergent opinions about things. These are the things that lead to religious wars among fans and all of a sudden you have to take a side because you are going to be etablishing how it works in this game."
That said, the policies Koster created were eroded over time, leading to increased player frustration and distrust. In another video, Javier traces a history of grievances and conflicts between the "Powers That Be" within the game company and the Entertainer class of characters. Some casual players felt the game was too dependent on player-generated content, while the more creative players felt that upgrades actually restricted their ability to express themselves through the game and marginalized the Entertainer class from the overall experience. At the same time, the game failed to meet the company's own revenue expectations, especially in the face of competition from the enormously successful World of Warcraft, a game which adopted a very different design philosophy.
Late last year, the company announced plans to radically revamp the game's rules and content, a decision that has led to the wholesale alienation of the existing player base and massive defections. It remains to be seen if the plans will draw in new consumers; it is clear that they have significantly destroyed the existing fan culture. Javier is not alone in seeing these decisions as the end of the road for his community.
The statements made by Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director, at LucasArts to the New York Times illustrates the huge shift in thinking from Koster's original philosophy to this "retooled" franchise:
We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base. There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves.
MacIntyre's comments represent a classic set of mistakes in thinking about how to build a fan community around a property:
1. Don't confuse "accessibility" with simplicity. As Steve Johnson notes in his best-selling book, Everything Bad is Good For You or educator James Paul Gee argues in his new book, Video Games Are Good For the Soul, contemporary media audiences are searching for complexity, not simplicity. The video games that succeed in the market are the ones that demand the most of their players -- not those that require the least. The key to successful games is not dumb content, but complexity that is organized and managed so that users can handle it.
2. Don't underestimate the intelligence of your consumers. Gamers are not illiterate. They are not necessarily simply kids. Industry statistics suggest that the average gamer is in his/her late 20s or early 30s and all signs are that the game market is expanding as the initial generation of gamers ages. Star Wars Galaxies consumers skewed older and as such, they wanted something different from the game play experience than younger Star Wars fans. And if you do think your consumers are idiots, it is not bright to say so to New York Times reporters. The fans do read newspapers and as members of a collective intelligence community, they have an enormous network for circulating information that matters to the group. These comments have come back to haunt the corporate executives many times over and probably did as much as anything else in creating a mass exodus from the game.
3. In an age of transmedia storytelling, don't assume fans want the same experience from every installment of the same franchise. There are many films, books, comics, and games out there which focus on the experience of the central protagonists of the series. Koster wisely recognized that while individual players might want to BE Luke Skywalker or Hans Solo, a world where everyone was a Jedi would be boring for all involved. Instead, he created a game world where there were many different classes of players (including the Entertainer class) and where each of those roles interacted in a complicated ecology of experience.
4. Don't underestimate the diversity of fan cultures. Contrary to what is often claimed, successful media properties do not appeal to the lowest common denominator. Rather, they draw together a coalition of micro-publics, each with their own interests in the material, each expressing their emotional bonds with the content in their own ways. Accordingly, Star Wars has a large, diverse audience interested in everything from the flora and fauna to interrelationships among characters. Given such diversity, why would you assume that the core market only wants to blow things up? The real sweet spot would be to /tap into/ these diverse audiences and sell even more copies. Why, given the richness of fan creative expression around Star Wars, would you assume that Luke Skywalker is the only role people care about? The goal should have been to expand the range of experiences available in the game rather than dismantle what appealed to one audience in hopes of attracting another.
5. Don't underestimate the value of fan creative contributions to the success of contemporary media franchises. Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, the most successful game franchise of all time, has suggested that his success can be traced directly back to player contributions:
We see such benefit from interacting with our fans. They are not just people who buy our stuff. In a very real sense, they are people who helped to create our stuff...We are competing with other properties for these creative individuals. All of these different games are competing for communities, which in the long run are what will drive our sales.... Whichever game attracts the best community will enjoy the most success. What you can do to make the game more successful is not to make the game better but to make the community better.
Conversely, when you alienate your most active and creative fans -- folks like Javier -- then you severely damage the franchise as a whole. These people play valuable roles as grassroots intermediaries helping to build up interest in your property and as performers helping to shape the experience of other players.
6. Don't Sacrifice your existing fan base in search of a totally different market. The kind of robust and creative fan cultures Wright and Koster describe in their comments above are hard to build and even harder to rebuild. To some degree, fans have to find media properties which meets their needs, even though companies can adopt policies of fan relations which will make them more receptive to fans and can help to sustain such communities once they emerge. Koster worked hard to win over Star War fans who were skeptical about his efforts given the history of fairly simplistic action-oriented solo-player titles within the Star Wars franchises. Koster, himself, was fully aware that you could not institute large scale changes in such a game world without damaging the kind of trust he had helped to establish. Here's what he told me when I interviewed him for my book: "Just like it is not a good idea for a government to make radical legal changes without a period of public comment, it is often not wise for an operator of an online world to do the same."
I have just scratched the surface here. I suspect the rise and fall of Star Wars Galaxies will be studied for years to come as a textbook example of good and bad ways to deal with fan communities. Certainly our member companies should draw on it as a reference in framing and evaluating their own fan relations policies.
Hands down fantastic article. If you can, take the time to read this!! It is a very well written discussion on what every MMORPG should be about :: Listening to the "community." I know we all have differences of opinions when it come to what we think a game should or should not be like. However, no matter how you slice it, those of us who do play the game are united as the game community. We make up the driving force that keeps the game going forward. This article touches so many topics about listening to the driving force; it's amazing. As I was reading this I was thinking about the vast number of mmorpg's that are out there. How many of them I have tried and have not tried and the one I am looking forward to trying. I thought, wouldn' t it be nice to play a game again that is so enjoyable I am driven to play it. I look forward to this game, and while I know it's still in early development I am still anticipating it's arrival.
SWG RIP 4/26/05
Great read, Proximo521. I really wish more people would read that. I found especially points 4 and 6 of interest.
4. the diversity of fan cultures. It was one of the big boni of SWG to have entertainers, crafters, so many things to do. And that was only partially due to sandbox. As someone who loved to be part of an entertainer group it remains one of the mysteries of MMO gaming why this was never taken into any other MMO. There was such a HUGE entertainer community and some were really popularon their servers. I know for many pure fighter types it was hard to imagine, but so many just had tons of fun as entertainer, but that potential was never tappen into, again. Something I just dont get. Especially Star Wars would offer so many careers and things to do other than combat.
6. The existing fan base... a tragic chapter. I have seen it so often MMOs seemed to try to find the almost opposite of the core fanbase. Take Star Trek Online. So many Trek fans are interested in other things than mere spacefight, and yet, for some unknown reason Cyrptic seems to focus mainly on that part which always had been the smallest in the Trek franchise. Space combat was always the smallest part in Trek and as in point 4 Trek fans are interested in so many other things, so narrowing down STO as some mere space combat game seems so totally out of place.
Now about SWG... I had played it all through pre-CU, CU and NGE, and the one big myth about NGE is that NGE destroyed a healthy, thriving game, and suddenly a booming MMO was destroyed. Thats just totally untrue. Today many vocal SWG advocates still preach the pre-CU dream, and its just lunatic. I was in one of the biggest guilds on my server, and when CU came NO ONE of my guild was unhappy with it, and it was almost entirely welcomed. SWG had many problems when the NGE came, and NGE was a way of SOE they thought to counter the problems. With WOW and other MMOs on the rise, SWG had constantly lost players before the NGE. Partially because what people expected just had changed; many simply had enough of sandbox without quests and stuff to do. Its not that we wanted limitations of the sandbox, but I know many of us were after years of free roaming just bored and wantes stories, quests and tasks to do other than grind mobs. That was why the Kashyykk addon was such a success, it had quests and stories, tasks to do!
Indeed SWG is a big lesson for what is good and what is bad, but it is difficult to read. Too many myth cloud SWG these days, mainly because a vocal minority spread it.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
apparently you never played the KOTOR series. Jedi and sith were everywhere in 1 and Sith ruled in 2. If you dont like it dont play it no one is forcing you too. Sith rule and I will be playing one.
Personally, I just hope the game doesn't become some sort of version of "SUPERHEROES OF THE UNIVERSE" game where a "mysterious" robed player with a lightsaber can single-handedly destroy multitudes of enemies without suffering a scratch and a handful of them can stop entire battalions and convoys, no matter how heavily outnumbered and outgunned they may be.
Tbh, I hope it does. I mean, in EQ-like MMOs there has always been this: a group of 5 or 6 heroes hack and bash endlessly on ONE gnoll. Or whatever. It was so un-heroic. Some combat I always had in mind was from Dynasty Warriors. One hero hacking his was through tons of enemies. I always greatly enjoyed that fast-paced, dynamic combat over the slow, dull, pseudo-turn-based one. It seems TOR may have such combat, as they stated TOR combat will always be heroic and you wont hack rats with 5 VS 1 scenarios. I am all for heroic combat, but of course for all classes equal not only Force Users. In EQ-like games it was always so anti-heroic, the higher your level was, the stronger your opponents became and the longer your group bashed on a single mob; it feels just like you grow weaker not stronger. Hopefully TOR combat is heroic and dynamic. I actually prefer to feel like a hero in my games.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
In Kotor, you played a team of Jedi playing through the stories...
What's the difference, if the other Jedi you travel with are controlled by other players???
True. The Star Wars movies weren't all about the Jedi, there were other characters to consider. Han, Leia, Lando, Chewbacca, the droids, and Luke....etc.
Those are all great characters. But i don't want to play them in a game.
In a game...MMO or not. I want to play the HERO, or at least one of them. Maybe you want to be a scout, or scoundrel and use a blaster. and thats cool. those classes are included (and probably needed). Given the choice between a blaster and a lightsaber...Ill take the lightsaber everytime.
I don't want to manage my home, play bills, and run a shop in a game. Thats too much like Real Life.
Tbh, I hope it does. I mean, in EQ-like MMOs there has always been this: a group of 5 or 6 heroes hack and bash endlessly on ONE gnoll. Or whatever. It was so un-heroic. Some combat I always had in mind was from Dynasty Warriors. One hero hacking his was through tons of enemies. I always greatly enjoyed that fast-paced, dynamic combat over the slow, dull, pseudo-turn-based one. It seems TOR may have such combat, as they stated TOR combat will always be heroic and you wont hack rats with 5 VS 1 scenarios. I am all for heroic combat, but of course for all classes equal not only Force Users. In EQ-like games it was always so anti-heroic, the higher your level was, the stronger your opponents became and the longer your group bashed on a single mob; it feels just like you grow weaker not stronger. Hopefully TOR combat is heroic and dynamic. I actually prefer to feel like a hero in my games.
Sorta, along the lines of city of heroes, where the term mob referred to 4 or 5 enemies standing together not just a single target. Honestly, I never could stand the concept of feeling so week in an MMO, like I did in FFXI. I saved the damn world but a I need a team to take out some trash goblin? The system of many players verses one enemy doesn't compare to me or my party going into a situation out numbered. You felt like you were greater then the average person (NPC) who stood around town and asked for your help.
Negative comments are just as viable as positive comments.
Exactly. So once again I'll ask, why is it ok for you to post positive comments over and over but people with negative comments don't have that same right? Double standard based on the person's side of the fence isn't right no matter what you think.
That makes absolutely no sense. This is the plain and simple version. You post about what you like and some people post about what they dont like. There is no double standard based on any part of the fence. You took offense to "You know...negative comments wouldn't be so bad if the people making them didn't post them in every single thread as much as possible." The person that posted that, was fishing for something.... And you bit. Thats all.
Negative comments are just as viable as positive comments.
Exactly. So once again I'll ask, why is it ok for you to post positive comments over and over but people with negative comments don't have that same right? Double standard based on the person's side of the fence isn't right no matter what you think.
That makes absolutely no sense. This is the plain and simple version. You post about what you like and some people post about what they dont like. There is no double standard based on any part of the fence. You took offense to "You know...negative comments wouldn't be so bad if the people making them didn't post them in every single thread as much as possible." The person that posted that, was fishing for something.... And you bit. Thats all.
No...I wasn't fishing for anything. I was just stating that repetitive negative comments get old. Sometimes I think certain people on these boards just go around and say this kind of crap to troll. Hey...the same thing goes for over-zealous fanboys. They are annoying as shit.
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Guys! I'm hopelessly lost in a mountain of mole hills! Them damn moles!
I didn't say I did not want to be a hero - I just don't want to be an indestructible hero.
How about the jedi in TOR being about as strong as the jedi in the Clone Wars movie (Star Wars 2)? Those jedi were definitely killable - even the main characters, the master jedi, could be beaten. That seems about the right level to me.
Negative comments are just as viable as positive comments.
Exactly. So once again I'll ask, why is it ok for you to post positive comments over and over but people with negative comments don't have that same right? Double standard based on the person's side of the fence isn't right no matter what you think.
That makes absolutely no sense. This is the plain and simple version. You post about what you like and some people post about what they dont like. There is no double standard based on any part of the fence. You took offense to "You know...negative comments wouldn't be so bad if the people making them didn't post them in every single thread as much as possible." The person that posted that, was fishing for something.... And you bit. Thats all.
No...I wasn't fishing for anything. I was just stating that repetitive negative comments get old. Sometimes I think certain people on these boards just go around and say this kind of crap to troll. Hey...the same thing goes for over-zealous fanboys. They are annoying as shit.
That's just real Star Wars fans in general. They are easily excitable. I remember the same thing happened when they announced Star Wars Galaxies, SOE’s forums topped out at over 400,000 members before the game launched. Most never played or left because they thought it sucked once it went into Beta. I think you are just seeing the hope for TOR from these same old fans of Star Wars, the same ones that were disappointed by SWG. Nothing to get angry about.
As for the trolls, most are from other games or ex-swg players who have a grudge against the whole IP, and since this game is being so hyped its a natural target. I was mad at SOE at one time myself, not at the IP. Though I'm not a fan of every aspect of it, I do like KOTOR and I expect this game at least won't be as dull as other games can be at times.