General: New Columnist Brings Player Perspectives

Dana

Jaime Skelton debuts a new Friday column here on MMORPG.com. Each week, she'll look at the industry from the eyes of a veteran player. In her debut, she looks at how players try to make themselves heard and what they can do to stand out from the pack.

There's a World of Warcraft blogger - who I won't name here, although many of you know his name - who drove over 400 miles this week to Blizzard's headquarters in Irvine. Armed with 40 page full-color booklets on his raid design, each of which has cost him $27 to print (which, at a count of 32, is over $800 in printing costs alone), he set up a table outside Blizzard headquarters, begging for people to take his booklet. His goal was to get inside Blizzard's headquarters, and present his ideas for "the perfect raid dungeon" that he had designed, and hopefully nail down a job where he could begin designing the game itself in the process.

This blogger isn't an ex-employee of a game company, or a student of game design. His first MMO was Final Fantasy XI, and his professional experience is completely outside the gaming industry. He's a regular MMO gamer just like you and I. Although, maybe a bit crazier; most of us wouldn't spend over $1,000 to camp outside an MMO's company headquarters in hopes for a job interview.

Read it all here.

spinach8puff

Interesting article. It brings to mind the thought of Furor. I remember my guild in Everquest talking about him and his frequent forum posts regarding EQ. I never read his forum posts, but from what others said he made valid points even though he came off as a whiner to a lot of people. So keeping your thoughts on the forums is a good idea because you never know who's watching.

Hyanmen

The players should also take into consideration that grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence. Too often I see people saying how MMO company X does Y thing better than MMO company Z, or how MMO company Z is worse than X at handling their MMO. No company is perfect, and when taking into consideration that handling an ever-changing MMO is no simple task and if the game code is not perfectly created at all times (which is nigh impossible, since the developers constantly need to create more content, often at a rate so fast that there's no time for much quality checking) there will be glitches and bugs the dev team couldn't see even coming. 

Cool to see that she has played FFXI though, that game always brings new perspectives to the table from what I've seen. I also pretty much agreed with everything said on the article.

Sanya

Hey, kickass! Welcome to the madness, Jaime

LordDmaster

It was a good job at giving us your insight into the MMO world and introducing yourself at the same time.

 

Thank you.

And Welcome

LordDmaster

Originally posted by Sanya


Hey, kickass! Welcome to the madness, Jaime

 

"Queen"?

LOL

nekollx

as a player, and a programer, i'm always reminded of the secret behind the keyboard. And while i agree with many of your points the big problem i see is a lot of dev forget that the gamers are their customers and will activly blow them off. Whenever i think of dev/player interplay i'm reminded of a quote from one dev that seemed to make the players insignificent.

 

"Players come, and players go, such is the nature of MMOs"

Jack Emmert - City of Heroes Forums

MissyShade

Originally posted by Sanya


Hey, kickass! Welcome to the madness, Jaime

 

Mmm, madness. I feel it slowly taking over. . . . thanks for the welcome, Sanya.  

And to everyone else as well, thanks for the welcome.

spinach8puff : Alex is working for Blizzard? Hilarious; I knew the references in game to Alex but it never clicked in my head that he was working for them. Goes to show you. I remember my dad getting into arguments with him on the EQ forums. It's a good thing I wasn't a forum junky back then. And Alex isn't the only one who's landed a job in the MMO world via ranting and raving fame.

As for devs not listening to players - it happens. Some companies are terrible about player feedback; some listen well (perhaps too well.) The companies that choose to actively flip the bird to player feedback usually find themselves in a pretty bad situation fast. Because MMO gamers spend so much time on their games - and have such accessibility to their makers - we all demand respect. If we don't get it, we're gone. 

Anyway folks, if there's anything you'd like me to touch on, feel free to drop me a line. I'm excited to be here, and hope to see some good discussions started about player issues.

Hyanmen

Originally posted by MissyShade

. Because MMO gamers spend so much time on their games - and have such accessibility to their makers - we all demand respect. If we don't get it, we're gone. 

It's not a valid reason though. We may demand respect, but we deserve none.

Capn23

Welcome Jaime

 

I'm not a regular poster anymore, but I'm always stopping in here to read the articles. You seem to be a nice, classy writer. However, you do have a big pair of shoes to fill

 

Can you just give us a little info about what your weekly articles will be about? Connecting we-the-players view with them-the-big-mean-devs view? Could you give us some general areas you'll be covering?

Scalebane

Originally posted by Sanya


Hey, kickass! Welcome to the madness, Jaime

 

MADNESS?!?!?!?!?

 

Babylon9000

Originally posted by nekollx


as a player, and a programer, i'm always reminded of the secret behind the keyboard. And while i agree with many of your points the big problem i see is a lot of dev forget that the gamers are their customers and will activly blow them off. Whenever i think of dev/player interplay i'm reminded of a quote from one dev that seemed to make the players insignificent.
 
"Players come, and players go, such is the nature of MMOs"
Jack Emmert - City of Heroes Forums

 

I agree totally.

I am an account executive for the largest food service company in the world. My accounts are major national franchises. On a national level I deal with their head offices. On a more local, and much more personal level I deal with individual franchisees who own restaurants in sometimes very small or remote towns. These are my customers. These are my companies customers. I deal with them each day at work and I think about them when i go home at night. I hold a portion of their financial prosperity in my hands and I dont take that lightly. Customer service.... relationship building is the most important part of my business.

MMOs are an industry where customer service could really set a company apart from it's competition. I think anyone looking to become a new game developer ought to really consider this. The people playing these games are paying their salaries. It only stands to reason that good customer service..which is building a solid trusting professional relationship with your customers on a level where they come to you with problems and trust that your solutions will help them, is the foundation of any good business.

Without making this into one of my long winded posts, I would simply like to say that this should be the focus for anyone looking to break into any field that offers a service for money, not just the MMO industry, but is especially important in this industry because the developer does not et to humanize themselves to their customers and must build that relationship through mediums such as MMORPG.com or a games forum posts.

CoX Does customer service quite well and I always had a good experience when I played that game and needed assistance.

Tisiphone

Welcome, Jamie.

Looks like you'll have a lot of interesting insight from a gamer's perspective. Glad to have you here.

Einstein-DF

 I smell another carebear.

Nothing against Jaime (hi and welcome) or carebears, but you should get a PVPer as a columnist also!

 

I suggest Syncaine from Hardcore Casual> also a member of Paragus Rants Inquisition guild, who wrote plenty of articles for this site.

 

syncaine.wordpress.com/

 

That will get the hate ball rolling and traffic flowin.

kaozz77

I find it of poor taste to use him as an example of what not to do as a story for your own blog. 

You didn't even have the courtesy to refer to his site where you obtained the information.

Sure it was an interesting read but none too classy.

Sorry that's just my2cp. 

 

shabazzster

Yeah, good article and, welcome! ( nice to meet yah)

I think being positive is a whole lot more than its corned up to be.

MissyShade

Once again, many thanks for the many welcomes.

 Capn23: Oh believe me, being Sanya's chaser is pretty scary. I used to read her stuff before I started writing myself, found myself working with her side by side as a writer in the industry, and now that she's going back to working for an MMO company, I want to cry and scream and say "Hold my hand!"

Well, okay, maybe it's not that traumatic.

As for the column focus, I want to use it a little as a springboard for MMO community issues. It's kind of hard for me to be too specific simply because the community pulse changes from day to day, from game to game. I'm aiming to pick up on specific community reactions to game issues (a good example here would be the enormous debate had over full retcons in Champions Online before it launched), but also cover more general topics such as forum and in-game behavior by game communities, guild issues, player expectations, and so on. And there will often be a focus between that interesting interaction between the community and the game companies themselves.

There will be times it reads a little like an advice column for newer MMO players who are finding themselves indoctrinated into the community. Other times it will be thoughts on recent events or player interactions. Sometimes it will be "voice of the community trying to reach the ear of the big guys." Ultimately, it will adapt around the community and what they are saying (or want to say.)

Does that help?

 

Babylon9000: I worked in customer service for years, from the small details of retail service to some very large international financial firms. I also served my time as a guide in EQ (before they got rid of the volunteer program.) I'm therefore pretty grounded in the customer experience, and solidly agree that MMOs have a really unique player-company interaction that can't be compared to any other sub-genre of gaming. Customer service has a real, living presence and meaning to MMO gaming. That, for good or bad, is why we're so demanding - games aren't just a game to us, they're also an entertainment service. 

 

Einstein-DF: I like Syncaine, except that I feel he uses his "carebear" catchphrase way too much. But yes, by Syncaine's definition, I'm a carebear (but a PvPing carebear.) No offense taken, I know I've gotten soft over the years too. Not as soft as some, though. 

You won't see much hate balls rolling from me, alas: I tend to play nice (in public).

 

kaozz77: I have utmost respect for said blogger, and I admire his bravery at doing what he did, but it was not a rational way to go about achieving his goals. His actions make a fine example of the lengths some people go to get their ideas into developer's hands, and his own words end up describing it as "what not to do."

 As for classy, I can see your point of view, and will keep it in mind in the future, though I differ. Keep in mind that his is a public and well-read blog, not a privately confessed tale of drama on LJ. I didn't provide a link not because I wouldn't like to give him a nod or let him get some extra views, but because I figure he doesn't need a few dozen extra trolls that know nothing about him going and spamming him with "LOL UR DUM."

After all, he doesn't get paid to deal with trolls.

docminus

there are two things about the article I want to point out/ask:

 

a) many (past) MMOs are made by (ex)gamers or non-MMO experience.

b) interesting that Blizzard would shred player content for legal content. all you need is a decent contract. but i guess they are afraid of the buddy's buddy's friend to get pissed off and sue. sad world for us gamers then.

kaozz77

I see your point, and I understand the nature of the blog. I just think it took a lot of guts to do what he did and didn't think he needed to be an example as he shared his experience with it. He didn't have to, and I thought it was cool he chose to.  Besides that it had some great points/tips in it  

ericbelser

Originally posted by Babylon9000


MMOs are an industry where customer service could really set a company apart from it's competition. I think anyone looking to become a new game developer ought to really consider this. The people playing these games are paying their salaries. It only stands to reason that good customer service..which is building a solid trusting professional relationship with your customers on a level where they come to you with problems and trust that your solutions will help them, is the foundation of any good business.

 

The core problem is that while you understand what "customer service" actually is, far far too many people on forums and in these games think that "customer service" = "give me what I want!". I have found many (not all, but many) MMOs actually have very good customer service when compared via any traditional metric of customer service. (I used to manage a tech support team at an ISP, so I have idea what I am talking about here) Generally speaking: waiting times on contacts are low, responses are prompt and many issues are resolved quickly...most of those that aren't fall into the "gimme things 'cuz I want them" category or issues outside the MMO company's control.

Smokeysong

Nice to have a very player-based writer!

Well said. It has got to be a trying process to wade through the QQ to find a decent suggestion, and following the few sensible steps you outlined will help any person read them. I know there are certain posts that I don't bother with at all from their title line, and others that I don't read past the first few words. There are too many well-done posts out there to waste my time wading through what is more likely to be trash.

mszv

Spectacular post, thoughtful and informative.  I can't wait to read more. 

 

Lathander81

Originally posted by nekollx


as a player, and a programer, i'm always reminded of the secret behind the keyboard. And while i agree with many of your points the big problem i see is a lot of dev forget that the gamers are their customers and will activly blow them off. Whenever i think of dev/player interplay i'm reminded of a quote from one dev that seemed to make the players insignificent.
 
"Players come, and players go, such is the nature of MMOs"
Jack Emmert - City of Heroes Forums

 

I would like to say Jamie you are the bomb and will love reading your articles! Welcome and thanks for a moment of forum sanity. I love the number 4 advise on your list I'm going to be using that for a while.

I just wanted to say to Neklix that most times dev have to put on the blinders because answering what seems to be a simple question can lead to more than damage that not answering at all.  I'm sure that dev deal with valid issue players have but realistically they can't make everyone happy. And some player won't be happy no matter what you do.  Also that quote can be taken out of context another reason for dev to be quiet. Players need to realize that they need to be good customers too. Thats what this post is all about.

aleos

 Then his name was black listed. The End

Radiogirl

Great piece, and speaking as a player-blogger myself (I used to write an EvE-relevant blog and I'm now blogging about Fallen Earth), I'm also glad to see a player perspective column here as well.

I also believe that good customer service is important, and that it's about more than just making sure the servers stay up and the games are fun and  fair. It's also about a consciousness that recognizes and respects that we're not all teenagers or college students. Also, even the best MMO can be ruined for some of us by excessive vulgar smacktalk and hate speech. I realize this isn't a big issue for a lot of players, but for some of us who care about the social aspects of the MMOs we play, it can really be an interest-killer.

For me, it's not just about a great and engaging MMO, it's also about the company and the community that comes with it. If not, I might as well go play a single-player game.

storm-dragon

This was an awesome post, and I feel bad for the aforementioned Blogger. His heart was in the right place, and he probably could one day be a developer, but he really needs to think things through first.

 I have been a computer gamer since the 80's, beta tested more games than I can count and even have a boatload of experience using many of the same tools game developers use every day. Taking all of that into consideration, I have had a grand total of three offers for interviews, (two of which I have turned down due to working conditions and/or compensation offered)  in all cases it was from speaking to someone who was already employed. I'm not saying you have to know someone, but it doesn’t hurt, also compensation isn't anywhere near what most people think,  you can make far more and work less hours designing enterprise software.

 

Back to our Blogger....the guy really had a better chance of making connections with developers by doing what he was doing…blogging. A good blog gets attention, and lots of it…you would be surprised how many game companies read common gamers blogs. Other ways of getting developers attention is attend shows like PAX, Gen Con, Dragoncon, Blizzcon…become a regular talk to these guys when you get a chance to, and trust me you will get a chance. In the past four years I have had a chance to speak with folks from Turbine, Mythic, Blizzard Bioware, and SOE. If you come across as an intelligent gamer, and not Tom Cruise over the top …you will find them quite approachable. But always always make sure you know what you're getting into before you accept anything.