Talk about completely missing the point, if a game makes money then it was designed correctly becaues enough people found it fun for it to be profitable. It's that simple.
This is not the case... Games like AOC and WAR made alot of money through PRE-ORDERS that have absolutly nothing to do with the actual design or playability of the game. It all about PR. And atm this seems to be the biggest "new thing" with MMOs. Promise this and that and you get ppl to pre-order... Then when the game turns out to be total crap - then you put up a skeletal crew to keep it going for 1 - 2 years before you shut it down.
At the risk of offending some folks, exactly how many of you commenting on this thread have problems larger than decided what color socks to wear?
Seriously, some of these comments are outrageous. No one wants to make a crap game/product. Everyone wants to make a great game/product. Those of you working at best buy or delivering pizzas seriously misunderestimate the amount of corporate pressure that gets placed on these development teams. Sure, its easy to say "hold it until its done" but when the rubber hits the road, and you got to pay your mortgage and some one is telling you to get it out, you get it out. End of story. The guys writing the checks decide when things get launched -- not the chumps talking to customers and cleaning up the mess.
At the end of the day it is a delicate balancing act. You need to hit certain targets and get the product out, AND get finance off of your back long enough to do the right thing. And guess what, balancing is hard, especially when people are hurling rocks at you.
I await the calm and reasoned response of the internet.
Game Devs are nerds who think they are rock stars. Rock stars don't ask their fans how to write songs or play guitar.
a) yes they do, they just don't do it as overtly. it's done though market research.
b) I'm pretty sure you'd be the first person in line to raise holy hell if developers ignored their player bases.
I know you're going for the whole I hate everything schtick, and that's fine, but takign a shot at developers for looking for fan input is just silly.
I think he is saying that they don't ask their player base what they want, unless thats what your also saying? O.O At any rate, Its a good thing that someone would raise hell if a company ignored their player base. Its an almost sure fire thing to make a game fail. Ignore the customer and guess what, they aren't your customer any more. And just out of curiosity, do bands really ask their fans what songs they want? I just find that hard to believe, especially with "Market Research".
I've never worked for a commercial game developer, but I can pass on experience from another angle.
A guy in a fancy suit sits down with a bunch of corporate types and signs the paperwork for a deal to make a software product that doesn't exist yet other than this guys design. Everybody shakes hands, they take a few pictures and Mr. Fancy Suit gets back on a plane to go home.
The corporate types don't have a clue how to make anything, so they hire a development manager to see this thing to completion. Mr. DM gets all the paperwork, figures out what he needs, goes back to the corporate types and tells them what he needs for a budget. They give him about half of what he needs and then set a deadline that would be just about impossible even if he DID get all the funding.
About three months in, there's another meeting to look over what's being created. Mister Fancy Suit has a fit because it doesn't match his "vision", and Suzie Blowhard from marketing opposes several major design issues because target demographics don't fit what has been done OR Mr Fancy Suit's templates.
Rip it apart, dumb it down, and make it cute are the "new" directives. Oh, and because of an issue with competition, we've just pushed the deadline UP by six months.
By the middle of the project, it has gone from a fun career, to a job, to why am I here... I could manage a McDonalds and have less hassles!
Bottom line is, the people who do the work are not the ones making decisions. The people who do make the decisions couldn't make a software product on their own to save their lives.
I relate to and agree with the comments that the business side of a development environment can really hose a good project. The bad news is, they are the ones PAYING for the project so it's kind of hard to keep them out of the loop.
Ken
www.ActionMMORPG.com One man, a small pile of money, and the screwball idea of a DIY Indie MMORPG? Yep, that's him. ~sigh~
Something that is little talked about is the investor. Why do these "fat cats" have to make profit in such a short period? Every investor is different in where thier money is coming from. Also, they may have obligations on those funds to other enities. Folks here have this image of bankers with loose cash sitting in vaults doing nothing. Thats not how investments work. To make cash, cash has to keep moving and accruing. Our Gross National Product is dependent on how quick cash transfers from buyer to seller in a consumer market. Is their greed in this industry? Sure, there are folks who want to make money for as little efforts possible. They are lazy and have no passion. Others, however, want to excel at thier chosen career. Making Money is a passion and career that many drive at. This expectation is why investors lean on companies to deliver even if not ready. With active I.P.s (ex:Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter etc. etc.) the pressure to deliver is even greater for marketing events and money to invest in other projects. That same pressure is present with investment houses also.
What should be fully researched and disclosed is the different investment models for MMO's related to market performance wieghed verses thier quality. EVE Online is a great model for a Long Term investment. It started at the bottom as indie and built and invested to where it is today and has a clear broader future. Every MMO should be like this if companies want to continue thier projects beyond thier limited scopes. WOW is truly the "White Elephant" in the market because its not the same game it started out as. It launched with all the growing pains of a new project but quickly overcame its bugs and saturated the market with ads and maintained a standard of quality and polish no other MMO can break in the market to challenge. At least not by the standard that WOW launched with. Its a "snowball" effect in that reguard and Blizzard has yet to drop the ball in keeping that far ahead of the market. The evidance to that is how many games have broken one million subs mark? It is near impossible for a MMO company to release games in the quality expectations market with the current investment modles avaible.
As an added, WOW had another effect on the MMO market. As it rose in subs, it created its demographic with its comprehensive advertising but also sucked subs from all its competitors as it rose in popularity and quality. I could be wrong but it may have plateaed in its subs as I have not heard of it raising in a year or so. That may purely be from the econemy slow down. As a poster here stated, "Why would you leave your good game with all your invested time and friends to try something else?" Especially if all you try fail to match quality and polish that WOW offers.
No gaming company is going to kill the "White Elephant" if they don't make a serious plan that launches a complete, bug free, polished and quality product that exceeds WOW. All other tools used, Cash Shop, TCG, F2P, Sandbox, Themepark are just dodges to the real issue of releasing a fully complete quality product.
I have enjoyed this artical and especially the this thread. Thank you all for an enjoyable read.
Game Devs are nerds who think they are rock stars. Rock stars don't ask their fans how to write songs or play guitar.
a) yes they do, they just don't do it as overtly. it's done though market research.
b) I'm pretty sure you'd be the first person in line to raise holy hell if developers ignored their player bases.
I know you're going for the whole I hate everything schtick, and that's fine, but takign a shot at developers for looking for fan input is just silly.
Oh you speak of that garbage made stars with music that has no soul. Same goes for games. I prefer music written and sang by artist with passion that happen to become famous doing what they love. Garbage that is marketed to the sheep is horrible music lacking substance.
It was written five years ago, but it is still very relevant today. And very relevant to this thread.
To summarize and quote some bits:
MMOGs live or die by their ability to attract newbies. No-one plays one game forever, so the number of new players needs to exceed the number of leaving players.
Newbies won't play a MMOG that has a major feature they don't like. This is common sense.
Players judge all MMOGs as a reflection of the one they first got into. The first MMOG that you get into is very special; it is a magical, enchanting, never-to-be-repeated experience. You then view all subsequent MMOGs in this light. You will demand that features from the first world be added, even if those very features were partly responsible for why you left! You say you hate treadmills, but if your first experience was in a MMOG with treadmills, then you'll gravitate towards other MMOGs with treadmills, all the while still hating them.
Many players will think some poor design choices are good. When a MMOG changes (as it must), most players will consider the change on its short-term merits only. You look at how the change affects you, right now. This short-termist attitude has two outcomes: Firstly, something short-term good but long-term bad is hard for developers to remove, because you want it. Secondly, something short-term bad but long-term good is hard to keep because you don't want it. Design that is short-term good but long-term bad we call "poor". Good design keeps players; poor design drives them away - when the short term becomes the long term and the game becomes unfun.
So, MMOGs are under evolutionary pressure to promote design features that are poor. Each succeeding generation absorbs these into the paradigm, and introduces new poor features for the next generation to take on board. The result is that MMOG design follows a downward path of Bad and Mediocre.
MMOGs are becoming diluted by poor design decisions that can't be undone. We're getting de-evolution - our future is in effect being drawn up by newbies who (being newbies) are clueless.
Regular computer games don't have this problem. The market for regular computer games is driven by the hardcore. The hardcore finishes product faster than newbies, and therefore buys new product faster than newbies. The hardcore understands design implications better than newbies. They won't buy a game with features they can see are poor; they select games with good design genes. Because of this, games which are good are rewarded by higher sales than games which are bad.
In MMOGs, the hardcore either wanders from one to the next, trying to recapture the halcyon experience of their first game. Furthermore, in today's flat-fee universe, the hardcore spends the same amount of money as everyone else: developers aren't rewarded for appealing to the cognoscenti.
There are a ton of posters on here that are complaining that companies design something that will make money and how wrong that is.
Talk about completely missing the point, if a game makes money then it was designed correctly becaues enough people found it fun for it to be profitable. It's that simple.
I don't think they are missing the point. What You talk is that when game is good and players like it, it will make profit and company makes money. What others talk is that when game is design ONLY to make money, not to make good game, that's when it goes wrong. Also just because game doesn't make big money, doesn't mean it's bad game, it could just have very narrow customer base. People should not mix up big business and good game, because they aren't the same thing.
In my opinion it's business side affecting the game design and development where it does go wrong. Pushing games out too early. Cuting content to get game done faster. Design features inside the game so that they exist only to make money (Cash Shops). All these problems are related, business side, we need money, we need faster, we needed it now, this cost too much and so on.
Good game is design only to make they target customers happy, not about how much profit company can make with the game. If they customers are happy, the company makes money too as long they customer base was bigger enough. Just remember, too big customer base can also be problem, because trying to please too wide group of different kind of players, what can lead mediocre game in general.
There are a ton of posters on here that are complaining that companies design something that will make money and how wrong that is.
Talk about completely missing the point, if a game makes money then it was designed correctly becaues enough people found it fun for it to be profitable. It's that simple.
These forums represent the vocal minority of gamers and not where the market is. For example look how many people on here say WoW is terrible and killed MMOs. Well when a game has 11 million subscribers it isn't terrible, it is exactly what the majority of gamers want. It is that simple.
So no there aren't very many devs designing for the posters on these boards because there's not enough of them buying and playing games for it to be worth it.
Although I do agree that how much profit a company makes from a game is one way to measure success, out of 6 billion people on this planet, the majority still think it's OK to continue to use up all the planets resources with no thought to how it will affect the future simply becuae it's not "their" future. Just because something is voted by the majority doesn't automatically make it right.
" Say someone offers you a loan of 1 million dollars to develop a game with core features that you estimate at 1.1 million and you simply can't get another cent from anywhere. Do you turn it down and hope someone else with big bucks comes along? Or do you accept and hope you can find a way to make what you want under a smaller budget?"
I don't take it. But, that's probably because I have a job that requires me to be honest in my "promises" to its clients. If I, or my bosses, promised results that we were SURE we couldn't accomplish with what we were being provided, when we failed, no only would we be out of work, but people would get hurt.
Then again, I live in MA, which had a tunnel project go about 13 billion over projected budget, and still leaks and crushes people. So I may not be unbiased about this subject.
The column had some interesting points, and some frustrating ones. One of the things that jumped to mind for me those was this question:
How come whenever the "scope", "vision", or "design" of the project has to be cut/adjusted/butchered, the part that never gets touched is the goal to "be like WoW"? It's always the other stuff, but never THAT "vision". Odd.
There are a ton of posters on here that are complaining that companies design something that will make money and how wrong that is. Talk about completely missing the point, if a game makes money then it was designed correctly becaues enough people found it fun for it to be profitable. It's that simple. These forums represent the vocal minority of gamers and not where the market is. For example look how many people on here say WoW is terrible and killed MMOs. Well when a game has 11 million subscribers it isn't terrible, it is exactly what the majority of gamers want. It is that simple. So no there aren't very many devs designing for the posters on these boards because there's not enough of them buying and playing games for it to be worth it.
Although I do agree that how much profit a company makes from a game is one way to measure success, out of 6 billion people on this planet, the majority still think it's OK to continue to use up all the planets resources with no thought to how it will affect the future simply becuae it's not "their" future. Just because something is voted by the majority doesn't automatically make it right.
Agreed, if only to speak the old quote from Men In Black.
"Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat. And fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."
But I partially agree with Webb, in that sometimes games... just... aren't liked, really. To throw down an image from the Ctrl-Alt-Delete sillies:
I am playing EVE and it's alright... level V skills are a bit much.
99% is really good score on an exam. However, an MMO is comprised of lots and lots of features that all work together to create an overall experience. If every facet of the game is only 99% awesome, the awesomeness compounds (like interest) when you try to calculate how awesome the game is overall. I'm not a mathematician, but I'm guessing that 99% awesome on each feature compounds down to about 60% awesome overall. And who wants to play a 60% game?
I think the reasons that some MMO's suck can be brought down to two common denominators. The first is the ' We know better what you want than you do' attitude that has been displayed time and time again by various developers. To see this in glorious technicolour action just look at what has happened to some of the stalwarts of the industry, namely Brad McQuaid, Richard Garriot, Gaute Godager and to a slightly lesser extent Mark Jacobs. All of these people to some extent suffered from that attitude and were brought low by it; McQuaid even rubbished WAR & AoC when they were in development on his forums, saying that they were not real MMO's and only he knew how to make a real MMO. Just how arrogant can a guy get? Times have moved on, modern gamers want different things today than they wanted ten years ago and a lot of developers are guilty of being firmly stuck in the past with outdated ideas and notions.
Secondly is the publishers complete lack of either vision or intelligence, sometimes it's difficult to seperate which is which. Blizzard have blazed a trail a mile wide for others to follow. They have shown how to make millions from an MMO but without exception publishers the world over completely miss it and veer off down a muddy side road because they thought they saw a large dollar sign at the bottom. This side road has WoW design philosophy written all over it and that explains why we now have WoW style theme parks littering the desert of failed projects, as the desert is exactly where that road leads. The wide trail however also has a rather huge nameplate but the dollar signs are much further away, and as a result appear smaller than they actually are. The name of this trail so lovingly blazed by Blizzard is 'Finished & Polished product'. Yes it takes longer and costs more but at the end of the day it's what is important. Why developers and publishers continue to try and copy WoW's design instead of just spending the time to make a good game that is about as finished as it can be out of the box is beyond me, maybe there are some invisible blinkers somewhere that keep them from seeing what happens to unfinished and bug laden games when released in that condition.
Rule #1 of business : The customer is always right. It's my opinion that the "goal" is never researched enough before the whole process of designing and coding gets started. How difficult would it be to do some "market research" on the flavor of MMO you wish to create and design a game around what the consumers want? Just a cursory perusal of these forums would already yield a gold-mine of information. In such a highly interactive environment it still boggles my mind at just how little interaction between developers and consumers actually takes place until it is too late.
“The customer is always right” means you should listen to your customers. It does not mean that all businesses are democracies governed by their customers. Nearly every company is run by a person or people empowered to make decisions for their company. If they’re smart, they listen to what their customers are saying. That does not mean they let the customers run the show.
A lot of posters have mentioned what I think is the biggest problem with games that "suck"; they're published with the sometimes willful intent of making a fast buck and getting out. The entire dot.com boom was based on this sort of thing...I saw business plans (not intended for the investors' eyes, natch) that basically involved launching the company then bailing before it fell apart, in the words of Steve Miller, "go on take the money and run".
I have no doubt that there are designers and developers who are into game publishing because they can do something they love to do and make a living. Raph Koster strikes me as that sort of guy. Too bad he got hooked up with a bunch of MBA "take the money and run" types at SOE and LEC looking to milk a franchise that can't possibly flop who went and brutally plundered his vision, and proved that even with a supposedly bullet proof IP you can screw the kusak.
I think one of the biggest reasons that WoW is so successful is that it's pretty obviously a labor of love for a lot of the developers. They have a lot of fun with it...at the best times in SWG you saw this sort of thing. But the biggest reason is that Blizzard, as an organization, is about making games for gamers that will sell. SOE (and most defintely LEC) are about selling games. LEC is a disappointment in a major way as it's an outfit about the money, not about love for all things Lucas, be it Star Wars or Indiana Jones, or even the original IP things like the Monkey Island series.
All the "WoW killers" miss this very thing. EVE seems to be the only one out there dedicated to going their own way, ignoring the 800 pound gorilla. Everyone else is about competing with WoW. Unless you're willing to do the things that make WoW really a success (hint, it's about night elf mohawks that WORK), don't bother trying to be "like WoW" in the superficial sense. Don't set yourself up to suck.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
You don't have to be a dev to recognize a crap game.
What, that sounds like a lot of work? And you're not qualified to undertake something like that? Then what makes you an authority on how people carry out any of those jobs? Wonderful argument! Although I generally don't agree with much of what MMO_Doubter says, I will have to back him/her on this one. We don't need to be developers or have active knowledge of how to develop a game to recognize crap when we see it. And let me just say that if some of the MMOs produced are the benchmarks from which you justify your (not you specifically, but the industry in general) qualifications then I believe a retarded monkey can make a convincing argument that you (again, the MMO industry in general and not you specifically) aren't very qualified to either.
An opinion is one thing, but when you so effortlessly lay accusations and blame in situations (the development of MMO games) that you clearly have no actual first-hand knowledge of, you're just being a jackass. I was going to comment on this but I get pissed when people comment, with feigned authority, on what it means to be in the Military when they clearly never have been. So I'll just let this one go.
Walk through that tunnel, come out the other side, and then tell me you have the answers. Although I cannot speak for everyone else on these forums I will say that I don't pretend to have the answers. I do, however, know what the wrong answers are and by the simple process of elimination we can eventually arrive at the correct answer. Doing the same damned thing over and over and over again just doesn't work. It doesn't. I'm fairly certain many people have cited that as the definition of insanity.
knowing how to code has nothing to do with knowing how to design a game, something alot of development team leads don't seem to understand
the fundamental question "is this fun?" doesn't get asked nearly enough when a feature is considered
too many development teams are afraid to move away from the "tried and true" templates, so we end up with copy after copy after copy of the same old crap
At the risk of offending some folks, exactly how many of you commenting on this thread have problems larger than decided what color socks to wear?
Seriously, some of these comments are outrageous. No one wants to make a crap game/product. Everyone wants to make a great game/product. Those of you working at best buy or delivering pizzas seriously misunderestimate the amount of corporate pressure that gets placed on these development teams. Sure, its easy to say "hold it until its done" but when the rubber hits the road, and you got to pay your mortgage and some one is telling you to get it out, you get it out. End of story. The guys writing the checks decide when things get launched -- not the chumps talking to customers and cleaning up the mess.
At the end of the day it is a delicate balancing act. You need to hit certain targets and get the product out, AND get finance off of your back long enough to do the right thing. And guess what, balancing is hard, especially when people are hurling rocks at you.
I await the calm and reasoned response of the internet.
In reference to the highlighted text let me say this, "EXACTLY!!!" But I believe this is the fault of the person pitching the idea to the "fat cat." You may disagree with this but you never-ever tell the person you are reporting to exactly how long it will take you to accomplish something. You simply don't. If you tell someone it will take you exactly 6-months to complete something they will automatically assume you are adding some time in for the "just in case" factor and demand a shorter time. Maybe not outright, but at the 4-month mark they are going to expect the product by 5-months. Never mind you told them exactly how long it would take (6-months) based off your requirements. It doesn't matter. So you as a manager need to anticipate the need for instant gratification from the "fat cat" and build in a little buffer. So when you tell him it will take 7-months, he will expect you are adding in some wiggle room, which you did, and demand it in 6-months. Well guess what? That's exactly how much time it will actually take so you are setting yourself up for success, the "fat cat" is happy because his little power trip was satisfied and everyone is smiling.
I think a lot of people also settle for "good enough." I see it ALL the time. No, it's not a great product. No, it's not exactly what they wanted to create. But you know what? It's good enough. If you pitch an idea to someone and they make unreasonable demands on you then you need to exercise a little moral fiber and tell them it isn't possible. Don't pump up your ego and try to convince yourself that you can do it when you know damned well you can't. That's just a recipe for failure and a shitty product.
Developers shouldn't look for sympathy from us consumers. We have none. If you told us you would give us this, this and this by such and such time then you had better well deliver all of that when you promised it. it's not my fault you didn't build some wiggle into your schedule.
Well for one thing if the designers feel they are “stakeholders” as Mr Webb calls them then corporate mentality remains supreme. Which means that the staff of the MMO, from the Head Designer to the Tea Boy will be good at running a company but not necessarily any good at all at making a MMO.
Creative flair and good business sense do not go together, rather than worrying about whether they are up on corporate jargon, just let the designers create and leave the business to the execs in the company.
Coders are sometimes expected to be able to design when they cannot or try to influence design when they should not. That’s were management must step in and clear the air.
I also agree that many posters on here probably have had no experience of any sort of work, which does lead them to a rather 'imaginative' view of the way real life works.
99% is really good score on an exam. However, an MMO is comprised of lots and lots of features that all work together to create an overall experience. If every facet of the game is only 99% awesome, the awesomeness compounds (like interest) when you try to calculate how awesome the game is overall. I'm not a mathematician, but I'm guessing that 99% awesome on each feature compounds down to about 60% awesome overall. And who wants to play a 60% game?
Wrong guess. It will still be 99% in the end.
99% of x = .99x
99% of y = .99y
.99x + .99y = 1.98xy
avg = 1.98xy / 2 = .99xy ~ 99% of xy
A bit sad to see...
99% of x = .99x
99% of y = .99y
.99x * .99y = .98xy
Don't be a literalist. You can actually build something so broken that's less than the sum of it's parts
If the game has 500 features (as Webb used in his example), each feature is 99% complete and we follow the assumption that this percentage compounds, we get 0.99 to the power of 500 which equals roughly 0.00657, or 0.657%. Yep, about half percent.
So basically, MONEY is the root of games sucking. Stupid human race economics/greed ruining all the great things we "could" accomplish but never will. This is the same reason we haven't landed on Mars yet or gone farther in space development. We let MONEY rule us.
True to some extent. At the same time, MONEY is what allows these games to even exist. People don't pour five years of their life into developing a mmo without some sort of return, and if we did manage to abolish money and live in some sort of socialist system do you really even believe games like this would exist? Cry about money all you want, but if you don't recognize the positive aspects of money than you're just ignorant.
So basically, MONEY is the root of games sucking. Stupid human race economics/greed ruining all the great things we "could" accomplish but never will. This is the same reason we haven't landed on Mars yet or gone farther in space development. We let MONEY rule us.
True to some extent. At the same time, MONEY is what allows these games to even exist. People don't pour five years of their life into developing a mmo without some sort of return, and if we did manage to abolish money and live in some sort of socialist system do you really even believe games like this would exist? Cry about money all you want, but if you don't recognize the positive aspects of money than you're just ignorant.
Money is never the problem. It's the LACK of money that's the problem.
Comments
This is not the case... Games like AOC and WAR made alot of money through PRE-ORDERS that have absolutly nothing to do with the actual design or playability of the game. It all about PR. And atm this seems to be the biggest "new thing" with MMOs. Promise this and that and you get ppl to pre-order... Then when the game turns out to be total crap - then you put up a skeletal crew to keep it going for 1 - 2 years before you shut it down.
Profits and fun are in no way releated in MMOs.
At the risk of offending some folks, exactly how many of you commenting on this thread have problems larger than decided what color socks to wear?
Seriously, some of these comments are outrageous. No one wants to make a crap game/product. Everyone wants to make a great game/product. Those of you working at best buy or delivering pizzas seriously misunderestimate the amount of corporate pressure that gets placed on these development teams. Sure, its easy to say "hold it until its done" but when the rubber hits the road, and you got to pay your mortgage and some one is telling you to get it out, you get it out. End of story. The guys writing the checks decide when things get launched -- not the chumps talking to customers and cleaning up the mess.
At the end of the day it is a delicate balancing act. You need to hit certain targets and get the product out, AND get finance off of your back long enough to do the right thing. And guess what, balancing is hard, especially when people are hurling rocks at you.
I await the calm and reasoned response of the internet.
a) yes they do, they just don't do it as overtly. it's done though market research.
b) I'm pretty sure you'd be the first person in line to raise holy hell if developers ignored their player bases.
I know you're going for the whole I hate everything schtick, and that's fine, but takign a shot at developers for looking for fan input is just silly.
I think he is saying that they don't ask their player base what they want, unless thats what your also saying? O.O At any rate, Its a good thing that someone would raise hell if a company ignored their player base. Its an almost sure fire thing to make a game fail. Ignore the customer and guess what, they aren't your customer any more. And just out of curiosity, do bands really ask their fans what songs they want? I just find that hard to believe, especially with "Market Research".
I've never worked for a commercial game developer, but I can pass on experience from another angle.
A guy in a fancy suit sits down with a bunch of corporate types and signs the paperwork for a deal to make a software product that doesn't exist yet other than this guys design. Everybody shakes hands, they take a few pictures and Mr. Fancy Suit gets back on a plane to go home.
The corporate types don't have a clue how to make anything, so they hire a development manager to see this thing to completion. Mr. DM gets all the paperwork, figures out what he needs, goes back to the corporate types and tells them what he needs for a budget. They give him about half of what he needs and then set a deadline that would be just about impossible even if he DID get all the funding.
About three months in, there's another meeting to look over what's being created. Mister Fancy Suit has a fit because it doesn't match his "vision", and Suzie Blowhard from marketing opposes several major design issues because target demographics don't fit what has been done OR Mr Fancy Suit's templates.
Rip it apart, dumb it down, and make it cute are the "new" directives. Oh, and because of an issue with competition, we've just pushed the deadline UP by six months.
By the middle of the project, it has gone from a fun career, to a job, to why am I here... I could manage a McDonalds and have less hassles!
Bottom line is, the people who do the work are not the ones making decisions. The people who do make the decisions couldn't make a software product on their own to save their lives.
I relate to and agree with the comments that the business side of a development environment can really hose a good project. The bad news is, they are the ones PAYING for the project so it's kind of hard to keep them out of the loop.
Ken
www.ActionMMORPG.com
One man, a small pile of money, and the screwball idea of a DIY Indie MMORPG? Yep, that's him. ~sigh~
Something that is little talked about is the investor. Why do these "fat cats" have to make profit in such a short period? Every investor is different in where thier money is coming from. Also, they may have obligations on those funds to other enities. Folks here have this image of bankers with loose cash sitting in vaults doing nothing. Thats not how investments work. To make cash, cash has to keep moving and accruing. Our Gross National Product is dependent on how quick cash transfers from buyer to seller in a consumer market. Is their greed in this industry? Sure, there are folks who want to make money for as little efforts possible. They are lazy and have no passion. Others, however, want to excel at thier chosen career. Making Money is a passion and career that many drive at. This expectation is why investors lean on companies to deliver even if not ready. With active I.P.s (ex:Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter etc. etc.) the pressure to deliver is even greater for marketing events and money to invest in other projects. That same pressure is present with investment houses also.
What should be fully researched and disclosed is the different investment models for MMO's related to market performance wieghed verses thier quality. EVE Online is a great model for a Long Term investment. It started at the bottom as indie and built and invested to where it is today and has a clear broader future. Every MMO should be like this if companies want to continue thier projects beyond thier limited scopes. WOW is truly the "White Elephant" in the market because its not the same game it started out as. It launched with all the growing pains of a new project but quickly overcame its bugs and saturated the market with ads and maintained a standard of quality and polish no other MMO can break in the market to challenge. At least not by the standard that WOW launched with. Its a "snowball" effect in that reguard and Blizzard has yet to drop the ball in keeping that far ahead of the market. The evidance to that is how many games have broken one million subs mark? It is near impossible for a MMO company to release games in the quality expectations market with the current investment modles avaible.
As an added, WOW had another effect on the MMO market. As it rose in subs, it created its demographic with its comprehensive advertising but also sucked subs from all its competitors as it rose in popularity and quality. I could be wrong but it may have plateaed in its subs as I have not heard of it raising in a year or so. That may purely be from the econemy slow down. As a poster here stated, "Why would you leave your good game with all your invested time and friends to try something else?" Especially if all you try fail to match quality and polish that WOW offers.
No gaming company is going to kill the "White Elephant" if they don't make a serious plan that launches a complete, bug free, polished and quality product that exceeds WOW. All other tools used, Cash Shop, TCG, F2P, Sandbox, Themepark are just dodges to the real issue of releasing a fully complete quality product.
I have enjoyed this artical and especially the this thread. Thank you all for an enjoyable read.
a) yes they do, they just don't do it as overtly. it's done though market research.
b) I'm pretty sure you'd be the first person in line to raise holy hell if developers ignored their player bases.
I know you're going for the whole I hate everything schtick, and that's fine, but takign a shot at developers for looking for fan input is just silly.
Oh you speak of that garbage made stars with music that has no soul. Same goes for games. I prefer music written and sang by artist with passion that happen to become famous doing what they love. Garbage that is marketed to the sheep is horrible music lacking substance.
Time to trot out Richard Bartle's excellent article
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2157/soapbox_why_virtual_worlds_are_.php
It was written five years ago, but it is still very relevant today. And very relevant to this thread.
To summarize and quote some bits:
So, MMOGs are under evolutionary pressure to promote design features that are poor. Each succeeding generation absorbs these into the paradigm, and introduces new poor features for the next generation to take on board. The result is that MMOG design follows a downward path of Bad and Mediocre.
MMOGs are becoming diluted by poor design decisions that can't be undone. We're getting de-evolution - our future is in effect being drawn up by newbies who (being newbies) are clueless.
Regular computer games don't have this problem. The market for regular computer games is driven by the hardcore. The hardcore finishes product faster than newbies, and therefore buys new product faster than newbies. The hardcore understands design implications better than newbies. They won't buy a game with features they can see are poor; they select games with good design genes. Because of this, games which are good are rewarded by higher sales than games which are bad.
In MMOGs, the hardcore either wanders from one to the next, trying to recapture the halcyon experience of their first game. Furthermore, in today's flat-fee universe, the hardcore spends the same amount of money as everyone else: developers aren't rewarded for appealing to the cognoscenti.
I don't think they are missing the point. What You talk is that when game is good and players like it, it will make profit and company makes money. What others talk is that when game is design ONLY to make money, not to make good game, that's when it goes wrong. Also just because game doesn't make big money, doesn't mean it's bad game, it could just have very narrow customer base. People should not mix up big business and good game, because they aren't the same thing.
In my opinion it's business side affecting the game design and development where it does go wrong. Pushing games out too early. Cuting content to get game done faster. Design features inside the game so that they exist only to make money (Cash Shops). All these problems are related, business side, we need money, we need faster, we needed it now, this cost too much and so on.
Good game is design only to make they target customers happy, not about how much profit company can make with the game. If they customers are happy, the company makes money too as long they customer base was bigger enough. Just remember, too big customer base can also be problem, because trying to please too wide group of different kind of players, what can lead mediocre game in general.
MMORPG.COM has worst forum editor ever exists
Although I do agree that how much profit a company makes from a game is one way to measure success, out of 6 billion people on this planet, the majority still think it's OK to continue to use up all the planets resources with no thought to how it will affect the future simply becuae it's not "their" future. Just because something is voted by the majority doesn't automatically make it right.
A tiny mind is a tidy mind...
From a post in the conversation:
" Say someone offers you a loan of 1 million dollars to develop a game with core features that you estimate at 1.1 million and you simply can't get another cent from anywhere. Do you turn it down and hope someone else with big bucks comes along? Or do you accept and hope you can find a way to make what you want under a smaller budget?"
I don't take it. But, that's probably because I have a job that requires me to be honest in my "promises" to its clients. If I, or my bosses, promised results that we were SURE we couldn't accomplish with what we were being provided, when we failed, no only would we be out of work, but people would get hurt.
Then again, I live in MA, which had a tunnel project go about 13 billion over projected budget, and still leaks and crushes people. So I may not be unbiased about this subject.
The column had some interesting points, and some frustrating ones. One of the things that jumped to mind for me those was this question:
How come whenever the "scope", "vision", or "design" of the project has to be cut/adjusted/butchered, the part that never gets touched is the goal to "be like WoW"? It's always the other stuff, but never THAT "vision". Odd.
Although I do agree that how much profit a company makes from a game is one way to measure success, out of 6 billion people on this planet, the majority still think it's OK to continue to use up all the planets resources with no thought to how it will affect the future simply becuae it's not "their" future. Just because something is voted by the majority doesn't automatically make it right.
Agreed, if only to speak the old quote from Men In Black.
"Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat. And fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."
But I partially agree with Webb, in that sometimes games... just... aren't liked, really. To throw down an image from the Ctrl-Alt-Delete sillies:
I am playing EVE and it's alright... level V skills are a bit much.
You all need to learn to spell.
Wrong guess. It will still be 99% in the end.
99% of x = .99x
99% of y = .99y
.99x + .99y = 1.98xy
avg = 1.98xy / 2 = .99xy ~ 99% of xy
A bit sad to see...
I think the reasons that some MMO's suck can be brought down to two common denominators. The first is the ' We know better what you want than you do' attitude that has been displayed time and time again by various developers. To see this in glorious technicolour action just look at what has happened to some of the stalwarts of the industry, namely Brad McQuaid, Richard Garriot, Gaute Godager and to a slightly lesser extent Mark Jacobs. All of these people to some extent suffered from that attitude and were brought low by it; McQuaid even rubbished WAR & AoC when they were in development on his forums, saying that they were not real MMO's and only he knew how to make a real MMO. Just how arrogant can a guy get? Times have moved on, modern gamers want different things today than they wanted ten years ago and a lot of developers are guilty of being firmly stuck in the past with outdated ideas and notions.
Secondly is the publishers complete lack of either vision or intelligence, sometimes it's difficult to seperate which is which. Blizzard have blazed a trail a mile wide for others to follow. They have shown how to make millions from an MMO but without exception publishers the world over completely miss it and veer off down a muddy side road because they thought they saw a large dollar sign at the bottom. This side road has WoW design philosophy written all over it and that explains why we now have WoW style theme parks littering the desert of failed projects, as the desert is exactly where that road leads. The wide trail however also has a rather huge nameplate but the dollar signs are much further away, and as a result appear smaller than they actually are. The name of this trail so lovingly blazed by Blizzard is 'Finished & Polished product'. Yes it takes longer and costs more but at the end of the day it's what is important. Why developers and publishers continue to try and copy WoW's design instead of just spending the time to make a good game that is about as finished as it can be out of the box is beyond me, maybe there are some invisible blinkers somewhere that keep them from seeing what happens to unfinished and bug laden games when released in that condition.
“The customer is always right” means you should listen to your customers. It does not mean that all businesses are democracies governed by their customers. Nearly every company is run by a person or people empowered to make decisions for their company. If they’re smart, they listen to what their customers are saying. That does not mean they let the customers run the show.
He who keeps his cool best wins.
A lot of posters have mentioned what I think is the biggest problem with games that "suck"; they're published with the sometimes willful intent of making a fast buck and getting out. The entire dot.com boom was based on this sort of thing...I saw business plans (not intended for the investors' eyes, natch) that basically involved launching the company then bailing before it fell apart, in the words of Steve Miller, "go on take the money and run".
I have no doubt that there are designers and developers who are into game publishing because they can do something they love to do and make a living. Raph Koster strikes me as that sort of guy. Too bad he got hooked up with a bunch of MBA "take the money and run" types at SOE and LEC looking to milk a franchise that can't possibly flop who went and brutally plundered his vision, and proved that even with a supposedly bullet proof IP you can screw the kusak.
I think one of the biggest reasons that WoW is so successful is that it's pretty obviously a labor of love for a lot of the developers. They have a lot of fun with it...at the best times in SWG you saw this sort of thing. But the biggest reason is that Blizzard, as an organization, is about making games for gamers that will sell. SOE (and most defintely LEC) are about selling games. LEC is a disappointment in a major way as it's an outfit about the money, not about love for all things Lucas, be it Star Wars or Indiana Jones, or even the original IP things like the Monkey Island series.
All the "WoW killers" miss this very thing. EVE seems to be the only one out there dedicated to going their own way, ignoring the 800 pound gorilla. Everyone else is about competing with WoW. Unless you're willing to do the things that make WoW really a success (hint, it's about night elf mohawks that WORK), don't bother trying to be "like WoW" in the superficial sense. Don't set yourself up to suck.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
What, that sounds like a lot of work? And you're not qualified to undertake something like that? Then what makes you an authority on how people carry out any of those jobs? Wonderful argument! Although I generally don't agree with much of what MMO_Doubter says, I will have to back him/her on this one. We don't need to be developers or have active knowledge of how to develop a game to recognize crap when we see it. And let me just say that if some of the MMOs produced are the benchmarks from which you justify your (not you specifically, but the industry in general) qualifications then I believe a retarded monkey can make a convincing argument that you (again, the MMO industry in general and not you specifically) aren't very qualified to either.
An opinion is one thing, but when you so effortlessly lay accusations and blame in situations (the development of MMO games) that you clearly have no actual first-hand knowledge of, you're just being a jackass. I was going to comment on this but I get pissed when people comment, with feigned authority, on what it means to be in the Military when they clearly never have been. So I'll just let this one go.
Walk through that tunnel, come out the other side, and then tell me you have the answers. Although I cannot speak for everyone else on these forums I will say that I don't pretend to have the answers. I do, however, know what the wrong answers are and by the simple process of elimination we can eventually arrive at the correct answer. Doing the same damned thing over and over and over again just doesn't work. It doesn't. I'm fairly certain many people have cited that as the definition of insanity.
The main problems with MMO development today:
In reference to the highlighted text let me say this, "EXACTLY!!!" But I believe this is the fault of the person pitching the idea to the "fat cat." You may disagree with this but you never-ever tell the person you are reporting to exactly how long it will take you to accomplish something. You simply don't. If you tell someone it will take you exactly 6-months to complete something they will automatically assume you are adding some time in for the "just in case" factor and demand a shorter time. Maybe not outright, but at the 4-month mark they are going to expect the product by 5-months. Never mind you told them exactly how long it would take (6-months) based off your requirements. It doesn't matter. So you as a manager need to anticipate the need for instant gratification from the "fat cat" and build in a little buffer. So when you tell him it will take 7-months, he will expect you are adding in some wiggle room, which you did, and demand it in 6-months. Well guess what? That's exactly how much time it will actually take so you are setting yourself up for success, the "fat cat" is happy because his little power trip was satisfied and everyone is smiling.
I think a lot of people also settle for "good enough." I see it ALL the time. No, it's not a great product. No, it's not exactly what they wanted to create. But you know what? It's good enough. If you pitch an idea to someone and they make unreasonable demands on you then you need to exercise a little moral fiber and tell them it isn't possible. Don't pump up your ego and try to convince yourself that you can do it when you know damned well you can't. That's just a recipe for failure and a shitty product.
Developers shouldn't look for sympathy from us consumers. We have none. If you told us you would give us this, this and this by such and such time then you had better well deliver all of that when you promised it. it's not my fault you didn't build some wiggle into your schedule.
Well for one thing if the designers feel they are “stakeholders” as Mr Webb calls them then corporate mentality remains supreme. Which means that the staff of the MMO, from the Head Designer to the Tea Boy will be good at running a company but not necessarily any good at all at making a MMO.
Creative flair and good business sense do not go together, rather than worrying about whether they are up on corporate jargon, just let the designers create and leave the business to the execs in the company.
Coders are sometimes expected to be able to design when they cannot or try to influence design when they should not. That’s were management must step in and clear the air.
I also agree that many posters on here probably have had no experience of any sort of work, which does lead them to a rather 'imaginative' view of the way real life works.
Wrong guess. It will still be 99% in the end.
99% of x = .99x
99% of y = .99y
.99x + .99y = 1.98xy
avg = 1.98xy / 2 = .99xy ~ 99% of xy
A bit sad to see...
99% of x = .99x
99% of y = .99y
.99x * .99y = .98xy
Don't be a literalist. You can actually build something so broken that's less than the sum of it's parts
If the game has 500 features (as Webb used in his example), each feature is 99% complete and we follow the assumption that this percentage compounds, we get 0.99 to the power of 500 which equals roughly 0.00657, or 0.657%. Yep, about half percent.
This is false & has been for a long, long time.
You make an article about some why some MMO's suck.
Might as well make your next article about which MMO's suck, because most of them that do suck (probably all) have done what your article says.
They may try to fix it.
But it'll already be too late.
True to some extent. At the same time, MONEY is what allows these games to even exist. People don't pour five years of their life into developing a mmo without some sort of return, and if we did manage to abolish money and live in some sort of socialist system do you really even believe games like this would exist? Cry about money all you want, but if you don't recognize the positive aspects of money than you're just ignorant.
This is false & has been for a long, long time.
If the customer is always right, what do you do when the customer is dead wrong?
People spouting garbage rules like this have never actually interacted with a customer...
True to some extent. At the same time, MONEY is what allows these games to even exist. People don't pour five years of their life into developing a mmo without some sort of return, and if we did manage to abolish money and live in some sort of socialist system do you really even believe games like this would exist? Cry about money all you want, but if you don't recognize the positive aspects of money than you're just ignorant.
Money is never the problem. It's the LACK of money that's the problem.