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General: Drama Queens
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com Player Perspectives columnist Jaime Skelton writes her piece this week on the somewhat morbidly entertaining sport of developer drama watching as it relates to both Quest Online and Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment.
MMO gamers are no strangers to drama. Our gaming experience is essentially social, forcing us all at some point to interact with other people. As we've all learned by now, other people means, inevitably, some form of drama – that angsty, dark, back-biting, emotional experience that many of us hate (and a few of us thrive on).
And that's just between friends.
The personal drama that takes place in-game and on the forums can sometimes have long-lasting effects on our gaming and, in rare cases, our lives. The high-level drama that takes place in developer offices brings a whole new level of experience to the social gaming platform, however. A flame war between players can be both exhausting and entertaining to the spectators, but a flame war between the people that make the game has so much more popcorn-chewing value.
Yes, I'm talking about the David Allen vs. Derek Smart debacle with Alganon. I'm also talking about the current Stargate Worlds development state. Both are excellent cases in what I'll term loosely as “developer drama,” and both have made some significant impact on their game communities as well as their games.
Read Drama Queens.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
If these developers put as much time into running their companies and making a solid player experience as they do slinging mud at each other we could have so many more enjoyable games, instead of the constant bounce form wow to the flavour of the month when we get bored with wow.
Power struggles over corporate governance are not uncommon. What is uncommon is needlessly and intentionally taking a dispute public, throwing written temper tantrums and generating litigation because of it. People at that level usually know better and recognize its bad business. The fact that Derek Smart doesn't understand this tells me that he lacks the experience and temperment to effectively manage.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Even tho some drama will effect you, it will mostly not influence my judgment about the game if i play a game and we have some drama with devs or publishers or both i keep playing if game its self is good or have potential i only leave when it realy become crap to play or lack of improvement.
Ive seen some drama over years but so far i never left any game becouse of this.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
Alganon is interesting, never heard of Derek Smart before this debacle at all but as a one time Horizons/Istaria (David Allen's first MMO) player my concern about Alganon has always been if the company can survive. Unfortunately all the latest dev drama has done is make me more concerned.
Stargate Worlds - me and my hubby were looking forward to it at one time. Pretty much died for us once the news came out that devs weren't getting paid. Have not been keeping track of it since then.
Pretty much it all comes down to stability. Before we invest our time on characters we want to be sure that our investment will still be there in the future. Now personally I don't need to amount of info available on the Alganon mess, though it was fairly entertaining - just the news that David Allen was gone, and some kind of statement of the future. With all the extra info we've gotten it makes me very leery of the current management, as in most corporations have some control over their message - and things appear to be out of control at Alganon.
Yep, it's not just MMOs. Look at Infinity Ward...well, what used to be Infinifty Ward, and Activision. **opinion** Activison most likely tried to lord their weight over IW in some capacity, ticking off West and Zampella who, to Activision's surprise, weren't gonna take it. So they left, and as of today like 13 other core, and I do mean CORE members of Infinity Ward have followed suit with estimations of another 20 or so people leaving as well in the following months.
West and Zampella have already formed another house called Respawn with help from EA (read EA has a program to help talented devs get started; Respawn isn't "under" EA like IW was with Activision) and speculation is many if not all of those leaving IW will end up with Respawn.
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I've seen and had to deal with some serious drama queens in my time in MMOs (and even had to guild kick a few who couldn't resist the urge to try and turn the game into a bad episode of a soap opera - if there can be such a thing as a good episode of one), but these guys really might consider the idea that, as someone else already said, some things really do not need to be aired in the public arena.
Devs and CEOs are supposed to be professionals. They might consider acting like it. The old saying of "any publicity is good publicity" is not necessarily true, at least not for me. If I see that the leaders of a company cannot act any more mature than a twelve year old, then I really am not terribly interested in their product. When the developers and executives of a company act this way, what does that say about how the game's community is encouraged to act or how customer service is encouraged to treat the customer? Makes my head spin just thinking about it.
Firebrand Art
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
/Agree. I'll never delve into Alganon, aside from testing it and experiencing the lack-luster nature of the game. But the internal squabbling we were opened to, was slightly entertaining, and at the same time revealing.
Excellent article. You managed to hit a lot of points without sounding in favor of one side or the other, and still being informative. Keep up the good job.
Thanks Jaime for giving an overview of events surrounding SGW. You might want to include CME going into recievership last week. I read that here.
I pay no mind to the drama queens, fanbois, or haters, all drama all the time, most of those folks are talking out thier rear ends and don't have clue, I just hate the fact they take up good, forum space..
Derek Smart has a long list of failure behind him when it comes to games. The thought that someone thought he could help Alganon is hilarious. Adding in his silly diatribes really cements how dumb it was to bring him on board.
At least it provides us with a good laugh now and then, of course there is the tragic nature that someone got the boot too.
way too busy slinging to do anything else lol!
That was actually a very insightful, well written article. Well done.
I'd take that a step further and say that the kind of antics these supposed "leaders" have been up to is enough for me to steer clear of any game they are involved with. It's not a matter of whether or not one party or another has legitmate grievances, but the fact that it was taken public in a highly unprofessional manner. By extension, I would tend to consider anything they touch to crafted in a similarly unprofessional manner, and wouldn't touch it with a 10' pole, let alone my Visa.
There are so many games out there fighting for my monthly subscription that it's really quite easy to write off anything associated with these two developers, or any other developer that acts in such a juvenile manner, sight unseen.
I expect stability in any game, be it the technology, the customer support or, in the case of MMOs, the longevity. This kind of silliness doesn't promote the concept stability to me.
That was a really enjoyable read, concise and balanced.
I think what the Davids and Dereks of this world tend to forget is that first and foremost: the game's the thing.
If the first thing that pops into peoples' heads when they hear "Alganon" is Derek Smart vs David Allen in a real life version of Forumwarz, then this is a bad thing.
If people are turned off even trying the game because of distaste at the public mud-slinging that has gone on (on both sides), this also is a bad thing.
We may be "just" gamers, but there is an expectation of professionalism from developers that evaporates as soon as they start accusing one another of things on any forum you care to mention (and it really does seem like it's every forum). If devs can't present a professional public front, then I can hardly expect a profesional product from them: ergo I have no interest in whatever product they're peddling.
I'd just as soon be blissfully ignorant of the people behind the game, and enjoy the game for what it is.
Public spats like this one make that impossible.
Well said. It's hard enough to keep communities from turning into vile cesspools that instant reject new players and opinions. It is 100x more difficult to keep the community civil when standing behind you are two members of the team bashing each other as hard as they can and telling you not to worry, they're professionals and will actually address the games problems and, better yet, and improve the experience for gamers over time.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
I think that anyone who is a leader and who thinks that sowing poison and dissent will make things better has another think coming to them.
People don't like to work in poison environments. They don't like to work with weird social pressures on top of the pressures of getting the job done.
More often than not they tend to just feed their own needs.
All the leaders I ever worked hard for and respected were those who treated everyone well and who also worked twice as hard at what they did.
Sort of the "I would never ask anyone to do anything I wouldn't do" type of attitude.
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Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
People need to grow up as well, and stop trying to make these developers into something other than people making products, currently bad ones at that, and trying to sell it to others.They are NOT heroes.They are NOT leaders.
What they currently are, is a small bunch of people who thru connections and cash are harming the very industry they are selling.
And if some group of MMO devs does come long some day and actually manage to turn out a good product,they will still be nothing more than people making and selling a product.No more special than the people who run a company that turns out toasters ,or any other consumer good (or service)
I've always enjoyed reading Jaime's articles. Thanks for the read!
This touches on a personal gripe I have about the way developers are talked about in the MMO community. As much as there are indeed "faces" to a game company (Derek Smart, Bill Roper, etc) the vast majority of stuff that happens in a community, in the code, and in the running of the company that makes the MMOs we play is not driven by one or two individuals-it's a team effort across multiple individuals, departments and even corporate entities. Yet MMO forums are absolutely rife with "I hate MMO X because of Developer Y!" or "I bet Developer Z is the reason Nerf A happened, he should be fired!"
The reality is we have very little idea of who is responsible for which decision until well after the fact, and often operate in a knowledge-poor environment when it comes to assigning blame, so we sieze on the few individual faces we do know and attribute virtually everything that happens to those individuals. This, inevitably results in some pretty much insane, brutal personal attacks on people who just happen to be known "faces" of a game company and may or may not have anything to do with the things we don't like about a game.
I'm all for games being criticised in depth, with detailed reasoning and counterarguments, but I have real problems when I see stuff being posted on forums about individuals who are, at the end of the day, gamers and human beings as much as I am.
Great article and interesting to hear how differently the two communities are responding to a similar situation based on the dev's interaction with them or lack thereof. The continued drama definitely has had a negative impact on the Alganon community and is the sole reason I left.
The article really conflates two seperate issues in my mind; developer behavior on the one hand and community support on the other.
I'd say the community differences boil down to the difference between a tiny dedicated niche community (Alganon) which by its very nature is caught up in the soap opera because of personal investment and a much broader "fan base" for a massively popular IP like Stargate. Alganons community is caught up in and interested in "the game" with big glowing letters and thus personally invested in the dev process. On the other hand, Stargate fans are fans of the "stargate universe", not a game called "Stargate Universe"...so they can be more divorced from the actual dev BS.
The other side of this is the aspect of corporate behavior. I'm sure many of those here can relate to working in a company like CME or the Alganon team; one with profoundly unprofessional management, office drama and the "eternal crisis" mode of operation. This sort of company and management is all too common in the internet/computer world because of the background and lack of prior experience many of the people bring to it. You simply won't see this sort of childish drama from a truely professional company; they may still fail at producing a decent game but you'd never see idiocy on this scale from say EASports.
I have to agree that the topic of workplace drama bleeding out into the community is by far way to childish for a development company. These days when I look into an MMO I consider the company behind it. I say this because they're building my future virtual home. If that company is in anyway unstable or shows signs of weakness I tend to get turned off and look for something differnt. People bash SOE and Blizzard constantly but honestly you don't hear this kinda junk coming from their studios. EA and Bioware are another good matchup which seems stable and strong.
I like game developers a lot since they make the games I so enjoy playing. However some of them need to grow up and remember that they have a job to do and customers waiting for a product. If I as a customer feel that the company I'm investing in (or plan to) is unstable or 'emotional' then I'll move on and find a more mature group of developers to give my money to. Honestly I wouldn't invest in a cell phone, power, car, or investment company that seemed unstable so why would I invest in an unstable game development studio... some good food for thought.
Have you actually read what these two have been posting about each other the last few weeks? This isn't about them being gamers and being human, this is about two professionals who are doing little more than slinging mud in the most unprofessional manner possible with a game and its community in the crosshairs. This is in addition to the thread locking, and general bs being done on the official forums themselves.
You have to remember MMOs aren't just a product, they're a service. How much faith and money are you going to afford a company whose spokesperson blasts former employees, dominates the forums with empty promises and threats (locking and banning), and for all intensive purposes comes off as an arrogant jerk?
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
Very nice article Jaime, thank you.