Please.If they cant do their jobs, and it appears very much so they cant,then they deserve every complaint they get.
The only thing stupider than a pitty party for the poor devs who turn out crap after crap,is the people trying to tell others the devs dont deserve to be held accountable for the product they sold.And thats all it is a product.Unfortunately for them, its a piss poor product.But thats their fault.NOT OURS.
Ive never in the 5 decades ive been on this earth,seen an industry so inept, and yet have so many foolish people keep saying "Its not their fault" ,"cut them some slack",etc..
There isnt a "AAA" single dev team in the industry right now that deserves to be payed for the product they delivered.wow is of course the exception, and NOT becuase it was quality,but becuase it at least manages to make a decent amount of the industries prospective customers happy enough that they continue to pay for the product.
Every MMO dev out there right now could become shoe salesmen, and the only people that would suffer ,would be the people who needed to buy shoes.The total absence of the devs would actually even improve the MMO industry, as even though the product would not improve,at least the customers wouldnt have to listen to their crying and excuses anymore for why the product is still crap.
To all the devs at Sony,Cryptic,Funcom,Turbine,Mythic,NCSoft,etc.... PLEASE find another industry to work in.There IS something out there you DONT suck at.Your litterally killing the MMO industry.PLEASE, leave it and find that one your not a liability too.
Most of us,including you, will be happier in the long run after you do.
Please.If they cant do their jobs, and it appears very much so they cant,then they deserve every complaint they get.
The only thing stupider than a pitty party for the poor devs who turn out crap after crap,is the people trying to tell others the devs dont deserve to be held accountable for the product they sold.And thats all it is a product.Unfortunately for them, its a piss poor product.But thats their fault.NOT OURS.
Ive never in the 5 decades ive been on this earth,seen an industry so inept, and yet have so many foolish people keep saying "Its not their fault" ,"cut them some slack",etc..
There isnt a "AAA" single dev team in the industry right now that deserves to be payed for the product they delivered.wow is of course the exception, and NOT becuase it was quality,but becuase it at least manages to make a decent amount of the industries prospective customers happy enough that they continue to pay for the product.
Every MMO dev out there right now could become shoe salesmen, and the only people that would suffer ,would be the people who needed to buy shoes.The total absence of the devs would actually even improve the MMO industry, as even though the product would not improve,at least the customers wouldnt have to listen to their crying and excuses anymore for why the product is still crap.
To all the devs at Sony,Cryptic,Funcom,Turbine,Mythic,NCSoft,etc.... PLEASE find another industry to work in.There IS something else out there you DONT suck at.Your litterally killing the MMO industry.PLEASE, leave it and find that one your not a liability too.
Most of us,including you, will be happier in the long run.
LOL. This might be mean... but i wonder what kind of increase theres been in the suicide rate of game developers over the past 5-10 years.
Some of them (as individual people, not necesarily representative of the company & product they put out) really do put everything theyve got into the world of gaming, and creating games for us, but are restricted at every turn by the people paying their checks (directly, as in their boss, not the consumers buying the game) Thats one thing a lot of people fail to realize. It's not the actual developers causing problems, but the suits who run the development company. Im not saying none of the devs are at fault, as im pretty certain there are lots and lots of bad ones, but i know weve all seen plenty of games that started out great and went horribly wrong at some point due to decisions made by the big bosses, not the people actually doing the grunt work.
Raging against the individual developers is like raging at your local bank teller and putting the responsibility of the banks shady lending practices and wasting of billions and billions of our dollars on her shoulders. That teller, much like your developer, is just a small part o fthe picture, and they have little to no say over how things are actually run. They are many times just given orders from above and told "This is what we want, now go make it work/happen". There are many branches to the development process, and while one game may fail due to bad programmers, another may fail due to bad design decisions (made by, you guessed it, Game Designers), and others fail due to simple green and lack of foresight by the people funding it and giving the orders.
Overall though, the majority of the problems come from 3 main areas. Greed, lack of creativity, and poor QA.
The people responsible for those 3 things are who we should be raging against.
If youre going to be greedy and only care about making a quick buck, and dont care about the quality and longevity of the game your workers are producing, then you deserve all the hate you get.
If you go into the Design field of making MMOs, especially heading up a project as a LEAD Designer, and dont have a single original thought/concept about an MMO, and are looking to just copy everything else youve seen and just rename it something else, and then tout it as being unique, revolutionary, original, or any other such nonsense. Or if you refuse to listen to feedback from your players as well as input from your lower ranked team members who might actually have some very good ideas... you deserve all the hate you get.
If youre heading up the QA / testing of a development company, and repeatedly let major, game breaking bugs & performance issue get through and arent ensuring that these biggest issues are a top priority to get fixed, rather than minor details that very few would ever even notice anyway then you deserve all the hate you get.
As someone who used to program for online games.. I have to say.. thanks much for the article.
I do believe that players have a right to complain.. just as devs have a right to ignore them. This goes back to the whole opinion thing.. everyone has one.. right?
Yes, some players DO actually know wtf they're talking about.. however, most players are looking for an immediate fix that works to their benefit. It is a devs job to look at the idea for the fix and follow it through time and see where new bugs might arrise due to said fix. Being a dev is like being a time traveler or a psychic.. and it really blows. O.o Lots of players can't appreciate that the time it takes to look into the future at a fix, will save them from downtime in said future.
Gaming is a drug.. it ruins families, marriages, jobs, etc. However, most people don't view it as such, because it's a 'game' and blahblahblah.. however, in most cases, the people who complain the loudest are the 25yr old virgins who still live at home in mommy and daddy's basement. So again, why should devs listen to you? Oh, right, because you live, breath, eat and sleep the game they only have an interest in for 8-10hrs a day (if possible.. usually its more) if you were a bit more constructive with your comments, people might actually listen to you. Go figure. Spending that downtime outside in the sunlight, might actually cure that virginity problem you seem to have.
When this article was linked to me via Twitter, I laughed so hard. Mostly at the comments. The article rocks.. the comments are full of humour and some are definitely trolls looking for entertainment. I thank you dear trolls, as now my entertainment quota for the day has indeed been fulfilled.
As someone who used to program for online games.. I have to say.. thanks much for the article.
I do believe that players have a right to complain.. just as devs have a right to ignore them. This goes back to the whole opinion thing.. everyone has one.. right?
Yes, some players DO actually know wtf they're talking about.. however, most players are looking for an immediate fix that works to their benefit. It is a devs job to look at the idea for the fix and follow it through time and see where new bugs might arrise due to said fix. Being a dev is like being a time traveler or a psychic.. and it really blows. O.o Lots of players can't appreciate that the time it takes to look into the future at a fix, will save them from downtime in said future.
Gaming is a drug.. it ruins families, marriages, jobs, etc. However, most people don't view it as such, because it's a 'game' and blahblahblah.. however, in most cases, the people who complain the loudest are the 25yr old virgins who still live at home in mommy and daddy's basement. So again, why should devs listen to you? Oh, right, because you live, breath, eat and sleep the game they only have an interest in for 8-10hrs a day (if possible.. usually its more) if you were a bit more constructive with your comments, people might actually listen to you. Go figure. Spending that downtime outside in the sunlight, might actually cure that virginity problem you seem to have.
When this article was linked to me via Twitter, I laughed so hard. Mostly at the comments. The article rocks.. the comments are full of humour and some are definitely trolls looking for entertainment. I thank you dear trolls, as now my entertainment quota for the day has indeed been fulfilled.
Just wondering... have you also had a chance to check out this related article by the same author:
Good article, but over generalizing a bit. Understandably, players may not be able to find the perfect fix to a problem, however, that hardly makes them incapable of finding them and offering potential solutions, some of which may have passed by without developer notice. A LOT of gamers are geeks and many of them go into programming for just this very thing. Now, I understand that a lot of gamers and players have no idea how the system works in the background, however, if they follow the developers closely and look at other, similar products, they can often point out where parts of the game can be improved..
You don't have to be a cook to know if your steak is underdone.
Why is that we should "expect" less than perfection at the release of an MMO? What if you bought a house and there was no kitchen, but the homebuilder said dont worry, Ill have that in there in about 2 months. Heck, what if you bought a new pen, and there was no ink, just a note saying, ink will be developed and installed as soon as possible? It really is utter BS that we hold mmo companies to such low standards. They have alphas, they have betas, do whatever it takes to get it right or don't launch the game. Or, if you need more players to better test systems, open the beta up to more, or extend it. People use the excuse that they "have" to release it due to money reasons, but guess what, just because a car company wants to release early to help with costs, doesnt mean they ship cars without steering wheels. No excuse to mmo developers.
And as far as extended downtime. If its a legitimate unforseeable issue, the community should bear with it. Power outages, short circuits, acts of god, these are things that are extremely hard to predict. However, down time due to patches are unacceptable. Put it up on test servers, put it up on several test servers, fix the problems before it hits live servers. Blizzard is notorious for that, and after all this time, its just unacceptable now, but sadly too many people treat mmo's like other addictions and can't simply drop the game on a whim, and this is why developers take advantage of their player bases, because players are addicts.
Holice, I work for an MMO developer. Usually, when we have someone like you complaining to our tech department, the complaints go largely ignored, because it displays a blind fury in the face of development and is quite frankly insulting to the dev team.
As for broken games... picture this. for a single-player console game, you've got a test team of maybe 50 people or so. They play through, break it, fix it, and repeat until it's set.
with an MMORPG, the testing is different and more user-based simply because 50 QA guys are not going to be able to find bugs and break a game as fast as 2000 players. Using that whole "I paid for the game, give me service" is only valid for maybe a month, because honestly your 50$ box sale barely even qualifies as an hour and a half of one of my workdays in the art department, and we're the underpaid ones, and we're working almost 7 days a week to deliver those patches and updates that people like you want, need, and frankly dont deserve.
Complaints goes largely ignored because they are an insult to the dev team?
Ok, I got you.
How about releasing a buggy and unfinished game is an insult to their customers?
No?
Does devs think that they are rockstars or something?
You could easily think so with all that attitude they are displaying.
All those memories will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
Developers have lives, do they? Chain them to their desks the layabouts! At l(a)unch time let them only eat sacred cows to remind them of their obligations. Oh and they should be exterminated if they do not implement my every design whim, I pay for the game so they owe me at least that!
And shut up those morons who keep whining on the forums will you!
I find this article pointless. It's like saying "The customers always right ... except with MMOs" and that is a boatload of BS. I understand to not freak out over little problems and downtimes but when it comes down to it, it is our money and people are going to get upset when their money feels wasted. Let's take for an example of Warhammer. They said clearly that certain things were coming and never did, I feel that is a perfect time to complain. It's not like people are asking for their money back they are just not going to waste anymore money on it and they have the full right to say why they aren't going to waste anymore money on certain titles. If a dev decides to ignore the consumers demand and straight out lie to them like so many of MMO devs have then they deserve all the BS they get and if they got a problem with it then get a different job.
I am sorry to say but this article is rubbish. Why? Because it forgets the golden rule of any company that sells a product or a service to a customer: The customer is ALWAYS right.
Why is he always right? Because we live in a capitalist society and customer are the one who is financing the whole thing and making things go forward. Somehow in the gaming industry this seems to have been forgotten, or rather neglected. And I say this as I am myself a Software Developer in a major Telecom company.
So to address your points:
5. Developers have lives - Yeah sure they (I) do but it is up to the company to have people available for game/product breaking bugs at all times. Why? Because the customer is paying the money and if you are providing a 24/7 service then they expect to get that service. If they dont they will leave and take their money with them. At our company we have products that are out there 24/7 and we always have a developer on call if a product breaking bug shows up or a customer cannot use our services. Why would gaming companies be special in this regard?
4. Making a game is not a game - Not sure what you want to say with this. Ofcourse making a game is not a game, it is making a living and the reason why the service needs to be top notch or you wont be having customer to pay your living.
3. Again, the customer is always right. The customer is paying for a 24/7 service and should expect to get minimal downtime. I worked on a product where we had strict requirements that an upgrade process should take no longer than an hour, even less if possible. How did we do that? By having rigirous testing phase before going live with the upgrade. Many game companies seem to skip as much as testing as possible and do their main testing on their live servers, hence the so many problems. Thats a big no no for professional products but again gaming companies seem to be special in this case.
2. You dont know to to fix it - Well yeah ofcourse customer does not know how to fix it, most customers are idiots. But again, the customer is always right. So if that idiot customer is voicing his complaints then you as a service provider must listen to him and be polite, even if you dont do as he says (because he is an idiot). Why? Yeah you guess it, he pays the money.
1. This one entirely depends on the company. Like I said I am working for a major telecom company and our customers expect a certain quality and customer service from us, that is why they pick us over other smaller, less known companies. And the same should apply to gaming companies, if Blizzard release a game then naturally people have higher expectations and this applies to famous IPs as well. For example, Star Trek online was a major dissapointment not so much because the game itself but rather that it was based on one of the biggest IPs ever.
So I would reject this list as nothing but an excuse for gaming companies to produce crap. Gaming companies are no exception and should adhere to the same standards as other software companies and I currently dont think they do because they are producing just games right? No, they are producing a commercial software which they are charging for and could potentially make alot of money from, so they should hold to the same standards as any other software company.
#5: I am a consumer. If I am not happy with your product, then I won't purchase it and won't recommend it to others. This includes on launch day. No I don't care about your lives or the fact that MMOs are different software. I am a consumer, and I speak with my wallet.
#4-#1: Same as above.
5 things every MMO player should remember:
#5: For every one of you complaining, there are 100 who don't care in the least
#4-#1: Same as above.
So? How does matter if some other customers/fanboys dont care. I dont care if you dont care, what I care about is if the company providing the service care. If they do then we will pay them, if they dont we dont pay them and then they may not get enough capital to keep going. Simple as that.
#2. yeah we as a community kinda do have a pretty good idea of how to fix it. notice how i said WE not I. Not all of as are idiots.
This. Sometimes the players know a lot more than the devs about certain aspects of the game, as the devs simply don't play the game in the same way (if at all)...
It's rarely that simple. More often than not, the "community" of a game will be split on how to fix something, or whether or not something is actually a problem.
In that case, which "community" should be listened to? Which side is the "no-brainer"?
Whichever side doesn't get their way will proclaim "epic fail". Such is the MMO landscape.
I think some ancient civilization came up with a way to solve this "issue" and I think it was called "Democracy". And a tool which I think was called "polls" was used to get and estimation of their voices heard.
Obviously not everyone can be pleased but pleasing the majority of customers is better than pleasing no one (or just the diehard-fans).
I dont know why, but when I saw this title I thought it was going to be in game things like always loot your kill.
But since I'm here now theres no turning back.
I'm not an IT developer and I've never worked for a software company. But I do have an incredibly complex job that requires me to memorize many details simultaneously and make split desions. When I make wrong choices or errors people die. Boy you can imagine the nerd rage in that forum. In the real world, "I have a life", or "I'm underpaid" isnt a valid reason to justify a mistake.
I have a life. im underpaid. I'm still repsonsible for my actions to those that have invested in me. Even 24/7
5 Things to remember about your customers, thats us
5, We buy the games and pay the subscriptions that your publisher needs to pay your wages.
4. We buy the games and pay the subscriptions that your publisher needs to pay your wages.
3. We buy the games and pay the subscriptions that your publisher needs to pay your wages.
2. We buy the games and pay the subscriptions that your publisher needs to pay your wages.
1. We buy the games and pay the subscriptions that your publisher needs to pay your wages.
So when we piss you off, which we will, and when we are being unreasonable in our expectations, understand its generally because you make a product we love and want to see grow and improve. It also means we will continue to subscribe and pay your wages.
Owned, /sign, Amen, or whatever. All your base are belong to Kothoses if you like.
Please.If they cant do their jobs, and it appears very much so they cant,then they deserve every complaint they get.
The only thing stupider than a pitty party for the poor devs who turn out crap after crap,is the people trying to tell others the devs dont deserve to be held accountable for the product they sold.And thats all it is a product.Unfortunately for them, its a piss poor product.But thats their fault.NOT OURS.
Ive never in the 5 decades ive been on this earth,seen an industry so inept, and yet have so many foolish people keep saying "Its not their fault" ,"cut them some slack",etc..
There isnt a "AAA" single dev team in the industry right now that deserves to be payed for the product they delivered.wow is of course the exception, and NOT becuase it was quality,but becuase it at least manages to make a decent amount of the industries prospective customers happy enough that they continue to pay for the product.
Every MMO dev out there right now could become shoe salesmen, and the only people that would suffer ,would be the people who needed to buy shoes.The total absence of the devs would actually even improve the MMO industry, as even though the product would not improve,at least the customers wouldnt have to listen to their crying and excuses anymore for why the product is still crap.
To all the devs at Sony,Cryptic,Funcom,Turbine,Mythic,NCSoft,etc.... PLEASE find another industry to work in.There IS something else out there you DONT suck at.Your litterally killing the MMO industry.PLEASE, leave it and find that one your not a liability too.
Most of us,including you, will be happier in the long run.
If youre heading up the QA / testing of a development company, and repeatedly let major, game breaking bugs & performance issue get through and arent ensuring that these biggest issues are a top priority to get fixed, rather than minor details that very few would ever even notice anyway then you deserve all the hate you get.
Ahh QA.
I work as IT Support in a Game Development lab in a major university now, but i spent my formative years working QA at Rockstar.
Once again it all comes down to suits and the person with the final say so. Right up until release i was finding class A game breaking bugs but i run it up the flag pole and what i get back is. "Sony want the game GOLD by 24th of month" we have no time to fix this issue, should be release a patch for the game we will fix it then"
This was before online console gaming was so popular so there never would really be a patch. Go back and play GTA: San Andreas on PS2 and i bet there are 100 different ways i could kill the game. Games ship with herendous amounts of bugs, QA find them but its up to the men in suits still to say whats important enough to get fixed.
Other bugs are downright impossible to recreate, i spent 5 consecutive 12 hour days driving a taxi in San Andreas crashing into things trying to recreate a bug that would cause the sound to drop completely from the game, i couldnt do it just wasnt able to recreate it even though we all agreed it was a horrific class A game breaking bug.
Go read the gamespot review for san andreas and it loses points for all game sounds randomly dropping out of the game.
Game development is really very complex, things that fix one thing break another, if devs had infinite time we would end up with another duke nukem saga but we cant continue letting publishers shove games out early we need a happy medium but as people get more money hungry the devs and everyone else gets over worked so the man in the suit can get his investment back and more.
Please.If they cant do their jobs, and it appears very much so they cant,then they deserve every complaint they get.
The only thing stupider than a pitty party for the poor devs who turn out crap after crap,is the people trying to tell others the devs dont deserve to be held accountable for the product they sold.And thats all it is a product.Unfortunately for them, its a piss poor product.But thats their fault.NOT OURS.
Ive never in the 5 decades ive been on this earth,seen an industry so inept, and yet have so many foolish people keep saying "Its not their fault" ,"cut them some slack",etc..
There isnt a "AAA" single dev team in the industry right now that deserves to be payed for the product they delivered.wow is of course the exception, and NOT becuase it was quality,but becuase it at least manages to make a decent amount of the industries prospective customers happy enough that they continue to pay for the product.
Every MMO dev out there right now could become shoe salesmen, and the only people that would suffer ,would be the people who needed to buy shoes.The total absence of the devs would actually even improve the MMO industry, as even though the product would not improve,at least the customers wouldnt have to listen to their crying and excuses anymore for why the product is still crap.
To all the devs at Sony,Cryptic,Funcom,Turbine,Mythic,NCSoft,etc.... PLEASE find another industry to work in.There IS something else out there you DONT suck at.Your litterally killing the MMO industry.PLEASE, leave it and find that one your not a liability too.
Most of us,including you, will be happier in the long run.
If youre heading up the QA / testing of a development company, and repeatedly let major, game breaking bugs & performance issue get through and arent ensuring that these biggest issues are a top priority to get fixed, rather than minor details that very few would ever even notice anyway then you deserve all the hate you get.
Ahh QA.
I work as IT Support in a Game Development lab in a major university now, but i spent my formative years working QA at Rockstar.
Once again it all comes down to suits and the person with the final say so. Right up until release i was finding class A game breaking bugs but i run it up the flag pole and what i get back is. "Sony want the game GOLD by 24th of month" we have no time to fix this issue, should be release a patch for the game we will fix it then"
This was before online console gaming was so popular so there never would really be a patch. Go back and play GTA: San Andreas on PS2 and i bet there are 100 different ways i could kill the game. Games ship with herendous amounts of bugs, QA find them but its up to the men in suits still to say whats important enough to get fixed.
Other bugs are downright impossible to recreate, i spent 5 consecutive 12 hour days driving a taxi in San Andreas crashing into things trying to recreate a bug that would cause the sound to drop completely from the game, i couldnt do it just wasnt able to recreate it even though we all agreed it was a horrific class A game breaking bug.
Go read the gamespot review for san andreas and it loses points for all game sounds randomly dropping out of the game.
Game development is really very complex, things that fix one thing break another, if devs had infinite time we would end up with another duke nukem saga but we cant continue letting publishers shove games out early we need a happy medium but as people get more money hungry the devs and everyone else gets over worked so the man in the suit can get his investment back and more.
I am sure building spaceships is complex too. If a dev can't handle his job or doesn't want to deal with the crap of it, I would love to take the job.
Developers who dont like dealing with "unrealistic player expectations" should take a moment to stop and consider where those expectations came from in the first place.
Whatever this is a cop out! Developers NEED to "win the hearts of gamers" if they dont they make no money.
The games (like EVE Online) that are well made and use the insight and critisism of gamers last. The ones who don't (like WoW) have spikes of membership newbs who don't know better, joining cause it's the "in thing" to do.
If you can't take the heat get the **** out of the kitchen (where I'm playing EVE)!
#5 We all get game designers have lives...really no one expects them to be at beck and call but we do expect customer service when we require it from someone. And that is lacking.
#4 Yes we realize making games are hard, we also realize the designers themselves should know this and not make promises and create hype they can not meet either with that in mind.
#3 That is correct the world does not end with down time. We all get regular downtime and even understand that it will usually go a little over the time frame they give us. That is not what gets people pissed.
#2 You do not know how to fix it, almost all of us realize this but we do like providing what we think would work, however lately a lot fo the game designers do not get how to fix it either.
#1 The easy simply solution to this is stop promising, hyping, promoting every litte think you expect your game will be able to do 2 years before it comes out. As with #4 it is hard make these games, stop promising and hyping things you may not be able to deliver.
Some has already mentioned this, but I want to add a little something: Developers are not the end all, do all when it comes to the game, the launch, the updates, the patches or its ups and downs. Money is what decides these things, and if you follow your precious $50.00 purchase price, or your monthly fee, THEN and only then will you know who to blame for what happens.
Everything starts with a scheme on how to make money. Calculations are done, and a timeline is drawn out as to how long and how much money it will take to see the scheme realized. With that expectation in mind (which may/may not have been done with the help of a consultant that specializes in MMOs, work gets started.
After all needed parties are hired and work begins on the product, real time schedules get fleshed out. Almost always at this time, developers are the first to ring out: We will need more time (money) to get your vision to fruition. Which is promptly replied back to: Find a way to do it with what has been given. End result... some corners are cut. Who are we blaming?
Fast forward a few years when the game is supposed to be ready for alpha and beta testing, and the feedback is "things need to be changed", and again, the developers have to go back to the suits and let them know they need more time (money) to flesh things out more because of some feedback... and again the response is: do it with what you have.. After some back and forth and devs stating that it will be impossible to have a working game without more time, then we get the push-backs we are so accustomed to when it comes to the starts of betas and/or releases to the games.
After all funds set aside have been exhausted by the development team, and new fresh money is needed, THEN the game has to go gold as-is, so that the purchase of the game can bring in the needed funds to continue the cleaning up of the game. Unfortunately, that means that the games come out with many faults. If the subscriptions are high enough after a few months, then more people can be hired to the team to flesh out whatever faults the game has, while at the same moment creating new content and expansions, which in turn cause more faults, for which more time (money) needs to be used.
Who is at fault? Is it that the developers don't WANT to release a good game? Extremely doubtful. More likely the time (money) needed to get it perfect is not available... Even in very popular MMOs like WoW, money ends up being the main issue on how things get done. In WoW's case, they feel like they got it right and do not want to change a single thing... so they wait years for any changes. As soon as they see their funds slow down, the suits give the go ahead to do big changes... again, not Devs faults.
Heck, even the NGE for Star Wars was not the devs deciding they needed to make this change. It was the suits that felt it was a needed change, and thought the players would not mind. The player's wallets spoke out and the MMO industry forever remembers not to do overhauls to an already released game.
Meh, I am rambling, take my words with whatever seasoning you want.
#2. yeah we as a community kinda do have a pretty good idea of how to fix it. notice how i said WE not I. Not all of as are idiots.
This. Sometimes the players know a lot more than the devs about certain aspects of the game, as the devs simply don't play the game in the same way (if at all)...
It's rarely that simple. More often than not, the "community" of a game will be split on how to fix something, or whether or not something is actually a problem.
In that case, which "community" should be listened to? Which side is the "no-brainer"?
Whichever side doesn't get their way will proclaim "epic fail". Such is the MMO landscape.
Funny.... this doesn't look like the MMO landscape at all. It looks like that dirty word everyone hates discussing in their precious 'game time': politics!!
Now that I've made that point, I seriously doubt anyone will want to discuss the Middle East, N. Korea, irresponsible oil companies, etc in the 'game' and still will want to argue about how to fix issues.
I just want to make a few comments on the 'get it right' issues. I'm not going to disagree with anyone making that statement. As software developers, we should 'get it right' the first time or fix it in short order.
In the game industry, the financial transactions used to be two sided: a developer designed, programmed, and published a game. It was hard to get seen even if you were good. During this period, games that were flawed didn't make it at all and left a bad taste that might have ruined your future. Income was completely tied to how many copies of a game sold, not by how many milestones you made and the contract you could negotiate with your publisher. There are still independant developers out there, though, that are completely happy with this.
Today, it's three sided: Publisher, Developer/development studio, consumer. (Rare is the single person designed game, and almost never seen in MMOs.) Developers get seen much easier and they likely will make more money on the average per title developed (even if it doesn't make it to release, a company still gets a 'sign on' amount and milestone payments). The flip side to this: if the developer has to meet those milestones. If the developer doesn't, he/she can get the game pulled. 'Fortunately,' the publisher isn't so worried about bugs as long as people will buy the game and make the money back that was invested in the studio. (Fortunately for the developer, at least, but not for the consumer.) This three way struggle generally leaves nobody happy except those that only care that their making their share of the pie. (Excepting those few games that really do meet and exceed expectations.)
Now, those that want to complain about developers not getting it right, do one thing: quit chasing the 'holy grail' of newly released titles. In my 30 years as a gamer, the only thing that has changed is the size of the worlds and quality of the graphics. (Oh, and the budget needed to push those pixels out.) The best games came out when publishers didn't have their fingers crammed in the pie like in certain movies.
One more thing:
@ whoever brought up the house analogy: It's flawed. A house in thousands of times simpler to design and build than software namely because the tools are simple in design (a square, a hammer, a saw, a rule, and maybe a shovel). Yet even with that simplicity, how many new homes have to have the builders come back out in the first few years to fix something that wasn't done right? Leaking roofs or plumbing, bad ventilation, bad insulaiton, leaking basement... I could go on. Even comparing software engineering to other engineering disciplines is rough because they have set rules to work by and tools that have been in use for decades or centuries. Compared to even the smallest of MMOs, basic game design is as simple as building a house. When you throw in thousands of players, the chances of exploits, and class/skill balancing, things get so complex I'm amazed some of the titles that have made it to market and are even moderately successful have done so, bugs or no bugs.
One thing to keep in mind, especially when looking at Developers, is that the guy writing code, or making changes to a game is generally doing so under the direction of someone who is supposed to be an expert in their specific subject matter. For example, using the hypothetical 'Raid' scenerio above where a dungeon is rendered unbeatable, only to be scaled back later, the Dev team is giving metrics and specifics to code against, and they simply apply the appropriate numbers. The guy writing code MAY know that the change is bad and can bring it up for discussion, but ultimately has to do what he is tasked with.
As for bugs in product... As a careered Software Test Engineer/Quality Assurance guy, I can tell you that MOST Testers/QA folk bust their asses trying to find flaws before a product hits the open market, and that no one wants to see a big Bug manifest in the wild. However, every line of code is an opportunity for an error to creep in, and not every event, condition and possibility can be tested against. The test environment can be set to simulate real world environments, but still falls short of the real thing. In my own past testing experience I know that I was unable to isolate and identify a defect that made it into the real world where it was finally caught because the event was a race condition that could not be reproduced without using a specific vendors DSL. Using the specific parameters of the vendors DSL, we were able to later simulate the environment in the lab and identify, track and fix the defect, but without the help of the vendor, we would never have come up with the exact combination of issues that made the bug manifest in the real world.
That all said, I do agree that a product that is available on a shelf should be stable, and playable from the moment you install. It is absolutely inexcusable for products to be forced though the channel when they are not consumer ready.
Comments
Please.If they cant do their jobs, and it appears very much so they cant,then they deserve every complaint they get.
The only thing stupider than a pitty party for the poor devs who turn out crap after crap,is the people trying to tell others the devs dont deserve to be held accountable for the product they sold.And thats all it is a product.Unfortunately for them, its a piss poor product.But thats their fault.NOT OURS.
Ive never in the 5 decades ive been on this earth,seen an industry so inept, and yet have so many foolish people keep saying "Its not their fault" ,"cut them some slack",etc..
There isnt a "AAA" single dev team in the industry right now that deserves to be payed for the product they delivered.wow is of course the exception, and NOT becuase it was quality,but becuase it at least manages to make a decent amount of the industries prospective customers happy enough that they continue to pay for the product.
Every MMO dev out there right now could become shoe salesmen, and the only people that would suffer ,would be the people who needed to buy shoes.The total absence of the devs would actually even improve the MMO industry, as even though the product would not improve,at least the customers wouldnt have to listen to their crying and excuses anymore for why the product is still crap.
To all the devs at Sony,Cryptic,Funcom,Turbine,Mythic,NCSoft,etc.... PLEASE find another industry to work in.There IS something out there you DONT suck at.Your litterally killing the MMO industry.PLEASE, leave it and find that one your not a liability too.
Most of us,including you, will be happier in the long run after you do.
LOL. This might be mean... but i wonder what kind of increase theres been in the suicide rate of game developers over the past 5-10 years.
Some of them (as individual people, not necesarily representative of the company & product they put out) really do put everything theyve got into the world of gaming, and creating games for us, but are restricted at every turn by the people paying their checks (directly, as in their boss, not the consumers buying the game) Thats one thing a lot of people fail to realize. It's not the actual developers causing problems, but the suits who run the development company. Im not saying none of the devs are at fault, as im pretty certain there are lots and lots of bad ones, but i know weve all seen plenty of games that started out great and went horribly wrong at some point due to decisions made by the big bosses, not the people actually doing the grunt work.
Raging against the individual developers is like raging at your local bank teller and putting the responsibility of the banks shady lending practices and wasting of billions and billions of our dollars on her shoulders. That teller, much like your developer, is just a small part o fthe picture, and they have little to no say over how things are actually run. They are many times just given orders from above and told "This is what we want, now go make it work/happen". There are many branches to the development process, and while one game may fail due to bad programmers, another may fail due to bad design decisions (made by, you guessed it, Game Designers), and others fail due to simple green and lack of foresight by the people funding it and giving the orders.
Overall though, the majority of the problems come from 3 main areas. Greed, lack of creativity, and poor QA.
The people responsible for those 3 things are who we should be raging against.
If youre going to be greedy and only care about making a quick buck, and dont care about the quality and longevity of the game your workers are producing, then you deserve all the hate you get.
If you go into the Design field of making MMOs, especially heading up a project as a LEAD Designer, and dont have a single original thought/concept about an MMO, and are looking to just copy everything else youve seen and just rename it something else, and then tout it as being unique, revolutionary, original, or any other such nonsense. Or if you refuse to listen to feedback from your players as well as input from your lower ranked team members who might actually have some very good ideas... you deserve all the hate you get.
If youre heading up the QA / testing of a development company, and repeatedly let major, game breaking bugs & performance issue get through and arent ensuring that these biggest issues are a top priority to get fixed, rather than minor details that very few would ever even notice anyway then you deserve all the hate you get.
As someone who used to program for online games.. I have to say.. thanks much for the article.
I do believe that players have a right to complain.. just as devs have a right to ignore them. This goes back to the whole opinion thing.. everyone has one.. right?
Yes, some players DO actually know wtf they're talking about.. however, most players are looking for an immediate fix that works to their benefit. It is a devs job to look at the idea for the fix and follow it through time and see where new bugs might arrise due to said fix. Being a dev is like being a time traveler or a psychic.. and it really blows. O.o Lots of players can't appreciate that the time it takes to look into the future at a fix, will save them from downtime in said future.
Gaming is a drug.. it ruins families, marriages, jobs, etc. However, most people don't view it as such, because it's a 'game' and blahblahblah.. however, in most cases, the people who complain the loudest are the 25yr old virgins who still live at home in mommy and daddy's basement. So again, why should devs listen to you? Oh, right, because you live, breath, eat and sleep the game they only have an interest in for 8-10hrs a day (if possible.. usually its more) if you were a bit more constructive with your comments, people might actually listen to you. Go figure. Spending that downtime outside in the sunlight, might actually cure that virginity problem you seem to have.
When this article was linked to me via Twitter, I laughed so hard. Mostly at the comments. The article rocks.. the comments are full of humour and some are definitely trolls looking for entertainment. I thank you dear trolls, as now my entertainment quota for the day has indeed been fulfilled.
I agree with everything except #3. You about need a gas mask to go outside in some places these days.
Just wondering... have you also had a chance to check out this related article by the same author:
http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/4237/page/1
Good article, but over generalizing a bit. Understandably, players may not be able to find the perfect fix to a problem, however, that hardly makes them incapable of finding them and offering potential solutions, some of which may have passed by without developer notice. A LOT of gamers are geeks and many of them go into programming for just this very thing. Now, I understand that a lot of gamers and players have no idea how the system works in the background, however, if they follow the developers closely and look at other, similar products, they can often point out where parts of the game can be improved..
You don't have to be a cook to know if your steak is underdone.
Complaints goes largely ignored because they are an insult to the dev team?
Ok, I got you.
How about releasing a buggy and unfinished game is an insult to their customers?
No?
Does devs think that they are rockstars or something?
You could easily think so with all that attitude they are displaying.
All those memories will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
Developers have lives, do they? Chain them to their desks the layabouts! At l(a)unch time let them only eat sacred cows to remind them of their obligations. Oh and they should be exterminated if they do not implement my every design whim, I pay for the game so they owe me at least that!
And shut up those morons who keep whining on the forums will you!
Signed
Chief Executive Suit at your MMO
I find this article pointless. It's like saying "The customers always right ... except with MMOs" and that is a boatload of BS. I understand to not freak out over little problems and downtimes but when it comes down to it, it is our money and people are going to get upset when their money feels wasted. Let's take for an example of Warhammer. They said clearly that certain things were coming and never did, I feel that is a perfect time to complain. It's not like people are asking for their money back they are just not going to waste anymore money on it and they have the full right to say why they aren't going to waste anymore money on certain titles. If a dev decides to ignore the consumers demand and straight out lie to them like so many of MMO devs have then they deserve all the BS they get and if they got a problem with it then get a different job.
I am sorry to say but this article is rubbish. Why? Because it forgets the golden rule of any company that sells a product or a service to a customer: The customer is ALWAYS right.
Why is he always right? Because we live in a capitalist society and customer are the one who is financing the whole thing and making things go forward. Somehow in the gaming industry this seems to have been forgotten, or rather neglected. And I say this as I am myself a Software Developer in a major Telecom company.
So to address your points:
5. Developers have lives - Yeah sure they (I) do but it is up to the company to have people available for game/product breaking bugs at all times. Why? Because the customer is paying the money and if you are providing a 24/7 service then they expect to get that service. If they dont they will leave and take their money with them. At our company we have products that are out there 24/7 and we always have a developer on call if a product breaking bug shows up or a customer cannot use our services. Why would gaming companies be special in this regard?
4. Making a game is not a game - Not sure what you want to say with this. Ofcourse making a game is not a game, it is making a living and the reason why the service needs to be top notch or you wont be having customer to pay your living.
3. Again, the customer is always right. The customer is paying for a 24/7 service and should expect to get minimal downtime. I worked on a product where we had strict requirements that an upgrade process should take no longer than an hour, even less if possible. How did we do that? By having rigirous testing phase before going live with the upgrade. Many game companies seem to skip as much as testing as possible and do their main testing on their live servers, hence the so many problems. Thats a big no no for professional products but again gaming companies seem to be special in this case.
2. You dont know to to fix it - Well yeah ofcourse customer does not know how to fix it, most customers are idiots. But again, the customer is always right. So if that idiot customer is voicing his complaints then you as a service provider must listen to him and be polite, even if you dont do as he says (because he is an idiot). Why? Yeah you guess it, he pays the money.
1. This one entirely depends on the company. Like I said I am working for a major telecom company and our customers expect a certain quality and customer service from us, that is why they pick us over other smaller, less known companies. And the same should apply to gaming companies, if Blizzard release a game then naturally people have higher expectations and this applies to famous IPs as well. For example, Star Trek online was a major dissapointment not so much because the game itself but rather that it was based on one of the biggest IPs ever.
So I would reject this list as nothing but an excuse for gaming companies to produce crap. Gaming companies are no exception and should adhere to the same standards as other software companies and I currently dont think they do because they are producing just games right? No, they are producing a commercial software which they are charging for and could potentially make alot of money from, so they should hold to the same standards as any other software company.
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So? How does matter if some other customers/fanboys dont care. I dont care if you dont care, what I care about is if the company providing the service care. If they do then we will pay them, if they dont we dont pay them and then they may not get enough capital to keep going. Simple as that.
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I think some ancient civilization came up with a way to solve this "issue" and I think it was called "Democracy". And a tool which I think was called "polls" was used to get and estimation of their voices heard.
Obviously not everyone can be pleased but pleasing the majority of customers is better than pleasing no one (or just the diehard-fans).
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I dont know why, but when I saw this title I thought it was going to be in game things like always loot your kill.
But since I'm here now theres no turning back.
I'm not an IT developer and I've never worked for a software company. But I do have an incredibly complex job that requires me to memorize many details simultaneously and make split desions. When I make wrong choices or errors people die. Boy you can imagine the nerd rage in that forum. In the real world, "I have a life", or "I'm underpaid" isnt a valid reason to justify a mistake.
I have a life. im underpaid. I'm still repsonsible for my actions to those that have invested in me. Even 24/7
Ahh QA.
I work as IT Support in a Game Development lab in a major university now, but i spent my formative years working QA at Rockstar.
Once again it all comes down to suits and the person with the final say so. Right up until release i was finding class A game breaking bugs but i run it up the flag pole and what i get back is. "Sony want the game GOLD by 24th of month" we have no time to fix this issue, should be release a patch for the game we will fix it then"
This was before online console gaming was so popular so there never would really be a patch. Go back and play GTA: San Andreas on PS2 and i bet there are 100 different ways i could kill the game. Games ship with herendous amounts of bugs, QA find them but its up to the men in suits still to say whats important enough to get fixed.
Other bugs are downright impossible to recreate, i spent 5 consecutive 12 hour days driving a taxi in San Andreas crashing into things trying to recreate a bug that would cause the sound to drop completely from the game, i couldnt do it just wasnt able to recreate it even though we all agreed it was a horrific class A game breaking bug.
Go read the gamespot review for san andreas and it loses points for all game sounds randomly dropping out of the game.
Game development is really very complex, things that fix one thing break another, if devs had infinite time we would end up with another duke nukem saga but we cant continue letting publishers shove games out early we need a happy medium but as people get more money hungry the devs and everyone else gets over worked so the man in the suit can get his investment back and more.
I am sure building spaceships is complex too. If a dev can't handle his job or doesn't want to deal with the crap of it, I would love to take the job.
Developers who dont like dealing with "unrealistic player expectations" should take a moment to stop and consider where those expectations came from in the first place.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Whatever this is a cop out! Developers NEED to "win the hearts of gamers" if they dont they make no money.
The games (like EVE Online) that are well made and use the insight and critisism of gamers last. The ones who don't (like WoW) have spikes of membership newbs who don't know better, joining cause it's the "in thing" to do.
If you can't take the heat get the **** out of the kitchen (where I'm playing EVE)!
WTF podded again?
#5 We all get game designers have lives...really no one expects them to be at beck and call but we do expect customer service when we require it from someone. And that is lacking.
#4 Yes we realize making games are hard, we also realize the designers themselves should know this and not make promises and create hype they can not meet either with that in mind.
#3 That is correct the world does not end with down time. We all get regular downtime and even understand that it will usually go a little over the time frame they give us. That is not what gets people pissed.
#2 You do not know how to fix it, almost all of us realize this but we do like providing what we think would work, however lately a lot fo the game designers do not get how to fix it either.
#1 The easy simply solution to this is stop promising, hyping, promoting every litte think you expect your game will be able to do 2 years before it comes out. As with #4 it is hard make these games, stop promising and hyping things you may not be able to deliver.
Cryptic?
#0. November 15, 2005.
That directly contradicts your #1, but meh. Otherwise, I agree with everyone else spouting an opinion. Especially the contradicting ones.
There's a sucker born every minute. - P.T. Barnum
Some has already mentioned this, but I want to add a little something: Developers are not the end all, do all when it comes to the game, the launch, the updates, the patches or its ups and downs. Money is what decides these things, and if you follow your precious $50.00 purchase price, or your monthly fee, THEN and only then will you know who to blame for what happens.
Everything starts with a scheme on how to make money. Calculations are done, and a timeline is drawn out as to how long and how much money it will take to see the scheme realized. With that expectation in mind (which may/may not have been done with the help of a consultant that specializes in MMOs, work gets started.
After all needed parties are hired and work begins on the product, real time schedules get fleshed out. Almost always at this time, developers are the first to ring out: We will need more time (money) to get your vision to fruition. Which is promptly replied back to: Find a way to do it with what has been given. End result... some corners are cut. Who are we blaming?
Fast forward a few years when the game is supposed to be ready for alpha and beta testing, and the feedback is "things need to be changed", and again, the developers have to go back to the suits and let them know they need more time (money) to flesh things out more because of some feedback... and again the response is: do it with what you have.. After some back and forth and devs stating that it will be impossible to have a working game without more time, then we get the push-backs we are so accustomed to when it comes to the starts of betas and/or releases to the games.
After all funds set aside have been exhausted by the development team, and new fresh money is needed, THEN the game has to go gold as-is, so that the purchase of the game can bring in the needed funds to continue the cleaning up of the game. Unfortunately, that means that the games come out with many faults. If the subscriptions are high enough after a few months, then more people can be hired to the team to flesh out whatever faults the game has, while at the same moment creating new content and expansions, which in turn cause more faults, for which more time (money) needs to be used.
Who is at fault? Is it that the developers don't WANT to release a good game? Extremely doubtful. More likely the time (money) needed to get it perfect is not available... Even in very popular MMOs like WoW, money ends up being the main issue on how things get done. In WoW's case, they feel like they got it right and do not want to change a single thing... so they wait years for any changes. As soon as they see their funds slow down, the suits give the go ahead to do big changes... again, not Devs faults.
Heck, even the NGE for Star Wars was not the devs deciding they needed to make this change. It was the suits that felt it was a needed change, and thought the players would not mind. The player's wallets spoke out and the MMO industry forever remembers not to do overhauls to an already released game.
Meh, I am rambling, take my words with whatever seasoning you want.
Funny.... this doesn't look like the MMO landscape at all. It looks like that dirty word everyone hates discussing in their precious 'game time': politics!!
Now that I've made that point, I seriously doubt anyone will want to discuss the Middle East, N. Korea, irresponsible oil companies, etc in the 'game' and still will want to argue about how to fix issues.
I just want to make a few comments on the 'get it right' issues. I'm not going to disagree with anyone making that statement. As software developers, we should 'get it right' the first time or fix it in short order.
In the game industry, the financial transactions used to be two sided: a developer designed, programmed, and published a game. It was hard to get seen even if you were good. During this period, games that were flawed didn't make it at all and left a bad taste that might have ruined your future. Income was completely tied to how many copies of a game sold, not by how many milestones you made and the contract you could negotiate with your publisher. There are still independant developers out there, though, that are completely happy with this.
Today, it's three sided: Publisher, Developer/development studio, consumer. (Rare is the single person designed game, and almost never seen in MMOs.) Developers get seen much easier and they likely will make more money on the average per title developed (even if it doesn't make it to release, a company still gets a 'sign on' amount and milestone payments). The flip side to this: if the developer has to meet those milestones. If the developer doesn't, he/she can get the game pulled. 'Fortunately,' the publisher isn't so worried about bugs as long as people will buy the game and make the money back that was invested in the studio. (Fortunately for the developer, at least, but not for the consumer.) This three way struggle generally leaves nobody happy except those that only care that their making their share of the pie. (Excepting those few games that really do meet and exceed expectations.)
Now, those that want to complain about developers not getting it right, do one thing: quit chasing the 'holy grail' of newly released titles. In my 30 years as a gamer, the only thing that has changed is the size of the worlds and quality of the graphics. (Oh, and the budget needed to push those pixels out.) The best games came out when publishers didn't have their fingers crammed in the pie like in certain movies.
One more thing:
@ whoever brought up the house analogy: It's flawed. A house in thousands of times simpler to design and build than software namely because the tools are simple in design (a square, a hammer, a saw, a rule, and maybe a shovel). Yet even with that simplicity, how many new homes have to have the builders come back out in the first few years to fix something that wasn't done right? Leaking roofs or plumbing, bad ventilation, bad insulaiton, leaking basement... I could go on. Even comparing software engineering to other engineering disciplines is rough because they have set rules to work by and tools that have been in use for decades or centuries. Compared to even the smallest of MMOs, basic game design is as simple as building a house. When you throw in thousands of players, the chances of exploits, and class/skill balancing, things get so complex I'm amazed some of the titles that have made it to market and are even moderately successful have done so, bugs or no bugs.
One thing to keep in mind, especially when looking at Developers, is that the guy writing code, or making changes to a game is generally doing so under the direction of someone who is supposed to be an expert in their specific subject matter. For example, using the hypothetical 'Raid' scenerio above where a dungeon is rendered unbeatable, only to be scaled back later, the Dev team is giving metrics and specifics to code against, and they simply apply the appropriate numbers. The guy writing code MAY know that the change is bad and can bring it up for discussion, but ultimately has to do what he is tasked with.
As for bugs in product... As a careered Software Test Engineer/Quality Assurance guy, I can tell you that MOST Testers/QA folk bust their asses trying to find flaws before a product hits the open market, and that no one wants to see a big Bug manifest in the wild. However, every line of code is an opportunity for an error to creep in, and not every event, condition and possibility can be tested against. The test environment can be set to simulate real world environments, but still falls short of the real thing. In my own past testing experience I know that I was unable to isolate and identify a defect that made it into the real world where it was finally caught because the event was a race condition that could not be reproduced without using a specific vendors DSL. Using the specific parameters of the vendors DSL, we were able to later simulate the environment in the lab and identify, track and fix the defect, but without the help of the vendor, we would never have come up with the exact combination of issues that made the bug manifest in the real world.
That all said, I do agree that a product that is available on a shelf should be stable, and playable from the moment you install. It is absolutely inexcusable for products to be forced though the channel when they are not consumer ready.