Players are customers. Developers are the product makers. Normally the customer buys the product and that's the end of it. However MMOs require the customer to continue to pay each month. That changes the relationship significantly. That is what makes players entitled to certain things I believe. They are right as well. I am paying for access to the game content I purchased. (That initial purchase isn't even to play the game but simply to have the content on a disc along with 30 days free access.) With that access I'm also paying for the continued development of said game (from upkeep of servers to the salaries of those working on the game as they make new content). If I don't like the changes I'm helping to fund (at this point I'm apart of the development process like it or not) I have a right to voice my opinion on what the developers are doing. This is why I have serious issues with bannings from games without any refunds (cost of the initial purchase and monthly fee (prorate). Yet that's another topic.
If developers and publishers do not wish for this to happen. Or wish for the customer and developer relationship to not the way it is now then something very simply needs to take place. Drop the monthly payment. Allow players to access the content offline right out of the box. Go to a Free to Pay model.
Players don't own developers any kind words. We are giving them money for their product. Without customers they don't have a job. They need us more then we need them. We'll be fine without their game if it comes to that.
When developers make changes in the game those playing are directly affected. If I'm paying for something consistently and what a developer does affects my enjoyment of the game I'll voice my opinion. I'm entitled to enjoy the product my money is being spent on.
Another issue is over promising. Here's an idea. Why don't developers keep their mouths shut until certain features are actually in the game during development. Then and only then announce what is actual in the game not what will be. That would solve a LOT of issues on this front in terms of the hate directed at them. The outright lying needs to stop as well. If you designed the game a certain way then say so. Don't try to talk to customers as if they are stupid. We see through the lies.
Jon Wood, and to all you other whinny pussy "Game" developers out there, get over your egos!!!!! You guys make the rest of us developers look bad. Yes, I am a fully seasoned Java/Flex developer with back-end database experience and oh yea you dorks, I have papervision 3d and OpenGl experience for you "Game" developers rock stars who mifght be perparing a flame backdraft. You jokers make me sick with this absurd whiinnnnneeee. Go back to basics, "How to feed and care for your users"@!. You develop bad logic, bad code, perpare for user revenge!!!! As every other developer dose. Either that or put that gun to your heads and pull the trigger for developers who have FAR GREATER ABILITIES THEN YOUR JOKE *DOCKEY BRAY* . I been in the field for 13(started back in 1997) years, and the users/players either worshop you like a Incan God or hate you for your dismal excuse for code. Fix it so that everything is to spec, or there is always the 38 (one of my favorite guns) to your mouth or *dockey Bray* off at least into networking along with the rest of the I.S wannabes.
Development in general isn't for the weak or faint of heart. There is a reason why Myst developers called programming, Game Hell.
Adding to this, I'm SOOOO DAMN MOTHER *DONKEY BRAY* SICK OF HOW GAME DEVELOPERS GET A WAY WITH MURDER.
If I were to tell my user base "Get over it, it our game we do what we want" bull*doNKEY BRAY* , I would be fired on the spot. Ask any of the 160,000 senior citizans who play professional bridge at ACBL what hell "Richard Oshlag" would burn any developer who would dare as such things to the customers.
BTW, I no longer work for ACBL but I can tell you, Game developers are the redneck of developers and deserve hell I would get for it!
Naah, players do know what they want. And they'll want it until they get their share of fun with it and/or realize that it isn't as flawless as they imagined. Painful truth - there's just to many kind of player tastes for them all to be satisfied with the same thing.
And yes, players don't know a process of development in details. You know, It would be perfectly fine to get a reply "we planed that feature, but it didn't make it into the release" if the feature wasn't announced. Since you know how it works better than we do and that not every feature will make it why the heck do you announce them? This is what pisses off most players, and not the lack of features all in itself.
At the risk of sounding arrogant, may I point out that it's the job of a specialist to understand the client, and not the other way around. This is why client isn't called worker. Of cause it never hurts to try and understand the service you are being given especially when every second service provider has no second thoughts about exploiting your lack of knowledge, but it's not really and obligation of a client.
What really needs to be done if gamers and development teams are to get along?
It isn't really hard to understand, but it is hard to implement.
-Moderated forums. Really. Feedback is meant to be productive. Being aggressive is counterproductive. As such anyone blowing-off steam gets a temporary restriction to enter the "polite" section of the forums. Result - no need to "expose" developers to "hostile environment", and anyone who really cares about one's concerns noted gets a good incentive to be polite, since development team isn't likely to be fishing for ideas in the "swampy" parts of the forums.
-Being honest. Really. You aren't sure you can make it? don't promise it. Advertisement and/or hype aren't really honest ways to make money and while they do give advantage, the amount of businessmen has grown to a point where there's too little competition for honest work. Several companies get persistent customers just for that - some customers still want to get quality not a shiny cover, and they tend to float towards the people who they trust.
-Being open. Really. Sure there are people prone to making decisions faster than they can think. Well, off to the swampy parts with them... Others will appreciate being informed upfront, by which i mean "we're working on this system", and not "there will be this system". Remember, gamers don't know the process of development.
-And last but not least - respect each other. REALLY! How often do we see players with long posts who try to hide the flaws of their points with fancy speeches? Many of us can't openly admit being wrong even when we realize that we are. How often do we see developers singing praises to their innovative changes and how they will improve the gameplay while they themselves know that those are only meant to drag in more players from different field at expense of current fans? In both cases fancy speeches fool nobody, they only insult the reader because he's/she's being taken for a fool. Respect the reader, have the decency to tell him/her the truth or let someone else do it if you can't.
The "entitlement" strawman is rather funny.Those pushing it make it sound like the customers want some socialist welfare program from the devs.
That the poor poor devs should have to provide an acceptable product for the money they are paid for said product,is painted as the customers "feeling entitled" to something beyond reason.Its like its fine and dandy the devs turn out crap thats so badly made,its actually deleted some customers windows boot ini. in one MMO's case.
The whining and begging from the devs for more time and more money while they "finish" the product ( as in get it to the status they promised it would be at for launch) they sold as retail months back is only growing.Good ole brads begging for more time and money was hilarious.As is the constant "under new management" anouncements and moves as the devs continually scurry from one failed product to the next.
Wanting to get a product worth the money you were charged for it is NOT an " attitude of entitlement",its the simple basic fair mindedness modern society is based on.But of course that simple truth shows the devs and their crap products for what they are, and so the MMO dev apologists cant let themselves grasp it.
My problem here is this, If I pay good money, my money by the way, for an online game that promises this, this and that, I expect those things to be there. If I subscribe to an online game, then When i get to the max level that game has to offer, I expect there to be things for me to do. Anything else is as far as I am concerned falls under "CONSUMER FRAUD".
Last time I checked, every game developer has volunteered to be a game developer. No one has twisted their arm to make then become one. Is it a long and difficult process, yes I imagine it is, but it is one that the devs made for themselves. As a consumer I demand what I was promised by the game developers, and yes I know that the game experience will change with time.
Bottom line here being that starting an MMO with little to no content is consumer fraud. The devs are acting more like con men than actual business men looking to make a living off thier project. IT seems to me that all the devs seem to be after are the initial box sales. The quick score then run with the money they have and forget the rest.
I cant speak for the rest of the gamming community but for myself I demand a game that is ready to be played when I buy it, Not a game that is only partially finished and empty promises of dubious content to come. My hostility comes from not liking the feeling that i got had. And then further treated like I do not count by the games staff.
Lot of good points being made in this thread on both sides.
I just have one question for the devs though. When you go and purchase something, like say your development software, from another company, and they advertised to you with a list of features which were the reason you went with thats oftware over another... then you get the software and 1/3 of the advertised features either don't exist at all, or are just plain broken, what is your rection? Do you get pissed off at developers of that software and either seek a refund, or insist they give you a finished product? Or do you instead sit back, relax, and say "Its ok, i understand these things take time, and even though I already paid for the product, ill just patiently wait for another 6 months or so until they get it into working condition and everything they promised is included" ?
I highly doubt it's the latter, so what makes you so much more special that you dont think us, your paying customers, should be just as angry with you over broken promises and missing/non-functional features? Regardless of how it is worded, wether mature & well thought out, or childish and insulting, the point is the same.
Wow, Stradden, you really seem to have provoked just about everyone with this one....
Reading through the thread I was reminded of the days pre-internet (and the early days thereof) when people used to read newspapers every day and a certain percentage of people would repeatedly send letters to the editor about whatever got up their nose that week. My folks and I had a game where one of us would read out the rantiest letter from the page and we'd try to guess which of the regular "angry types" sent it in.
Spend enough time on any game's forum and you can play the same game.
What players forget is that developers and CMs can filter stuff the same way. There is the poster who is always mad about sometihng, always threatening to /ragequit and who goes on and on about how they have been burned by other game companies and by god this is not going to happen again (translation: ignore this guy, he has issues beyond the game), or the player who posts occasionally and complains rarely (translation: we should look into whatever provoked this person's complaint). Then there are the players who don't post at all, but then do, because something had gone wrong for them (translation: yikes, someone look into that).
Game customers forget that they're dealing with people on the other end. That CMs and Devs have access to their post history, they know if you complain about any and every little thing, or if you're not inclined to complain but have been moved to by something broken or changed that got to you. Giving good customer service is an art, but being able to get it is equally an art. Screaming posts cause a mental check-out, just like often we'd let cutomers bellow away until the rage has abated and we can actually get to trying to help them. Trying to defuse someone intent on raging just adds flame to their fire.
Yes, developers should try to explain themselves a bit, should be transparent about their planned direction for a game, should make sure CMs are keeping players up to speed with what's going on dev-side and equally that the CMs are letting them know what problems are going on player-side. But even in games that do this well, and have more dev interaction than others do, the forums are still full of rants, personal pet peeves and all the rest of it.
It's the internet, nobody wins but everyone wants to think they're top dog. It's all too easy to say that people who provide a service to you have lost the right to be seen as people first and foremost (you can see this in some responses in this thread), and once you stop seeing people as people it's very easy to rail in judgement of their percieved shortcomings, as though you as the customer have the right to their attention and respect, no matter how badly you rail at them. In reality, ranting and raving in forums will have the opposite effect to your intended one, it just won't ever be made clear to you.
And if you ever see a file a company has on you with VIP on it, it doesn't mean what you think it does, it's shorthand for "Very Irate Person" and a flag for whoever is dealing with you....take it from someone who has worked CS for decades, we'll tell you you're always right, we'll smile and nod and take abuse, but we'll never go the extra mile for someone who is consistently abusive. I find it hard to understand why people would think game forums work any differently....
players do know what they want, the problem is, that there are as many opionions as there are people.... and you can never make it right for all.
They don't... They only think they do.
This is one of the main roots of the evil. A lack of competence on game development in the game studios. I was very disappointed at GDC last year when I listened to the Software Engineering tracks. What I heard was knowledge that was hailed as new, but in fact were the simplest basics of SE and in a lot cases totally outdated.
To get to the point: one golden rule is that the customer knows what he wants and not the developer.
To those who do not agree with me I want to recommend very much to read a book about Software Requirements.
Of course the costumer might often not exactly know what he wants, or there might be requirements that are in conflict with each other. There are a lot of "tools" out there to solve this situation, but I haven't seen even one applied in any game forum.
The only ppl that might from time to time listen to the costumers are moderators that have zero knowledge about RE.
In my opinion, this has all primarily come about because of a lack of understanding and transparency.
Just WHO are you even covering for?
Its entirely because of the lack of transparency, ITS TOTALLY OBVIOUS AND APPALLING. In morpgs the situation just keeps reapeating itself where the developers sit on their lazy bum not fixing anything while they decide about the next expansion which not only takes more than it should but also tends to suck in comparison to what companies used to do in olden days plus topping it off they keep their lips sealed tight until the game is well underway so as to not "stir the gamers up", its a fact that there is much incompetence as of late in the industry, it still hasn't caught up to the elites in the industry nor to the entire populace but quality keeps decreasing steadily and the "corruption" or maybe should I say indifference keeps increasing.
Companies releasing games which should be postponed to fix pressing issues, and meanwhile doing horrible and overpriced microtransactions like the WoW pony, gms and forum admins not doing a thing, each and every day loosing respect nad power over the decisions they take or are forced to take. I could go on but I'd rather write about one or two examples just to be more clear...
If you need an example, look at Funcom, before Age of Conan launched, it went tru an EXTENSIVE beta phase which lasted a *****load of time, only to open up with a game filled with even more bugs than its beta, and they took 2 months to clean up their asses while they decided wheter to fix the bugs, implement new material, or fix the sucubus's tities, what did they do first? fix the sucubus.
When you have such a buggy game with so many pressing conserns how can you kick it off by doing cosmetic stuff instead of making the game playable, and to top it off meanwhile there were posts being bumped about goldfarmers, goldfarmers defending their ilegal trade publicly even thought it was against the rules and the admins never banned these accounts, because they kept posting week after week, and even worse they didn't even respond to the threads.
Aeria's SMTI is another good example, the game runs smoothly, piece of art, but they are greedy little thieves, at first in the American server they didn't have descriptions for premium armor/weapons in the Item Mall, shops inside the game sell a few premium items for Aeria Points, inside, one of such items was the Saber, It was only 500 AP, 5 dollars, nothing special, not even worth the 5 dollars, even when NOT compared to other non premium stuff from the shop. One day they add to the item mall a new sword (swords btw are broken in SMTI, mostly useless), WhiteFang, costing 5K AP, or 50 dollars, the WF doesnt have a description.... in the end some users came to realise that the WF had almost the same stats than the saber, and even so it was inferior to crafted swords, in other words they charged 50 dollars for something useless at endgame which in fact was even broken (swords remember?). Yes totally crooked, it took acusations and a little bit of outrage to make them list the items 's stats properly after that, and it took them 2 months to start doing so after the WF thing.
Irresponsible, Incompetent, Lazy, Unsociable, Avaricious, Indifferent . How ELSE could you describe them?
How can you even say this issue is an issue of understanding?
WE PAY SUBSCRIPTIONS WITH REAL CASH what are you gonna claim next? that such admins and gms take orders from up above and are not at fault? that its their job? to steal from us? ghee Im not even gonna explain whats wrong with that, take a shot for all I care. Im fed up myself with such treatment, if someone pks me on a game I dont leave, Im not a carebear, and Im sure as hell not a retard either, at the first sign of these symptoms I unsubscribe immediately like I did in Funcom's AoC after 2 months of waiting for not only a fix but to even a TRANSPARENT announcement from Funcom.
Its not just an incompetence or corruption issue, its mostly about transparency, they don't care about their service to their customers? Why should we fill their company's pockets, if you are not wiling to treat gamers from your morpg's comunity fairly like any other type of customer and deliver fair treatment and quality, then don't make a morpg in the first place.
The problem is simple "INTERNET". Ever since internet is released people had more opertunity to give their idea about subjects. Its not only the game sector, but any sector really that has a community. We have bigger mouths now cause we are better/more informed these days.
Another problem is that we gamers get allot of promises, we hear all kind of idea's. We get excited, we have exspectations. But than the game is released and we see things we where so excited about being left out of the game or worked out poorly. Game devs. should not just post everything on the net before they tested it. But in their defence, many game devs. suffer from extreem deadlines and game publishers who force them to release the game early.
Age of Conan is the biggest example where it goes wrong between gamer and game dev. Funcom promised allot, i mean really allot. You would be able to build your own player cities where ever, and many other things that we didn't seen in a MMORPG for a long time (ever since WoW players where given less influence on the world and end game became more important). Sadly when Age of Conan came out there where some huge flaws. The promised guild cities where nothing more than a piece of ground you could buy and place buildings on a decided spot and only in the Aqulonian theme even though you where a guild formed by another race. Bar fights? I played the game for a while but they never made it into the game, not as they where mentioned as brawls with fist fights. And more things like that.
But in the defence of MMORPG devs. Players either they will admit it or not are impatient people. They look at MMORPG's that are longer on the market and forget their start up problems but judge new MMORPG's on their start up problems. Its a fact that with every MMORPG that comes out that there will be start up problems like certain bugs, unstable servers, huge down times, exstended server maintaince. Players forget that once a MMORPG is launched it will be really made compleet..as far as a MMORPG can be completed. Word of Warcraft had these issues aswell (im european so my experience is european based). WoW has a weekly server maintaince..in the first few months maintaince day meant no play day cause the servers where offline till late in the night most of the time. And sometimes took more than 1 day to be finished. And when WoW was launched there wasn't as much to do as there is now...you didn't had battlegrounds, you didn't had arena's, and things like that. But we as players don't have the patience for the new MMORPG's to evolve over time, to wait for new free content, to wait a month or 3 or 4 before the biggest and most anoying bugs are fixed.
How ever i have no simpathy for devs like Infity Ward who now cry that players are angry after they kicked the pc gamers in the nuts and than stabbed a dagger into their spines. Is it that weird that players get angry who are pc gamers, who made the game populair and big (yes players make a game big not the devs.) and get Modern Warfare 2 as a port from the xbox 360 to their system. To see dedicated servers are stolen from them and get back a verry terrible totally not working console matching system. Where if you group with friends you hardly can join a server cause it has problems connecting you and your friend? Where online is haunted by huge lags cause the player with the fastest internet is made host, either this player wants it or not. A game that only became big because of the huge mod scene...the same mod scene who no longer is allowed to make their own maps because activision is a greedy money grabber who sells map packs for with 5 maps for 15 euro..there fore screwing the european even more than the USA game cause 15 euro is more expensive than 15 dollars..and 15 dollars was allready to much for 5 maps where 2 are just remakes from Modern warfare 1. They smelled the money and forbid players to make maps, otherwise they can't sell louzy maps for a extreme high price.
No in case of Infinity Ward and Activision its only fair we gamers stand up and call them bad names. For they became thiefs and backstabbers, and like in the medieval times we should feel no symphaty for thiefs and backstabbers. They turned against the gamer..they turned against their most loyal fans and now exspect we worthship them as gods? And gonna cry to mommy when the gamer says "No, this is not fair, this is thiefery!".
Infact, the MMORPG's game devs. are the best devs. Cause most of the time they try to please most of their followers. They can't please everyone but look at BLizzard, their players are mostly raiders and they keep providing them with raids for free every now and than, and new itmes and such. Lord of the Rings Online added allot of stuff for free aswell like player houses when the players asked for it, Warhammer online adjusted more for the pvp player the last year and Age of Conan also provides the players with new things and improvements. You might not like the game and hate to see things didn't made it into the game, but atleast they try. But singleplayer game devs they are mostly the bad guys. Cause they don't add free stuff, and sometimes don't even bother to bring out patches like with Stormrise, a nice themed RTS game thats unplayable cause of the bugs and till today never been fixed.
A beautiful example is Atlantica Online. Playing it since CB day 1. The gap is growing ever since between community and devs... ( well more like between the korean devs and the NA + europe community )
This relationship you are talking about really isnt an even termed relationsship. Devs vs. Fans is a Seller vs. Buyer relationship. So us as buyers, customers, dont need to be polite as we are paying our money and spending our spare time to use these products. The Devs on the other hand are being paid for their work so to expect Us to be as polite and courteous as Them is really a flawed argument.
We pay the money, they receive the money. They owe us, we dont owe them anything (beside our money). If they dont produce what we want, they wont get our money, simple as that.
It is only natural that developers and players do not always see eye to eye. As long as both can accept that it is not an issue.
Do’s and Don’ts
For developers:
Do not allow your design decisions to be influenced by a vocal minority; do not have star players whose opinions you give more weight to, accept that you are not going to be every players friend. Don’t sound patronising, promise what you are not sure will be delivered or use hype-speak. As a ‘designer’ you will be expected to know everything about the MMO, regardless of what your job is. Be careful during anything which is live, you will want to give an answer even if you know it is not your area, just say ‘I don’t know’.
For Players:
Do raise issues on the official forum, keep your cool, don’t spam. Try to form a consensus of opinion, but be prepared to disagree. Don’t just agree with people because you think of them as a forum friend, or because they are an in game friend. Occasionally, only very, very occasionally, email or PM a community representative if you feel very strongly about an issue; do this too often and your emails will go to the bottom of the pile.
Basically if you've ever taken a SE class or read a book about the *basics* of Software engineering you would know that what most game companies, not just MMOs, are putting out are would be failed projects things that if I worked in SE and presented to a customer they would probably tell me they aren't paying me and/or going to take me to court.
The problem is these games are better off being crappy and rushed and not work because as long as you sell the box it doesn't matter how many months they sub to your game unless it is about 4 or more they already made most of the money they are going to make off of you.
The other problem is because theres no real contract going on here so the companies hold all the cards. There is no "Spec" like there would be in a real contract so there is nothing we can do to them, even though had this been a real SE contract I would be sued or denied payment since the game didn't live up to its specs.
This to me means people deserve to be angry they were told a game would be something its not so it would sell the box who cares how crappy the game actually is they are making a large portion of the money upfront and theres nothing you can do about it.
TLDR A game is like a business contract expect the game company holds all the cards, they can lie and say its great and trick you into buying it and theres nothing you can do because there is no physical contract binding them to making a game that lives up to some standard.
To be honest I think the whole Us vs Them thing is a result of the shift in the industry from being niche to mass-market.
WoW's success attracted all the big investors and CEOs who don't have a clue about making games and only want to make quick money. Ever since then new MMO releases have gardually been getting lower and lower in quality and players are wising up to the tricks and realising that the developers in this current age aren't trying to do anything in the interests of their players. I don't think there's anyone left now who will deny that Cryptic has little interest in providing for their customers, and what about Blizzard's recent cash shop additions charging extra for what once would have been free?
The fact is the developers have brought this distinct change upon themselves by backing players into a corner with underhanded sales tactics and general moneygrabbing. The players simply don't trust the devs any more.
There's also the issue of the player community itself, and this varies from game to game, but in general I've noticed that the more popular a game is the more aggressive the community becomes and this also forces the devs onto the defensive.
Both sides are propagating the problem but the devs have the ball and only they can try and fix things up... only problem is that the big names behind the devs honestly don't care what we think, they can only see the money.
Don’t sound patronising, promise what you are not sure will be delivered or use hype-speak. As a ‘designer’ you will be expected to know everything about the MMO, regardless of what your job is. Be careful during anything which is live, you will want to give an answer even if you know it is not your area, just say ‘I don’t know’.
Basically this is what ever game representative does. Exactly what they wouldn't be doing if it was an actual business contract. There is no ramification to them lying and saying something along the lines of.
"YEA ITS GOING TO BE GREAT THERE ARE GOING TO BE THESE HUGE HUNDREDS VERSUS HUNDREDS BATTLES AND THE GAME IS GOING TO RUN SMOOTH!"
Yea okay try again how about the day warhammer launched it crashed frequently because of a memory leak, but they wouldn't acknowledge that, then when we finally got to those 100s vs 100s battles the servers crashed everytime. The Guy who hyped Warhammer lied about every aspect of the game but we couldn't demand a refund we couldn't do ANYTHING except cancel our sub, its too bad they already got about 65 dollars out of us at that point.
People deserve to be angry about this they promised a game that would have things that it clearly does not, look at AOC when it first launched there were entire zones with basically no mobs or quests for crying out loud!
Damn rigth there is an us and them attitude and rightously so.
Besides the fact that we pay your salaries we can clearly see that as time goes by the player is being treated worse and worse.
Next year we will be paying for empty DVD cases promising a patch.
And the developer is not responsible for this in most cases yet nobody is forcing them to join a compagny that is unethical. Money is a poor excuse for actions.
The gaming industry also appears to be the only business where there are no drawbacks to misconduct. No sir, the player will cough up the next game. And since games are a form of art or a mass product that is being payed for, gamers have every right to be as vocal as they want.
And the sad part is with the way things are evolving now, a lot of the current gamers just might have to retire because the industry is consuming players without any care for the future. Just like every other industry out there.
I think the crux of the matter revolves around the fact that publisher and developer don't care about ethics. When we gamers were with a 1000 damn right they were being nice to us.
Now that we are a global "infinite" community we have lost our voice as with everything in life.
Because there is a sucker born every 5 minutes.
In conclusion, I understand the process from concept to game. I understand as a gamer that it is a process that involves a lot of back tracking and just bloody hard work. But as a developer you have a professional ethos to choose wich house to work for. If you choose a house with less then good ethics then you as a developer deserve to be blamed.
I do think the situation between players and developers has gotten bad the last few years. However, after leadership training I believe it takes a lot before the situation cannot be fixed. Here's my recommendations. They go to game developers as opposed to players because unless developers use them they won't attend (at least in my experience).
1 - Townhall meetings - Developers have to have regular meetings with players to find out what's bugging them, or even just hang out with them and answer questions. It's the fastest way of showing you care about the players by opening up lines of communication. Questions asked should be posted on the forums with answers. There shouldn't be 'I don't know' as an answer. Those in charge of one aspect should answer the question when they can. It doesn't have to last four hours, but it can happen several times over a few days.
2 - Polls - Developers should ask their players about the game and the content they would like to play in game and on the forums. These should be resources developers use to plan content in the future. People who don't vote might not get what they'd like for the game. It's like real life. You don't vote, you might be unhappy with the result. The thing is, developers actually have to develop based on what players would like or it comes across as 'See we asked you what you wanted but we're going to spend the next six expansions on PvP cause we like PvP.'
3 - Show people you play - Developers or community representatives should pop into game from time to time. Answer questions, chat, play minigames with people, host mini events, hold trivia games, be human. Otherwise players get the idea that developers just aren't in game, even if they are regularly. Events don't have to be large scale, but showing up from time to time helps the community associate the developers with friendly people.
4 - Discuss Loot - This is a big issue on why players often fight with developers. I think mainly it's because Developers refuse to discuss the loot system. Players who regularly get poor loot and complain often times get told 'it's fair and balanced' but won't get to see examples of how it works. If you're playing a board game with someone whom you suspect is cheating. You confront them on it in such a way as to see if they're actually cheating. If you're playing monopoly with someone who is the banker who you think is stealing money you put the money where you can see it. No one accepts 'I'm not cheating but I like the money right here' If developers don't regularly examine loot tables, and show players how it works, then players think it's broken, even if it's not.
5 - Give News to Players - Currently when expansion news is approved by marketing it's sent in the following order. Websites (MMORPG/Massively/IGN) then Gaming Magazines then Stockholders/Outsiders, and finally players. Generally by the time players get the information it's so confusing or distorted that players don't know what's going on. This should include having Patch notes for expansions available BEFORE the patch is released. Yet gaming companies don't do that. Players aren't considered to be worth communication. Often times the players of the game don't get patch notes for several hours (or even days). That and often times there are stealth changes which should be a sin.
These are common reasons why developers don't seem to have very good trust and compassion from players. Players care about their game. They might not ever go to the movies, or out to eat, but the character they've created is often very important to them. Players however get really rotten treatment by developers though. Stealth nerfs, rebalancing without discussion or improving something else, decreasing loot while increasing difficulty, or even just simple lack of communication.
If there is a vaccum in terms of communication in a game, then people fill it with their own thoughts. If developers and community representatives don't show people their kindness, compassion, and willing to communicate then they come across as Aristocrats sitting in ivory towers.It comes across as players should be happy to pay for abuse. Players should be treated better then they currently are by many game developers. Unfortunately, there's almost no one to stand up in an official position against game developers, and say "What you're doing is wrong." Players can do it, and they get ignored.
There may come a time when players stop turning to game developers as being the solution though. Eventually it might just go back to console games and tabletop games. I hope that doesn't happen but if developers don't work with players to fix the lines of communication it will not be the players that suffer from loss of business.
Oh well, yes some devs do great things. Other devs get the attitude of were right the costomer is wrong.
For instance Lotro, You had the entire radiance gear gate put in place. It chased of a got 50% of the player base at that time, and they are still suffering. They had a recient poll and folks voted to vermove it. However then you have the attitude from the lead guy Jeff Stefell postingin the forums more than once "Our players love the raidiance system" It has continued no matter what.
I will point at the NGE same thing devs actually putting players down in the forums calling them out personally.
Lotro with their draconic forum rules shutting anything down about certain topics and pruning threads. All of the nerfs to existing classes in the name of balance instead of trying to do the real job of making the classes work together without having to give out nerf stick.
Comments
At least if they get angry they give a nut about theri game...
Players are customers. Developers are the product makers. Normally the customer buys the product and that's the end of it. However MMOs require the customer to continue to pay each month. That changes the relationship significantly. That is what makes players entitled to certain things I believe. They are right as well. I am paying for access to the game content I purchased. (That initial purchase isn't even to play the game but simply to have the content on a disc along with 30 days free access.) With that access I'm also paying for the continued development of said game (from upkeep of servers to the salaries of those working on the game as they make new content). If I don't like the changes I'm helping to fund (at this point I'm apart of the development process like it or not) I have a right to voice my opinion on what the developers are doing. This is why I have serious issues with bannings from games without any refunds (cost of the initial purchase and monthly fee (prorate). Yet that's another topic.
If developers and publishers do not wish for this to happen. Or wish for the customer and developer relationship to not the way it is now then something very simply needs to take place. Drop the monthly payment. Allow players to access the content offline right out of the box. Go to a Free to Pay model.
Players don't own developers any kind words. We are giving them money for their product. Without customers they don't have a job. They need us more then we need them. We'll be fine without their game if it comes to that.
When developers make changes in the game those playing are directly affected. If I'm paying for something consistently and what a developer does affects my enjoyment of the game I'll voice my opinion. I'm entitled to enjoy the product my money is being spent on.
Another issue is over promising. Here's an idea. Why don't developers keep their mouths shut until certain features are actually in the game during development. Then and only then announce what is actual in the game not what will be. That would solve a LOT of issues on this front in terms of the hate directed at them. The outright lying needs to stop as well. If you designed the game a certain way then say so. Don't try to talk to customers as if they are stupid. We see through the lies.
You spelt a word wrong there, it's spelt ego not game.
lol.. Jon Wood... You always make the most pointless articles that make no sense.
Jon Wood, and to all you other whinny pussy "Game" developers out there, get over your egos!!!!! You guys make the rest of us developers look bad. Yes, I am a fully seasoned Java/Flex developer with back-end database experience and oh yea you dorks, I have papervision 3d and OpenGl experience for you "Game" developers rock stars who mifght be perparing a flame backdraft. You jokers make me sick with this absurd whiinnnnneeee. Go back to basics, "How to feed and care for your users"@!. You develop bad logic, bad code, perpare for user revenge!!!! As every other developer dose. Either that or put that gun to your heads and pull the trigger for developers who have FAR GREATER ABILITIES THEN YOUR JOKE *DOCKEY BRAY* . I been in the field for 13(started back in 1997) years, and the users/players either worshop you like a Incan God or hate you for your dismal excuse for code. Fix it so that everything is to spec, or there is always the 38 (one of my favorite guns) to your mouth or *dockey Bray* off at least into networking along with the rest of the I.S wannabes.
Development in general isn't for the weak or faint of heart. There is a reason why Myst developers called programming, Game Hell.
Adding to this, I'm SOOOO DAMN MOTHER *DONKEY BRAY* SICK OF HOW GAME DEVELOPERS GET A WAY WITH MURDER.
If I were to tell my user base "Get over it, it our game we do what we want" bull*doNKEY BRAY* , I would be fired on the spot. Ask any of the 160,000 senior citizans who play professional bridge at ACBL what hell "Richard Oshlag" would burn any developer who would dare as such things to the customers.
BTW, I no longer work for ACBL but I can tell you, Game developers are the redneck of developers and deserve hell I would get for it!
and no , I never got fired becuase when I screawed up, I went into red alert and corrected my mistakes begging the users forgiviness.
Naah, players do know what they want. And they'll want it until they get their share of fun with it and/or realize that it isn't as flawless as they imagined. Painful truth - there's just to many kind of player tastes for them all to be satisfied with the same thing.
And yes, players don't know a process of development in details. You know, It would be perfectly fine to get a reply "we planed that feature, but it didn't make it into the release" if the feature wasn't announced. Since you know how it works better than we do and that not every feature will make it why the heck do you announce them? This is what pisses off most players, and not the lack of features all in itself.
At the risk of sounding arrogant, may I point out that it's the job of a specialist to understand the client, and not the other way around. This is why client isn't called worker. Of cause it never hurts to try and understand the service you are being given especially when every second service provider has no second thoughts about exploiting your lack of knowledge, but it's not really and obligation of a client.
What really needs to be done if gamers and development teams are to get along?
It isn't really hard to understand, but it is hard to implement.
-Moderated forums. Really. Feedback is meant to be productive. Being aggressive is counterproductive. As such anyone blowing-off steam gets a temporary restriction to enter the "polite" section of the forums. Result - no need to "expose" developers to "hostile environment", and anyone who really cares about one's concerns noted gets a good incentive to be polite, since development team isn't likely to be fishing for ideas in the "swampy" parts of the forums.
-Being honest. Really. You aren't sure you can make it? don't promise it. Advertisement and/or hype aren't really honest ways to make money and while they do give advantage, the amount of businessmen has grown to a point where there's too little competition for honest work. Several companies get persistent customers just for that - some customers still want to get quality not a shiny cover, and they tend to float towards the people who they trust.
-Being open. Really. Sure there are people prone to making decisions faster than they can think. Well, off to the swampy parts with them... Others will appreciate being informed upfront, by which i mean "we're working on this system", and not "there will be this system". Remember, gamers don't know the process of development.
-And last but not least - respect each other. REALLY! How often do we see players with long posts who try to hide the flaws of their points with fancy speeches? Many of us can't openly admit being wrong even when we realize that we are. How often do we see developers singing praises to their innovative changes and how they will improve the gameplay while they themselves know that those are only meant to drag in more players from different field at expense of current fans? In both cases fancy speeches fool nobody, they only insult the reader because he's/she's being taken for a fool. Respect the reader, have the decency to tell him/her the truth or let someone else do it if you can't.
The "entitlement" strawman is rather funny.Those pushing it make it sound like the customers want some socialist welfare program from the devs.
That the poor poor devs should have to provide an acceptable product for the money they are paid for said product,is painted as the customers "feeling entitled" to something beyond reason.Its like its fine and dandy the devs turn out crap thats so badly made,its actually deleted some customers windows boot ini. in one MMO's case.
The whining and begging from the devs for more time and more money while they "finish" the product ( as in get it to the status they promised it would be at for launch) they sold as retail months back is only growing.Good ole brads begging for more time and money was hilarious.As is the constant "under new management" anouncements and moves as the devs continually scurry from one failed product to the next.
Wanting to get a product worth the money you were charged for it is NOT an " attitude of entitlement",its the simple basic fair mindedness modern society is based on.But of course that simple truth shows the devs and their crap products for what they are, and so the MMO dev apologists cant let themselves grasp it.
My problem here is this, If I pay good money, my money by the way, for an online game that promises this, this and that, I expect those things to be there. If I subscribe to an online game, then When i get to the max level that game has to offer, I expect there to be things for me to do. Anything else is as far as I am concerned falls under "CONSUMER FRAUD".
Last time I checked, every game developer has volunteered to be a game developer. No one has twisted their arm to make then become one. Is it a long and difficult process, yes I imagine it is, but it is one that the devs made for themselves. As a consumer I demand what I was promised by the game developers, and yes I know that the game experience will change with time.
Bottom line here being that starting an MMO with little to no content is consumer fraud. The devs are acting more like con men than actual business men looking to make a living off thier project. IT seems to me that all the devs seem to be after are the initial box sales. The quick score then run with the money they have and forget the rest.
I cant speak for the rest of the gamming community but for myself I demand a game that is ready to be played when I buy it, Not a game that is only partially finished and empty promises of dubious content to come. My hostility comes from not liking the feeling that i got had. And then further treated like I do not count by the games staff.
Lot of good points being made in this thread on both sides.
I just have one question for the devs though. When you go and purchase something, like say your development software, from another company, and they advertised to you with a list of features which were the reason you went with thats oftware over another... then you get the software and 1/3 of the advertised features either don't exist at all, or are just plain broken, what is your rection? Do you get pissed off at developers of that software and either seek a refund, or insist they give you a finished product? Or do you instead sit back, relax, and say "Its ok, i understand these things take time, and even though I already paid for the product, ill just patiently wait for another 6 months or so until they get it into working condition and everything they promised is included" ?
I highly doubt it's the latter, so what makes you so much more special that you dont think us, your paying customers, should be just as angry with you over broken promises and missing/non-functional features? Regardless of how it is worded, wether mature & well thought out, or childish and insulting, the point is the same.
Wow, Stradden, you really seem to have provoked just about everyone with this one....
Reading through the thread I was reminded of the days pre-internet (and the early days thereof) when people used to read newspapers every day and a certain percentage of people would repeatedly send letters to the editor about whatever got up their nose that week. My folks and I had a game where one of us would read out the rantiest letter from the page and we'd try to guess which of the regular "angry types" sent it in.
Spend enough time on any game's forum and you can play the same game.
What players forget is that developers and CMs can filter stuff the same way. There is the poster who is always mad about sometihng, always threatening to /ragequit and who goes on and on about how they have been burned by other game companies and by god this is not going to happen again (translation: ignore this guy, he has issues beyond the game), or the player who posts occasionally and complains rarely (translation: we should look into whatever provoked this person's complaint). Then there are the players who don't post at all, but then do, because something had gone wrong for them (translation: yikes, someone look into that).
Game customers forget that they're dealing with people on the other end. That CMs and Devs have access to their post history, they know if you complain about any and every little thing, or if you're not inclined to complain but have been moved to by something broken or changed that got to you. Giving good customer service is an art, but being able to get it is equally an art. Screaming posts cause a mental check-out, just like often we'd let cutomers bellow away until the rage has abated and we can actually get to trying to help them. Trying to defuse someone intent on raging just adds flame to their fire.
Yes, developers should try to explain themselves a bit, should be transparent about their planned direction for a game, should make sure CMs are keeping players up to speed with what's going on dev-side and equally that the CMs are letting them know what problems are going on player-side. But even in games that do this well, and have more dev interaction than others do, the forums are still full of rants, personal pet peeves and all the rest of it.
It's the internet, nobody wins but everyone wants to think they're top dog. It's all too easy to say that people who provide a service to you have lost the right to be seen as people first and foremost (you can see this in some responses in this thread), and once you stop seeing people as people it's very easy to rail in judgement of their percieved shortcomings, as though you as the customer have the right to their attention and respect, no matter how badly you rail at them. In reality, ranting and raving in forums will have the opposite effect to your intended one, it just won't ever be made clear to you.
And if you ever see a file a company has on you with VIP on it, it doesn't mean what you think it does, it's shorthand for "Very Irate Person" and a flag for whoever is dealing with you....take it from someone who has worked CS for decades, we'll tell you you're always right, we'll smile and nod and take abuse, but we'll never go the extra mile for someone who is consistently abusive. I find it hard to understand why people would think game forums work any differently....
Great article Jon.
This is one of the main roots of the evil. A lack of competence on game development in the game studios. I was very disappointed at GDC last year when I listened to the Software Engineering tracks. What I heard was knowledge that was hailed as new, but in fact were the simplest basics of SE and in a lot cases totally outdated.
To get to the point: one golden rule is that the customer knows what he wants and not the developer.
To those who do not agree with me I want to recommend very much to read a book about Software Requirements.
Of course the costumer might often not exactly know what he wants, or there might be requirements that are in conflict with each other. There are a lot of "tools" out there to solve this situation, but I haven't seen even one applied in any game forum.
The only ppl that might from time to time listen to the costumers are moderators that have zero knowledge about RE.
Quote Jon:
In my opinion, this has all primarily come about because of a lack of understanding and transparency.
Just WHO are you even covering for?
Its entirely because of the lack of transparency, ITS TOTALLY OBVIOUS AND APPALLING. In morpgs the situation just keeps reapeating itself where the developers sit on their lazy bum not fixing anything while they decide about the next expansion which not only takes more than it should but also tends to suck in comparison to what companies used to do in olden days plus topping it off they keep their lips sealed tight until the game is well underway so as to not "stir the gamers up", its a fact that there is much incompetence as of late in the industry, it still hasn't caught up to the elites in the industry nor to the entire populace but quality keeps decreasing steadily and the "corruption" or maybe should I say indifference keeps increasing.
Companies releasing games which should be postponed to fix pressing issues, and meanwhile doing horrible and overpriced microtransactions like the WoW pony, gms and forum admins not doing a thing, each and every day loosing respect nad power over the decisions they take or are forced to take. I could go on but I'd rather write about one or two examples just to be more clear...
If you need an example, look at Funcom, before Age of Conan launched, it went tru an EXTENSIVE beta phase which lasted a *****load of time, only to open up with a game filled with even more bugs than its beta, and they took 2 months to clean up their asses while they decided wheter to fix the bugs, implement new material, or fix the sucubus's tities, what did they do first? fix the sucubus.
When you have such a buggy game with so many pressing conserns how can you kick it off by doing cosmetic stuff instead of making the game playable, and to top it off meanwhile there were posts being bumped about goldfarmers, goldfarmers defending their ilegal trade publicly even thought it was against the rules and the admins never banned these accounts, because they kept posting week after week, and even worse they didn't even respond to the threads.
Aeria's SMTI is another good example, the game runs smoothly, piece of art, but they are greedy little thieves, at first in the American server they didn't have descriptions for premium armor/weapons in the Item Mall, shops inside the game sell a few premium items for Aeria Points, inside, one of such items was the Saber, It was only 500 AP, 5 dollars, nothing special, not even worth the 5 dollars, even when NOT compared to other non premium stuff from the shop. One day they add to the item mall a new sword (swords btw are broken in SMTI, mostly useless), WhiteFang, costing 5K AP, or 50 dollars, the WF doesnt have a description.... in the end some users came to realise that the WF had almost the same stats than the saber, and even so it was inferior to crafted swords, in other words they charged 50 dollars for something useless at endgame which in fact was even broken (swords remember?). Yes totally crooked, it took acusations and a little bit of outrage to make them list the items 's stats properly after that, and it took them 2 months to start doing so after the WF thing.
Irresponsible, Incompetent, Lazy, Unsociable, Avaricious, Indifferent . How ELSE could you describe them?
How can you even say this issue is an issue of understanding?
WE PAY SUBSCRIPTIONS WITH REAL CASH what are you gonna claim next? that such admins and gms take orders from up above and are not at fault? that its their job? to steal from us? ghee Im not even gonna explain whats wrong with that, take a shot for all I care. Im fed up myself with such treatment, if someone pks me on a game I dont leave, Im not a carebear, and Im sure as hell not a retard either, at the first sign of these symptoms I unsubscribe immediately like I did in Funcom's AoC after 2 months of waiting for not only a fix but to even a TRANSPARENT announcement from Funcom.
Its not just an incompetence or corruption issue, its mostly about transparency, they don't care about their service to their customers? Why should we fill their company's pockets, if you are not wiling to treat gamers from your morpg's comunity fairly like any other type of customer and deliver fair treatment and quality, then don't make a morpg in the first place.
The problem is simple "INTERNET". Ever since internet is released people had more opertunity to give their idea about subjects. Its not only the game sector, but any sector really that has a community. We have bigger mouths now cause we are better/more informed these days.
Another problem is that we gamers get allot of promises, we hear all kind of idea's. We get excited, we have exspectations. But than the game is released and we see things we where so excited about being left out of the game or worked out poorly. Game devs. should not just post everything on the net before they tested it. But in their defence, many game devs. suffer from extreem deadlines and game publishers who force them to release the game early.
Age of Conan is the biggest example where it goes wrong between gamer and game dev. Funcom promised allot, i mean really allot. You would be able to build your own player cities where ever, and many other things that we didn't seen in a MMORPG for a long time (ever since WoW players where given less influence on the world and end game became more important). Sadly when Age of Conan came out there where some huge flaws. The promised guild cities where nothing more than a piece of ground you could buy and place buildings on a decided spot and only in the Aqulonian theme even though you where a guild formed by another race. Bar fights? I played the game for a while but they never made it into the game, not as they where mentioned as brawls with fist fights. And more things like that.
But in the defence of MMORPG devs. Players either they will admit it or not are impatient people. They look at MMORPG's that are longer on the market and forget their start up problems but judge new MMORPG's on their start up problems. Its a fact that with every MMORPG that comes out that there will be start up problems like certain bugs, unstable servers, huge down times, exstended server maintaince. Players forget that once a MMORPG is launched it will be really made compleet..as far as a MMORPG can be completed. Word of Warcraft had these issues aswell (im european so my experience is european based). WoW has a weekly server maintaince..in the first few months maintaince day meant no play day cause the servers where offline till late in the night most of the time. And sometimes took more than 1 day to be finished. And when WoW was launched there wasn't as much to do as there is now...you didn't had battlegrounds, you didn't had arena's, and things like that. But we as players don't have the patience for the new MMORPG's to evolve over time, to wait for new free content, to wait a month or 3 or 4 before the biggest and most anoying bugs are fixed.
How ever i have no simpathy for devs like Infity Ward who now cry that players are angry after they kicked the pc gamers in the nuts and than stabbed a dagger into their spines. Is it that weird that players get angry who are pc gamers, who made the game populair and big (yes players make a game big not the devs.) and get Modern Warfare 2 as a port from the xbox 360 to their system. To see dedicated servers are stolen from them and get back a verry terrible totally not working console matching system. Where if you group with friends you hardly can join a server cause it has problems connecting you and your friend? Where online is haunted by huge lags cause the player with the fastest internet is made host, either this player wants it or not. A game that only became big because of the huge mod scene...the same mod scene who no longer is allowed to make their own maps because activision is a greedy money grabber who sells map packs for with 5 maps for 15 euro..there fore screwing the european even more than the USA game cause 15 euro is more expensive than 15 dollars..and 15 dollars was allready to much for 5 maps where 2 are just remakes from Modern warfare 1. They smelled the money and forbid players to make maps, otherwise they can't sell louzy maps for a extreme high price.
No in case of Infinity Ward and Activision its only fair we gamers stand up and call them bad names. For they became thiefs and backstabbers, and like in the medieval times we should feel no symphaty for thiefs and backstabbers. They turned against the gamer..they turned against their most loyal fans and now exspect we worthship them as gods? And gonna cry to mommy when the gamer says "No, this is not fair, this is thiefery!".
Infact, the MMORPG's game devs. are the best devs. Cause most of the time they try to please most of their followers. They can't please everyone but look at BLizzard, their players are mostly raiders and they keep providing them with raids for free every now and than, and new itmes and such. Lord of the Rings Online added allot of stuff for free aswell like player houses when the players asked for it, Warhammer online adjusted more for the pvp player the last year and Age of Conan also provides the players with new things and improvements. You might not like the game and hate to see things didn't made it into the game, but atleast they try. But singleplayer game devs they are mostly the bad guys. Cause they don't add free stuff, and sometimes don't even bother to bring out patches like with Stormrise, a nice themed RTS game thats unplayable cause of the bugs and till today never been fixed.
A beautiful example is Atlantica Online. Playing it since CB day 1. The gap is growing ever since between community and devs... ( well more like between the korean devs and the NA + europe community )
This relationship you are talking about really isnt an even termed relationsship. Devs vs. Fans is a Seller vs. Buyer relationship. So us as buyers, customers, dont need to be polite as we are paying our money and spending our spare time to use these products. The Devs on the other hand are being paid for their work so to expect Us to be as polite and courteous as Them is really a flawed argument.
We pay the money, they receive the money. They owe us, we dont owe them anything (beside our money). If they dont produce what we want, they wont get our money, simple as that.
My gaming blog
It is only natural that developers and players do not always see eye to eye. As long as both can accept that it is not an issue.
Do’s and Don’ts
For developers:
Do not allow your design decisions to be influenced by a vocal minority; do not have star players whose opinions you give more weight to, accept that you are not going to be every players friend. Don’t sound patronising, promise what you are not sure will be delivered or use hype-speak. As a ‘designer’ you will be expected to know everything about the MMO, regardless of what your job is. Be careful during anything which is live, you will want to give an answer even if you know it is not your area, just say ‘I don’t know’.
For Players:
Do raise issues on the official forum, keep your cool, don’t spam. Try to form a consensus of opinion, but be prepared to disagree. Don’t just agree with people because you think of them as a forum friend, or because they are an in game friend. Occasionally, only very, very occasionally, email or PM a community representative if you feel very strongly about an issue; do this too often and your emails will go to the bottom of the pile.
Basically if you've ever taken a SE class or read a book about the *basics* of Software engineering you would know that what most game companies, not just MMOs, are putting out are would be failed projects things that if I worked in SE and presented to a customer they would probably tell me they aren't paying me and/or going to take me to court.
The problem is these games are better off being crappy and rushed and not work because as long as you sell the box it doesn't matter how many months they sub to your game unless it is about 4 or more they already made most of the money they are going to make off of you.
The other problem is because theres no real contract going on here so the companies hold all the cards. There is no "Spec" like there would be in a real contract so there is nothing we can do to them, even though had this been a real SE contract I would be sued or denied payment since the game didn't live up to its specs.
This to me means people deserve to be angry they were told a game would be something its not so it would sell the box who cares how crappy the game actually is they are making a large portion of the money upfront and theres nothing you can do about it.
TLDR A game is like a business contract expect the game company holds all the cards, they can lie and say its great and trick you into buying it and theres nothing you can do because there is no physical contract binding them to making a game that lives up to some standard.
To be honest I think the whole Us vs Them thing is a result of the shift in the industry from being niche to mass-market.
WoW's success attracted all the big investors and CEOs who don't have a clue about making games and only want to make quick money. Ever since then new MMO releases have gardually been getting lower and lower in quality and players are wising up to the tricks and realising that the developers in this current age aren't trying to do anything in the interests of their players. I don't think there's anyone left now who will deny that Cryptic has little interest in providing for their customers, and what about Blizzard's recent cash shop additions charging extra for what once would have been free?
The fact is the developers have brought this distinct change upon themselves by backing players into a corner with underhanded sales tactics and general moneygrabbing. The players simply don't trust the devs any more.
There's also the issue of the player community itself, and this varies from game to game, but in general I've noticed that the more popular a game is the more aggressive the community becomes and this also forces the devs onto the defensive.
Both sides are propagating the problem but the devs have the ball and only they can try and fix things up... only problem is that the big names behind the devs honestly don't care what we think, they can only see the money.
Basically this is what ever game representative does. Exactly what they wouldn't be doing if it was an actual business contract. There is no ramification to them lying and saying something along the lines of.
"YEA ITS GOING TO BE GREAT THERE ARE GOING TO BE THESE HUGE HUNDREDS VERSUS HUNDREDS BATTLES AND THE GAME IS GOING TO RUN SMOOTH!"
Yea okay try again how about the day warhammer launched it crashed frequently because of a memory leak, but they wouldn't acknowledge that, then when we finally got to those 100s vs 100s battles the servers crashed everytime. The Guy who hyped Warhammer lied about every aspect of the game but we couldn't demand a refund we couldn't do ANYTHING except cancel our sub, its too bad they already got about 65 dollars out of us at that point.
People deserve to be angry about this they promised a game that would have things that it clearly does not, look at AOC when it first launched there were entire zones with basically no mobs or quests for crying out loud!
What a load of crock.
Damn rigth there is an us and them attitude and rightously so.
Besides the fact that we pay your salaries we can clearly see that as time goes by the player is being treated worse and worse.
Next year we will be paying for empty DVD cases promising a patch.
And the developer is not responsible for this in most cases yet nobody is forcing them to join a compagny that is unethical. Money is a poor excuse for actions.
The gaming industry also appears to be the only business where there are no drawbacks to misconduct. No sir, the player will cough up the next game. And since games are a form of art or a mass product that is being payed for, gamers have every right to be as vocal as they want.
And the sad part is with the way things are evolving now, a lot of the current gamers just might have to retire because the industry is consuming players without any care for the future. Just like every other industry out there.
I think the crux of the matter revolves around the fact that publisher and developer don't care about ethics. When we gamers were with a 1000 damn right they were being nice to us.
Now that we are a global "infinite" community we have lost our voice as with everything in life.
Because there is a sucker born every 5 minutes.
In conclusion, I understand the process from concept to game. I understand as a gamer that it is a process that involves a lot of back tracking and just bloody hard work. But as a developer you have a professional ethos to choose wich house to work for. If you choose a house with less then good ethics then you as a developer deserve to be blamed.
I do think the situation between players and developers has gotten bad the last few years. However, after leadership training I believe it takes a lot before the situation cannot be fixed. Here's my recommendations. They go to game developers as opposed to players because unless developers use them they won't attend (at least in my experience).
1 - Townhall meetings - Developers have to have regular meetings with players to find out what's bugging them, or even just hang out with them and answer questions. It's the fastest way of showing you care about the players by opening up lines of communication. Questions asked should be posted on the forums with answers. There shouldn't be 'I don't know' as an answer. Those in charge of one aspect should answer the question when they can. It doesn't have to last four hours, but it can happen several times over a few days.
2 - Polls - Developers should ask their players about the game and the content they would like to play in game and on the forums. These should be resources developers use to plan content in the future. People who don't vote might not get what they'd like for the game. It's like real life. You don't vote, you might be unhappy with the result. The thing is, developers actually have to develop based on what players would like or it comes across as 'See we asked you what you wanted but we're going to spend the next six expansions on PvP cause we like PvP.'
3 - Show people you play - Developers or community representatives should pop into game from time to time. Answer questions, chat, play minigames with people, host mini events, hold trivia games, be human. Otherwise players get the idea that developers just aren't in game, even if they are regularly. Events don't have to be large scale, but showing up from time to time helps the community associate the developers with friendly people.
4 - Discuss Loot - This is a big issue on why players often fight with developers. I think mainly it's because Developers refuse to discuss the loot system. Players who regularly get poor loot and complain often times get told 'it's fair and balanced' but won't get to see examples of how it works. If you're playing a board game with someone whom you suspect is cheating. You confront them on it in such a way as to see if they're actually cheating. If you're playing monopoly with someone who is the banker who you think is stealing money you put the money where you can see it. No one accepts 'I'm not cheating but I like the money right here' If developers don't regularly examine loot tables, and show players how it works, then players think it's broken, even if it's not.
5 - Give News to Players - Currently when expansion news is approved by marketing it's sent in the following order. Websites (MMORPG/Massively/IGN) then Gaming Magazines then Stockholders/Outsiders, and finally players. Generally by the time players get the information it's so confusing or distorted that players don't know what's going on. This should include having Patch notes for expansions available BEFORE the patch is released. Yet gaming companies don't do that. Players aren't considered to be worth communication. Often times the players of the game don't get patch notes for several hours (or even days). That and often times there are stealth changes which should be a sin.
These are common reasons why developers don't seem to have very good trust and compassion from players. Players care about their game. They might not ever go to the movies, or out to eat, but the character they've created is often very important to them. Players however get really rotten treatment by developers though. Stealth nerfs, rebalancing without discussion or improving something else, decreasing loot while increasing difficulty, or even just simple lack of communication.
If there is a vaccum in terms of communication in a game, then people fill it with their own thoughts. If developers and community representatives don't show people their kindness, compassion, and willing to communicate then they come across as Aristocrats sitting in ivory towers.It comes across as players should be happy to pay for abuse. Players should be treated better then they currently are by many game developers. Unfortunately, there's almost no one to stand up in an official position against game developers, and say "What you're doing is wrong." Players can do it, and they get ignored.
There may come a time when players stop turning to game developers as being the solution though. Eventually it might just go back to console games and tabletop games. I hope that doesn't happen but if developers don't work with players to fix the lines of communication it will not be the players that suffer from loss of business.
Oh well, yes some devs do great things. Other devs get the attitude of were right the costomer is wrong.
For instance Lotro, You had the entire radiance gear gate put in place. It chased of a got 50% of the player base at that time, and they are still suffering. They had a recient poll and folks voted to vermove it. However then you have the attitude from the lead guy Jeff Stefell postingin the forums more than once "Our players love the raidiance system" It has continued no matter what.
I will point at the NGE same thing devs actually putting players down in the forums calling them out personally.
Lotro with their draconic forum rules shutting anything down about certain topics and pruning threads. All of the nerfs to existing classes in the name of balance instead of trying to do the real job of making the classes work together without having to give out nerf stick.
And folks wonder why it's become a us vs them.