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[Editorial] General: MMOs Discover Collaboration's the Key to Success
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Time was, game developers created games in a vacuum, following no guidelines but the ones they invented. Many of them even had a kind of superiority complex they used to create games with obscure, maddening mechanics that made us bang our collective head on the wall. Fortunately, those dark days are over, and today's developers seem to have realized the antagonistic approach is no longer viable. Even better, they've realized that success depends on giving us what we want. If any holdouts remain who still believe it's a developer's rather than a gamer's market, well—their days are certainly numbered.
Click to read more of Neilie Johnson's MMOs Discover Collaboration's the Key to Success.
Comments
I don't think any gaming project can really be a success unless the person at the top has the ability to lead their team to the right decisions. Player feedback is important but just doing whatever the loudest members want would be a disaster.
Firefall is a good example of a game that had a great concept but lacked the leadership to direct the game to a successful and positive outcome. There was no shortage of player feedback and lots of communication between red5 and the community but at every turn the company never seemed to go in the right direction. I don't want to count them out because I'm still hopeful the game will see a change one day but the past has a lot of lessons on what not to do.
As to wargaming didn't one of their head guys once respond to the statement " but the players don't seem to want that " by saying " the players are idiots and don't know what they want "
I don't disagree with his response :P but it's always funny when someone actually says it.
The time to bring in potential customers for collaboration is really up front when the requirements documents are being prepared and plans are being made. A development team has to have a vision... and they need to stick to that vision at least in principle... once they start actual development since schedule slips and cost overruns will result otherwise.
There is a difference between sticking with a vision and being totally anal ("We aren't going to change things no matter what!").
There is a difference between sticking with a vision and being totally arrogant ("We know better than our customers what they will enjoy!").
There is a difference between sticking with a vision and being focused on short-term profit (the cash-grab).
Too often what we see these days are development teams bringing in "collaboration" during Beta testing... instead of actual testing. At that point in time, it is too late to determine what the intended playerbase is going to like. It is also a way to guarantee that the Beta testing will be grossly inadequate since it will be more focused on marketing than testing.
I couldn't disagree more. Of course player feedback is important but true innovation comes from trying things no-one has done before, and no player is going to ask for something they've never had when they already like a, b and c. They will ask for that, then get bored for a while, then ask for it again.
This is the entire problem with MMO development these days. There is almost no-one willing to really branch out and try something different and the industry itself is built around quashing innovation.
Those 'maddening' quirks were often the soul of the games, and quite often if you persisted with them, became part of what made those games stand out and eventually become time-honoured classics. I've yet to see a single classic 'crowd-forged' game and I suspect we will be waiting a much longer time still.
Yeah, not intending this to be insulting, but i'm curious what planet the author is living on. GW2 is not a succesful example. That game is barely profitable. World of wartanks on the other hand is a good example, but as the first response to this thread said, its because they are smart enough to realize that most gamers are idiots and dont actually know what they want. So they do a good job of figuring out what the players actually want and giving it to them.
Giving the players what they want does not mean "give the players what they say they want".
As many other posters have said, the developers need to have a vision and mostly need to stick to that vision.
Michaelangelo didn't create masterpieces by consulting a bunch of people who viewed his previous and asking them for input. He created masterpieces because he was a visionary.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
It's amazing how entire groups of people can be labeled as idiots if they cannot see the genius that is your point of view. It would seem that arrogance is not the sole purview of the game developer. I think the gaming industry is one of the luckiest businesses out there. The very media they work with is the perfect way to get in touch with their potential customers in order to find ways to appeal to them with their products and services. It seems to me that history is proving that companies who completely disregard their customers tend to go out of business quickly.
The problem isn't listening to your customer's ideas or requests, it's differentiating the ones that originate from your target audience from those that come from the sometimes loud and vocal minority who do not represent your target audience.
In what world?
"As you read these words, a release is seven days or less away or has just happened within the last seven days those are now the only two states youll find the world of Tyria."...Guild Wars 2
Agreed - in what world? Go check out the Q4 2013 reports (http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx) for ArenaNet and you can see that not only is GW2 successful and profitable, it's actually significantly increasing in terms of profitability QoQ.
You should make the distinction between "games that I don't like" and "games that are not successful" because they are not the same thing. GW2 clearly being an example of game you don't like, but is unarguably very successful.
Neilie, I wouldn't be tooting the horn for GW2's Chris Whiteside and his communication efforts any time soon. He and his merry band are notorious for ignoring lengthy feedback threads on major issues and updates. The only threads they have been active in were a token effort called their Collaborative Discussion Initiative (CDI). And by "token effort", I mean they did a great song and dance to listen and chat to the community, apparently hearing these topics and concerns for the first time. Any regular forum goer over there knows fully well Chris has a terrible history of communication, seemingly preferring the fingers in the ears "la la la" approach and going full steam ahead.
A great example of this is their recent patch. A huge patch with some good improvements and some really fundamentally stupid changes. While opinions vary on the patch content, feedback threads were created for the community to comment on the changes. One week later, after thousands of posts and tens of thousands of views on the threads, there hasn't been one comment by Chris, or any ANET rep. Not one.
So, Neilie, giving GW2 and Chris Whiteside credit for communication and collaboration is a bit tongue-in-cheek. The community on the GW2 forums knows precisely how valid that is.