Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Developers Should Stop Being Transparent
SirAgravaine
Member RarePosts: 520
The title says it all. But, "Why?" you may ask.
Because of you.
Because of you.
Comments
early in my career i was working with one orthopod who stated people will always complain but if your up front and transparent they can't complain about that.
The current level of transparency (read: status quo) has seemingly been a terrible way to communicate for both the consumer and developer. All in all, the transparency seems bad for the genre, from where I sit.
I dont think the problem is transparency, I think the problem is software developers are held to a different standard than any other business. Tell me what other business allows a person to change the contract (terms of service) when ever they want without getting the other persons permission. What other business allows you to say a product will have features A, B and C then release the product with only A? Honestly, game development is like being an American politician, the rules the rest of us have to follow dont apply to you.
The problem is not transparency, the problem is developers getting caught going back on what was previously said. Chris Roberts is a perfect example, all of 2015 he is promoting Star Marine, showing videos of it, describing features and telling us it is coming soon/in a few weeks. Then all of a sudden he says it was never a real product and we basically have it in the tech demo they call the PU.
Transparent development could refer to an already released game where the input of the players could help improve the game.
What you are describing is overhyping a game before the release which is purely the fault of the company.
Too many bad or unfinished games atm.
Did you hear that Disney is opening up the new theme park they have under construction to crowd funders? It's a big grassy field with a couple walkways and a dozen rides and attractions that don't work right. You pay half price to get through the gate, and you can watch all the contractors putting your coasters together. If you want, you can pay a little extra for silly hats or other dance moves.
Its not even a challenge now prdicting a game will 'fail' because they all basically do. At least by the definition of enough peopel to matter (to them).
But what surprises me is that they still do it and to this day, every time they do, there is a army of white knights ready to defend their honor.
You know......."It's still in Alpha, what do you expect?" kind a thing.
And why do game dev times take longer than expected? They are doing something they have never done before, creating something new. Even companies providing a set service can have delays, the more complicated the process is the better the chance. Games are pretty complicated, especially MMOs. No one starts a project (no professional anyway) without a planned timeline. So basically games are like any other product, it's just the nature of the product that ends up delaying release, or causing features to be dropped.
Transparent or not, unreasonable people will complain about delays, or features being dropped, but being transparent will allow reasonable people to understand what's going on.
Some studios will mismanage things, lie about what's going on, but that will happen irrelevant of their level of transparency.
It is like watching one of those time lapse art videos and stopping 1/4 through and bitching that it looks all wrong and that they should work on the chin before they sculpt the forehad and then complaining that the colors are off.
You may think you want transparency, but what you want is assurance it will be good. Games aren't that. They simply can't appeal to everyone. Stop hoping they will, and destroying their communities before they grow, simply because you latched onto a fantasy and the game you see being transparently developed isn't meeting that fantasy.
Transparency is destroying the magic. It makes for an interesting read now and again, some nice forum banter, but it certainly doesn't make for a good game experience.
It's bad enough they work themselves to near-death in an extremely volatile industry doing something they love to turn around and get berated by a bunch of unruly gamers. You gotta have some seriously thick skin and the patience of a saint to deal with the fickleness of people who play MMORPG's.
Yea, that's what I thought.
The first problem is with the drought of upfront money to make a game. People who are already rich are rarely crazy enough to invest in entertainment software.
The second problem is marketing, it takes forever to get the word out, it is hard to scrape up an audience unless you made a game that was popular 20 or 30 years ago.
The third problem would be somewhere between project management, which for software is notoriously difficult, and expectation management, which is also fairly hard.
There are also problems of technology, it is wise to stay within the limits of what has been done before, but sheesh, that is no fun! Who does not want to do the impossible, right?
I do think there is a balance to be struck between announcing a vaporware project, during the vapor stage when it is all just wild imaginings, and trying to release a perfect gold-master project before making any announcement.
And clearly, much of the sausage making needs to stay hidden in the abattoir.
Perhaps what needs to be done, is to follow the age old advice of every English teacher I ever had: Show, don't tell. ( which of course, is telling, not showing, but hey it's hard to do ). I think it is best to get something cool done, and show it to a small, personal audience first, and when the feed back becomes positive start showing more of what has been done; rather than just pulling a Molyneux and talking to the press about all the awesome stuff we dream about doing.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Despite that i consider Open Development and Crowdfunding important new developments in the gaming industry. That is why i support them.
There is a caveat for gamers: this is nothing for the instant gratification crowd. Some patience is required in any of these new projects. So far i am very satisfied with the results (e.g. the Shadowrun series).
Have fun
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
Yes, I'm indie, but this goes for large publishers too. There are so many game released every day, you have to promote the crap out of a title in order to make any kind of impact.
If a game remains a secret throughout development, it very likely won't survive development or, at best, be a flop on launch day.
If a great MMO suddenly released without us hearing a word of it before it released we will get it anyways rather soon.
It is different for crowdfunded games since a developer needs to update the investors. In other cases being "open" have mainly been used to hype mediocre games and maybe for selling life time subs for a certain MMO before launch that went F2P pretty soon anyways.
I don't care myself (unless as I said above it is CF), just get out a good game and Im a happy camper no matter if I hear about since the start of development or at launchday.