In this week's column, Sanya Weathers addresses issues raised in a colleague's column earlier in the week, stating that both "the customer" and "the developer" are misnomers.

"The Customer" is not always right, and neither is "The Developer."

The reason for this is simple. There's no such thing as "the customer" or "the developer" in the MMO world.

Speaking of an MMO customer as a single entity is madness. Even a small MMO has tens of thousands of customers. The only thing they are all certain to have in common is that they need to breathe air. The age span will run from toddler to senior citizen. The intelligence level will vary from illiterate cretin to Asperger-iffic engineer. There are a few incredibly good looking people, and there are a few, er, Morlocks.

Most players are right in the middle of every possible bell curve. In fact, the divergence amongst the typical MMO playerbase is mostly found in their opinions about the game. If you've got ten thousand customers, and you ask them all for their opinions, you will have ten thousand different ideas on what the game really needs. There will be broad areas of agreement, of course, but everyone will have their own spin based on their wildly divergent play styles, the amount of time they prefer to spend on gaming, their class, their preferred visual style, how well they read, to what degree they prefer immersion, how fast they type, how much time they spend on consoles, their reflexes, their personalities, their past experiences with MMOs, and their socioeconomic niche. Probably their marital status, too.

Read "The Customer” Is Not Always Right

Most players are positive "developers" are a monolithic entity that marches in lockstep, a juggernaut of nerf that heeds not our cries.

I lol'd.

Conversely, I'll wager that most developers are positive that players are a seething mass of exploiters, bound and determined to escape the box they're being shoved into by the design.

Hell has frozen over, I completly agree with Sanya on this topic which is also shown by my response to The Customer is Always Right article.

I think the majority of players have no idea the complexity that goes into an MMO design and changes. If you read official game boards everything is "It's easy just do this, should only take 5 minutes too." Those statements show such a lack of understanding it is insane. And those same people spit out later that day "The devs don't respond to me" or "The devs don't listen and make easy changes."

As I said in reponse to the other article, are the devs free of blame? Absolutly not, they do make mistakes and they do miss major issues that need to be fixed. But on the grand scheme of things they tend to do a solid job, and often times those major problems that need to be fixed have to be carefully done so in order to prevent many more major issues from popping up.

But the modern MMO player/forum poster tends to be a person who feels they know absolutly everything and they should be listened to and any changes they suggest made. It is ridiculous

Two of my favorite games were destroyed because devs decided to go their own merry way. Despite tons of hollering, crying, whining, and bitching from their subsribers. Those two are EQ and DAoC.

EQ used to be a nice little grouping game. Then some idiot dev had a brainfart to totally change the game to a raid centric nightmare. Locking out players from content, creating a raider vs. grouper division, and worst of all balancing the group game based on raid gear instead of group gear.

DAoC. Oh, DAoC, once the best game ever to grace the earth. Full of grouping, little to no raids. Not gear dependent. Vibrant economy. Awesome RvR. It had it all. Then, out of  nowhere we are hit by this thing called Trials of Atlantis. I mean, wtf was that? This thing was a nightmare. Those of us who left EQ, because of the raids were once again being forced to raid. Not only that, but every encounter seemed to be broken. It took DAoC years, and tens of thousands of subscribers before they finally figured out "the customer is always right".

So, you can say all you want that "The Customer" is not always right(of course, we aren't talking individuals here), but history of MMOs that have gone from riches to rags proves otherwise.

I think I've found my favorite game columnist! 

Originally posted by Hyanmen

I think I've found my favorite game columnist! 

She's pretty much the only one on this site's staff with the ability to write, so yeah, welcome to the fan club.

 The customer is always right. Thats why the customer gets what they pay for. If you ask 1 million people a question. You will get 1 million answers. But there is an average of the same answers. People have somehow fallen into the hype machine and don't know how to get out of it. Foaming at the mouth of every MMO release just because it's something new and looks exciting! Not once attempting to look up information on who's making this crap who owns this company what people are on the dev team and who's funding this game? I didn't play all these games for the hell of it, I played them because I'm looking for something to immerse myself in for a little while. I havn't bought a MMO in over a year because none of these p2p's are even worth it and are an insult. The people that run the show at making games are absolutly fucking DRY. NO IDEAS, NO INNOVATION, NO HEART. They have lost something somewhere down the road and aren't even using the biggest source of ideas. Us.

Originally posted by aleos

 The people that run the show at making games are absolutly fucking DRY. NO IDEAS, NO INNOVATION, NO HEART. They have lost something somewhere down the road and aren't even using the biggest source of ideas. Us.

They just aren't given the chance to do something different, because it's risky. 

The player's aren't very good source of ideas. We don't know what we want. The developer should develop something we want to play, not what we think we want to play.

Originally posted by Hyanmen

Originally posted by aleos

 The people that run the show at making games are absolutly fucking DRY. NO IDEAS, NO INNOVATION, NO HEART. They have lost something somewhere down the road and aren't even using the biggest source of ideas. Us.

They just aren't given the chance to do something different, because it's risky. 

The player's aren't very good source of ideas. We don't know what we want. The developer should develop something we want to play, not what we think we want to play.

Of course its risky. You going to spend millions of dollars on an idea that might not work. Kinda sounds like a lot of shit produced today no? You make it sound as if we were actually asked what we wanted to play we would fumble around like ass hats and idiots drooling over oatmeal cookies. We know exactly what we want most of us aren't complete morons. 

Originally posted by aleos

Of course its risky. You going to spend millions of dollars on an idea that might not work. Kinda sounds like a lot of shit produced today no? You make it sound as if we were actually asked what we wanted to play we would fumble around like ass hats and idiots drooling over oatmeal cookies. We know exactly what we want most of us aren't complete morons. 

No, we would say "moar classes and races plz, and moar instances that are.. bigger and better". 

Before trying out new things we don't know what would be 'best' for us. We say now that instant gratification is The way to reward players in MMO, but that is simply because they haven't tried a game where you actually have to work for your rewards. Some might like it more than what most MMO's offer these days, but without trying... they'll never find out.

It's the dev's duty to create opportunities like this for us to try out. But this isn't possible if they just let us do the thinking.

Originally posted by Hyanmen

Originally posted by aleos

Of course its risky. You going to spend millions of dollars on an idea that might not work. Kinda sounds like a lot of shit produced today no? You make it sound as if we were actually asked what we wanted to play we would fumble around like ass hats and idiots drooling over oatmeal cookies. We know exactly what we want most of us aren't complete morons. 

No, we would say "moar classes and races plz, and moar instances that are.. bigger and better". 

Before trying out new things we don't know what would be 'best' for us. We say now that instant gratification is The way to reward players in MMO, but that is simply because they haven't tried a game where you actually have to work for your rewards. Some might like it more than what most MMO's offer these days, but without trying... they'll never find out.

It's the dev's duty to create opportunities like this for us to try out. But this isn't possible if they just let us do the thinking.

I think you are wrong to assume thats what would happen. Considering those are less than basic ideas. and offer no change what so ever to the MMORPG universe, I'm not sure you're taking this topic seriously. And we wouldn't be doing the thinking we would only providing the supplies FOR the bridge. Not building the damn thing. and by supplies i mean ideas. So we bring sticks rocks bones cans plates cars and mud boom there are your supplies(ideas) now build a bridge(game). Do you have a lack of faith in your fellow player? Or do you have a lack of faith in the Devs?

Originally posted by aleos

I think you are wrong to assume thats what would happen. Considering those are less than basic ideas. and offer no change what so ever to the MMORPG universe, I'm not sure you're taking this topic seriously. And we wouldn't be doing the thinking we would only providing the supplies FOR the bridge. Not building the damn thing. and by supplies i mean ideas. So we bring sticks rocks bones cans plates cars and mud boom there are your supplies(ideas) now build a bridge(game). Do you have a lack of faith in your fellow player? Or do you have a lack of faith in the Devs?

From what I've seen, most often those ideas come down to "make the same game, just bigger and better". 

We can only tell the what we want based on our earlier experiences of the games. We can't make up features outside of that limited range, but the devs have the ability to do so. 

We can tell the dev to use sticks, rocks, bones, cans, etc. when making a game... but we can't tell them to use 'dark matter' for example. Why? Because we don't know it exists yet. The devs can create the game for us made by those ingredients- that we didn't even know existed yet.

It's not really a lack of faith, but more the limited imagination we have. When we think of 'what features would be good in an MMO', we think of what earlier MMO's have done and take our ideas based on those images. That's the problem. 

"If you don't trust your producer or president or designer or your community person to make the best possible decisions for the game, the best recourse you have as a customer is to not give those people your money."

That is so RIGHT

Thanks again Sanya

A very poignant and well-written article. I agree with much of what Sanya said, although I tend to be even more cynical about user opinions/ideas. If I see one million ideas posted by one million gamers, the first things that I assume are that most of them are wrong, unsalvageably myopic, or utterly moronic.

Originally posted by veritas_X

Originally posted by Hyanmen

I think I've found my favorite game columnist! 

 

She's pretty much the only one on this site's staff with the ability to write, so yeah, welcome to the fan club.

And Yes Welcome to the club.

Originally posted by Hyanmen

Originally posted by aleos

I think you are wrong to assume thats what would happen. Considering those are less than basic ideas. and offer no change what so ever to the MMORPG universe, I'm not sure you're taking this topic seriously. And we wouldn't be doing the thinking we would only providing the supplies FOR the bridge. Not building the damn thing. and by supplies i mean ideas. So we bring sticks rocks bones cans plates cars and mud boom there are your supplies(ideas) now build a bridge(game). Do you have a lack of faith in your fellow player? Or do you have a lack of faith in the Devs?

From what I've seen, most often those ideas come down to "make the same game, just bigger and better". 

We can only tell the what we want based on our earlier experiences of the games. We can't make up features outside of that limited range, but the devs have the ability to do so. 

We can tell the dev to use sticks, rocks, bones, cans, etc. when making a game... but we can't tell them to use 'dark matter' for example. Why? Because we don't know it exists yet. The devs can create the game for us made by those ingredients- that we didn't even know existed yet.

It's not really a lack of faith, but more the limited imagination we have. When we think of 'what features would be good in an MMO', we think of what earlier MMO's have done and take our ideas based on those images. That's the problem. 

 

Ok so bam. We have identified a problem. Lets pretend that me and you are the community arguing about wrong and right. On this basis the left and right side must agree on at least one thing at this point. It would be that pretty much all of our ideas come from previous MMOs and other games. So as a community how would we present our ideas and thoughts on how to improve this in a calm and organized manner.

Originally posted by aleos

 The customer is always right. Thats why the customer gets what they pay for. If you ask 1 million people a question. You will get 1 million answers. But there is an average of the same answers. People have somehow fallen into the hype machine and don't know how to get out of it. Foaming at the mouth of every MMO release just because it's something new and looks exciting! Not once attempting to look up information on who's making this crap who owns this company what people are on the dev team and who's funding this game? I didn't play all these games for the hell of it, I played them because I'm looking for something to immerse myself in for a little while. I havn't bought a MMO in over a year because none of these p2p's are even worth it and are an insult. The people that run the show at making games are absolutly fucking DRY. NO IDEAS, NO INNOVATION, NO HEART. They have lost something somewhere down the road and aren't even using the biggest source of ideas. Us.

I think thats looking at it a little sideways. In many ways they are giving the majority of players exactly what they want...the problem is that we, as in the hardcore MMO veterans are not the majority anymore.

Throw on top of that the massive increase in budgets (20m to 50m to make a mainstream MMO these days) and you have a situation where of course the developers are going to go for the lowest common denimonators. So I would argue that the devs are doing exactly what you say they aren't, they are looking at everyone and picking the most commons likes, and those sadly aren't the things us veterans yearn for after years of the genre and playing the titles.

Sadly we simply arent the majority anymore, we are a niche, and hell, when people do make games for us as a niche, like Darkfall for example, we judge them by the standards of WoW and co anyway, I don't blame developers at all for not changing the formula - because we don't give them a reason to! (or there arent enough of us that would at least)

If "the customer is not always right" is the theorem then the corollary is "The customer is always the customer"

This is why no one who works for a game company with a shred of intellegence will ever be brutally honest with a customer.

Originally posted by LordDmaster

"If you don't trust your producer or president or designer or your community person to make the best possible decisions for the game, the best recourse you have as a customer is to not give those people your money."

 

That is so RIGHT

 

Thanks again Sanya

When I read the article... then I see this quote and the fact I agree with the person I quoted (tho not in the way they intended).

Then I consider who wrote this.. who they worked for.. and the current situation of that company (or what is left of it).

The only thing that comes to mind is....  Irony.

*edited to add*

I have no idea why a few posts above this someone is discussing whether the "hard core" is the majority or not.  Look around at all the failed games.. especially recently.  Then look at games which were successful and changed AGAINST customer wishes (in case of this article think DAoC... but imho SWG is probably a better example.. but Sanya wasn't a community relations poster for SOE.. which is why I find this article ironic given recent history especially this week...)

I actually agree with the article that Sanya didn't like(and linked in her article).  Tho I think I would have written it different and my approach would have been different.  Between the two article the one she quoted was closer to "how it is".  Games don't fail because some small group of customers are "wrong".. they fail or start to die because the majority of customers don't think its "right" anymore.

That has nothing to do with Hardcore or casual... it has to do with Development decisions that are wrong... and the attitude of developers lately toward their player base.  Oh don't worry my main beef is with things I've seen SOE employees say/do... but as I like to say.. we all have our perspectives.

This is of course mine... my point of view... my opinion and my experience.  I left that industry in 2005... for good reason.

I go by two phrases:

The customer is always right, but verified by logs.

The customer should be impowered and made to believe his or hers feedback has merit even if it is not to be considered.