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Auto Assault : Dissecting our Baby: AA Post Mortem
Posted May 15, 2007 by Jon Wood
Carolyn Koh files her second report from the recent Online Game Developers conference. This time, she sat in on a talk with Scott Brown and Hermann Peterscheck from NetDevil, the company responsible for Auto Assault. In this talk, Brown and Peterscheck discuss their missteps while brining Auto Assault to market.
Day two of the ODGC saw me at the Auto Assault Post Mortem - a lecture presented by Scott Brown, the President of Net Devil and Hermann Peterscheck, the game's Producer, as they shared with conference attendees their missteps while brining Auto Assault to market.
"Want to make a great game?" asked Scott Brown, "Don't make a deal with milestones. There are better ways to do a game deal."
What Scott meant was that when it came to game design and delivering an MMOG, there are better measurables out there than milestones as contracted payment deliverables. Per the normal business models, a detailed time and progress schedule is tied to payment. However, with games development, planning out what you will be doing a year from now (or two, or three) is impossible beyond the most basic set of features. Without a dynamic and reasonably simple change process, developers will spend an enormous amount of time doing the wrong things at the wrong time or in the wrong order to meet the milestone schedule in order to be paid.
Most developers are unable to cover the costs of teams, in the event of missing a milestone. This puts incredible pressure on the publisher to pay for milestones they felt were not met, or cancel the project.
;)
Read the whole article here.
Interesting stuff. I'm glad to see that many of their mistakes are purposefully being avoided by Flying Labs with PotBS. Maybe NetDevil should write a book "How NOT to Make an MMO."
AA is much improved over beta (was in beta and then played for a while in the past year), but it's still lacking quite a bit of content and some of the game mechanics aren't working that well. But it's pretty fun for a month or two, depending on how you play.
Every game has the potential to be great, it's all in the execution and, as they said, you only get to launch once.
Blowing up stuff and driving around is only fun for so long
They're still trying to spin Auto Assault as "people don't play it because it's too complex and too good for them"?
Come on.
Auto Assault is still the only mmo that I've played where the sound didn't work. That's a special level of broke right there.
The game is fun, but in the same way that the SWG space game is fun. You can only take so much of blowing up the same old things the same old ways. If you are going to have a car as an avatar you need more 'look' options, in the same way a Dwarf might have many armors and weapons to pick from that effect his look.
Anyway the biggest problem is they over reached. They tried to have a lot of things, but on a small budget. If you want WoW numbers you have to spend WoW money.
I loved Auto Assault, but it isn’t a game that lends itself to new players very easily. When someone see's a driving game MMO especially the videos of AA they immediately think its either going to be very hard to learn or way too easy. It's a shame because the game was very cool and very original creation that deserved a lot more than it got.
It was a game that should have been fast paced action over a few minutes or a few hours. But sadly because of the way the game worked it felt too slow and restrictive. I don’t mean it wasn’t fast and fun, heck I had a great laugh just driving about killing things and destroying buildings like Mad Max on speed. What I mean is that the typical MMO system of calculating damage doesn’t work in a fast game like AA. I found myself driving around and fighting many enemies either completly destroying loads of them no problem at all or finding one nigh on impossible to kill even though I was high enough level and I had good enough equipment.
I found myself sitting almst ontop of the enemy and shooting point blank and not once taking off his health. The only way around that was constantly using my stealth attacks to create an opening and running away to repeat it until I could destroy him completly. I can't tell you how many times I found myself wanting to step out my vehicle and have a look at my gun's incase someone had some how bent them like in a Looney Toons cartoon and was shooting out at some strange angle.
I found that the creation system was very time consuming, not because it was very difficult to learn but the more I played the game and destroyed the world around me the more junk I carried and stored. I had to spend a long time looking at each item to see if I had any thing in my storage locker that I needed in order to create some thing. Which then means I needed to transfer it out in order to use it. I can't tell you how much hastle it was to transfer them one at a time between my character and my storage locker every time. If only they allowed you to create things without having to worry if the items was being carried or I had in storage.
All of this I could forgive because I loved the fighting but the more I tried to get people into the game the more people left it. Eventually it came down to me driving solo wondering why the heck I was paying to play with other people when I spent all my time never seeing or hearing anyone apart from in town or for the 2 seconds I seent hem flying past me on route to some where else.
I am always tempted to log back in and re-sub just to go for a little drive like I used too. Thanks Net Devil for a great game, shame for all the faults but it was an experiance like no other.
"We should have been playing our game ourselves. The question you should ask yourself is 'If your own Devs aren't playing the game... who will?' Play your own game early and often. If people in your office are not playing your game, people outside will not either."
I had just assumed that in general developer's played their own games.... this was a surprise to me that they had to learn this...
Having been a beta tester, I can tell you that the biggest difference between beta and live was that issues that we brought to their attention during beta were quickly patched. In Live, when people who had beta tested the game brought bugs to the devs attention using the same systems as before, communication on the patching ceased.
The reason myself and my friends who beta tested AA with me left live had NOTHING to do with complexity. We were tired of the devs telling us that "the issues would be fixed on the next patch but that there was no ETA for the patch, OH but we have these additional features that will be coming out with that patch!" A month later we would ask about the patch and they would say, "Well we don't have an ETA for it, but we added even MORE features to that patch!"
New Feature patching should occur on a TBA basis; BUG patching should be done asap. If you have the fix for a bug/missing feature, don't announce that it's going to be fixed on the next patch which will occur SOMETIME in the future. The communication for the devs implied that they were holding up the patch in order to add additional features. Most of us that have been in the gaming world for a while know that new features always have some bugs in them. Fix bugs quick; add features slowly.
This is and was always a small niche market game. The developers can whine all they want, but this was never ever going to be a great money maker.
The focus should have been that the concept was wrong from the start.
"There were difficulties with driving controls."
Well I’m glad to FINALLY see this problem brought up. I was complaining bitterly about those lousy controls when I joined late in the beta but was completely ignored. They were not improved at all when I tried a free-trial after release. I certainly enjoy wasting my gaming time spending 10 minutes trying to maneuver a car out of a trench – whoppee.
Character/Avatar movement. Can you get any more basic or fundamental than that? And here they’re finally admitting they messed it up.
"We should have been playing our game ourselves. The question you should ask yourself is 'If your own Devs aren't playing the game... who will?' Play your own game early and often. If people in your office are not playing your game, people outside will not either."
What the??? They weren’t PLAYING their own game?? What the heck were they doing, playing Hero-clix? This is one of the most appalling things I’ve ever heard from a development company. I used to feel sorry about this game failing so miserably but if they had Devs who couldn’t be bothered to play their own game, then they got what they deserved.
The lessons learned from Auto Assault:
Maintaining a good publisher/developer relationship is important.
Treat innovation with caution.
Play your game early and often.
Polish as you go.
Avoid complexity.
Expect change and plan for it.
Focus on one good instance first, and then add content.
The one caveat they left the audience with is the one we have heard over and over again... "You only launch once."
I will agree with these points 100% but would add - Listen to feedback and learn what to ignore as well as what's worthwhile
But knowing what to ignore as whining and what not to ignore is a hard thing. But then if designing games was easy they'd all be best selling hits :)
imho, AA is not a bad game. it's just to "niche" for a full price mmorpg.
ncsoft should introduce some kind of multipass. that would greatly buff their subscriber numbers for EVERY one of their games.
No most people can't play AA cause their machines can't handle it, and for alot of people it is too complex.
Game was hella fun for a few months
<blockquote><i>Originally posted by KoSPr0</i>
<br><b><blockquote><em>Originally posted by Cutedge</em> <br />
<strong>
<p>They're still trying to spin Auto Assault as "people don't play it because it's too complex and too good for them"?</p>
<p>Come on.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Auto Assault is still the only mmo that I've played where <em>the sound didn't work</em>. That's a special level of broke right there.</p>
</strong></blockquote> <br />
No most people can't play AA cause their machines can't handle it, and for alot of people it is too complex.<br />
<br />
Game was hella fun for a few months</b></blockquote>
<br>
I'm guessing with complexity they refer to the crafting system and skill system among other things. They're obvious once you're used to them, but the skillsystem in general gave too little feedback on what was going on and what you got, not to mention it took ages to put in respecs.
But in all honesty, I truly believe Auto Assault, which I found a fun game and returned to several times, failed because it had too many bugs affecting gameplay. Buffs and their stacking was a nightmare, and allthough they'd fixed alot last time I played, it still leaves something to be desired, vehicles STILL have bugged sounds (ie some chassis play their sounds at like 10% of the standard volume), sound effects will become lagged (ie they'll still play, but first you won't hear anything from a group of sound fx and then they'll start playing off in the order you should've heard them 30 minutes ago) and of course their problems with player data being unsynched for PvP. Stuff like that doesn't cry out "pay me".
And basing your endgame on PvP in an itemcentric game is never an optimal solution. Some games pull it off cause people so addicted that they'll farm items for months to go do Item vs Item combat, but AA wasn't one of those few.
The one biggest "good thing" I can point out with AA is that it had for the most part some pretty good storylines for their quests, even though the quests themselves were of the generic type.
This is ridiculous. This game is not complexed at all. The controls aren't either. This is a very simple game to play especially if you like a fast paced game where you can zoom in and out leveling pretty fast as you go along.
I recently cancelled my account after just two months of play because after you hit the top level of 80 there's nothing to do. Plus, there aren't that many players in the game although it's just one server. The Mutants have the least players followed by the Bio-Meks with the Human having the most players. But even the Humans don't have that many themselves.
The mission system is all screwed up. There are many instances where you tend to run out of missions then all of a sudden they pop up again out of nowhere. But now many of these missions are 8-12 levels higher then you are making them impossible to complete or they're 20 or so levels under you where you get nothing for exp.
Pvp is just for the high levels, there's none for the lower levels. if you want an even chance in pvp you then have to wait til you hit the top level to have any chance of staying alive.
In the Mutant side the game is geared just for the Avenger class. Avengers seem to get all the best gear of any class. Everything is either for Avengers or for everyone else. Champions have seconds, the other two classes are forgotten. They should just make the Mutant side just for Avengers since they get everything.
The game itself is pretty good. I like it, I just wish they changed a few things around a bit and maybe, just maybe more people would return to play. And it would be more interesting, especially at the high levels.
These devs see what their mistakes are then do something about it and don't waste time telling others.
AA is a great game.
I tried that game in some beta, and I really love what I saw. I purchase some deluxe edition (eh don't recall the terminology) and I have been happy with it. I didn't play AA even the full month, I just didn't get the extra little motivation to log in and play. What was missing? I don't know. Maybe the ending in some PvP zones cripple my driving goal I don't know.
But I have only praises for this game. Oh, it wasn't perfect, and I didn't play it long. But I buy the collector/deluxe whatever edition and I am extremely happy with that choice. The game is neat. I am spoiled and playing a game I find better (CoV), but eh, that remove nothing to AA. What was it missing? Not much, a little something that make you want to play more...and more...and more...It was like 1 of the best firecamp I ever saw, but nobody has fire to light it up.
I guess the game releases at "the wrong" moment in my personnal life for tastes and all, otherwise, I could have been playing that game, not much of a stretch to see myself playing it and loving it.
At any rate, when peoples ask me to do a top X of the best games I play, AA sometimes make it to the 4-10th position depending on the exact question, and this is great.
Kudos guys and I will definitely considers/buy the next title, maybe even another collector edition!
PS: What would have turn AA into a blockbuster? I know it didn't need much more, but...I dunno what exactly. And I am a Game Designer, a High School Teacher, I solve the problems of the world on an everyday basic. I know it wasn't much, but, I can't pinpoint the detail, what would have change everything...you can go read me in EQ or vanguard forums and see my solutions...but...for AA...it was beyond me, and it didn't need much...it was soooo close.
Anyways thats why I didnt even play the game and still havent, I could be totally wrong about the game.
I followed Auto Assault since it was a rumour. And was lucky enough to play it for a while. I thought it was the best thing in a stale genre to come along in a while. The MMO market is going down hill - nothing but fantasy clones. They are also becoming dummed down. Games used to have elements of strategy or skill in them.. That used to be the draw - testing your wits and mettle against other players or the game AI. Now it just seems like a barely interractive movie. Get wowed by graphics and effects, direct your character and watch all the action take place with little or no input from yourself. Auto Assault was a little bit different. Tried to introduce some player skill in the equation and some speed and action. I thought the system they had was innovative and a fresh change from the norm. Some players love complexity and if the model is given a chance It can become popular to all players once they are weened off the 'norm' of dummed down games.
I think Auto Assault suffered bad luck in its release. But in no way do i think that new developers out there should heed some of that advice. Without risk taking, trying new formulas and innovations we will be stuck with WoW/lineage clones for the next 10 years- people only playing it safe. And gamers being hypnotised into a consumer norm, only playing one type of experience and being made to believe anything remotely challenging is over complex and not fun.
NetDevil screwed over the small player base of JumpGate to work on the trash known as "AutoAssault". So in my eyes, karma came around and bit them in the arse.
If they want success, its sitting there.. in the code they have already written. With the old acronym KISS...(keep it simple stupid)
The company created a fantastic game engine for space related games... with near real physics that brought praise from almost every single player who came into contact with it. What they need to do is revisit that old code (jumpgate) and capitalize on Sony's past screwup with swg and create a space based mmo.
Some things to remember.
1. Make sure you retain a good publisher (3DO ftl)
2. Play to your company's strengths.. (at the time, the best playing space sim out)
3. Follow the project through... (ND dropped the ball with JumpGate after their publisher failed to advertise and market a really great game)
4. Avoid milestones.. (also avoid the term "soon" and announcing dates that are just not within a reasonable reach.
Sure, AutoAssault may be an original idea for the MMO market, but lets be realistic here... who really wants to play hotwheels? By the way, didnt your player base warn ya about this? (shakes head)
Note to Scorch... if ya still working ND that is, go back to JG, rework the code, recreate the stage, keep the storyline (races), and keep the physics... add in a pinch of avatar work, carrier based combat, planets.. etc... rework market and trade and you have the possiblity of a hit MMO. There is an entire community waiting, sitting, watching and wishing for the release of a game the fills this slot. You should really take a look into it.
It is time for a renaissance in gaming.
J.S. Mills
I dont believe in niche markets... any market can be a success if done well...
Twisted metal 1,2,3 all sold over 1 million copies each....if the game is fun people will buy it.
Other genres in games are harder to make mmo's becuase you cant just copy features.. so its harder to make a "WoW" when there are no games to steal from.
QFT
I liked Auto Assualt, but it actually made me motion sick. I would have headaches that lasted hours after a sesson of gameplay.
I do hope ND goes back to work on Jumpgate. If jumpgate was created in a universe the size of Eve, it would be a first rate game. It's main problem was the size of the universe. Within a couple months you'd done/seen everything. It's commodities trading system was built as well as it's flight engine. I spent countless hours transporting loads between stations to make a profit in a game where mass affected manuverability and the amount of time it took a ship to reach zero accerleration. Only SWG FLS had a flight engine that came close to matching Jumpgates and it too suffered from a Galaxy too small.
A few follow up notes here: (not going to argue anyone’s thoughts, if you don't like something its your opinion I am certainly not going to change it)
1-I feel this "not playing the game" point needs some clarification. Its not that nobody played the game, many people played the game quite a bit. It is that EVERYONE did not play the game every day. With the team crunching we thought it was more important for people to work on deliverables than to force a time carved out every day for every person in the company to play. This is something we are doing now with each of our projects once the game is to a playable point.
2-We spoke to performance quite a bit in our talk, not really reflected here. Our point is simple, poor frame rate equals bad game experience. Having higher specs in general hurt us on this project no question. We continue to optimize the AA engine and squeze more performance all the time.
3-The talk for us was really more about a good process for making games more than specifics about Auto Assault.
4-Great points on Jumpgate, that’s why we have a team working on a complete revamp now. :)
I still think Auto Assault is a very cool game and we are far from giving up on that project. Hopefully some of the changes in store will give players a reason to take another look at the game.
Scorch
The reason that my entire guild left the game had absolutely NOTHING to do with "complexity" of the game. Most of us had been beta testers and were enjoying the game itself. We all realized that it takes time for fixes to be implemented and were willing to wait. However, our patience was finally exhausted when after 6 mths of repeated annnouncements that the first patch for all the bugs reported during the final stages of beta and the beginning of live, they were still telling that the patch was coming out "soon". If you tell your players that a patch is coming out soon, this is not >6 mths down the road. If you take a poll of people on here, I'm sure that soon would be < 3 mths.
I terminated my subscription at this point (and yes they had already stated it was free at this point), and left my email address up on their announcements. If I remember correctly, it took at least another 3-4 mths before that patch was released, AND THE BUGS WERE STILL NOT FIXED.
The real reason my guild and I left was that we were sick of being lied to.
Those are good advices for future game developers. If you screw up once it will scar your game for life and it's very hard to recover from bad impressions. First impression is very important here as consumers will only give you ONE chance to take a look at your game and will either dismiss is as crap or praise it and invite their friends over. Early beta are not good, you should polish your game first before going beta. Auto Assault is a good game, unfortunately people dismissed it as a blah game so it didn't caugh on the momentum and eventually the population of the game dwindled and that spelled it's death.
AA is a great game, plain and simple... Scott should not be out there apologizing for anything. It breaks my heart to read some of the comments that he made. Especially when I really think that he's missing the boat on what the core issue with the AA subscriber numbers are...
The issue with AA is this, and only this (imo): AA is deployed on the WRONG REVENUE BUSINESS MODEL. End of story. You can comment about this and that, the controls, the gameplay, blah - blah - blah. And this is fine, you are definitely entitled to your opinion. But I have maintained this from the start and I will continue to maintain it until NetDevil wakes up and changes things and starts earning money (I have 2 AA acounts btw - one for my son and one for myself) by having more subscribers.
AA is not a retail box + $15.00/month subscription based game. It's trying to compete in the wrong business space. There is just too much competition in this market area and AA is not the type of game that is going to glean a decent revenue stream out of this market.
NetDevil/NCSoft should try out another business model. Namely:
#1) Adopt a Station Pass (SOE) type of approach where AA is offered as one game in a set of games where a monthly fee is charged (let's say $15.00/month or $19.00/month) depending on what other games are included in the set.
#2) Adopt a Guild Wars style model where on-line play is free, and revenue is gleaned by offering timely expansion packs and releases.
#3) Offer a lower monthly sub (let's say $4.99/month) and do in-game advertising. Heck, it's an auto based game for heaven's sake. There are millions and millions of advertising dollars available in this arena. If they got one or two big in-game advertising accounts, and lowered the sub (or eliminated it), AA would be an incredible hit.
All of the other observations that Scott has made I feel are just way off base. Yes, there's beta, and communications, and frame-rate, and all of this other stuff. But when it comes down to it, it's not why AA has such a low subscriber base. He needs to think in terms of how much a person is going to spend on a monthly game fee. It's going to be a limited amount. As a basis, people are probably going to throw their $$ into one of the big boys: WoW, EvE, EQ, etc. etc. They are not going to throw it into a game like AA.
For $15.00/month people want some other immersive type of experience. But under a different revenue model - heck ya! People are gonna want to log in and blow stuff up, and trick out their car, do a little crafting... It's totally a no brainer.
I hope NetDevil doesn't throw this game away. It's just too good, and it's too much fun. Just get real about how you can make money with this title (and YOU CAN!). Please think out of the box - and for Pete's sake: DON'T PULL THE PLUG ON NEXUS!!!!!
IMO Auto Assault suffered from the same problem that Earth and Beyond suffered from. It isn't actually a science fiction setting, it's a fantasy setting. In a technology based setting all abilities come from equipment and the skill to use it comes from the character. In AA (and E&B) the character themselves have what equate to magical spells. Other then the hazard mode there was no equipment requirment to use your special abilites which makes them spells, not technology. In a sci-fi based game the technology should be disposable and easily replaced, it's the skills to use that technology that should lie in the character. Players relate to the character, not the vehicle. The vehicle should only be a tool.
But the main thing was it needs to look more about driving skill and fast and furious speed than auto aim guns and a tiny amounts of enemies, maybe our technology isnt developed enough for this genre..
Here's the thing. You should not have to schedule your staff to play your game.
Your game should be such that people WANT to play it - you should be writing memos to your staff to STOP playing the game on company time. Fun games are things the rest of us not in the gaming industry secretly load onto computer and play when the bosses aren't looking. If you have a legitmate reason to have the game on your computer, then a fun game will keep you after work, at the office, playing with your co-workers.
If enough people aren't doing this, and at a fairly early stage of the game, it's probably a good indication of the general fun level of it.
I've seen gaming companies where people will be working on one game, then stay after hours at the office to play another game. It can be a PC game, a console game, or even a card game. But it's the fun level of these OTHER games that companies should be striving to produce. If they're own game isn't competitive with games that are truly fun then they should realize their doing something wrong.
1.) It was dasigned as a casual game, but priced for and marketed to the general/hardcore MMO market. The way the game is structured, specifically the ammount of XP you get for missions as opposed to killing mobs, makes the game easy to stay competitive without logging hundreds of hours a week. This game is awesome for casual play, but the only places I've seen the game marketed are MMO sites and Computer gaming magazines. Not exactly the best places to find casual gamers. And when casual gamers happen to actually find the game, the $15.00/month fee is very offputting.
2.)At it's most basic level, AA is an vehicular-combat game, yet 90% of the vehicular-combat fans I've talked to wont touch AA with a 10-foot pole. the original AutoDuel from Origin is more engaging at some points. That's pretty sad. Also to note; the other auto-combat MMO, DarkWind, has gotten a better reception from fans of the genre so the 'Ease of Use + Graphics = awesome game' theory doesnt fly.
If ND would lower the price to say $5 per month, they could easily triple their subscriber base and not lose money. There was a game store here that had the game-time cards for $5. That was the only time I considered buying them. I did actually buy a retail box recently, but only because they were selling them for a penny. People shouldnt have to wait for your game to go on sale to think it is a good value.
What someone said about AA essentially being a fantasy game is accurate. If it werent for the Havok engine, it would be a fantasy game with post-apoc graphics overlaid.
I guess thats enough ranting for me.
On the early start, it have enforce the kill this.. kill that.. collect this.. collect that. AA might be in a successful path if the game have sandbox enviroment or convoy enforced to most of the missions.
Awesome first post, I 100% agree.
Wwelcome to0 MMORPG, we need a few more like you around here :)
They are still in denial, there was nothing complex about the game, at all. It was far too simple. Pretty graphics may grab your attention in the beggining, but complexity is what keeps you interested and draws you in deeper.
Massively: What was massive about it? You went from one small area, blasting a few enemy types that fall within your level range, and then move on to the next very small area, to blast whichever 1-2 new enemy types appear. It couldn't have been more linear if it had been an old side-scrolling console game.
Multiplayer: It felt dead already, during the month they launched. As noted by others, the principle problem was bad word-of-mouth advertising, first from beta testers, and then early players such as myself. Their advertising campaign wasn't anything special either, not that it would have mattered much in the end. If you are doing something new, you really need to sell people on it. A few banner adds here and there on sites like mmopg.com aren't enough. Why was it Multiplayer? It certainly never felt like a multiplayer game. There was no reason to form teams or guilds or the like. This ties closely with my next complaint:
Online: Auto Assault is not an multiplayer online game. It is a single player console game where the creators wanted people to pay an additional monthly fee to keep playing it. That's the only conclusion I can come to. Its online because they want online fees. The game would play vitually the same as a console version.
Role Playing: What role was I playing, other than chump? I looked the same as anyone else, and I functioned pretty much the same. There was no real reason to play healer/buffer types, other than to try to self-inject a little variety into my playing experience. Straight-up combat was the order of the day, every day, 24 hours a day, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 dollars. In a game where the only activity is shooting your weapons (even crafting began with you first blasting apart the terrain) then combat is the end-all be-all of your existence. What's complex about that? The coolest looking weapons often had the greatest drawbacks, so there wasn't even that to keep me entertained (I liked the single target lasers, but weapons that affected areas were of much greater utility). And gettting a different chasis was mostly pointless, other than to make you spend your money. There was no reason to advance, no world-building to engage in, no end-game other than pvp which, as someone pointed out earlier is completely missing from the early game (and how weird is that? Its like two different games, one you play PvE for a while, then Wham! suddenly its a PvP game).
I gave AA an honest try, and it was fun . . . for about 2 weeks. By the fourth week of my included month of play, I had gone back to EQ2. It wasn't bad, really, just nothing you can call a mmorpg. And that's what I like to play.
Performance + Easy + Pretty = Fun! ?? Are you kidding me? Of course a game has to be easily accessible, but are you joking? People dont need dumbed down games...they just dont need games where they are thrown to the wolves from day one.
Hell, a lot of us jumped right in to the early MMOs with no clue and did amazingly well. Whoever thinks that games need to be dumbed down ought to get fired from an MMO job and move to making console games.
Lots of interesting points here. Scorch has already clarified a few things. I understand the frustration to the "play your game" points. What is so difficult about this is that it DOES seem so obvious. The goal, of course, is to WANT to play your game, but to get there you have to force people to play it, every day. This is how you reveal what it is that makes people not want to play it in the first place. It's tricky because game development is usually tons of hours on difficult tasks that require lots of focus. When people are working on some hard problem, or building some complex asset, they don't want to be interrupted for an hour or so to be forced to play a game... especially a game that isn't done (and not fun :)). It can also be demoralizing because now they have to go back to work on a game that isn't fun and no one knows how long it will be until it is fun!
They'd rather finish their work and "play later" or play "when it's ready." The trick is, they won't play later, and if they never play it'll never be ready :). When you're staring down a hard deadline and are worried about your game getting canned it's hard to prioritize playing the game over finishing up this last thing. I guess maybe a better way of thinking about it is we didn't make playing our game a #1 priority, and if it's not then in effect you are not playing your game... at least not really. The other thing is to take what you learn from game play sessions and making those issues the top things to fix (also hard if you have a hard and fast dev schedule). It's all tied together and one of the points we were trying to make in the PM is that the contract side strongly affects all these things.
We did, of course, play the game... but not nearly enough and I am guilty of embellishment to drive a point home.
With regard to the game being too hard... this is a general statement as everyone is different. I can say from first hand experience now that getting people not on your team play your game and writing down what they do is incredibly painful and educational to watch. Buttons that are really obvious are missed; paths that are clear as day are ignored; giant glowing flashing signs are skipped over :). A game being too unintuitive (perhaps a better word than complex) and not having enough things to do are very different things. The issue that we face is that, in general, if you pull someone off the street to play your game, they won't have any idea what to do without tons of focused iteration. By doing this (and forcing people to watch) you get a really good sense of where people get lost and if you plug those holes people will either like or dislike your game on it's own merit as opposed to not liking it because they simply don't understand how to play.
Though another thing did factor in, that the game never quite worked and that therefore they weren't able to maintain a population. The PvP system where you could join in tournaments would often drop me out (leaving me emptyhanded) or send me against weaker or stronger opponents who would have no chance against me, and that's just on the off chance it was able to send me against ANYBODY.
So, AutoAssault would be good if there were enough people, but there was never a point in actually interacting with them. Without the interaction there's no long-term reason to play. Without that longterm reason to play you won't have anybody to interact with.. then again, there's no reason to anyway.
That it was easy to get to maximum level was not a problem, WoW does that, WoW is an easy game and it's ginormous. That it was utterly pointless to team up, that there was no auction-house, that there were precious few enemies you'd even think to get a group for, was a problem.