Sanya Weathers's MMO Underbelly: Content Design

Even at companies that launch games, content gets laid in later than you’d think in the whole process, and often finds its work bunched up at the end of the schedule. You’re at the mercy of other teams at the beginning, and at the end you’re crunching like mad to finish.

And you don’t have the big picture when you’re a content guy with his nose to the grindstone. Pat Malott is a designer with ten years of experience. He started his career with Ultima Online, which means he’s seen a lot of techniques and trends in design come and go. He says, “The biggest challenge that I’ve had to overcome is my own expectations, and being patient with the game development process. By nature, I’m a perfectionist, and I try to be proactive in identifying development hurdles that the team has to overcome. My advice to new developers is to be patient with this process. Sometimes it may feel like the people above you aren’t listening to you or your warnings. Most likely, they are listening, and they know more about the big picture than you do. Patience is definitely key in the game industry.”

So that’s the process. Now, an experienced team at a well funded studio can focus on the fun. So… what’s fun? Is it like porn, you know it when you see it?

It’s definitely subjective, and your past experiences in games inform your point of view. Really, the definition of fun comes down to the producer – that person is in charge, presumably because someone thought his or her experience qualified them to be the arbiter of fun.

On the subject of fun, Finnigan told me that getting new people into making fun encounters required two things – knowing the scripting tools really well, and having a clear vision of how to put together all the components. Trouble comes when people lack either one of those things. “I have seen encounter designers that knew the tools and were awesome with them, but really couldn't make encounters that were fun and enjoyable, just complex,” he said. “Complexity =! Fun. Designers will sometimes lose sight of fun in order to throw in bells and whistles.” When I pushed him on what he personally flagged as fun, he said it depended on the game. “With FPS games, [I want] clear objectives, some puzzles, lots to kill. With RPGs, I want to feel powerful – slaying enemies, traversing a castle, striking from the shadows. That’s fun to me. If I see an encounter that’s too precise [forces players to interact in only one specific way] that throws up a lot of red flags for me.

Being able to identify fun versus tedium during the scripting stage is what separates the warm bodies from the future lead designers, because the cost to the studio in time and money from allowing not-fun through to the testing process is enormous – studio killing enormous. When a front line content guy doesn’t execute the design properly, there are massive repercussions.

An experienced content lead on a major subscription MMO gave me this example: “In pre-production, we had written an encounter that involved a small race [with very specific behavior patterns]. When the encounter developer implemented it, instead of using the design, he decided to have this small race run around in a circle. It was contrary to the IP, it looked boring and thrown together, and the most important part, it was not fun... it was just a bunch of mobs running around in a circle.”

It got past the implementation stage, and into testing. The encounter was eventually scrapped, but here was the total of the waste: The original designer’s time writing up an encounter that wasn’t used. The implementer’s time that wasn’t spent on useful content. QA’s time, testing the functionality (more on that in a second). The play tester’s time, used on an encounter that couldn’t be made more fun. The art team’s time, spent on making props and visuals for an encounter removed from the game. Dozens of hours, gone, out of a schedule that already included weekends and fifteen hour days.

As a side note, “QA” does not actually have anything to say about the fun factor. Not officially, anyway. QA’s job is to say an encounter works, or does not work. But they can flag something for specific play testing, especially if they suspect that bug free doesn’t mean it’s worth putting in the game.

Anyway, back to our new front line dev. What advice do we have for him?

Unsurprisingly, the pros advocate not getting emotionally attached to anything, and taking feedback at face value. Finnigan says, “As a new encounter designer, you have to get used to raw feedback and be able to digest it. Those that don't digest it and take it for what it’s worth will not move up.” Malott adds, “Learn how to manage your perceptions, and foster positive relationships with your teammates. You will be working long hours with other game developers. It’s ideal that you get along.”

And one producer on an unlaunched MMO, but with five other titles under his belt, says, “When you play games, don’t just mindlessly consume the content. If you find something fun, sit down with a notebook and identify the feelings you had, what caused you to feel that way, the pace, the animations, the risk vs. reward, all of it. You can’t build something cool unless you know what makes people think something is cool.”