Justin Webb: Why Some MMOs Suck
MMORPG.com columnist Justin Webb starts his weekly article off with a bang, tackling a question that's near and dear to the hearts of many MMOers: Why do some MMOs suck?
Column By Guest Writer on December 15, 2009
One thing you see quite a bit when rummaging around forums are comments like, "OMG that game sucks! Those devs don't know how to make a game." Often these comments are laced with more expletives and leet speek than my example which is understandable since gamers are very passionate and loyal creatures. These comments are somewhat hard (painful) to read as they infer that the developers as a whole don't know what they are doing. Trust me, that's not true. There are plenty of other reasons why MMOs don't end up quite as good as they should...
MMO developers don't try to make bad games - it's in nobody's interest to do so. Since MMOs are massive games with colossal amounts of content and really long development times (typically at least four times as long as a console title), the plan is to recoup the vast majority of the development costs through subscription or micro-transaction fees. A bad MMO is a waste of a hundred million dollars and five years of everyone's time. A bad console game can make money if marketed well - an MMO will not. Believe me, every developer on an MMO is trying to make the best MMO ever.
These days, MMO Development teams are full of people with previous MMO experience. It's rare that an MMO will go into production with stakeholders that have no previous MMO experience - it just doesn't happen. I guarantee that every triple-A MMO released in the last three years had an awesome design document at the beginning of development.
So, how do things go wrong?
SCOPE
Here's how it normally goes. Studio X writes an awesome design for a new game. They approach "the Publisher" with whom they already have a relationship and make a pitch asking for Y million dollars. Publisher gives Studio X a briefcase containing Y million dollars in a dark parking lot and tells them they want a triple-A MMO released by specific date Z. Studio X signs the contract. Everyone is very excited. Hey, we're gonna make a kick-ass MMO, right?
Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that. Especially since, if Studio X has "low-balled" on either Y or Z, the game will suck. "Already?" I hear you ask. Yup, pretty much ... and they haven't even begun preproduction yet.
The studio just signed a contract and got Y million dollars. This has to pay everyone's salaries until the release date, which the studio just promised was on Zeptober the ZZth 20ZZ. That's years away. We can make an MMO by then, right? The studio now knows how many people they can hire and how much they can pay them. Hopefully, this is enough people to make all of the features they just promised.
An MMO has a huge number of moving parts. Scheduling one is really hard. As the game goes into production and gets closer to launch, there is a good chance that the studio's initial estimate for the release date was wrong or that the game design has been revised to be more competitive with the current market leaders (remember five years could have gone by), or that a bunch of guys jumped ship and started their own company, or any number of unforeseen events have occurred.
It becomes clear that there is not enough time for the studio to finish the game that they promised by Zeptober the ZZth 20ZZ. At this point, there are three things the studio can do.
- Hire more engineers. If you add more engineers, they can code more stuff before launch, right? Maybe, but who's going to train them? That takes time too. This step involves either asking the publisher for more cash (who might say no), or just spending some of what's left of the Y million dollars. The latter is a surefire way of ensuring massive layoffs just before the game ships.
Having scope is very important. - Ask for more time. Push the release date back and hope you don't go up against a WoW expansion. Of course, the publisher has shareholders to worry about and needs the game to ship during the fiscal year that you promised, so they might only allow a small delay (if any). Very few publishers (with Blizzard being a notable exception) will allow you to delay until the game is properly finished. If launch marketing initiatives have already begun, this can be massively expensive.
- Cut scope. Cut things from the game. However, there are some core features that just can't be cut, otherwise you're not left with an MMO. Normally, all the cool new features go first. Throwing features overboard is usually accompanied with a massive drop in morale. Hopefully, you didn't promise any of these features to your fans already. Oh, you did? Then expect a massive fan backlash.
;)
Usually, the studio does a combination of all three. All three steps result in a lower-quality game, especially step three. The harder you cut scope, the suckier your game will be.
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Justin's column will appear every Tuesday here at MMORPG.com.
If things were like that in every business in the world,dangit,world would be a paradise.
And I dont think that gaming business is any different.
"Believe me, every developer on an MMO is trying to make the best MMO ever."
I don't believe you - unless "best" means "most profitable". Devs don't put in things like cash shops, grinds, and dungeon lockout timers to make their games better for the players.
Apologia from an industry insider. No surprise it's a puff piece.
I think that it always is the fault of the company. The company, which consists of individuals, makes the wrong decisions in pre- and post-release, its as simple as that in my book :P
"It becomes clear that there is not enough time for the studio to finish the game that they promised by Zeptober the ZZth 20ZZ. At this point, there are three things the studio can do."
Yes and why dont they get it done before the deadline? It could be anything, but in the end its the company's fault, or someone inside that company. Bad organisations, flawed cashflow, its always someones fault when something goes wrong, its always someone inside that company who made a, unintentional, bad mistake.
Countdown to the "It's really the customer's fault - because they don't know what they want" garbage in - ten... nine... eight...
Oh, I think we got that in the article itself.
Rule #1 of business : The customer is always right.
It's my opinion that the "goal" is never researched enough before the whole process of designing and coding gets started. How difficult would it be to do some "market research" on the flavor of MMO you wish to create and design a game around what the consumers want? Just a cursory perusal of these forums would already yield a gold-mine of information.
In such a highly interactive environment it still boggles my mind at just how little interaction between developers and consumers actually takes place until it is too late.
I am not overly concerned with finding who is at 'fault' for MMO issues in games I play.
I think finding 'who to blame' is more a Forum hobby than a real community concern. My observations is that witch-hunting is one of several forum trollers favorite topics.. because it really does not matter who is to blame, and its confrontational.. and it allows people to drop civility in order to become Spanish Insisitioners.. where playing 'nice' is not the goal.
I am only concern if the developers make NO attempts to correct the issues. Even sucky system can be tweaked up to trashed and revised. Trashing & rebuilind is obviously a much harder pill to swallow in terms of investory money and game reputation, but some things simply don't play out in reality like they do on the board room table.
MMO players love to exploit game systems... its just our nature to find holes and take advantages any time we can. Without discussing the 'morality' of exploiting errors or assigning blame for their creation.. its actually to the devs advantage if they handle it properly.
Players will always gravitate towards the faster/easier way to accomplish their goals. Its instinctive and natural.. and by observing their behaviour and patching up as you go, you can take advantage of all this 'free testing' to make your product better overall.
The only cardinal sin in MMO development is when you leave 'broken parts' broken for years and years.. and allow exploits to be used indefinately.
Assigning blame is not important to the average player.. the guys inside the game and not on the forums witch-hunting the dev crew.
Fixing broken or sucky systems IS important.. and MMO's have a lot of 2nd chances IF they take them and IF they have the money and ambition to do it.
So long as the /suckyfix process stays alive.. then the MMO can recover from some issues.. even if it takes years and even if you lose some playerbase in the process.
So basically, MONEY is the root of games sucking. Stupid human race economics/greed ruining all the great things we "could" accomplish but never will. This is the same reason we haven't landed on Mars yet or gone farther in space development. We let MONEY rule us.
I'm going to have to point one thing out:
A lot of developers don't. One of the points of being a GOOD developer is knowing how to create balance in the software between technologies and customer desires. When it comes to games, you then have to toss in great game design as well as the others. I wish I could remember the original article from so many years ago, but it basically said all software must compromise between 7 categories such as reliability, performance, scalability, etc. The GOOD developers know how to balance a game within all these things. MMOs really tilt the balance in certain directions, though, so it takes a GREAT developer to make a successful game. (For reference, I recall the article being referenced in the text "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell.)
Now, the other end of the spectrum is true, too. Many of the players that make these sorts of comments don't have a clue as to what they're doing. They make assumptions about what the game should play like (ie this should function like <insert favorite game here>), not what the actual mechanics are, so they end up lost in Noobdonia forever and get pissed at the devs for a 'crappy game'.
Game Devs are nerds who think they are rock stars.
Rock stars don't ask their fans how to write songs or play guitar.
We don't let it, it just does. Money is everything. Everything tangible we need and want.
We don't risk our paychecks to provide more entertainment to our customers. Neither do game devs. They are no worse than we are. The problem is, that they think they are better.
a) yes they do, they just don't do it as overtly. it's done though market research.
b) I'm pretty sure you'd be the first person in line to raise holy hell if developers ignored their player bases.
I know you're going for the whole I hate everything schtick, and that's fine, but takign a shot at developers for looking for fan input is just silly.
I'll start on a negative note but don't worry it'll end positive :) haha. "Trust me, believe me, I gaurntee" I remember an old saying that goes: Never listen to the plea of a man that says trust me, it is the cry of the guilty. I also think that playing the no blame game means no motivation to change/do better. When politics of defending employees/creaters/developers/producers/game take over the reality of a situation also auto-suckiness. Now on the other side of things I do agree that we do not need a witch hunt, I don't need to know who/what is responsible or need to see them tar n feathered. There are way too many players that cry about misunderstandings, or want to see someone burned at the stake.
a) yes they do, they just don't do it as overtly. it's done though market research.
b) I'm pretty sure you'd be the first person in line to raise holy hell if developers ignored their player bases.
I know you're going for the whole I hate everything schtick, and that's fine, but takign a shot at developers for looking for fan input is just silly.
I'm not going for any 'schtick' at all. I praise what is good, and condemn what is bad. It is revealing about the industry that so much fits into the latter category.
Objectivity pleases very few people. They prefer their religion uncluttered with dissenting views.
Heres an example of the game devs (and obviously company as well) sucking to the max.
Simple things, that stick around for years is what kills the player base.
My example is in SWG, I bought the game upon release and played for maybe 2-3 months. During release on Naboo there was a area near town with a tree cluster similar to oter I have seen on the planet. However, everytime I drive past them, or attempt to get by, I hit an invisible wall, or the game simply crashes. Once my char got stuck in the trees, and I didnt recieve any GM help at all.
Flash forward to 2008, I did the trial for the game, and even started playing again until lvl 40 or so. And believe it or not, years dow the road, I still get bugged out, stuck, or crash when I get anywhere near those trees (the damn things are right near a major town for christs sake!).....
The point is some MMO's devs just seem to be at the point of "life support" for their game, and thats not doing anyone favors.
I'm not going for any 'schtick' at all. I praise what is good, and condemn what is bad. It is revealing about the industry that so much fits into the latter category.
Objectivity pleases very few people. They prefer their religion uncluttered with dissenting views.
Fake musicians make music through "market research" which is a fancy way of saying "copy someone else to sell 1,000,000 records!".....And that's been happening with MMO's lately, which is making them suck.
I have seen a lot of persistent bugs in Warhammer (only a year old, mind you).
It's quite obvious these 'games' are just a paycheck for many devs. Not a labour of love, as Mr. Webb would have us believe.
Not all devs love the game they are working on, and I have heard that some of them don't even like games at all. It's just a job to them.
This is a really good short article. It puts alot of things into perspective, that I knew about but didn't really know exactly how they worked.
Two things seem to be clear though:
Studios need to clearly define the roles and need to clearly define the "Leader" of everything. Which, is obvious.
Second, is it may be time for studios to take a step back and not look so much at the design of the games they are making, but rather the process they are going to be using and fix the genre that way. Set the goals of the game lower, to something easily achievable, then build on the game from there. Which, really needs to start all the way back to the design concept.
Instead of building a design concept that says this game is going to have features A through Z with A being the biggest (engine) and Z being the smallest feature, why not just build the game that has the core concept of the features of A through C. Very basic, very linear, very core features of the game that won't make for a great game, but will be playable and the users would have something to do. That something won't be much and probably wouldn't be very much fun for most people, but that's not really the game, that's just what can be done quickly, easily and efficiently. Once that's get's finished, work on features D-G and so on and so forth.
To me, from experience playing, it seems that some games try to do the features A through Z, but the problem is they didn't have enough time to put in feature N and therefore features O through Z are pretty much broken and/or make no sense and people wonder why they are in the game.
Now, you may be saying "well that's how it works. The lead developer divies up the concept into those types of parts", that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the game concept being designed as such that if only features A through C are made, then the game is playable. Crappy, but playable and testing can start there. While in testing, if feature F (using the D-G example above) is stupid or doesn't work as planned, redesign it before moving on to feature H-Z.
Maybe, I'm living in a dream world, maybe I'm not stating what I'm trying to say properly. But to me, it seems things would work better if the designers were to take a step back and redesign the design concept process, before ever moving on to investors. Because, if you can get funding for a game with features A-C with round about the same time frame, then the rest should be free time to polish up with D-Z, yeah?
In my opinion its not only the mmo´s that sucks, it includes all forms of video or computer games. Im just waiting for the holy grail or even search for a hidden gem (never found one jet....) in the mmo genre. And i dont understand why the hell is there no mmoRPG´s on a console (ok theres PSO on my DC haha) or why didnt do ubi soft, nintendo,sega or companys like that do an mmo? Or im just too old for that shit haha
So, for everyone on here who is screaming Anti-dev rage.
Ever build a game yourselves? Ever even attempt it? There seems to be this fairy-tale expectation of what the world of building games is like. The truth is, it's a lot like any other job, with all the same crap in a different pile.
I develop games for a living, I started in MMOs and have since moved on to console games with maybe 10 or so titles to my credit as a Lead Designer. Not trying to whip out the penis-ruler here, just wanted you to understand that I am speaking from some experience.
Let's start with the money thing.
* If someone pays you 1+ million dollars to build a game, they have a major stake in that game and developers can't simply blow off their expectations by muttering "I'll make the game the way it SHOULD be made."
* Investment isn't an interest free loan. If they put in 1 million dollars, the developer is going to owe them a lot more by the time everything is said and done
So, on to responsibility:
* I didn't once read in the article that "devs are not at fault". What I did read is "can be no-one's fault". The sum total of a thousand little decisions that added up to a big fat turd. And before you go yelling "then it's EVERYONE'S fault!" consider this: Sometimes there is no right answer. Say someone offers you a loan of 1 million dollars to develop a game with core features that you estimate at 1.1 million and you simply can't get another cent from anywhere. Do you turn it down and hope someone else with big bucks comes along? Or do you accept and hope you can find a way to make what you want under a smaller budget?
* Sure, it would be nice if someone would build a game just for you, but it's never going to happen. And it's not entirely about greed. If you're creating something, you want people to enjoy the result of your work. If a large portion of the people out there like something, then you're likely to develop toward that end. Oh, and looking around your favorite forum and citing "A skill-based, open world FFA full-loot PvP sandbox would clean up!" doesn't exactly measure up against the research and business experience these aforementioned financial people bring to the table.
They know where the money is. We all do. Some might say "Why do they all want WoW-level returns?" If you went to the bank and they offered you two different types of accounts, "This one pays out 0.25% interest, but it makes a specific group of people around here happy. This other one returns 7.5%, but the thing is, those people don't really enjoy hearing about those accounts." Seriously, where is your money going?
Okay, I've already gone too far with this. First Dev rule is "Don't feed the Trolls." which is not specific to trolls. It just means don't stir the water any more than it already is, because nothing you say will satisfy everyone. You simply can't remedy a forum squall.
But I guess if at least one person gets some perspective from this, it's worth the time it took me to create an account and type out my thoughts.
I think that's all the author was probably aiming for, too.
I will agree that if a certain person made a decision that resulted in suckyness.. they should fix it or be let go.. you cannot waste money forever on someones bad decisions.
However its hardly us as players (assuming there are no devs reading this) responsibility to try to lay blame on any particular developer.. that really does not yeild any results for us .
Ultimately the dev team makes it or breaks it.. and they are responsbible for fixing it. If one member of that team is incompetant.. then its the team lead job to let them loose..or transfer them to another title ;)
If the team lead is the issue... then the Producers take responsbility and get a competant replacement.
But ultimately we as players 'Vote' with our subscriptions.. we don't hire or fire anyone.
My job is not to assign blame to a person or team so much as to either try to get them to fix it or take my money elsewhere.
If the game sucks that bad.. from the start.. then nature will run its course and the money will dry up and it will shut down.
The tale-tail sign is if the dev team is still fixing bugs and retooling systems.. the moment they stop or 'scale back' to a snails pace.. you'd better not get too 'attached' to your character.
You're also talking about a game based on a IP that's been around for 25yrs, rather than something completely new.
You don't have to be a dev to recognize a crap game.
I thought this article was right on. I work in product development -- not games -- but we are under much the same pressure.
The over-riding factor that impacts any product development is the pressure of finance. You have promised a product by such and such date, and the pressure to hit that date becomes unrelenting. You advocate for making x, y and z changes that will help you meet your original targets, but get shot down ... by finance. Making those changes would either delay product delivery outside of a targetted fiscal year/period, or require an investment that the people writing the checks are unwilling to make. Even when they are willing to work with you, they force subtle compromises that impact the final product. Sure, customers want X, but will cutting X really hurt that much? Maybe not. What about cutting Y and Z as well? OK. Maybe you fight and are able to protect Y and Z, but X winds up in the scrap heap. And maybe X really was the critical feature.
The people making the decisions to release product DO NOT care about making the next genre-breaking MMO or whatever. They don't care about the developers or the customers. They care about making money.
Again, this sounds crazy, because you'd think that if they cared about making money they would wait until "it" was ready and give everyone a great experience. The solution is clearly to hold "it" until "it" is ready. Seems simple and straight forward, right? Only not really when you have share-holders breathing down your neck and executives screaming to release now. I've personally witnessed people release stuff that was completely and utterly unready over the strenuous objections of the developers. The problem is that the people trhat make these decisions do not talk to customers and do not care. "Look," they say, "we can release it now, collect the revneue and patch it later."
Finance drives these decisions, unfortunately.
You can't make a post trying to explain how things really work on this site. Everyone here thinks they know it all.
Everyone here thinks they can do it better and that every mmo company is evil. It's best just to let them sit in their anger until one day they grasp how the world really works. No game will ever be good enough for them and making the next big thing is simple in their minds. It's a useless argument and they're so bitter they'll always post one more time to make sure they get the last word in.
They will never be happy but yet they will spen dmore money MMO wise then any other human beings, so if they're willing to keep paying money for all the games they hate, then I guess let them and let the companies get all that money.
The rest of the world has a better grasp on things and plays MMOs to have fun.
No one said anything about recognizing the quality of a game. The topic was how games can end up at crap quality.
You're clearly unsatisfied with the MMO genre. So instead of complaining on forums, waiting for someone else to "fix" things, I invite you to raise a budget, assemble a team, set up a studio, create a design, schedule out the tasks resulting from that design, and implement on time and on budget.
What, that sounds like a lot of work? And you're not qualified to undertake something like that? Then what makes you an authority on how people carry out any of those jobs?
An opinion is one thing, but when you so effortlessly lay accusations and blame in situations (the development of MMO games) that you clearly have no actual first-hand knowledge of, you're just being a jackass.
Walk through that tunnel, come out the other side, and then tell me you have the answers.
Of course people want those returns and the reason for those posts isn't because people don't understand that companies want those kinds of returns, it's that they understand that they aren't going to get those returns. But, what game in the industry actually can get those returns besides Blizzard?
Using your bank scenario, what if the bank told you that you only have a 0.25% chance of getting that 7.5% return but you have a 90% chance of getting the 0.25% return and possibly much much more, are you still going to take the 7.5% or are you going to take the 0.25%?
I really wonder who the hell does this market research honestly. WoW has alot of accounts, yeah great we all know that. But, who else does? From what I can tell, the biggest player in the pay to play genre who isn't WoW is EVE Online. A fully sandbox, open world PVP game. It's an indy game that beats the hell out of all the triple A competitors. The game has been around forever, sure. But, being a forum troll and an MMO junkie for years, I have probably seen thousands of people say that the only reason they don't play EVE Online, is because they have no avatar and can't form a connection to their character. Oh, but the game is still number 2? What happened to the market research there?
So, I'm sorry if I didn't take anything from what you wrote. If you're what you say you are, I respect that and I would love to be you. Perhaps, if I was I would be saying the same thing. But the only thing I took from all that you wrote, was the you hire guys who claim to do "Market Research" who probably don't know a damn thing about games or what players want. No matter how much developers want it to be, this genre is not the single player market. It's a completely different being from any other market in gaming.
I would not generalize that 'all' MMO players are dev-haters or trolling witch-hunters trying to bash the dev team any chance they get.
I certainly don't think I 'know it all' or could do it better.. but as an active player who does spend a fair amount of time researching issues and playing the system, I do try to contribute a players perpective on certain 'sucky' issues.
From my observations, you simply cannot expect to get it perfect right out of the gate... as no product is ever truely 'perfect'.. no amount of money or time is going to replace kind of feedback that thousands upon thousands of hours of overall player time can do in a few short months.
I don't think reasonable players have a hard time grasping the concept of why things get cut back or delayed or pushed out a earlier than intended and don't work perfectly. Most players just care if the game is fun and if the bugs don't create unsurmountable issues or cheat them out of game content.
Forums are way to confrontational.. its unfortunate but its simply the nature of the beast. Still.. if your able to sift through the mud.. you find gem players who enjoy the 'hobby' of learning the dev-created game mechanics and get to a player-based level of understanding that can provide substantial feedback on how to correct or at least identify a /sucky element.
MMO's are big, complicated code beasts with potentially thousands of individual players and expectations all seeking their own game adventure. A lot of players DO get that.. wheras Forum trolls don't really care.. its just about hitting 'reply' to argue something anyway.
Articles like this are good reminders as to why something might fall short of our personal expectations. I can live with that.. or try another product... in the end I don't invest anywhere near the time and money the publisher does.. so I can afford to walk away from any MMO at any time I feel like it.
Players are renters after all.. character investment is a falicy.. you don't own anything.. your just renting the opportunity to use the system to interact with other players.
You'd better enjoy the interaction or put your money somewhere else right?
I think the article and almost everyone else is eluding that MMOs are games which keep development over time even after release. Sure, an MMO sucks now, but will it keep sucking? The common gamer mentality is to think 'yes' because most games are static. But MMOs are not, and everything might change within a year of release or so. It could also be the other way around (at least for many); look at Star Wars Galaxies. That certain MMOs suck isn't set in stone, not in the very least, and witch-hunting and its implied pressure has the positive aspect of making the companies try harder, because if they victimize themselves, if they say 'no one is at fault' so we gamers keep silent and disengage from those games we love, then no one wins - the MMO keeps sucking, and we do nothing about it.
The thing is, devs take these things too personally. They have to realize these games are reaching possibly hundreds of thousands of people, or at least tens of thousands. It's your work, and it will be criticized and destroyed as well as praised; this is no high-school project for your friends and family, and you should face that fact with responsibility, because sure, even if things get out of your direct hands, it's still something YOU are developing. NO ONE ELSE can make it right. Blame the publishers and the money-grabbers all you want, but if you let the criticism personally affect you, then you shouldn't be working in such a public medium. Stop trying to evade these things; buckle up and face your audience with dignity.
I don't have to be an authority, nor even make unsubstantiated claims of being one.
I make my posts and give my opinions. You are free to argue with them. Claiming some moral superiority through some unproven claim of expertise is irrelevant and merely an attempt to stifle debate.
Resorting to childish name-calling isn't making your posts any more convincing.
I can smell well enough to tell when something is crap, and I know that game companies have profit as #1 concern - not quality games. The latter is just one way of achieving the former.
I think this is a good article - informative and a good read.
Generating sparks of brilliance between the design and talent folks is pretty easy, but once you add the guy with the purse strings it almost always changes into something a lot less fun and sparky. Suddenly there are rules and contracts to sign, promises to keep (or lies to tell) and you can't wait until that guy goes off into his corner somewhere.
Down the road, he becomes relevant again and at some point he never goes away. He is a huge part of the audience you're selling to, and you need to keep him happy. In the fine balancing act of bringing ideas to market, the guy with the money is a deal maker or breaker. Until you can satisfy him it's a scramble. But if you can make him happy as well as your target audience, you have achieved WIN.
Honestly If I had the opportunity to make others happy because of my actions I would make them happy because then I can go to bed happy and proud knowing that I didn't choose money over people and I made a difference. So by what you have said most game developers don't care about what the players what they care about where the money is at. There are a few developers who don't follow the money and make games how they want it and to please their players not their wallets. Take Bioware for example when EA bought them they essentially told them you will not touch our games we make them the way we want them and how players expect them and we don't want you ruining that. That's not exactly what they said but its essentially what they said.
So how come game developers such as the ones who made EVE or even Darkfall decide to do something different, knowing it may fail, they do it for the players they see forums such as these, see what the players are crying for and attempt to make something they may enjoy even if its only a few players.
I think the world as a whole needs to stop worrying about making more money and start worrying about making people happy.
Now I'm not trying to say its the devs fault because its probably not, I just don't think Devs truly care about the players, no offense to you. That's my 2 cents.
Interesting article.
Some blame the devs, and some of that can be true, but who I like to blame is those who give the dev's their marching orders. Orders come down from the top and the devs have to do what they are told, unless in some cases they think they are god. I can use a few examples SWG - Helious, LOTRO - Orion. When you have devs like those with the atitude of what I am doing is the way it needs to be despite what the comunity thinks that is when things get sucky.
Oh and then lets do talk balance. When you program something and you not its way over power, leave it that way for 2 years, then go omg its game breaking then fix it, yes players get way upset. DOn't code stuff that makes things way over power, like for instance RK's in lotro everybody knew they were op and that was a fact, now after a year they hend out nerfs. When you program something so far out of balance and then fix it thats when things suck.
Players hate nerf's of any kind so you need to think about what your doing in the first place so as not to nerf the player down later.
Players like a chalange, but they dont want it to be insane on the hard side either. Take for instance Dark Delvings in lotro, that thing was imposible to beat in normal mode so folks went and they exploited it there were 5 distink exploits.. Then 6 months after the fact the beefed up the instance took out 4/6 exploits and made it impossible to beat again. Guess what players figured out the hole and exploited it every night until SOM arived. Now they all just run the one easy instance GS over and over and over.
So players dont want stuff to easy, and they dont want it to hard, but when you make it insane they will expliot it.
So I blame both devs and management for making a sucky game. And even the company sometimes. Just look at NCSOFT or Cryptic you mention those names and its a huge turn off for folks, due to how they run things.
I have played and still do play several games online. .. I think it really boils down to what YOU want in a game. if you want tradeskilling and houses to fill with furniture. . . play the games that allow youto do that. If you want flying mounts. . . well go play that game. If you like to stand around dance and do PVP. . . there are several to choose from and at that point it comes down to the fashion if you happen to be of the female persuasion.
I like the houses and the tradeskilling and the dancing. I could care less for grinding levels, PVP and flying mounts.
There was one game I tried though and I thought it truely did suck. It had notheing to do withmy playing ability. . .. it had everyhting to do withthe type of person it was aimed at. The game is LINEAGE II . . .as far as I am conerned it is the worst game in the world. Maybe not the worst game the world. It is a heavy grind for Adena and level. . . . I mean when a fluff hat with a feather in it costs 140,000,000 Adena. . . . ummmm. . . .. I can play better games than that and choose to go to the "marketplace" and pay $10.00 real money for a better hat. . . . .
Thank you very much. . .but some games do truely suck.
Just my opinion.
Debates are based on facts. So far all you've said is "I don't believe it.". Which I believe is a fact. But that's all you got. I've stated a number of factors that I am aware of through direct experience and contribute to the situation which should be considered in an analysis. I don't know it all, nor do I expect I ever will. But I know some.
So, in the spirit of free exchange, what's your opinion on:
* a MMO investor's right to have influence over the development of the product?
* a development house's right to pursue the means with which to pay their employees despite that it might not satisfy YOUR aesthetic tastes?
* the right of a share in a free market to hold a comparable level of influence on said market (most popular movement calls the first shot, followed by second most popular, etc, all the way down to tiny niche)
Great, you can smell a turd. You are a singularly blessed individual. Back to my previous question. Are you just going to keep complaining that someone hasn't come along and wiped your backside or are you going to learn how it's done and change your pants yourself?
Also, this isn't completely directed at you, but a company isn't a single entity. When you say "companies have profit as their #1 concern" you are right, if you mean some individuals in a company. And the rest of us care too, just to a lesser extent, because in order to do what we love for a living, we need to make a living. I'm sure there are people who would love to work on whatever your dream game may be, but not if it means they have to sacrifice their lives and families for it, especially when another game allows them to do it all. Most people involved in making games are amenable to creating all sorts of games, not locked on one dream-like ideal of a specific game.
To Hatter:
Your point is taken on the bank analogy. I think your example is closer to the truth, although the actual numbers probably make it seem like less of a slam dunk in either direction. Higher return is obviously going to be greater risk, but guys who have the means to risk a million plus aren't likely interested in a 2% return. So to get the money, a developer has to explore options that can be both artistically satisfying and also convince someone that the risk is worth it, usually by making SOME game choices that sweeten the projected return for an investor. And to that end, people who actually work on the game are rarely the ones courting investors, so sometimes you get told you have a chance to work on an idea that is only 75% of the game you'd like to make in a perfect world. Most of us can roll with that.
Also, someone else said something to the effect of "grow a thicker skin". You are so right. There is a reason i didn't have an account until today. And that was to keep me from giving in to temptation and getting involved in endless internet arguments. Truth is people will believe what they want to believe and anything I have to offer is only an opinion. Can't fix a forum squall.
Of course people want those returns and the reason for those posts isn't because people don't understand that companies want those kinds of returns, it's that they understand that they aren't going to get those returns. But, what game in the industry actually can get those returns besides Blizzard?
Using your bank scenario, what if the bank told you that you only have a 0.25% chance of getting that 7.5% return but you have a 90% chance of getting the 0.25% return and possibly much much more, are you still going to take the 7.5% or are you going to take the 0.25%?
I really wonder who the hell does this market research honestly. WoW has alot of accounts, yeah great we all know that. But, who else does? From what I can tell, the biggest player in the pay to play genre who isn't WoW is EVE Online. A fully sandbox, open world PVP game. It's an indy game that beats the hell out of all the triple A competitors. The game has been around forever, sure. But, being a forum troll and an MMO junkie for years, I have probably seen thousands of people say that the only reason they don't play EVE Online, is because they have no avatar and can't form a connection to their character. Oh, but the game is still number 2? What happened to the market research there?
So, I'm sorry if I didn't take anything from what you wrote. If you're what you say you are, I respect that and I would love to be you. Perhaps, if I was I would be saying the same thing. But the only thing I took from all that you wrote, was the you hire guys who claim to do "Market Research" who probably don't know a damn thing about games or what players want. No matter how much developers want it to be, this genre is not the single player market. It's a completely different being from any other market in gaming.
My thoughts exactly.
It would be interesting to see a list of MMOs that he considers bad.
Oh I like this guy!
No one, especially in business wants to do a bad crap piece of work. It doesn't look good on the resume (for one reason) and the only reason one would want to do garbage work is so that one can claim all the expenses for the failure at the end of the tax year. But this doesn't take away the anger and resentment of the employees at the managers who let this happen. Both in terms of pride of work and loss of employment. And profitable meaning successful is a means to an end to make money by having a successful game. There are easier ways to lose money in this world than making MMO's.
Does this mean the consumer is the reason? Yes and no. The failure of MMO designers to make games that the consumers want can be based on bad intel gathered on the consumers or an unrealistic assumption on the part of consumers as to what they want the MMO to be. You can't please all the people out in the hinterlands who want A,B, and C for their MMO and make sure it works with current technology and for a low price per month! The most you can do is fight for your market share and try to keep costs down so you'll have money to make improvments for your upcoming builds in the coming months/years.
I'm sure, looking at the posts so far, that all the...consumers will want to blame the developers for all the MMO's that suck. But each one dying out there is taking someone's dreams with it. So before sticking out a finger and saying "J'accuse!" at all the MMO creators out there. Try seeing it from their point of view first, will ya?
I'm not going for any 'schtick' at all. I praise what is good, and condemn what is bad. It is revealing about the industry that so much fits into the latter category.
Objectivity pleases very few people. They prefer their religion uncluttered with dissenting views.
Fake musicians make music through "market research" which is a fancy way of saying "copy someone else to sell 1,000,000 records!".....And that's been happening with MMO's lately, which is making them suck.
Market research is a surefire way of giving players a predictable, lukewarm experience. Innovation comes from vision and risk-taking. If the developer is actually also a player, then they won't have to test the market to the same extent - they can base their design on their own experience, and that of playing with others. Many of the greatest filmmakers and artists have been writing or performing for themselves first, and their audience second. The really good ones know how to pull this off without being self-indulgent.
Rockstars are out amongst their fans constantly. Their audience can become divided the more the songs pander to expectations., because truly, no-one knows exactly what that new thing they want is until they are experiencing it.
All i can really say is this article did read EXACTLY how i was expecting it to. "designers all want to make the best game, producers want to make the best game. Publishers want to publish the best game." That's the biggest bunch of crock i've ever seen. You say in your article yourself the publishers want a "AAA mmo... and we got a wowkiller" That alone says they're doing it for the money. Most of these games are made for the money and that's it. I mean look at wow, the way it's made is so that they hold that carrot out on a stick infront of you the entire time. The game's not completely great but they do have a great way of getting people addicted which is their goal.
Almost no devloper is truly trying to make a great game, they're trying to make a game that's goign tomake them rich. Look at and name one game publisher who isn't worried about their bottom line? Yeah sure Activision's the worst company out there for it but they're all concerned about it. A person doesn't go and get a job in the game company because they simply love games oh no, they do it because they want to do something that they like doing and get paid for it. After they work on it for awhile, they know that they'll lose interest in the type of games they make. If all you do is program ai all day long, you'll grow bored of playing single player games and will most likely never do them again because you can predict what they're going to do.
Bottom line is... when you said "AAA mmo with y million dollars" the publishers are thinking "they're going to make us a game that's going to be a wow killer" no publisher thinks otherwise. They want to make that game. They want to make the wow killer if it's a sub based game. If it's a cash shop game, they want to know they can make as much as they can possible from the cash shop.
This entire article is biased out of the ass. MMO developers unless they're indy doing their own indy thing are doing it for the money. Well maybe not "all" for the money but a great deal of it. As there's also fame, if you make the wow killer or a game that's got x million players you can know that you can basically pump out the same old shit for years and you'll get paid for it.
So the point was that we should give dev's a permenant break on the forums because their sucky games might not be anyone's fault? Come on. I think mmorpg would go away if it there wasn't a way to vent on the forums. I found this site because I got tired of an mmo. There were things I didn't like and I wanted to talk about it. Most mmo's suck. This site is all about mmo's. You do the math. Might want to rethink this strategy. Poor, poor, poor developers...
*** APPLAUSE ***
Impressive article, that I expected to strongly dislike based on the title (was expecting a trash editorial).
Looking forward to more!
Ken
My opinion still remains, based on the past few failures:
1. Gross waste of development resources to minimal value-added features- example: CO and its ridiculous focus on costumes which have no effect on gameplay whatsoever...
and...
2. Lack of interesting non-combat, downtime activities. AoC, CO, WAR, absolute, all around failures on this point. So I guess my opinion doesn't sway much, or any, from the column.
There's a reason that management is defined as "overseeing a project", and that when someone screws up, it's referred to as an "oversight".
*shrug*
All of those points are indicative of poor management. The same people that run these games into the ground would end up running any business into the ground - be it a Quicky Mart or a McDonald's franchise.
By and large (from my personal experience) MMO game developers have just enough "artist" in them to hand-wave away a very large part of the realities of designing and running a business - because they are visionaries, misunderstood in their own time and so forth.
It's kind of understandable in a way. A game dev gets promoted up the ladder from QA or CS based on their ideas and capabilities. The erstwhile bug-hunter shows that he's got a fantastic way of putting together game systems to make a really fun and successful game - thus he's make lead producer, head developer and whatever.
But then the studio wants a new game, or that eager beaver wants to strike out on his own and make the game he always dreamed of, and all of a sudden he's not a designer or developer anymore - he's a manager. And large-scale management / leadership is a skill-set he simply doesn't have. Going down in flames would be the expected result here - especially if it's on a high-profile game with a lot of pressure to perform.
Add to that the creeping notion that publishers aren't looking for the "best" game, they're looking for the game that might pull in numbers like WoW (which wasn't the best game either at launch - but simply captured lightning in a bottle and ran with it) and it's not tough to see why most MMOs suck.
Huge wrap-around, seamless world. Extensive character customization. The ability for players to have an affect on said world, such as the ability to terraform like in Wurm. Politics, laws, whatever, crafting and gathering for things like building a place to live, decorate and store things...some mundane everyday life things to take care of, foraging, hunting, gardening whatever is necessary for the type of world...having to eat, drink...but a more real life model that doesn't have you dying if you don't eat/drink every 20 minutes...to make it seem like a real world...a person can go a long time without eating. A real time clock not a scaled down version of time (a night and day cycle). An endurance system that regulates a players ability to achieve certain tasks. Heavy consequences for unprovoked PKing (again...laws). Beautiful graphics and animations to further submerse and draw me into the world. These are things I'd like to see.
Now I myself not being a developer do not really know anything about what goes on in the creation of these games; so far be it from me to criticize the people that try and do bring us these amazing places to play in. In my opinion, I believe that the community is pretty much the blame for how a world plays out and please if you have any bad comments or think I'm an asshole for my opinions, likes/wants, thoughts, please, keep them to yourself...we all know what is said about assholes...oh wait...that's opinions and I'm entitled to my own.
My definition of "suck" would be that the developers are trying, as the OP stated, to create "wow-killers". To say that and then try to espouse the differences between "Design" and "Vision" is laughable at best. According to your previous statement we know the design and Vision: WoW. Sure, you can't copy it completely, though Alganon is certainly pushing that envelope, but overall that's what is happening.
There seems to be this belief that there is this pool of gamers out there who are not playing WoW but want a WoW-like game. Um, no.
There also seems to be a belief that if you make a game very similar to WoW but different in a few ways you'll syphon off players from WoW. Um, no. Why would they leave something where they are established to start from scratch in virtually the same thing? News flash, they won't.
I'm not knocking WoW for those of you too short-sighted to see my point. The problem is all these developers and investors who can't wake up from the WoW wet-dreams. The problem is that these folks in influential positions have no creativity when it comes to making a game world, inventing new systems and ideas and putting them together to bring the world alive. Just like old school Dungeon Masters/Game Masters on the table-top.
Triple-A developers have locked themselves, with extreme pressure from investors and CEOs no doubt, into a culture of un-originality. We've seen one or two flashes, like PQs in WAR (speaking on that specific system only) and possibly the combat system in AoC (again, speaking only on that specific system). Outside of that, it's the same level based, class based, 2 to 3 "talent" lists for variety, combat heavy, crafting-social systems weak, get-to-the-endgame games.
Companies are too interested in the almighty quick buck, many that are producing these inferior mmopg's have lost sight in what it is to make a sucsessful mmo and that is to design a mmo that gamers actually want to stay, play, and compete in so we do not feel the need to look elsewhere for our mmo home.
You maybe producing these mmo's to make a profit sure what company would'nt, but stop and ask yourselve's at what point should we ask our customers what THEY WANT A MMO TO BE!
So... A game comes out that is shit... And we should blame the buyers for buying it ?
No its the job of the DEVS to put it together. Its part of developers job to MANAGE diffrent elements of the game so they fit together in the final porduct. It doesn't matter if there are billion first time ever seen features...
You can put 1000 geniouses together to make a game. They would do absolutly nothing without some managment. But hey... Developing a a top MMO game is 90% about MANAGMENT.
Thats where games like AOC and WAR failed. Those games cut BILLIONS of corners to get a game out for the PUBLISHER - the other half of the release duo.
If a developer that screws up 90% of the managment of their game ends up standing infront of the puplisher for the 4th time asking for more time (like Funcom) ..... then whos fault is it ?
Excuses, excuses, excuses.... Its easy to make them... but it doesn't make them any more valid.
There are a ton of posters on here that are complaining that companies design something that will make money and how wrong that is.
Talk about completely missing the point, if a game makes money then it was designed correctly becaues enough people found it fun for it to be profitable. It's that simple.
These forums represent the vocal minority of gamers and not where the market is. For example look how many people on here say WoW is terrible and killed MMOs. Well when a game has 11 million subscribers it isn't terrible, it is exactly what the majority of gamers want. It is that simple.
So no there aren't very many devs designing for the posters on these boards because there's not enough of them buying and playing games for it to be worth it.
This is not the case... Games like AOC and WAR made alot of money through PRE-ORDERS that have absolutly nothing to do with the actual design or playability of the game. It all about PR. And atm this seems to be the biggest "new thing" with MMOs. Promise this and that and you get ppl to pre-order... Then when the game turns out to be total crap - then you put up a skeletal crew to keep it going for 1 - 2 years before you shut it down.
Profits and fun are in no way releated in MMOs.
At the risk of offending some folks, exactly how many of you commenting on this thread have problems larger than decided what color socks to wear?
Seriously, some of these comments are outrageous. No one wants to make a crap game/product. Everyone wants to make a great game/product. Those of you working at best buy or delivering pizzas seriously misunderestimate the amount of corporate pressure that gets placed on these development teams. Sure, its easy to say "hold it until its done" but when the rubber hits the road, and you got to pay your mortgage and some one is telling you to get it out, you get it out. End of story. The guys writing the checks decide when things get launched -- not the chumps talking to customers and cleaning up the mess.
At the end of the day it is a delicate balancing act. You need to hit certain targets and get the product out, AND get finance off of your back long enough to do the right thing. And guess what, balancing is hard, especially when people are hurling rocks at you.
I await the calm and reasoned response of the internet.
a) yes they do, they just don't do it as overtly. it's done though market research.
b) I'm pretty sure you'd be the first person in line to raise holy hell if developers ignored their player bases.
I know you're going for the whole I hate everything schtick, and that's fine, but takign a shot at developers for looking for fan input is just silly.
I think he is saying that they don't ask their player base what they want, unless thats what your also saying? O.O At any rate, Its a good thing that someone would raise hell if a company ignored their player base. Its an almost sure fire thing to make a game fail. Ignore the customer and guess what, they aren't your customer any more. And just out of curiosity, do bands really ask their fans what songs they want? I just find that hard to believe, especially with "Market Research".
AoC and to a lesser extent War almost broke even through box sales and pre orders. They did not make a lot of money. The business plan of every MMO includes a reasonably large and stable player base. Achieve it and you've a license to print money, fail and you'll be lucky to keep your job.
I've never worked for a commercial game developer, but I can pass on experience from another angle.
A guy in a fancy suit sits down with a bunch of corporate types and signs the paperwork for a deal to make a software product that doesn't exist yet other than this guys design. Everybody shakes hands, they take a few pictures and Mr. Fancy Suit gets back on a plane to go home.
The corporate types don't have a clue how to make anything, so they hire a development manager to see this thing to completion. Mr. DM gets all the paperwork, figures out what he needs, goes back to the corporate types and tells them what he needs for a budget. They give him about half of what he needs and then set a deadline that would be just about impossible even if he DID get all the funding.
About three months in, there's another meeting to look over what's being created. Mister Fancy Suit has a fit because it doesn't match his "vision", and Suzie Blowhard from marketing opposes several major design issues because target demographics don't fit what has been done OR Mr Fancy Suit's templates.
Rip it apart, dumb it down, and make it cute are the "new" directives. Oh, and because of an issue with competition, we've just pushed the deadline UP by six months.
By the middle of the project, it has gone from a fun career, to a job, to why am I here... I could manage a McDonalds and have less hassles!
Bottom line is, the people who do the work are not the ones making decisions. The people who do make the decisions couldn't make a software product on their own to save their lives.
I relate to and agree with the comments that the business side of a development environment can really hose a good project. The bad news is, they are the ones PAYING for the project so it's kind of hard to keep them out of the loop.
Ken
I agree with the article to an extent, but for extremely different reasons. I find more and more MMO's are not even tolerabe. Not necessarily because the game itself sucks, but rather the player community. Take FFA Full Loot PvP games for instance, which are destined for failure simply because it beckons for griefing, ganking and your usual hackers and cheaters. No one knows why people gank, grief, hack or cheat. However, they do exist and in far greater numbers than people are willing to admit to. From my experience, I haven't met any gamer that enjoys playing a game that involves any of the above types of players.
Another reason a lot of MMO's suck is another community issue... consisting of bot farming gold sellers. How many games have we played where every chat channel is overflowing with gold selling adds? Then, you have the idiots who actually support these arseholes by actually buying their crap.
Of course, I'd have to say 80% of an MMO's failure rate is the developing / producing company's fault. Poor design, poor implementations, poor customer support, poor server infrastructure and poor planning. Sure, it's not easy making an MMO, but lets face it, this isn't exactly something new to the gaming market. MMO's have been around the better part of the last decade and companies have a lot of experience to build off of.
MMO's are just like movies, instead of drama, comedy and horror, you are limited to Sci Fi, Superhero, Military and High Fantasy. Theres only so many variations designers can manipulate before the markets reached its peak point of variety. Another huge mistake I find a lot of companies doing is using someone elses Intellectual Property as the backbone for their new MMO. That right there tells me the company has no imagination power whatsoever. Games like Eve Online, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot and Asheron's Call are pretty much original ideas. Sure, they have content based off of some prior resources of movies or literature, but for the most part, they are original.
Fact of the matter is, the MMO market has changed for the worse over the last year as did the gaming community. Probably why I've never really found a replacement MMO that captures the feel and intensity that EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot gave me when I first played them.
Something that is little talked about is the investor. Why do these "fat cats" have to make profit in such a short period? Every investor is different in where thier money is coming from. Also, they may have obligations on those funds to other enities. Folks here have this image of bankers with loose cash sitting in vaults doing nothing. Thats not how investments work. To make cash, cash has to keep moving and accruing. Our Gross National Product is dependent on how quick cash transfers from buyer to seller in a consumer market. Is their greed in this industry? Sure, there are folks who want to make money for as little efforts possible. They are lazy and have no passion. Others, however, want to excel at thier chosen career. Making Money is a passion and career that many drive at. This expectation is why investors lean on companies to deliver even if not ready. With active I.P.s (ex:Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter etc. etc.) the pressure to deliver is even greater for marketing events and money to invest in other projects. That same pressure is present with investment houses also.
What should be fully researched and disclosed is the different investment models for MMO's related to market performance wieghed verses thier quality. EVE Online is a great model for a Long Term investment. It started at the bottom as indie and built and invested to where it is today and has a clear broader future. Every MMO should be like this if companies want to continue thier projects beyond thier limited scopes. WOW is truly the "White Elephant" in the market because its not the same game it started out as. It launched with all the growing pains of a new project but quickly overcame its bugs and saturated the market with ads and maintained a standard of quality and polish no other MMO can break in the market to challenge. At least not by the standard that WOW launched with. Its a "snowball" effect in that reguard and Blizzard has yet to drop the ball in keeping that far ahead of the market. The evidance to that is how many games have broken one million subs mark? It is near impossible for a MMO company to release games in the quality expectations market with the current investment modles avaible.
As an added, WOW had another effect on the MMO market. As it rose in subs, it created its demographic with its comprehensive advertising but also sucked subs from all its competitors as it rose in popularity and quality. I could be wrong but it may have plateaed in its subs as I have not heard of it raising in a year or so. That may purely be from the econemy slow down. As a poster here stated, "Why would you leave your good game with all your invested time and friends to try something else?" Especially if all you try fail to match quality and polish that WOW offers.
No gaming company is going to kill the "White Elephant" if they don't make a serious plan that launches a complete, bug free, polished and quality product that exceeds WOW. All other tools used, Cash Shop, TCG, F2P, Sandbox, Themepark are just dodges to the real issue of releasing a fully complete quality product.
I have enjoyed this artical and especially the this thread. Thank you all for an enjoyable read.
a) yes they do, they just don't do it as overtly. it's done though market research.
b) I'm pretty sure you'd be the first person in line to raise holy hell if developers ignored their player bases.
I know you're going for the whole I hate everything schtick, and that's fine, but takign a shot at developers for looking for fan input is just silly.
Oh you speak of that garbage made stars with music that has no soul. Same goes for games. I prefer music written and sang by artist with passion that happen to become famous doing what they love. Garbage that is marketed to the sheep is horrible music lacking substance.
Time to trot out Richard Bartle's excellent article
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2157/soapbox_why_virtual_worlds_are_.php
It was written five years ago, but it is still very relevant today. And very relevant to this thread.
To summarize and quote some bits:
So, MMOGs are under evolutionary pressure to promote design features that are poor. Each succeeding generation absorbs these into the paradigm, and introduces new poor features for the next generation to take on board. The result is that MMOG design follows a downward path of Bad and Mediocre.
MMOGs are becoming diluted by poor design decisions that can't be undone. We're getting de-evolution - our future is in effect being drawn up by newbies who (being newbies) are clueless.
Regular computer games don't have this problem. The market for regular computer games is driven by the hardcore. The hardcore finishes product faster than newbies, and therefore buys new product faster than newbies. The hardcore understands design implications better than newbies. They won't buy a game with features they can see are poor; they select games with good design genes. Because of this, games which are good are rewarded by higher sales than games which are bad.
In MMOGs, the hardcore either wanders from one to the next, trying to recapture the halcyon experience of their first game. Furthermore, in today's flat-fee universe, the hardcore spends the same amount of money as everyone else: developers aren't rewarded for appealing to the cognoscenti.
I don't think they are missing the point. What You talk is that when game is good and players like it, it will make profit and company makes money. What others talk is that when game is design ONLY to make money, not to make good game, that's when it goes wrong. Also just because game doesn't make big money, doesn't mean it's bad game, it could just have very narrow customer base. People should not mix up big business and good game, because they aren't the same thing.
In my opinion it's business side affecting the game design and development where it does go wrong. Pushing games out too early. Cuting content to get game done faster. Design features inside the game so that they exist only to make money (Cash Shops). All these problems are related, business side, we need money, we need faster, we needed it now, this cost too much and so on.
Good game is design only to make they target customers happy, not about how much profit company can make with the game. If they customers are happy, the company makes money too as long they customer base was bigger enough. Just remember, too big customer base can also be problem, because trying to please too wide group of different kind of players, what can lead mediocre game in general.
Although I do agree that how much profit a company makes from a game is one way to measure success, out of 6 billion people on this planet, the majority still think it's OK to continue to use up all the planets resources with no thought to how it will affect the future simply becuae it's not "their" future. Just because something is voted by the majority doesn't automatically make it right.
From a post in the conversation:
" Say someone offers you a loan of 1 million dollars to develop a game with core features that you estimate at 1.1 million and you simply can't get another cent from anywhere. Do you turn it down and hope someone else with big bucks comes along? Or do you accept and hope you can find a way to make what you want under a smaller budget?"
I don't take it. But, that's probably because I have a job that requires me to be honest in my "promises" to its clients. If I, or my bosses, promised results that we were SURE we couldn't accomplish with what we were being provided, when we failed, no only would we be out of work, but people would get hurt.
Then again, I live in MA, which had a tunnel project go about 13 billion over projected budget, and still leaks and crushes people. So I may not be unbiased about this subject.
The column had some interesting points, and some frustrating ones. One of the things that jumped to mind for me those was this question:
How come whenever the "scope", "vision", or "design" of the project has to be cut/adjusted/butchered, the part that never gets touched is the goal to "be like WoW"? It's always the other stuff, but never THAT "vision". Odd.
Although I do agree that how much profit a company makes from a game is one way to measure success, out of 6 billion people on this planet, the majority still think it's OK to continue to use up all the planets resources with no thought to how it will affect the future simply becuae it's not "their" future. Just because something is voted by the majority doesn't automatically make it right.
Agreed, if only to speak the old quote from Men In Black.
"Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat. And fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."
But I partially agree with Webb, in that sometimes games... just... aren't liked, really. To throw down an image from the Ctrl-Alt-Delete sillies:
Wrong guess. It will still be 99% in the end.
99% of x = .99x
99% of y = .99y
.99x + .99y = 1.98xy
avg = 1.98xy / 2 = .99xy ~ 99% of xy
A bit sad to see...
I think the reasons that some MMO's suck can be brought down to two common denominators. The first is the ' We know better what you want than you do' attitude that has been displayed time and time again by various developers. To see this in glorious technicolour action just look at what has happened to some of the stalwarts of the industry, namely Brad McQuaid, Richard Garriot, Gaute Godager and to a slightly lesser extent Mark Jacobs. All of these people to some extent suffered from that attitude and were brought low by it; McQuaid even rubbished WAR & AoC when they were in development on his forums, saying that they were not real MMO's and only he knew how to make a real MMO. Just how arrogant can a guy get? Times have moved on, modern gamers want different things today than they wanted ten years ago and a lot of developers are guilty of being firmly stuck in the past with outdated ideas and notions.
Secondly is the publishers complete lack of either vision or intelligence, sometimes it's difficult to seperate which is which. Blizzard have blazed a trail a mile wide for others to follow. They have shown how to make millions from an MMO but without exception publishers the world over completely miss it and veer off down a muddy side road because they thought they saw a large dollar sign at the bottom. This side road has WoW design philosophy written all over it and that explains why we now have WoW style theme parks littering the desert of failed projects, as the desert is exactly where that road leads. The wide trail however also has a rather huge nameplate but the dollar signs are much further away, and as a result appear smaller than they actually are. The name of this trail so lovingly blazed by Blizzard is 'Finished & Polished product'. Yes it takes longer and costs more but at the end of the day it's what is important. Why developers and publishers continue to try and copy WoW's design instead of just spending the time to make a good game that is about as finished as it can be out of the box is beyond me, maybe there are some invisible blinkers somewhere that keep them from seeing what happens to unfinished and bug laden games when released in that condition.
“The customer is always right” means you should listen to your customers. It does not mean that all businesses are democracies governed by their customers. Nearly every company is run by a person or people empowered to make decisions for their company. If they’re smart, they listen to what their customers are saying. That does not mean they let the customers run the show.
A lot of posters have mentioned what I think is the biggest problem with games that "suck"; they're published with the sometimes willful intent of making a fast buck and getting out. The entire dot.com boom was based on this sort of thing...I saw business plans (not intended for the investors' eyes, natch) that basically involved launching the company then bailing before it fell apart, in the words of Steve Miller, "go on take the money and run".
I have no doubt that there are designers and developers who are into game publishing because they can do something they love to do and make a living. Raph Koster strikes me as that sort of guy. Too bad he got hooked up with a bunch of MBA "take the money and run" types at SOE and LEC looking to milk a franchise that can't possibly flop who went and brutally plundered his vision, and proved that even with a supposedly bullet proof IP you can screw the kusak.
I think one of the biggest reasons that WoW is so successful is that it's pretty obviously a labor of love for a lot of the developers. They have a lot of fun with it...at the best times in SWG you saw this sort of thing. But the biggest reason is that Blizzard, as an organization, is about making games for gamers that will sell. SOE (and most defintely LEC) are about selling games. LEC is a disappointment in a major way as it's an outfit about the money, not about love for all things Lucas, be it Star Wars or Indiana Jones, or even the original IP things like the Monkey Island series.
All the "WoW killers" miss this very thing. EVE seems to be the only one out there dedicated to going their own way, ignoring the 800 pound gorilla. Everyone else is about competing with WoW. Unless you're willing to do the things that make WoW really a success (hint, it's about night elf mohawks that WORK), don't bother trying to be "like WoW" in the superficial sense. Don't set yourself up to suck.
What, that sounds like a lot of work? And you're not qualified to undertake something like that? Then what makes you an authority on how people carry out any of those jobs? Wonderful argument! Although I generally don't agree with much of what MMO_Doubter says, I will have to back him/her on this one. We don't need to be developers or have active knowledge of how to develop a game to recognize crap when we see it. And let me just say that if some of the MMOs produced are the benchmarks from which you justify your (not you specifically, but the industry in general) qualifications then I believe a retarded monkey can make a convincing argument that you (again, the MMO industry in general and not you specifically) aren't very qualified to either.
An opinion is one thing, but when you so effortlessly lay accusations and blame in situations (the development of MMO games) that you clearly have no actual first-hand knowledge of, you're just being a jackass. I was going to comment on this but I get pissed when people comment, with feigned authority, on what it means to be in the Military when they clearly never have been. So I'll just let this one go.
Walk through that tunnel, come out the other side, and then tell me you have the answers. Although I cannot speak for everyone else on these forums I will say that I don't pretend to have the answers. I do, however, know what the wrong answers are and by the simple process of elimination we can eventually arrive at the correct answer. Doing the same damned thing over and over and over again just doesn't work. It doesn't. I'm fairly certain many people have cited that as the definition of insanity.
Wrong guess. It will still be 99% in the end.
99% of x = .99x
99% of y = .99y
.99x + .99y = 1.98xy
avg = 1.98xy / 2 = .99xy ~ 99% of xy
A bit sad to see...
99% of x = .99x
99% of y = .99y
.99x * .99y = .98xy
Don't be a literalist. You can actually build something so broken that's less than the sum of it's parts
The main problems with MMO development today:
In reference to the highlighted text let me say this, "EXACTLY!!!" But I believe this is the fault of the person pitching the idea to the "fat cat." You may disagree with this but you never-ever tell the person you are reporting to exactly how long it will take you to accomplish something. You simply don't. If you tell someone it will take you exactly 6-months to complete something they will automatically assume you are adding some time in for the "just in case" factor and demand a shorter time. Maybe not outright, but at the 4-month mark they are going to expect the product by 5-months. Never mind you told them exactly how long it would take (6-months) based off your requirements. It doesn't matter. So you as a manager need to anticipate the need for instant gratification from the "fat cat" and build in a little buffer. So when you tell him it will take 7-months, he will expect you are adding in some wiggle room, which you did, and demand it in 6-months. Well guess what? That's exactly how much time it will actually take so you are setting yourself up for success, the "fat cat" is happy because his little power trip was satisfied and everyone is smiling.
I think a lot of people also settle for "good enough." I see it ALL the time. No, it's not a great product. No, it's not exactly what they wanted to create. But you know what? It's good enough. If you pitch an idea to someone and they make unreasonable demands on you then you need to exercise a little moral fiber and tell them it isn't possible. Don't pump up your ego and try to convince yourself that you can do it when you know damned well you can't. That's just a recipe for failure and a shitty product.
Developers shouldn't look for sympathy from us consumers. We have none. If you told us you would give us this, this and this by such and such time then you had better well deliver all of that when you promised it. it's not my fault you didn't build some wiggle into your schedule.
Well for one thing if the designers feel they are “stakeholders” as Mr Webb calls them then corporate mentality remains supreme. Which means that the staff of the MMO, from the Head Designer to the Tea Boy will be good at running a company but not necessarily any good at all at making a MMO.
Creative flair and good business sense do not go together, rather than worrying about whether they are up on corporate jargon, just let the designers create and leave the business to the execs in the company.
Coders are sometimes expected to be able to design when they cannot or try to influence design when they should not. That’s were management must step in and clear the air.
I also agree that many posters on here probably have had no experience of any sort of work, which does lead them to a rather 'imaginative' view of the way real life works. :)
99% of x = .99x
99% of y = .99y
.99x * .99y = .98xy
Don't be a literalist. You can actually build something so broken that's less than the sum of it's parts
If the game has 500 features (as Webb used in his example), each feature is 99% complete and we follow the assumption that this percentage compounds, we get 0.99 to the power of 500 which equals roughly 0.00657, or 0.657%. Yep, about half percent.
This is false & has been for a long, long time.
You make an article about some why some MMO's suck.
Might as well make your next article about which MMO's suck, because most of them that do suck (probably all) have done what your article says.
They may try to fix it.
But it'll already be too late.
True to some extent. At the same time, MONEY is what allows these games to even exist. People don't pour five years of their life into developing a mmo without some sort of return, and if we did manage to abolish money and live in some sort of socialist system do you really even believe games like this would exist? Cry about money all you want, but if you don't recognize the positive aspects of money than you're just ignorant.
This is false & has been for a long, long time.
If the customer is always right, what do you do when the customer is dead wrong?
People spouting garbage rules like this have never actually interacted with a customer...
True to some extent. At the same time, MONEY is what allows these games to even exist. People don't pour five years of their life into developing a mmo without some sort of return, and if we did manage to abolish money and live in some sort of socialist system do you really even believe games like this would exist? Cry about money all you want, but if you don't recognize the positive aspects of money than you're just ignorant.
Money is never the problem. It's the LACK of money that's the problem. :)
It's not meant to be taken literally. It means "give the customer what he wants, not what he needs, and do it with a smile on your face."
It's not meant to be taken literally. It means "give the customer what he wants, not what he needs, and do it with a smile on your face."
If you want to say "The customer is King" then say that. Don't say something else, and has a completely different meaning. A number of people take rules literally, especially those which leave no room for interpretation.
Your post is nothing but excuses to me. So you can't get all the funding you need? Welcome to the ranks of small business. You drop a couple extravagent salaries and come up with creative ways to make the money work. Startups don't do well when they want all the rewards from the very beginning, you have to SACRIFICE with a lower salary, longer working hours, perhaps pitching in as a group for bulk purchasing power for food, fuel, and other expenses. You'll get your reward when you've made a great mmo. Have the patience to reap the benefits of your work.
My favorite excuse is your justification of wow clones. Yes, you as a dev justified wow clones. Congratulations. Here's a nice little fact I brought up in another thread. Once a market becomes popular, other businesses quickly setup shop in that market until eventually profit = 0. At that point, competition is solely based on (in mmo terms) features, price, and service. All of a sudden that 7.5% shrinks to 0% and the .25% looks outstanding. The key to business is to setup profitable niches, and to retain control of those niches. The niches don't have to be small (take wow for example), they just need to be niches where you get in first, attract most of the market, and maintain your competitive position (which Blizzard does totally pro). Bottom line is you don't understand jack about economics and neither do your financial dumbasses who are chasing a piece of the pie that they'll only get a sliver from. This is why you devs fail over and over again.
Change the financing model. Tell your investors "after 5 years, we will pay you back your investment + X%. Now go away until that time." Have more and smaller investors. Overbudget your time and costs. If you think you can get your game fit for release in 4 years, then say it will take five. If you think it will cost 40 million, then say it will cost 50 million.
Hope for the best, and plan for the worst.
And this will drive any potential investor away and no game will be made.
Investors will be confronted with a multitute of choices, and the return on the investment is the measuring stick. If you present them with 10% chance of 100 million payday (the wow-killer) vs 100% chance 1 million (the average MMO), ALL investors will choose the first option. As long as the first option has more than a 1% chance of happening it will be preferred.
The problem with MMO's is the success of WoW. Even though the probability of being the next WoW is very low, the payout IFF you are the WoW-killer is so high it pretty much trumphs all other investment choices.
This is false & has been for a long, long time.
And it is especialy false for mmos. There are so many people playing the game. A feature someone demands could be a gamebreaker for someone else.
Reading a lot of response by current/former game devs, it seems dev environments are not that great in the US, too.
When I interviewed for my dev job in Taiwan, the lead designer asked me what was my vision and what's my ambition in entering this industry.
My answer(and I think a lot of devs around the world have said the exact same stupid thing) was I wanted to build the next WoW. Well, as all of you could imagine, all of the interviewers almost laughed their pants off, and gave me a reality check.
"Son, if we had the guns and greens to make WoW class stuff, you wouldn't even had the chance to interview..."
And the truth is, the reality is much more disappointing than you could have of ever imagined. The original post said that an MMO project has 5yrs production time, but in Asia(well maybe crossing out NCsoft), the average produciton cycle is around 1~2yrs max. No company has the luxurious resources to support a project for more than 2yrs. It would mean serious cash flow problems once it passes the 2yr mark.
So, a lot of people say devs are nerdy guys who think they are god and don't know the crap about games isn't quite true(at least in Taiwan). Because the pay is awful, the work time is long and tedious, anyone that even considered jumping in the industry are either super game nerds or have huge passion for making games since their first experience of holding a game controller. And also, the work load of an MMO is massive, with a short leash on the timeframe, a lot of the pieces sometimes doesn't quite worked out than it should be. But by the time the problem submerges(most of the times, it doesn't occure until you place all the functions together), the deadline is always just around the corner. And as mentioned above, we don't have the greens to produce games for ten years and push back issuing dates as long as we want(yes I'm pointing at you StarCraft 2), so, the boss simply tells you if you don't make the deadline, than everyone can get their empty box for personal items at the HR dept. next Monday.
Devs wanting to make crappy games? Everyone always has a great and glamorous idea for their dream game, but the reality is when you want to do X you'll get a slap in the face and a reponse which pretty much sounds like "no can do, no time, not applicable, and not making money". But the boss always pats your head and say "when we do have the money, I will give you your dream game".
Finally, I would like to add some other dirt on the solutions issue to bugs or crappy mechanisms. It actually is more statistically based than you think.
1. the dev and publisher would address certain issues on consumer feedback of the game, and a list of complains will get laid out on the discussion table.
2.When considering to fix bugs or certain mechanisms, the boss always lets everyone think of resources. ex. you only got 4 programmers, 3 devs, 2 artist maintaining the MMO. The same work time you fix bug X or carppy mech Y, you could''ve develop a new mech or new function to the game. Now, here comes the tricky part, which decesions make more profit?
3.After the publisher present certain statistical numbers and in-game research data, the final decesion will be made. Keep in note that there are silent majorities in a MMO, sometimes the most vocal players on a forum actually just represent a small group of players when considering the overall subscribers*. So eventually the ones that make more money jumps to the first priority, end of discussion.
*AION makes a great reference for this statement. In Taiwan, the forums are always jam pack with endless strings of complains and heavy gunfire on AION. But it still manages to be the No.2 game, and actually the accounts that make most nasty posts are around 200, where comparing to it's 170,000 subsribers is just a pebble in the lake.
Not true. Investors know high risk investments have a high risk of showing no return or even a loss. It's not the investors that decide this it's the CEOs of publishing houses. Their decisions are based on marketing trends and research. They know WoW sells. On the other hand they know there is a market for lower budget games with more modest returns on investment too. What they can't make is a game with a huge budget and modest returns expected which is what you see spoiled gamers screaming for on these forums every day. I'm sorry but the reality is if you want to play a niche MMOG you're going to have be less demanding and pay the same price or you're going to play WoW. That's all there is to it.
Only for the gamblers. They are not even the majority of investors.
Not true. Investors know high risk investments have a high risk of showing no return or even a loss. It's not the investors that decide this it's the CEOs of publishing houses. Their decisions are based on marketing trends and research. They know WoW sells. On the other hand they know there is a market for lower budget games with more modest returns on investment too. What they can't make is a game with a huge budget and modest returns expected which is what you see spoiled gamers screaming for on these forums every day. I'm sorry but the reality is if you want to play a niche MMOG you're going to have be less demanding and pay the same price or you're going to play WoW. That's all there is to it.
Having spent some time at an private equity company, I assure you that it is all we do. Calculate expected return on investments under different circumstances. In my overely simplified example above, game A would have an expected return of 100*0.1 + 0*0.9 = 10m while game B would be 1*1 = 1m. If game A costs 5m to develop the expected ROI would be 100%. If game B costs 800k to develop, the ROI would be 25%.
Since most (all?) MMO's are financed by investors and not banks, game A is chosen because the ROI tells you so. If you are in private equity you are rewarded for taking big risks and getting big returns, while making big losses mostly affects you indirectly (apart from the lack of that bonus..)
Nothing new, just a dev protecting his own.
Now that I remember the connection with Mythic, I want to ask Mr Webb what happened to Warhammer Online. Why does it suck?
Most MMOGs are financed by publishers, not venture captalists. If what you were saying were true mutual funds, hedge funds, and most large corporations would not exist. Investors wil sacrifice ROI for stability. Five million won't build a MMOG and if the market has proven anything it's that spending mpore money doesn't gaurantee a bigger return.
Just a couple things I wanted to point out...
In my own cynical way, I don't even think the following statement is true:
"MMO developers don't try to make bad games - it's in nobody's interest to do so."
I know I may be strecthing it, but have you ever seen the play/movie "The Producers" ?
I thought the following statement was an interesting take on things too.
"If every facet of the game is only 99% awesome, the awesomeness compounds (like interest) when you try to calculate how awesome the game is overall."
So lets say you pick 40 facets of a game and 10 are 100% perfect, and 30 are 99% perfect. If you stick with your theory of those things compounding to the game's overall "awesomeness", you get:
1^10 * 0.99 ^ 30 = .7397 = 74%
Yeah I'd say 74% (or much lower) is about the rating I'd give many of these so called "triple A" titles that have come out in the past couple years. Makes sense to me
Publishers acting like investors the same as general institutional investors, just that they are specified to a certain niche, i.e. books, music, games etc. All the calculation and decision making processes is identical.
As for risk: AAA Government bonds are the most secure, but has the lowest return (quite often negative real returns). Then follows high grade gvmt/muni bonds, investment grade corp bonds, banks, high yield gvmt/corp/muni bonds, stocks/funds, PE, derivatives, and so on. Investors who sacrifice return for stability will buy government bonds. If you have invested in i.e. a PE fund, you are expecting a higher return and a higher risk (higher risk = higher return). No investor will give money to something with an unknown risk profile, and this is on the first page on any investment prospect.
And I said my example was overly simplified as to prove the underlying point. It was not discounted, there were only two scenarios, no payback, IRR, VaR and all the other measures. It is merely an illustration of how investors think and not a complete example. And there is of course no direct causation between size of investment and return, but the point still stands: Smaller niche MMO's must cost less because the appeal to a smaller market segment, and will probably not bring in the big bucks, while taking a gamble on (yet) another AAA mass market MMO which are hugely expensive, but has the potential of being a mint, is worth a lot of investment dollars.
I agree,it is all about profit.I think there is these producers looking around all the time to see what gimmick and type of game will sell subs and not have to put much effort into it.
I have seen incredible glaring holes in games,no question the developer knows of these holes,so they are purposely leaving out needed content.There seems to be a ton of gamers that don't want to play a game,they just want a media platform to PVP,so developers are allowed to continue to churn out garbage because there is a large player base that will buy it up.
A lot of the problem is these are business people some are computer nerds,i don't believe these are true gamers that have a real feel for the gaming community.My guess is that a good quality game is going to run around 100 million,no way to get around it.If a few hi tech buddies got together to make their own game engine and do most of the work,it would take them forever,so by the time it is released you have a stale old looking game.This is why you need to buy all the people you can to make it happen.
Look at that guy making that game called LOVE,he is all proud of his work ,i am i guess as well as it is a monumental task for sure,but his end result will be of VERY low quality, so it just cannot be done.
First, a gamer no need to know how to make a game to know whether its fun for them or not. Just like you no need to know how to build a car to know whether you like the car or not.
Second, FC and Mythic, Turbine etc... is not the first time they making a mmo. But what happen to them? They have no excuse.
As ive said before, why play a clone when i can play the original thing?
Failure of a mmo is the company fault, i dont care who and i will just vote with my wallet. There's forums for the devs to read, beta forums for feedback, failure of other games to warn them, tons of source for devs to see what is happening to their game from the beginning of production all the way to before release. Yet game after game they fall into the same mistake.
Just like what you said " All devs ( though i dont believe this part ) wants to produce great game", let me tell you something revolutionary, so does all the players that follows the particular game. They all want the best for the game.
But if the devs, or you can blame the publisher all you want, fail to see what players really want than they only have themselves to blame. They are responsible for suxky contents, early release ( before that x-pac is out), untrue hype, stupid excuse ( gold sellers) etc... And blame them we will for they create the game, not us.
Till the day they wake up and really count their cost before they start, this cycle will never end...
Good article. It brings up some good thinking points on what has happened to the MMORPG market. The only other thing I would have liked to see was some ideas on how these companies, and we players, can break out of this self destructive cycle.
to me, it never has anything to do with anything you wrote. it always boils down to an mmo forcing me to group to continue playing.
when i have to become a sheep to keep progressing, i quit and move on to different games.
THAT'S when MMO's suck, to me.
The OP nailed it on the head early in the article. Almost all software (not just games) is designed on incomplete requirements with no real scientific basis for the estimates used to calculate cost and delivery dates.
As the product moves through the development lifecycle (from Concept, through Initiation, Requirements and Design) the delivery dates and costs should be reassessed and reforcasted and new dates reset for delivery based on the greater clarity th project has in later phases.
I've always maintained you really can't set a reasonable delivery date for a software project until you are well into or almost complete with Development, and though my bosses disagree, they've never been right yet on their "estimates"
Yet, time and again, most software projects have their delivery date 'set' for them by outside agents. Doesn't matter if this doesn't happen right away (but I doubt many MMO's start Dev without a target delviery date in mind). As soon as this date is set, its pretty much the kiss of death for an MMORPG.
While other software products like the financial software I work on can be successfully delivered even if we decide to toss out functionality until a future release (our clients don't always agree with us btw), as mentioned by the OP, this is the deathknell of an MMO because the features are frequently the best ones, and in some cases have been promised to the fans.
Once you set a delivery date in advance, and work to it, you've doomed yourself to removing items from the scope, and this is a bad way to create an MMORPG.
It was mentioned that Blizzard will not deliver any game until its ready..... any wonder why most of their games are big financial successes then?
This is not the case... Games like AOC and WAR made alot of money through PRE-ORDERS that have absolutly nothing to do with the actual design or playability of the game. It all about PR. And atm this seems to be the biggest "new thing" with MMOs. Promise this and that and you get ppl to pre-order... Then when the game turns out to be total crap - then you put up a skeletal crew to keep it going for 1 - 2 years before you shut it down.
Profits and fun are in no way releated in MMOs.
That part isn't the companies fault to be honest. No one should ever preorder an MMO, ever. By doing so you are encouraging bad behaviour and putting yourself at risk of getting a game you won't be happy with. There is no need to preorder a game, you miss out on a couple "special" items that end up not mattering at all 99% of the time.
If I was running a company and thought that by using the right spin I could get a million preorders I would certainly do it. That is useful money that can be used for this or future products. But if I know that only a handful of players will actually preorder, then I need to put all my focus on a solid launch.
i would love to believe that only some of the title released over the past years have suffered the suck. and that i can blame the money men as you alluded to.
however, the suckiest games out there are the big triple A releases over the past several years. conan and lotr and warhammer make the top of my list of suck. wow is a non issue and i would love for 'wow-killer' to not be used anymore. its an mmo for nubs.
these are games that spent a ton of time in development and then were rushed to retail with only the briefest of beta periods and absolutely no understanding of what release day would do to their infrastructure. playtesting behind closed doors in controlled environments does not mean the game is playable. that is what makes the suck imo.
perhaps im wrong not to lay the blame squarely on the money men. after all, the rush to release would equate to a rush to get paid subscribers? and opening the item shop while a game is still in beta [speaking of f2p models now] would equate to the same thing. lets fleece our player base early and then not spend a dime on fixing anything. just extend "beta" lol. and dont get me started on "collectors editions". ill never buy another one after conan. no reason to spend 2x as much to find out a game sucks.
anyway, about the only thing i can say for certain is that there has not been an mmo that has kept my interest [and my money] in a really long time if ever. i love gaming and this is a sad state of affairs that i find myself playing single player [civ 4 and galactic civ 2 ult.] all the time instead of in an immersive, fun, and huge mmorpg with no micro trans bullshit and a reasonable monthly fee with responsible and attentive devs concerned with *sigh* fun and an understanding that solo rewards are just as important as raids. too much to ask, i know.
there are many reasons some game suck first I will say some people are looking for different things from games so I will just explain it from my perspective...
most MMOs today lack diversity,, they are narrow and shallow hack and slash they render out anything but arena combat, while combat is important to a game it should be part of a tapestry not the all mighty god.
there are different types of players that primarily favor one type of game play ofer others
WARMONGER out for the thrill of battle
ACHIEVER highest score, most medals #1
SOCIALIZER likes talking with ingame friends both about game stuff and other
EXPLORER loves to discover new places or understand how the game or the gameworld functons
BUILDER this player loves to change the world houses mountains mines temples dams ect a subset is crafter
ROLEPLAYER this person really wants to get into an alternate persona so the more different the races the better they prefer
PUZZLER this person likes riddles cyphers quandries misteries both physical and mental
im sure there are a couple im probably missing but these are most of the main ones I rend to be an explorer/builder
most games are simply not built well rounded, usually 80% of a game if not more is all about combat, even the economies are based on an economy of weapons and armor.
myself im more for a sandbox world immersion type of play some players thing wishing or farming or ranching is boring fluf but to me thats bread and butter (if its done right and avoids too much micro manage and grinding) graphics arnt all that important to me, i like having a certain level but thats a relativly low bar if the gameplay is top notch.
mob AI tend to be the same AI ive encountered for the last 20 years (percieve, advance,destroy) this is why raids are so distasteful to me just a room full of bigger rats i call it.
for me id love to run an inn but in MMOs there is no justification for an inn food and drink dont matter it doesnt matter wether you log/sleep in a warm bed or some mountain cliff,, charactors dont get cold and miserable or sick and that in my book is a crying shame and players miss out on a whole bucket of plot device let me give you a couple of examples
crossing a desert most MMO you just aim and go to me that is boring, but if you factor in water...
castle sieges having to build gear,, stock up supplies travel the distance..
famine your wheat crops this hear got flooded or blighted so very little bread what do you do?
disease the village NPCs have come down with something making them much less usefull do you find a cure?
magic has also been precanned I would like to see spells as well as combat manuvers constructed from subcomponents you want a long range fireball that does a small amount of damage? or a short range room burnner? green? blue? casters are able to research and craft their own customized spell.. same for manuvers figheters are able to construct their own favored combinations.
economy really must be a food/crafts based economy and different areas should have different types of resources that are valued in distant regons this creates trade pressure think silk trade or oranges iceburg lettuce snow peas opals teak I really hate generic evenly placed resource "nuggets" I love going out in the wild and looking around and finding cattails by a pond or an iron in a cliff face some places will have chalanges and advantages coastal will have more storms,, but have fish and clams,, deserts will be hot but might be windy or have jewel mines or glass sand,
im a huge fan of weather and climate also as long as its done right
most MMO are vastly incomplete from a universal view their are priests but they never have a temple or gain followers, there are soldiers but no sergents of the guard there are mages but no head masters players dont make a difference in most MMO a level 60 charactor can look back and they have nothing to show for their existance,, mobs respawn in a few minutes,, all they have to look foward to is the hell that is raiding (i dont get it,, they are allready 60 what do they need better gear for???)
and lastly expansions painfully end up being more hack and slash, more rooms with bigger monsters and bigger weapons and better armor,,, not better game play.
im thinking of leaving LOTRO because their last two expansions have been just that hack and slash junk. and ive been with them since beta because I thought they were different.
if you like some of the ideas ive sugested try wurm its a harsh begining and can be a bit grindy but its on a different path,, theres a free path.
The OP is nonsense. No publisher throws a giant pile of money at a developer, and then comes back four years later and tells them: "just release whatever you've got halfway done." Games are done in phases; and they have to get approved for continuation many times during the development cycle.
The problem with 90% of the suckfests out there isn't that they just (oopsie!) came up a few dollars and a few months short at the very end. The problem is that the execs responsible for these games don't have the balls to pull the plug on a bad design EARLY!
I don't even know what in the holy living Hell people are talking about when they say a lot of these games are "unfinished." Bullcrap. I know what bugs and glitches look like, and nine times out of ten, that ain't the problem. The problem is that twenty minutes into the demo I realize: Hey, this isn't any damned FUN. That's not something you can tack on at the end with patch; that has to be in the fundamental gameplay from very early alpha.
If you spend another ten years and another ten million dollars polishing a turd, hey, guess what? It is never going to be anything but a really shiny turd.
That's why Blizzard (at least from the outside looking in) seems to never fail. Of course it's not because they "don't have to worry about money." That's asinine. EVERYBODY has to worry about money. And people who have more of it have to worry about it that much more than everyone else.
The reason Blizzard seems so infallible is because they prototype the heck out of their gameplay before they greenlight content development. When they have a base gameplay that works, THEN they can throw money at it like it's going out of style, because there is no real risk.
Blizzard has just as many hopelessly wrong ideas and just as many failed concept implementations as anybody does. And they didn't have more money than God until long AFTER they developed their reputation for excellence. The big difference between them and hack developers - both large and small - is that if an aspect doesn't work, Blizzard kills it. And, more importantly, they kill it EARLY, instead of throwing millions of good dollars after hundreds of thousands of bad ones.
There's a lot that goes into making a game; I understand that even from a casual gamer viewpoint. The same challenges encountered there apply to many other large-scale projects outside the industry. Construction, for example. I'm not going to go into an analogy, but take a moment to think about all the comparable details.
From my perspective, I agree that money is a game-breaking factor in the MMO market. No money equals no (paid) development; hence we see games with holes in them released in order to try and collect enough subscribers to at least cover some of their losses. In light of this, I would think the next logical step would be how to partially or fully negate this financing burden. Is it possible? How? I'd like to see some research put into this, and will be happy to do it myself if I can.
Moving on, I'm beginning to wonder if the MMO industry is simply moving too fast. Has the industry had enough time to really get its feet on the ground, or are we going to see this trend of games reproducing the same effects until a "savior" comes around and gives everyone a new vision? As a believer in building strong foundations, I think that in a time of trouble we (and by "we" I mean players, developers and financial backers) need to step back and re-evaluate what we want, believe in, and what we could be capable of. Why not take the experience we've gained from games currently on the market and, instead of giving more of the same, learn from our predecessors and come up with something that can truly be called unique? By unique, I mean a game that not only includes re-considered mechanics from previous games, but explores new areas of what might be possible in an MMO, even if they aren't demanded by the market at the time. Is say this because not everyone knows what they want, what could be available to them, and what will make their experience in online games better.
Not all games are going to succeed. Many will fail, but I would like to see them start taking leaps of faith with designs and mechanics. I know there are examples out there, but I'm not going to compile a list. I ask you to think of experiences you've had from other games that you think stand out. I myself am trying to think of new things to do. I'm not a developer or producer, yet, but I am a gamer in the process of learning how to program and, at the same time, developing concepts and designs for my own games.
That being said, I know my comments are only opinions. I don't have hard evidence to support some of the subjects I'm talking about. In time I hope to remedy this, but for now I'm posting these things as food for thought.
I heartily agree with you on many points in this, sir.
heres how i would invision my MMO (factor in im not a dev and this id just off the cuff, so i not working out the detales here)
decently large map with several climates temperate arctic tropical grassland desert coatal ect. a good mix of low lands mountains islands with lakes and rivers.
I would love to have both seasons and weather.
players would build a charactor primarily race and charactoristics or get a random selecton so they can be human elf dwarf goblin orc ect (presuming fantacy was the theme) would be skill based with focus modifications. charactors could take certin charactoristics or traits in exchange for other things like starting grar or knowlage.
players would start usually at the edge of a selected(or random) NPC/player village with a raged tunic and a few small posessions (depending on a few factors during charactor creation) they are a non class pesant like charactor (think of this as a kind of miniverse or tutorial stage) players would be given different opertunities to do chores and odd jobs for food shelter and equipment and also be exposed to different class focuses a player might have to scrounge for leftovers from a trashpile behind an inn or try to steal food or a coin purse without being cought by the local security and beaten uncontious and thrown in jail (which could very well be where you meed a thief class contact.)
merchants dont know you and have no real responce to you later they become familiar with you and love you hate you fear you ect
later players join one of the focuses which adjusts the cost of skills most likely there would be focuses for crafts also
players would be able to own a basic block of land after a certain level and they can purchass larger sectons ultimatly they could control a small kingdom if they wished.
merchants and auctions would be localized this allows for more "masters"
crafters would have basic formulas building subcomponents and assemblying them there are basic items and fancy items
basic items tend to all work similar based on a quality so 2 high quality daggers would do the exact same damage but fancy items are much more custom and take more time and advanced items and components are assembled a decent iron sword might be crafted in a few hours casual time,, but a high end fancy sword may take many days or weeks to complete.
I would have many different structures or components of structures bridges walls buildings towers roads mines ships. some taking many resources and crafts men to build.
cultures would be sharply different and guided by the players as much as possible such as politicol structure and religons
I would have a "GM" type of avatar that game masters could use to cause some unpredictability to the world storms earthquakes volcanos floods plague pestilance invasions and so forth not to grief the players but just to be able to make the world a bit unpredictable they could also play the role of gods droping a low level benefit or wrath depending on the faith and the circumstance.
mobs I would try to build them more naturalistic with different priorities like deer would be skittish and elusive a crock might try to turn your canoe over cave goblins might swarm you or cave in the celing or throw rocks at you. birds might dive at you and cattle might try to run you over and lets not forget ants and bees
while there might be chores and odd jobs and work available in villages (gather wood or toad eyes ect) many quests would have imbeded rewards like attacking and supressing bandits on the caravan roads leads to more and better goods (or simply stoping goblin raiders from stealing your corn!)
crafting: will be done in a way where its a base plus bonus theme my example is a crop a warmonger can drop a little seed and some water and furtilizer and head of to go adventure,, when he returns he will have a basic yeald from the crop,, while a player who tends and adjusts the field occasionally will get a higher yeald and/or better quality for the extra work.
players could own animals both farmyard and pets farmyard are tended for what they produce meat eggs skin milk wool fur ect pets have skill and proform some task be it be a guard dog or a bird that sings
lastly death: i like death to have meaning but not criplingly so first all players would have methods to change a mobs mine distract, fear, climb trees, bribe with food and if those dont work players have a faign death that they can attempt if the mob isnt too focused and mad they might be attracted to something else food or loot or simply wander off. players many times may just be injured and uncontious and be able to recover after a short time or be able to be draged and tended to by teammates, but not if they actually die like in a siege they would leave a certain amount of loot (not in the secure items bag) (this would have coding so that the non secure bag wont just have crap expendable stuff and would occasionally drop other random equipment) you would respoawn back at some remote rez point not the home village unless they were with a certain distance,, I would most likely have some form of skill deficit that they would need to address.
I like wounds and things so I would make charactors durable and fast healers but injurable they can also be sick or diseased or mentally attacked
i want players to feel emotion and care about the NPCs and players around them a player should be outraged if their village is attacked and pillaged (player houses would be damageable but for the most part secure unless located in unsecure wilderness areas.
<blockquote><i>Originally posted by Tabash</i> <br />
<b>
<p>Rule #1 of business : The customer is always right.</p>
</b></blockquote>
<p>That statement is flat wrong. Sure it holds water if you have ONE customer. What happens when you have more than one and they all disagree? They can't all be right... and you can't possibly remain profitable as a business if you try to make your product suit everyone of them.</p>
<p>Whoever coined that phrase was only dealing with one person at a time and was probably selling umbrella cans door to door.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
And this is the problem - most customers have a long wishlist of what they want in a product without considering the work that is involved or whether or not other people will like it as well.
This reminds me an early episode of The Simpsons. Homer was given the chance to make the car of his dreams at his Brother's car plant.
The logic thinking was since Homer was the "average American" his car design should appeal to the average customer - hence be successful.
As it turned out what Homer wanted in a car was totally different what other customers wanted.
A bad MMO is in the eyes of a beholder - one person may think it's worst game in the world while other person may think it's gold.
Most of the mmo company who started poor like EVE or niche one that we got today like darkfall and mortal online make sandbox mmorpg's with full loot, open world pvp.
They seem to not need too much money or devs(They got around 10 - 30 devs) to make their game because the players make their own content anyway in game. The devs dont need to spend time to hold each players hands in a park to guide them in the next quest, next location or tell them what to do next.
So if those rich company that are rich could make sandbox open world pvp with full loot instead of a theme park, i bet they would spend less time, less money and a small sub base as 30 000 only would be good enough to catch up on the amount of money they spended to make their game and if that game got time to upgrade over time like EVE did, it might end up hitting 300 000 subs one day.
So im just saying, rich company should stop making MMO's like wow. It cost too much and if it fail then its too much money waste. So they should make sandbox instead from now and see how it goes.
So after i readed the new journal, im still at it, Mainstram MMO's sux. Stop doing like wow do just to being at risk to waste money or to get money. stop doing competition with wow. Make an MO that cost less money like sandbox mmorpg's. Thats all im saying. Stop thinking that you will be succeful like wow. Because players will start your game and once theiy figure out its the same like their old game, they will go back there.
What color is the umbrella can? Does it have Darth Vader on it? What size is the can? Will this umbrella can work well at my door? Can others use my umbrella can for thier umbrellas? Is this umbrella can better than my neighbor's umbrella can? Can I keep a rifle in the umbrella can? If this umbrella can is made from an Elephant's Foot is it illegal? So how many customers are buying this umbrella can?
Its true that this statement has more "water" with say selling jewlery but where it applies in a mass market is just as valid. Marketing Research is done to find group trends. Group Trends translate into targetable customer desires. When the larger group all agree on a given feature as a whole..."the customer is always right" is the guide to development. What most on forums like this don't understand is those large groups of customers never make vocal thier desires here. They just quietly quit games and move on to thier next entertainment. They will not engage you in debate as they don't care that much.
+ 1 10x
no one listens to feedback anyway. seems the thing to do when a game realizes it sucks [which is waaaay after the gamers decided the same] is now to switch to f2p model with micro suck transactions, fire everyone except the guy with the paypal passwords, and make a new game with the same suck, different textures.
"Most profitable" means, lots of people playing it, which requires! You guessed it!!! Wait, maybe not, actually I think you missed the puncline entirely. Quality polished , fun game for the masses. The game you probably hate the most, WoW. Isn't it in their f*king interest to make the best MMO ever?! It's like any other business. You don't even half to be in the industry to understand this. You just half to drop the fact that you are a snobbeling geek and use some common sense. Wait, that's rare too huh...
MMO's are made as well as "Possible", AKA, they will get put on the backburner for the??? Yes, thats right, the reasons stated in the article that you maybe forgot to read...
They have the same business regards as most quality "Customer service stores will". "The customer is always right, even if he's a complete tool". The last part is a inside joke for anybody on the planet who has held a job dealing with people. Actually... My 5 yearold sister understands this as well.
Good article.
#1 frustration in the MMORPG genre and the biggest reason so many suck? Failure to award additional time and money needed to release a game that is truly ready for launch!
When you've already invested close to $100 million and four years of development time in a title, why do so many publishers fail to see that granting an additional $20 million and another year to development, in exchange for doubling or tripling your chances of having a blockbuster title, is superior to cutting production and releasing a game almost guaranteed to fail?
I work in Tech too....not the entertainment vertical ....but SaS ....so alot of similarties to MMO's who also work off the subscription based models. Both you and the author of the article made some good points. However some counters...
1) To the point you made about the WOW model.... I have a 2 word response.... Market Saturation.
You don't get to be successfull by opening the 412th burger joint on a street that has 411 other burger joints on it already. There is a reason why most MMO's never approach WOW level returns. You can't just follow a formula...even if you follow it to a T and expect huge returns.
The companies who really hit the monster successes tend to be the ones that find a product that NO ONE knows they want yet.... hence no one else has built/offered ..... but which a whole lot of people WOULD enjoy if was availble. That's alot riskier and more difficult to do.... and there is a very good chance of bombing. However, when a company does hit something like that right... THAT's the product that will make huge returns..... not WOW clone #347.
2) Let's be honest.....whether the financial people have any degree of competence whatsoever is an utter crapshoot. I don't know if that's true in your industry, but it's certainly true in mine. Sometimes the investors know what thier doing....other times the have absolutely no clue about the vertical they are investing in...... they just heard/read somewhere that the vertical was "hot" and want to be in it... they throw thier money at the guy who gives the best presentation, uses the right buzz-words and has a really good golf handicapp..... whether the project makes a lick of sense to anyone who really understands the vertical or not.
3) Again....not sure about your experiences but from mine..... I can say honestly that it's not that uncommon for huge decisions to be based on absolutely ZERO market research. I've also seen plenty of examples of market research being done and then blatantly ignored when it didn't fit with the results that the executive who ordered it WANTED to see. That's not even considering the quality of the research done....nor the fact that many times the researchers will cook the data because they know the customer who paid them to do it WANT's a particular outcome so that they can turn around and justify the decision....rather then the unvarnished truth.
Sometime major decisions are based upon nothing more then a magizine article that the CEO read.....that has absolutely nothing to do with the particular situation your project is in.....and doesn't translate at all.
I won't speak for you..... but what I've seen with my own eyes in the many years of my own work experience in Tech companies.....more then half the time resembles an episode of the Office....rather then NASA.
Paul Barnett said that World of Warcraft was The Beatles. He said that Warhammer Age of Reckoning was not trying to be The Beatles, they were going to be Led Zeppelin.
Of course, we all know now that they weren't Led Zeppelin. They were Spinal Tap.
The combination of vision, brains and brawn is a rare thing and the industry really doesn't churn out that many MMO's a year. How often do you see a really excellent movie?
The height of mediocrity is the challenge. It's practically a law of nature that most of these productions will be ruled by "nincompoops" on all levels. I like the Beatles just fine. I don't mind when they come on the radio, but I wouldn't buy one of their albums. It's just not my kind of band.
Alot of bands trying to be The Beatles lately. Me, I'm still waiting for Led Zeppelin. I know they'll come on stage one day, it's just a matter of time.
I think the problem is that the Vision is often just wrong. Look at a tight controlled game like Warhammer, Mark Jacobs had a vision, just the wrong one. The game should have been DAoC in the Warhammer world with a WoW interface and combat system. Instead it took too much elements from WoW, like battlegrounds.
They lost tons of players due to exhaustion on the battlegrounds aka scenario's, later on RvR was alot more fun, but the damage had been done. I still remember taking a 1 week break and when I got back it looked like half the server left, seriously. And that was in the second month after release I believe, so people liked the game at first, just as I did.
So after a while this vision was adjusted in a good direction, RvR was promoted and when I rejoined the game I had alot of fun in very active RvR. But now a new problem arises, everyone is doing RvR and no PVE, so PQ's were a ghost town ...
DAoC had PvE and RvR nicely balanced pre-ToA-NF, most DAoC vets will agree with me, I don't understand why Mythic did not try to work on their strong points instead of trying to compete with WoW.
WAR did bring a couple of nice things into the genre, like PQ's and the ToK, but that was not enough.
I really think producer(s) messed up the game with a wrong vision and not learning from the mistakes in the past.
I can give more examples of just plain bad vision, but I'll leave it at this for now.
To add to this, the only visionaries that have not failed me yet are CCP, I am sure there are others, but I talk about personal experience.
Mythic ( with DAoC and WAR ), SOE ( with SWG ), EA ( with UO ), ... All have failed miserably in long term vision, imho.
Even WoW is not doing so great I think, however their next expansion is more horizontal in nature, so I applaud that, and perhaps are the changes in latest patch not so detrimental after all, and probably even in line with what most people want from Blizzard, on the other hand, everyone familiar with the mmo scene knows you should not always give what people ask, because they don't always know what they actually want :p
Anyway, just wanted add that.
p.s. Yes Dust514 scared me, and I still think it is a wrong turn, but I hope the damage won't be too big and a PC version will be released soon enough.
This article is equivalent to telling children not to complain when they can't have ice cream.
Gamers are emotional cry babies and whine when they don't get what they want.
Another question I had after thinking about the artice:
If the "real" start of the death spiral for mmo's is its problems with "scope"(release date, financing, feature cuts, etc), then where does the overabundance/overuse of the "fantasy" genre come in to play?
After all...the first complaint I hear all the time from the mmo community is that they are tired of games featuring orcs/goblins/elves/swords/sorcery. And, since choosing the genre is pretty much a designer controlled decision...one that comes BEFORE any money is requested or a date is set, wouldn't that suggest that there are problems in the "vision" of many games BEFORE the "scope" is effected.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, while yes, money and time can make a game "suck"...isn't it possible that some (most?) developers just aren't that creative or imaginative in their ideas in the first place? (as evidenced by the lack of diversity in mmo genres)
First off, when someone here says "its the developers fault", usually he/she does not mean developers in the same sense as a game company. For a game company a dev is some specific job. For us as gamers developers are everyone who do a part in developing the game. So everyone, essentially. And how then can you NOT say its the developers fault? Now yes, before you bog me down with precision of speech, sure I can say "its everyone in charge's fault" but that does sound complicated, so I say "all those who develop the game and have a say in the game" or in short: THE DEVS.
That much been said, one of the basic reasons MMOs fail IMVPO is, outside of these technical reasons, rooted in two failures:
(A) The failure to see through a gamer's eye.
Sorry to say, but I have this fundamental feeling most people involved in development decisions don't have the view of the average player. Everyone in the development team fall in love with some particular part. Its quite simple to proof. I have been in many closed betas in early stages, and there always are many testers who point at all the cruicial issues quite early. But the "devs" (definition see above) simply don't listen. The truth is OUT THERE, it is SAID, but to no avail. They listen to fanbois because thats more comfortable. They delude themselves "it will magically work out". Sorry, I have seen enough intelligent people testing and KNOWING what would be a big issue, and they simply dont listen because many devs have no clue what really works.
(B) The failure to assume artistic power which they dont have
Art is something you need an artist for. A game is broken down in several parts who require a sense for art. You need tailors and amor designers for the gear, you need architects for the houses, you need people with a feeling for landscapes to design cool landscapes. And finally you need REAL AUTHORS to write good story via quests, dialogues and characterizations. A mere programmer won't do! A mere bean counter aka CEO won't do! NONE of these people is qualified in the arts. It is the hubris of programmers to thing, everyone who can hold a pencil can draw a cool clothing or armor design! It is hubris of pixel pushers to think, everyone who knows the alphabet can write good stories! Thats the whole issue! Most games are PLAGUED by the most forseeable stories, the most hollow and cliche quest stories, the most boring dialogues. Dammit, you dont think you are an author just because you can write! I mean, a game does not need a Pulitzer, but when I look at most games and esp. MMORPGs, I could cry tears for the hilariously bad level of writing most quests and stories have!
Those two issues are IMVPO the most grave reason for the many mediocre and sucktastic MMOs we have seen. Visual trash like Warhammer, story trash like post-Tortage AoC. Games which are not so much mired by the financial shortcomings mentioned in the article or the 99%, but by said two issues. At least thats my 2ct about it.
Solutuion:
LISTEN TO YOUR TESTERS!
HIRE SOME GODDAMN ARTISTS AND REAL WRITERS!
"Often these comments are laced with more expletives and leet speek than my example which is understandable since gamers are
very passionate and loyal creaturestypically complete and utter douchebags, as evidenced by the overwhelmingly douchebaggy responses to this article. Yes, douchebaggy."I'm sorry, but this article was hilarious. Was I the only one who saw it that way? First, everyone is just entirely too uptight in responding to this thing. It seems like just a bunch of inside detail revealing that the majority of games are underfunded, doomed projects loaded with rampant scope creep and people who couldn't follow a budget if it came with a GPS. These types of things happen every day in corporate America, they just aren't as visible. People lose jobs, massive layoffs occur, and huge losses are incurred because some project manager decided the money set aside to pay for Artist #4 would instead be the public slush fund (read: beer and pizza money), as you can certainly get by with just the 3 artists, right? Ok, it's never that obviously stupid, but hopefully you get the point. This type of buffoonery isn't limited to games. But the article was hilarious, regardless. Well done!
Some devs are like mechanical robots. All brain and no common sense. They don't know what gamers like and sometimes I even wonder if they ever been around a player commnity before.
Have you ever called up a company’s customer service and complained about a product, but then they blamed the problem on some other department in that same company? Does that solve your problem? No. Do you still want satisfaction? Yes.
The problem I have with this article and with most of what “Dev4Aliving” has to say is this: So what now? I still don’t care. No really, I don’t care whose fault it was, or how much money some rich dude put into the project. I don’t care if it was a designer, producer, developer, key grip, or the water guy’s fault the game sucked. After reading this article, while I’m hitting my “cancel subscription” button in my account management screen, I’m not going to be saying to myself: “Well, sure the game was boring, half-done, and a clear copy of WoW. But at least I know it wasn’t Bob Johnson the developers fault!” No, that’s not going to make me feel better about the money I just wasted, and the money your company won’t be receiving. No amount of complaining and explaining to me why it wasn’t you or the dev’s fault isn’t going to change the fact that I’m still not paying for something that sucks. Making, funding, and developing is hard you say? Ok, but you still need to make something that is fun to play, no matter who dropped the ball - in order for me to pay you.
I feel that articles like these and responses from “devs” are just ways to make themselves feel better, and that’s fine, but I really don’t care. I’m sorry you don’t have employment with blizzard, and someone else keeps screwing up your projects, but in the end, it’s the millions of gamers that are paying for your salary, and if the project you’re apart of sucks, then you’re going to be labeled with it. If you don’t like that, then I would suggest another profession. It's pretty obvious now, some MMO companies and/or investors need to spend more time and money finding the source of failure and eliminate it, rather than spend millions of dollars trying to copy something that already has the market cornered.
In the final result...this is all that will matter. Good post Xanthas.
Well said.
I've said this before and I'll say this again: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE A GAME DESIGNER OR A GAME DEVELOPER TO CRITICIZE A GAME.
Are all film critics film makers? Are all literary critics authors? Are all television critics television producers? In some cases yes they very much are, but in many cases (most cases) no, they are not.
Anyone with an opinion can criticize an MMO, you do not have to be an MMO developer to do so!
What you wrote is nothing more than a stupid fallacy that needs to be shot in the head before its stupidity infects anyone else.
What's really sad is that there is something lacking in a lot of MMORPGs that devs never seem to get, and that's the basic fundamental of "fun". Way too often a game is created that makes the game work, not fun, and then they get the impression that if they make the gamer work really hard for the results, then it will somehow translate to fun. Some games succeeded in that capacity but for different reasons. One was Everquest which required a lot of work to get results sometimes, but that game existed in a time when there wasn't a lot of competition around. It WAS the big boy on the block, so they could do that, and gamers went along with it.
Nowadays, most games are faced with the behemoth that is WoW, and they see it as some albatross that is to be beaten or copied, but what it is actually is a lot of fun. If you play WoW, you play a game that is designed around a lot of fun, and lots of hours of involvement that is nothing but fun. Sure, you might eventually get bored of it, but it's going to bring a lot of fun before that happens. I keep coming back to that game, mainly because it's fun.
I think devs really miss that a lot. Fun. Simple fun.
Some?
one factor that bgan to annoy me is the sound(mood)some try to bring
you know like you go see a movie but the movie sound is so bad its a renter
like the game would be good but some sound choice are so fugly that you would rater ear your dog sing instead
The point of half of the debates about MMOs stem from a very simple idea. Stop trying to be World of Warcraft and do something else. Yes, lots of people like WoW. Yes, it is making a killing. But just because Blizzard can do it doesn't mean you can!! WoW was a success because of the new things they did, and the new approaches they took to old ideas. It wasn't because they copied previous games. Yeah, being the next WoW would rock. But the next WoW won't be WoW. It'll be something else. Just like the next EQ was WoW, not EQ2.
Dear Devs, DO SOMETHING ORIGINAL. That is the only way you're going to succeed. And even worse, you probably won't succeed if you do something original. But if you don't, you certainly won't win.
And only his second post :-p
Another thing I see a lot is adding stuff to keep us busy and playing. The Devs are better coming out with a game that will only keep us playing for a few months than to have a game with a year of content but we get bored with the game before the free month is up.
They can add content to a good game and we will come back, you cant fix it after its broken. Not without a tremendous amount of work.
Here's my three problems with "suckiness in MMOs" based on what you described on the creation of a MMO.
1.) Deny it's as bad as it is. Some MMOs are so wrapped up in political correctness that they refuse that there are problems that have to be fixed. An example of this would be "No it doesn't take fourty hours of farming to get an item" even though the actual results are very close to that. Rather then admit "We checked the drop rates and it's pretty terrible, we hope to address this issue soon" sometimes players hear "We'll look into it" with no posting back with even "Sorry nothing we can do about it at this time".
2.) Developers DON'T play their games. This needs some clarification. A developer might play a single class, as their favorite. A ranger, a healer, whatever it is. More then likely this class will be overpowered to everyone else, because the developer is giving "love" to that class by playing it and seeing the weaknesses. What about the bad classes though? The classes with lots of weaknesses. Players don't even know if developers are playing them. Often times because "updates" or "buffs" seem so far out of right field I at times have gone "Dude, have you even played with these new changes?"
3.) If someone says "We have the best donut ever" how do you convince them that the donut actually tastes rancid without being a jerk? I understand the temptation is to close yourself in ivory towers, but things don't get fixed. If developers aren't willing to listen to their "paying" customers about what they'd like in game in exchange for new content, it sucks.
You can put as much spin on it as you want, however, my question is "How many game companies have polls to ask players what they should work on?" None. It's because game developers really honestly don't care, it's a job. You can deny it, but this is certainly how it looks out there.
"We have eight months of development time left this year for Ourmmorpg, and we want to make sure we keep you the fans content. So we've prepared a poll in both game and the forums. Please fill it out and send it back and we'll send you some goodies in exchange in game
Primary Focus for the game within the next six months should be;
Secondary Focus for the game within the next six months should be;
What other things would you like for their to be in game (500 words or less):________________________
What is your account name:_________________________
Rate your content within the current game:___________________
What is your favorite feature?:____________________
What is your least favorite feature?:________________
Thanks for taking the time to participate in the poll. Soon as the results are calculated we'll let' you know what the game schedule is."
That's an example. It doesn't have to be twelve pages. It doesn't have to deal with every aspect of the game. I as a player who sees that PvP elements are the most popular in the game right now, is not going to be shocked by the next four updates then. It gives the people who buy the game a chance to voice their opinions in the game development, not ranting on the forums. Developers don't feel attacked, and players feel like they're being listened to.
From experience, when the developers listen to what players want, it gets better. When they don't it gets worse. When they do what they want regardless of the player base, it sucks.