Sanya Weathers's MMO Underbelly: Tech Talk with Andrew
Each Friday, the former Director of Community Relations for Mythic Entertainment pens this column that focuses on some under-served MMO story. In this installment, she tells relays a conversation with server guy Andrew Mann talking about some of the issues behind the technology of MMOs.
Speaking of exposed metal, what kind of foundation do we start with, when we build an MMO?
Andrew tells us "MMOs are rough to begin with. No one wants to start from scratch on MMO technology because it covers so many different technical areas. Pretty much every MMO project startup recently has bought an engine rather than building their own. I do wonder why that is though. I can't think of any major MMO now that's running on purchased server tech - EQ, EQ2, WoW, WAR, EVE all built their own. Most were based on some previous code base, but the code base was MUD era, and was largely re-written for the MMO usage.
"The advantage of [building your own], provided you can retain your developers, is that you have in-house knowledge of your own software. Bioware and Zenimax have a challenge ahead of them - the worst problems they face with the Hero Engine will be because no one in house will ever know the design decisions of the parts of the engine that don't work the way they want them to."
Andrew went on to explain that even off the shelf engines require extensive customization to function with large scale combat situations like big raids, or open field PVP. As they exist coming out of the box, such rapid-development MMO products often collapse when surprisingly few customers begin to play the game as it's meant to be played - with many models animating at once, spell effects flying, and customized equipment on everyone in sight.
What? New technology isn't always the answer? Okay, okay, all sarcasm aside, I confess that I did think that maybe some of the crash problems we see with MMOs aren't just a matter of instability creeping in over the years from multiple layers of code, or of outdated technology. And I'd been reading about "increasingly obsolete architecture." That phrase sounds so good it's gotta mean something, right?
Well, maybe not. Andrew said "Increasingly obsolete architecture would be great - that would imply that there's snazzy new technologies in the market that are deployed and being widely used."
So, where are we going when it comes to MMOs?
Andrew thought this article at Joel on Software was very appropriate to a discussion of the future of MMOs. (Short version: Amazon = Get Big Really Fast. Spend a lot of money to grab the biggest chunk of land in a new category and compete from a position of strength, while everyone rushes to copy you. B&J = start small in a crowded, established category with simple goals, and build for the long haul.)
He said, "Current MMO development is the Amazon model, but it's obsolete, I think. The article points out that this model only works if you are not entering a competitive market. If you're entering a competitive market it becomes far more risky. While you're losing money like crazy trying to pull people away, the dominant product is making money.
"The application to the MMO market, I think, is that if you want to compete now, you need to start small and sustainable. You need to build something for 1,000 or 10,000 players, and then build it better one step at a time, making money constantly, and drawing people to your product over a long period."
Andrew thought the part of the article focusing on the importance of understanding barriers to entry in the market was important, and that the areas of opportunity for MMOs can be seen with the games that are free to play, web accessible, and so on. "They're specific implementations of reducing the barrier to entry. The sad part is that so many game studios don't understand that. They want to make "a web game" because "web games are popular now."
"They should want to make a web game because it's easier for more people to experience the game. And that should lead them to the realization that in order to make any successful game, you need a good game experience."
At that point in our conversation, my friend and I realized we had to stop talking. Every conversation about MMOs eventually comes around to that point, and this chat was already covering ten times the territory we'd intended.
So I asked him for his final thoughts, and like the behind the scenes man that he is, this is what he said:
"I think much of the MMO industry doesn't consider its products as long term [things]. We spend 3+ years developing a game engine, and at the end of it we hate spending anything on maintenance and upkeep. We have a 15 million dollar car, but $500,000/year is too much for us to spend on maintenance."
Spoken like the guy who gets up at three in the morning to keep your raid from ending in disaster! The next time your servers crash, send up a good thought for Andrew, the guys like him, and the teams they run.