The KGB Oracle Forums KGB National Announcements, News, and Help The KGB Sentinel Are we doomed to mediocrity?

Drak, I do not believe that is entirely accurate, and I hope you will allow me to provide an alternative view on the matter based on my 11 years in the industry.

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Game companies are laughing all the way to the bank at what they perceive to be an indulgent, and decadent group of social misfits.

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This is untrue; game developers are gamers themselves. We come with all of the fallacies of humans across the globe, to be sure... but gamers at heart we are.

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As they rake in millions of dollars each year as you buy up their various game related merchandise and mass marketed super MMO's, they are using the bare minimum of the resources dedicated to producing a quality experience when compared to the social dynamics.

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I assume you mean in-game quests? Creating an MMO service is an entirely daunting endeavor, and a very difficult one, at that. This sort of thing is often overlooked, or when times get tough, is the first one cut.

It is one of the great experiences working at a game company. It is one of the more traumatic experiences losing it through layoffs.

But most companies don't ever get to that point because for every MMO that launches, twenty fail. Many don't know what they're getting into. Some run out of capital with cost overruns at every turn. Some wander back to singleplayer games. Some find they've created a technical monstrosity, and others find at the end of the day that their game just plain sucks.

All of this before considering the service and operations of being "live", in-game quests included. It is a hugely expensive mission to develop and publish and support an MMO, something that requires hundreds of man-years of labor to build and maintain.

Operating costs are high, profits not so much.

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Ever wonder why many companies merge or fold? Because there is a terrible monster out there, big business. They want the entire pie chart and are willing to devour all who oppose them. The small independents have only the slimmest of chances against such a foe, and it's these niche companies which are our future hope. The larger companies concern for vast wealth to appease shareholders, executives, and support partners is all about keeping the great money engine churning out proven design.

Risk taking is only an option after intense market research gives the OK, this is why I don't do questionnaires anymore, let them figure it out on their own and stop over analyzing my gaming tendencies. We are not lab rats, we are an ARMY! In opposition to the oppressed market, restrictive design, monitored communities, and enforced labor camps which are in essence what treadmills regardless of their design really are.

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I believe that's a little premature to make all of those claims. Two things:

1) Evolution of the industry (finally). It was not that long ago MMOs did not exist at all; now it is common to see developers and players who have been on two or three MMOs, and that experience in invaluable. It allows consumers to know what they want and developers to know what is realistic. I really believe by 2010 we will have turned loose the creativity.

2) Market reality. There is a lot of money in MMOs if done right, and as long as the public keeps consuming Tolkien-esque worlds, there will be people coming into the market ready to supply it to them.

Why? Consider this:

Would you as head of development, choose to fund a high risk product on a design that is not proven, or at best, shown to be incredibly risky?

Or, as a responsible steward of a business venture, choose the safe product that will earn your company a decent profit?

Remember, this is $10-20m and a heck of a lot of people's careers you are gambling with.

I work for a publicly held MMO publisher with 2000 employees worldwide, and we have chosen both routes in the past three years. We abandoned the proven designs and ventured out on our last two titles, trying to be "bold" and "adventurous".

Both titles were abysmal failures as games and as multimillion dollar projects. Worse, about 100 people lost their jobs.


The good news is that all of these folks are learning these lessons, trying to incorporate them, and working to create better games.

Which were the failures? Tabula Rasa and CoH/CoV? Auto Assault? Lineage 2? (I thought it was huge in Asia.)

What games are you guys working on now?

By the way, incredible slide show, I'm checking out the pictures on the Lotus temple right now.

I agree with those statements if your looking at it as a structured business venture and from the perspective of a designer. While I am very certain that many of those in game development have their roots as game players something gets lost in the translation between "It's my job" and "It's my hobby". Design from my perspective is not perfect and I am not so blind as to see that my opinions are more often then not in the wrong. I realize my knowledge in such areas is tenuous at best, but more likely nonexistent. Though I would be remiss if I didn't mention the social, psychological, and creative impacts felt by players as a whole with in the games design.

I agree that much of what I spoke of was as I said overly dramatic and carried little substance, however the the truth is still never the less prevalent, that games follow a tend and that trend is in question. Why else would your guild as well as all the other guilds I've come to admire and respect be waiting? Would not the perfect game have already been created if all that you say is true?

Is not the definition of the word creativity stem from being innovative, and does that not also mean doing something that has not been done? So given that, wouldn't a game company or development house seek to improve something, or invent and create something that has never been seen instead of reach out and live off the work that has been previously done?

By following a trend, you have not been creative, you have not invented or improved the current industry standard, there by all your really accomplishing is pirating past achievements and resting on your laurels for the pursuit of money.

I realize it takes money to make money, though I believe there are as I initially stated other aspects to gaming that current design does not address very well, it is the social and psychological dynamics at play in a community. Something everyone here in KGB seems to all agree on. You want pvp, you want good guy verse bad guy, player justice, community, recognition, and player fame, a story driven by you or your guild, a dynamic living breathing world not a static re-spawn world tightly monitored for bad behavior or slightly off center from pc comments, you want guild verse guild, and epic explorable areas, combined with less grind and itemcentricity, you want player kingdoms. None of which can be accomplished without some risk great or small.

Will every attempt to innovate yield positive results? Probably not. Will it cost money? Undoubtedly so. Without such though, the world and games in general would be a very boring place. Just think of all the things in games or otherwise we wouldn't have if people just followed the ebb and flow of design, if people concerned themselves more with the cost then the results, or if companies looked at the untold millions of revenue instead of making something unique.

I have heard that no MMO makes money in their first 1-5 years or better and some never fully recover invested interest, I understand that they are costly endeavors with many employees, and that no game is created in a vacuum or that no game can function without huge logistical support structures outside of the game itself.

I am merely commenting on game ideologies concerning the things players want and that design in general either completely ignores this point or doesn't understand it. I am looking at the community aspects as well showing the fact that as a social game, with humanistic mentalities you can't compartmentalize it using flawed industry standards that have been handed down since the beginning of time.

That creativity requires sacrifice, and the players know this apparently more than the game companies. By default players are a community and communities are often times linked directly with the game in a symbiotic relationship which reflects how well it's received and by what success it generates. WE are paying the bill regardless of how minor or insignificant it may be, and if we had a game that wasn't cloned or refurbished with a dynamic tool set success could all but be guaranteed and a game company could make a strong case for taking risks.

There are many companies out there with capital to spare, and they voraciously hold onto this to cover projects that in the past they never even participated in. They get this huge chunk of money and diversify, why? If I started a company making MMOs for PC, why would I diversify making say Xbox 360 games if I previously had no experience in it? When I could use the money I made from my MMO experience to enhance our understanding of the concept and become the best at it, there by continuing to produce MMOs far more superior then others who branch their efforts.

Not meaning to sound callous or rude, but on the one hand you state companies have no venture capital and cannot take risks then you state that companies can make a lot of money in a MMO if done right, proceeding on to say if I had 10-20 Million would I risk it on a questionable project.

Well to this I say, if done right means following a industry standard, proven concept, or trend just so I can make money for future endorsements on a project unrelated to my current field of work, or so that I can enhance my business posture with stockholders, and strengthen my portfolio so I can be bought out. I think I'd opt to be a leader in the field instead, I realize that's easy to say sitting from the cheap seats but how else can one make a game that can compete? You don't get to be the best by following the pack, you can't be Alpha Dog by being a Omega.

I'm not disagreeing with you completely, I'm just seeing a different picture on the other side. A community and a game are linked and most games fail because the community fails due to lack of social enhancing mechanics or restrictive play which limits interaction to grind scenarios based off of item-centric quest based play or care bear for those familiar with the term.

Lastly, before I get called on it, since game designers I've spoke with in the past always do, quest based game play is by my definition a game designed from the ground up which promotes questing at it's heart. Quest based game play doesn't mean a game can't have quests it means the game design is based totally on it to the exclusion of general exploration and adventuring due to the lesser returns on such activities. It usually required people to meet many demands as far as character design and group composition.

A player may need to be a certain level, a certain class, have certain gear, be at a certain location, on a certain part of the quest, or to have the quest before he can enjoy the benefits of completion, and there can be many other such hoops players are expected to jump through depending on the quest system in general. This form of compartmentalization and isolationist game play means you only see or meet people before or after a quest in centralized staging areas. Pardon me, but that's LAME, if I wanted to have such an experience I could go stand in line in Kmart.

Anyhow If you've gotten this far, and not completely destroyed your keyboard in a fit of rage at my comments, shaken your head in utter disgust or just plain given up on my idiocy I invite a response if your eyes are not bleeding. I hope you've taken no offense, and if you have I do apologize.

It's funny you mention that, Lev. Just the other day I was reading this powerpoint that was presented at the GDC a few weeks ago:

http://www.netdevil.com/news/article.php?id=681

They mention a lot of what you were speaking about, from how now the average cost of an mmo is around 40 million, to the return on capital (apparently 95% of mmos don't make back the initial investment,) and all the aspects that truly go into making and keeping an mmo running.

What is it that you do at NC, exactly?

Agreed, much of what I see is that for every attempt to create something special a company ends up in the long run finding it biting off more then they can chew. In an attempt to create everything hoped for, they end up creating nothing, case in point Tabula Rasa or Vanguard.

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That's nothing to say of the investment that is required to make it. There's a lot of capital that goes into that fourth, fifth, and even sixth year of development, and people want to know where their money is going.

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My point here is that if companies stopped dumping money into cloning technologies then they would stop the bleeding as it were, and there by be able to use that money for truly revolutionary or evolutionary works. If you don't spend money on a trend driven game you have that much more money to work with to produce a high quality ground breaking technology and one that won't sit and flounder in a sea full of mediocrity and failure.

This medium is participating in a flooded market, and the consumer is not able to respond to the growing multitudes of clone type products and there fore many games are crashing and burning, unable to recoup their losses in such a massive grave yard that has become MMO's of today.

New stratagems are required financially by these design houses, as well as new ideologies surrounding development. Unfortunately though it seems as if these companies would rather commit economic suicide by building a game that is doomed to failure due to it's similarities and send it forth unto the world with cumbersome overly developed logistical support and massively expensive continued operational forecasts then to use this capital for a more innovative approach.

Of course as you have said, we are all hoping for the same things, in the end it is left up to a select few, namely big business suit wearing types who may or may not be gamers at heart to make the calls. Those who own or run the company may have less information about what is really happening on the ground level then those who are building and creating the game. While I have no doubts about those like yourself Leverett, I do have some misgivings about your Bosses Bosses Boss

"MMORPG what's that? Oh we can make money like Blizzard has? Well in that case lets do that."

I am manager of what is called Game Support. I oversee all of the in-game monitoring, regulation, and administration of our products. If someone is cheating, hacking, stealing, botting, cursing, or if anyone needs a GM (Game Master) for any reason... my team is the one that you would call.

It's a fun job to be honest. A GM's job is involved with a little bit of everything... marketing, testing, design, business, support, operations, etc. We have the opportunity to work with every group on every game, and it's a good platform for my guys to move up in the industry.

I started back in 1997 on Ultima Online, and my first KGB experience was with Jetstar on Pacific who had called about another guild that was cheating.

(I'll answer the rest when I get some time at home this weekend... there are things that the game industry needs to do better at, but also some very practical reasons about why it is the way it is.)

My other two points:

1) The market is always the judge, jury and executioner.
2) Discussing game mechanics and features on paper is completely theoretical and academic. Getting it out the door is a wholly different beast.

Why are there so many clones right now? It's because that's what the market wants. We in KGB may not like that (in fact we find it rather distateful!), but we also aren't the audience that makes up the mainstream market.

It is, however, to the point now, though, that the market is becoming saturated, and that stirs up initiative and creativity amongst content creators.

As for the second point, I can't stress how many developers have set out to create full-featured games only to see them limp out the door as half-complete, poorly constructed shells of what they could have been. Making a game is expensive, and difficult, and that's just working on the core fundamentals of what an MMO should be, such as character creation, missions/questing, and working basic client/server tech.

I don't believe anyone would argue that the industry needs to create and deliver better products, but I am not certain it's due to a lack of creativity or desire. There are some very smart folks putting out clever products everywhere... some work out, some do not. It's a terrible thing to see features get slashed out of a product, or worse, for a game to fail, but blaming that on a lack of foresight or initiative does not really take into account all of the pressures and realities that developers and publishers have to deal with.

I say we force everyone to play one game and then have them all send me their money and their wives.....if they are hot.....um.........nevermind.

I am waiting for AOC.....