Principle Architect behind NGE flips lid. Still in Eastern Europe.

[HRose]

I may feel sympathetic, but that rant looked pretty weak.

[squirrel]

Lol. It's poetry. We need to set it to a proletariat theme song. And have it played. Endlessly. In a loop. C'mon! "You are on notice!" Ba-da-da dum!

tee-hee...

EDIT:OMG No, really! All the dev's on strike! For humanity!!!!``11!! The food crisis!11!!1

[HaemishM]

I think any of us who have written about MMOG's since 1997 have put devs on notice multiple times. We can tell by the incomplete bugginess of the still successful Age of Conan that no matter who is talking, how well or coarsely they speak, the devs aren't fucking listening over the sound of the cash registers.

[Salvator]

I think the best part is that he is kissing Raph's ass as if to say, "sorry for taking what ever was left of your game and fisting it into submission with the NGE, now please let me in on your Areae project"


But seriously, perhaps the problems with MMOs is they have no room to truly evolve because the basic idea is to create an online social experience for generally unsocial people?

Meh, Another bitter developer so deep in the forest he can't see the trees...

[schild]

Caveat - This is not an argument. I will attempt to speak honestly about these elements, to give you perspective. For those of you who want to misconstrue it, or perceive it as some “ZOMG YOU ROONED SWG”, please proceed to the back of the room where you can quietly eat a dick. OM NOM NOM.

For the rest, I look forward to a well versed and intelligent discourse on the nature of a creative business, and how to better approach difficult situations in the future.

begin article here. You dick eaters quiet down. *om nom nom*

So, I just logged back in to discover that a bunch of you whackjobs have turned one of these threads into some misguided personal grievance with the SWG NGE.

So first.

If I have ever created something that you didn’t like or that brought you sadness, I apologize.

That is never the goal of a game developer.

However.

Let us set the record straight.

Let us set the history of the Star Wars Galaxies NGE into something that makes a little more sense to those from the outside.

First, some ground rules.

I am a game designer. I make video games. I manage teams, develop features, and turn the creative insanity that is game development into demonstrable and sellable products.

A lot of this manifests itself in the form of direct implementation. Scripting, writing, hands on content development.

I do not sit in a room and give orders. Generally, nobody I’ve worked with ever did this.

We provided a means to create something to make money.

As professional developers, it is our job to execute on these types of creative endeavors within the context of limited finances, linear time, and sometimes explicit creative direction.

Sometimes this context is direction from Raph Koster. Sometimes it is to meet a marketing need, other times it is one of business decisions.

At times, I describe it as, ‘If someone asks for pink fluffy bunnies, we give then bunnies done to the best of our abilities. If we don’t like those, we can still deliver the best bunnies based off of our understanding of the marketplace.”

That is what we do. All of this is tempered with reality. Sometimes people get sick. Sometimes things take longer than we’d like. Sometimes things end up more or less fun than we intended.

This is the job of a designer.

This is what I did on UO, Galaxies, JTL and every other game I worked and am working on.

So we were given the directive to make Galaxies better.

Not just make Galaxies better, but make it succesful. Not the 200k subs it had, but really succesful. The idea was that we had the most valuable IP in the entire world, and we fucked it up to the point of having 200k subs.

And yes, all 200k of you were important, but 200k means nothing in the scheme of things.

I worked on Galaxies for around 5 and a half years. That’s a long time.

Before we launched, I wrote the combat system, mission system, spawning system.

I wrote the combat model for JTL, implemented Content development tools and ship interior systems and more.

Hell, I implemented the original Jedi System in 2 weeks after we launched. Not because it was how we wanted it, but because we had 2 weeks to do it.

I have the understanding of where we went wrong and how. I see the misteps and how the experience was misaligned with what most people wanted from a Star Wars game.

So, when the NGE push came along, we were asked to reimagine the game.

Not just small changes, but rebuild it.

And it was needed. When we were asked, we were bleeding subscribers.

If I remember correctly, somewhere around 10k a month. LOSING 10,000 subs a month.

It was not idyllic. You can remember it as an amazing game, but it wasn’t.

Hell, all of you who recall the grand ole days of launch seem to conveniently forget that everyone quit shortly afterwards.

It’s similiar to the UO rose colored glasses. Everyone remembers the positives, but nobody remembers how unpalatable UO was before Trammel. Nobody acknowledges that after Renaissance, UO’s numbers rose from 110k to 220k.

But I digress.

WOW was out. SWG was niche and clunky.

We were asked to imagine something new and unique. To push it to the next level. Originally, it was specced as a tutorial. A tutorial paired with a new marketing push, new and grandiose relaunch that would recapture the magic that we missed when we first released.

But a tutorial wasn’t enough. We scrambled to come up with something more impressive.

We tested out a new combat system on a whim. I did a quick prototype and we discussed it internally.

The difference was the control scheme, not the rules. You clicked, You shot.

When we demonstrated it, the first comment was “Wooooah….”

And the producer left the room.

He came back shortly and was torn. He knew that we had to make the change. It was THAT much better.

We did a side by side comparison. We tried to play the old system. We couldn’t.

However, we made a mistake.

Somewhere during the discussions it was strongly recommended that we streamline our characters.

People wanted something simpler, more direct, more accessible.

We told them. “If you do this, you will lose all 200k subscribers. It is that significant.”

It was explained that we would gain more due to the marketing push and relaunch.

So, we pushed forward.

If I remember the dates correctly, we did our NGE conversion in 2-3 months of solid crunch. It was some of the heaviest crunch I’ve ever done.

We had an immovable date, and an insane set of features.

We were working in parallel, maintaining old code on the off chance that we would pull the plug on the implementation.

We launched, the marketing push failed, and we lost subscribers.

It was a misread at an organizational level. Marketing, Production, community. You name it.

Epoch grade fuckup.

But.

The fuckup was NOT the changes.

Let me say it again, louder, for those who do not get it.

THE FUCKUP WAS NOT THE CHANGES.

Galaxies NGE made it more playable. I think it lost a lot of the Raphy goodness that makes MMOs work, and that was a profound loss.

But the general idea was sound.

The control scheme was a good idea.

Losing the character skill system was not.

But, that’s not the point.

The point, the fuckup, the mistake that we made, was answering an unasked question.

“Can you change an MMO drastically after it launches?”

Categorically, NO.

If we were to do it again, and wanted to make those types of changes, you have to make a new game.

Relaunch with a new title.

Or shut down Galaxies and relaunch for real.

You cannot change it at runtime.

BUT!

And this is a HUGE but.

Right as I left SOE, post NGE..

Galaxies was subscriber positive.

A few thousand, but it was a far cry from the 10k per month we were losing.

A lot of you were upset. A lot of you still seem to be upset. I’m sorry if you feel betrayed, or that we ruined something you liked.

But I’m proud of the work I and the rest of the team did. I’m proud of the choices we made, the direction we took. ALL of SWG.

JTL, NGE, Launch, Jedi Fuckups. You name it.

We made mistakes. We made a LOT of mistakes. We crunched, we argued, we fired people, we hired people.

But we fucking launched a goddamned game. We launched a SECOND succesful MMO (post-uo). We made a fucking amazing space game using the same fucking game engine, integrated action combat, interior spaceships and in 9 MOTHERFUCKING MONTHS, all while running a succesful, cash positive product.

NGE was done in 3-4 months by a team of people. I am proud of the work that we did, even if I am torn about the end product.

So those who think it’s about blame or credit or who ruined what or how great it used to be when kids didn’t swear so much…

Take a deep breath and move on. Times change. Games don’t last forever.

Except UO. It’s still running. And I bet people are still pissed about some fucked up code I wrote in 1997.

That, I am genuinely sorry for.

And Finally, a telling Anecdote that I think came from Gordon Walton originally.

A cancellation email from UO came in. A diatribe, really.

It want on and on about how shitty the game was, how it was the worst piece of crap he’d ever played.

So, someone called him to find out some information.

They asked how long he played for.

His answer?

2 years.

Sigh. What a bitch. It seriously would've been best if he had just kept his fucking mouth shut and faded into obscurity. He is so bad at 'the internet.'

From - http://rubenfield.com/?p=86 : quoted above for posterity.

[tazelbain]

Nope.  That's awesome. The difference between first-degree and second-degree murder is key.

[Margalis]

But we fucking launched a goddamned game.

I love it when devs see release by itself as some sort of success.

In a way I can sympathize: yes, management sometimes has dumb ideas and forces you to implement their dumb ideas. But you have to push back if the idea is either really *that* dumb or impossible given the schedule.

I guess it does answer the main question I've been asking: why the hell did changing combat also mean changing the classes, crafting, etc?

[HaemishM]

He can categorically eat a dick himself. Way to pass the buck. I played the NGE. It was shit. An interesting concept, totally fucked by implementation, from one of those who wouldn't touch original SWG with a ten-foot pole. It was shit.

[sam, an eggplant]

I dunno, dick eating aside I don't see anything so surprising or controversial there.

1) SWG wasted the best IP in the world
2) You can't reboot a released game
3) They worked really hard, but it just didn't come together

So, yeah. I agree with all that stuff. His only real mistake is in saying fuck a lot. Makes him look unprofessional, and once it's on the internet, it's out there forever.

[IainC]

I dunno, dick eating aside I don't see anything so surprising or controversial there.

1) SWG wasted the best IP in the world
2) You can't reboot a released game
3) They worked really hard, but it just didn't come together

Yeah I agree with this although I never played SW:G pre or post NGE so I don't have Teh Rage burning as fiercely as some. Basically they did some stuff that seemed sensible at the time to rectify a correctly perceived problem and the end result wasn't what anyone wanted but it still worked for a given definition of 'worked'. It's clear he's not trying to say that the NGE was the best thing ever for SW:G but it's also clear that something drastic and on an unprecedented scale had to happen.

[Endie]

The only real problem I have with his post - apart from the dbp formatting which has already been pointed out - is the idea that returning the game to being subs positive for a certain month after losing a vast proportion - the majority, I always assumed - of the playerbase is something to boast about.

[tazelbain]

Admitting that you threw away your current playerbase of 200k on purpose seems pretty big.

[sam, an eggplant]

The NGE was always seen as a risk. They risked 200k subscribers on the hope that SWG could explode into the 4+ million they felt the IP deserved. And with 200k subscribers and a 10k/month attrition rate the writing was on the wall. The risk/reward numbers had to make sense at some level to proceed.

I also agree that the pre-NGE SWG sucked. It did. It was fucking horrible. But it found its niche, and the correct solution was and is to fund a new game, like what bioware is working on right now.

I also find it disingenuous to say that literally everybody is to blame except for his team. It's great that he had pride in his work, but putting all the blame on marketing and the community guys is frankly cowardly. Ultimately, they were trying to market and deal with his product.

[HaemishM]

Exactly. You can't market a turd, and he made a great big stinking Star Wars smelling turd. While it might have been an improvement over what they had before (I don't think it was any better because of how badly it was put together), it still sucked big-time. If marketing is screaming that you have to do it in 3 months, and you don't have enough power to tell them it can't be done in 3 months, you're still at fault because it's your work that got produced. Either you scale back to what you CAN do in 3 months, or you find another fucking job if you don't want to take the heat for your product sucking monkey ass.

The deadlines may have been shit, BUT IT'S YOUR WORK. It sucked because you didn't get it done. Therefore, eat a dick.

[Ratman_tf]

And yes, all 200k of you were important, but 200k means nothing in the scheme of things.

200k is a solid subscriber base. AO and Eve have shown you can bank on those people and build on it.

Throwing them away to chase imaginary money is folly.

NGE can be summed with: You never get a second chance at a first impression.

(I think the WoW money flying around at the time made the suits crazy-insane myself. Seems to fit the general scheme.)

[tmp]

So we were given the directive to make Galaxies better.

Not just make Galaxies better, but make it succesful. Not the 200k subs it had, but really succesful. The idea was that we had the most valuable IP in the entire world, and we fucked it up to the point of having 200k subs.

(..)

So, when the NGE push came along, we were asked to reimagine the game.

Not just small changes, but rebuild it.

And it was needed. When we were asked, we were bleeding subscribers.

If I remember correctly, somewhere around 10k a month. LOSING 10,000 subs a month.

(..)

But we fucking launched a goddamned game. We launched a SECOND succesful MMO (post-uo). We made a fucking amazing space game using the same fucking game engine, integrated action combat, interior spaceships and in 9 MOTHERFUCKING MONTHS, all while running a succesful, cash positive product.

I'm confused. Given the timeline he provides and taking it all at face value, it's apparently the addition of fucking amazing space game, that turned the SECOND succesful MMO post-uo into total failure that required full redesign in order to be saved..?  

[Rishathra]

And yes, all 200k of you were important, but 200k means nothing in the scheme of things.

That statement is not internally consistent.

[lamaros]

These bletherings are two great articles for why:

a) Yes, any half-wit can make a MMO.
b) Yes they will fuck it up.

Self-important blatherings, random points, excessive use of coarse language; that's what I want in my devs, someone demonstrating exactly the kind of person you don't want in charge of a carefuly constructed mass market appeal game.

[Margalis]

That is the funny part. This pretty much reads as "never, ever hire me!"

[UnSub]

And yes, all 200k of you were important, but 200k means nothing in the scheme of things.

That statement is not internally consistent.

A 200k sub MMO isn't something to downplay... unless it has the biggest geek IP on the planet stamped all over it. SWG should have been so much bigger.

I don't disagree with what he says - mistakes got made. But the fault wasn't that NGE was implemented (the 'how' is another story) but that SWG didn't have NGE from the start. We all know this. It was Star Wars without the stars and with very little wars.

... and yeah, I wouldn't want to hire this guy if I felt he'd go blabbing about what went on in this fashion.

[Ratman_tf]

A 200k sub MMO isn't something to downplay... unless it has the biggest geek IP on the planet stamped all over it. SWG should have been so much bigger.

Should or could? Star Wars has never been a huge RPG IP compared to Dungeons and Dragons, and we saw how many subs DDO got. I still think a Star Wars MMORPG is a niche of a niche, and was never destined for huge sub numbers compared to other online games.

Maybe a Star Wars online game that wasn't an RPG... maybe.

[Lum]

My response.

[Falwell]

Nice reply Lum, especially about the serious passing of the buck on blame.

A good game will sell itself.

[lamaros]

My response.

I don't get it. Is all the "srsly" and "oh no you didn't" shit meant to be scarcastic? Because you only want to do that once, then point is made. Repeating it just brings your reply down to the level of the thing you're replying to. And you don't want that.

Srsly.

[Margalis]

I don't get it. Is all the "srsly" and "oh no you didn't" shit meant to be scarcastic? Because you only want to do that once, then point is made. Repeating it just brings your reply down to the level of the thing you're replying to. And you don't want that.

I assume that was the point, in order to mock how poorly written it was.

[Bzalthek]

The mystical "level" is all hogwash anyway.  You communicate in a manner in which the recipient can understand.  Anything else is intratube masturbation.  When speaking to a retard, using big words is simply posturing for spectators.  That being said, after having read the original tirades, the desired level for meaningful communication would probably be distracting him with dangling keys and socking him in the jaw.

[Lum]

I assume that was the point, in order to mock how poorly written it was.

Partially that. Partially just putting a sense of  in words. The "Oh no you didn't!" part was me honestly recoiling/pissed off about what I saw as after-the-fact finger pointing. Most of the time, I write like I talk, and sometimes I talk like a jerk.

Note that since all this was written the architect in question has heavily edited his piece to be, as he put it, less assy. In so doing removing a lot of what launched my initial NERD RAGE.

[schild]

He rejected my "You are retarded." comment. What a jerk.

Can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen and move to Eastern Europe where no one knows how much you fucked up.

[Ratman_tf]

Note that since all this was written the architect in question has heavily edited his piece to be, as he put it, less assy. In so doing removing a lot of what launched my initial NERD RAGE.

Bleh. Party's over.

[Reg]

And for next week's entertainment make sure you don't miss Anthony Castoro's riveting new blog entry where he explains how "Yes, it was a Goddamned Mirror. Happy?"

[UnSub]

A 200k sub MMO isn't something to downplay... unless it has the biggest geek IP on the planet stamped all over it. SWG should have been so much bigger.

Should or could? Star Wars has never been a huge RPG IP compared to Dungeons and Dragons, and we saw how many subs DDO got. I still think a Star Wars MMORPG is a niche of a niche, and was never destined for huge sub numbers compared to other online games.

Maybe a Star Wars online game that wasn't an RPG... maybe.

Could have been so much bigger. I don't think it was the RPG per se, just the way the RPG elements played. No Jedi at launch was oh look where I ended up in a SWG thread talking about what could have been. My fault.

Guess we'll only know when another SW MMO comes out.

[Dtrain]

Maybe they did push back, and maybe the Smedvalanche was too powerful to resist. So maybe they should have walked away to preserve their reputation and integrity. But there has to be some attempt to reconcile the company's chosen direction with your personal beliefs, because you can't win every fight. Hindsight is 20/20, so it seems obvious that they should have seen the writing on the wall in this case, but you can easily see what they told themselves to get through the long dark night.

Also, SWG was a fuckup of epic proportions. They had the wrong people working on it with the wrong direction. Anyone who was having fun in the game before NGE was having fun in spite of the game, not because of it. Too little, too late, the NGE was just the spark that ignited the fuel of an inexcusably failed prospect - it went out with a bang instead of a whimper.

[Endie]

The thing is that his account of the source of the NGE is totally at odds with what Jeff Freeman posted at the time on his blog, before it all turned sour (which should narrow it down to about a three day window for you).  He pulled the article off his blog again, but not before I'd copied it, as I kinda suspected what was going to happen.

The article is at home, but I seem to remember it went:

Hot-shot senior developer comes up with idea for redesign, shows others.
Developers go "Wow!  We couldn't.  Could we?  We could you know!"
Evangelise to producers, who go through the same process
Dev locks self in room, writes bulk of code
Profit!

[Margalis]

Hot-shot senior developer comes up with idea for redesign, shows others.
Developers go "Wow!  We couldn't.  Could we?  We could you know!"
Evangelise to producers, who go through the same process
Dev locks self in room, writes bulk of code

That's not actually that different from what he said, except that he threw in extra step:

Marketing people decide that classes need revamping.

[Endie]

Hot-shot senior developer comes up with idea for redesign, shows others.
Developers go "Wow!  We couldn't.  Could we?  We could you know!"
Evangelise to producers, who go through the same process
Dev locks self in room, writes bulk of code

That's not actually that different from what he said, except that he threw in extra step:

Marketing people decide that classes need revamping.

What I get from his post is that the devs were the innocent victims in a marketing/production/senior-management-driven holocaust.  Jeff's version was certainly readable as the dev team kicking it all off and, to an extent, running with and driving it.