WAR to be released...

[cevik]

I'd be more worried if it was Mark Jacobs saying that.  Barnett's just a crazy p.r. frontman type, all MMOs have that type. 

Jacobs is the CEO and Barnett is the Creative Director right?  Are the titles misleading in the fact that Jacobs is really maintaining creative control?  Because from what Barnett is saying it sounds to me like he thinks is God's gift to video game design and that anyone who disagrees isn't worth listening to, which is scary (though sometimes you encounter people like that who are actually right, most of the time they are just suffering from delusions of grandeur, much like me).

His band analogy, that he really seemed so proud of, is so incredibly flawed.  The Beatles were a great band, but you can directly hear their influences in their music, and while the Monkey's sucked, there were a ton of greeat bands that were directly influenced by The Beatles and you can hear those influences all over the place. 

Most bands only exist BECAUSE of the influence of the bands before them.  For instance, Nirvana would have never been Nirvana if Kurt had thrown out all his Pixies records the moment he learned his first chord.  You don't smash your record collection because you are a rock star now, in fact I bet rock stars listen to more music than the rest of us.

Of course, that's all a digression from the real point, which is, he sounds like he thinks he has all the answers.  I've met a lot of people who think they have all the answers, but rarely have I met people who actually (de facto!) have all the answers.  That was a strange speech he gave there, I imagine being in the audience would have been rather uncomfortable (of course, my nay saying means I'll never get a job at Mythic!).

[eldaec]

Jacobs is the CEO and Barnett is the Creative Director right?

Paul Barnett does artistic direction, lore, and is GWs man on the project. He never really even speaks on detailed design.

Josh Drescher is in the lead design role as far as I can tell.

Mark Jacobs is CEO and seems to have some quiet obsession with the crafting mechanics.

[sam, an eggplant]

Well, the proof is in the pudding. I'm pretty dubious about his point 11.

I bookmarked that link and fully intend to come back to it in november.

[cevik]

Perhaps it's all just a big misdirection play.  The general hype I hear is that Warhammer is "too much like WoW" and generally things along that line.  Maybe they are pretending to be crazy in the other direction to quell some of that criticism. 

[Cadaverine]

EDIT 1: Seriously though - let's fire the talented people who have the gall to criticize decisions we're making, while keeping the untalented ones who blindy say "yay team"? That's no way to run *any* business.

EDIT 2: Man I can't stop coming back to this. A friend of mine just said, essentially, its like he admitted, publically, that he can't manage people, so he just hires lackeys. That is pretty much how that reads. Astounding.

There's a vast world of difference between constructive criticism, and being a whiny douche that constantly complains about how everything sucks, and it'll never get done, etc.  As someone who is stuck working with the latter, you talk to them about their negative attitude once, and if it keeps up, shitcan them pronto.

[cevik]

There's a vast world of difference between constructive criticism, and being a whiny douche that constantly complains about how everything sucks, and it'll never get done, etc.  As someone who is stuck working with the latter, you talk to them about their negative attitude once, and if it keeps up, shitcan them pronto.

Unfortunately though, there are quite a few people who have a hard time distinguishing that fine line when it comes to constructive criticism aimed at their ideas.  Constructive criticism can sound like whiny douchebaggery when it's about your really stupid pet idea.

[Montague]

Jacobs is the CEO and Barnett is the Creative Director right?

Paul Barnett does artistic direction, lore, and is GWs man on the project. He never really even speaks on detailed design.

Josh Drescher is in the lead design role as far as I can tell.

Mark Jacobs is CEO and seems to have some quiet obsession with the crafting mechanics.

Paul also does (did) the outlandish PR videos, the most vivid for me being about the Knights of the Blazing Sun, which went from being these way cool dudes with funny hats that were hinted at fighting from horseback, then to DAOC paladin clones with oh yeah no mounted combat our bad, then to no longer being in the game. So much for underpromise overdeliver. 

[Lum]

There's a bit of discussion on my blog about this, where I also thought that particular talk was somewhat boggling of the mind.

I agree with him on Civ to a point though. Although it shows that he never played Civ4 (which did dial back on the chromed complexity of Civ3). I also happen to think CivRev goes way too far in the other direction, though this is the subject of frequent arguements at the office (I'm the designated grognard that downloads each new Fall From Heaven patch!)

[Tannhauser]

How DARE you say that CivRev is anything less than a masterpiece!  My veteran catapults will be arriving at your city gates posthaste sir!

Seriously though, I like Barnett's rants; he just hasn't learned that MMO gamers forget NOTHING.  Plus, why not stir up some gamer blood with these comments?  Gets more folks talking about WAR.

WAR is not the WoW killer.
WAR won't seriously wound WoW.
WAR won't cripple WoW and leave it in a ditch.
WAR won't even give WoW a nasty scratch that, if left unattended, might develop into an infection.

But I think WAR will do good business, about 1 mil subs and then some of those go back to WoW and they keep at around 700k.

[Venkman]

Anyway, if we really want to know why WAR is going to suck, we need look no further:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19660

#11 is probably the most egregious thing in the interview, but crapping all over the Civ games other than Civ 1 and Revolutions is pretty ridiculous too.

The one that sticks out most for me is #6:

Surprisingly, he noted that he does not play other MMOs, including the ubiquitous World of Warcraft. "[MMOs] are cancerous and will change the way you think," he warned. "People on the team come with a design idea - they are corrupted in their thinking by WoW, corrupted to such a degree that they don’t even realize it, not capable of thinking sideways because they knew the answer, and it worked, and it made a lot of money for another game. Why would you do something different?"

You can only ignore an entire genre if you plan to do something actually different. When you're derivating to build upon success though, you better damned well play the successes and then understand why it's successful. If not and your game is not completely inventive, you've just made mistakes you could have avoided, because you repeated what your priors did.

[Ingmar]

Anyway, if we really want to know why WAR is going to suck, we need look no further:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19660

#11 is probably the most egregious thing in the interview, but crapping all over the Civ games other than Civ 1 and Revolutions is pretty ridiculous too.

The one that sticks out most for me is #6:

Surprisingly, he noted that he does not play other MMOs, including the ubiquitous World of Warcraft. "[MMOs] are cancerous and will change the way you think," he warned. "People on the team come with a design idea - they are corrupted in their thinking by WoW, corrupted to such a degree that they don’t even realize it, not capable of thinking sideways because they knew the answer, and it worked, and it made a lot of money for another game. Why would you do something different?"

You can only ignore an entire genre if you plan to do something actually different. When you're derivating to build upon success though, you better damned well play the successes and then understand why it's successful. If not and your game is not completely inventive, you've just made mistakes you could have avoided, because you repeated what your priors did.

Maybe he just can't tell which things were good and which things were bad and he was afraid they might copy the wrong one!   

[sam, an eggplant]

Well he's just one man and building anything as huge as a MMO is a massive undertaking of an enormous team, but as Lum adeptly put it looking to "hire team members who have more enthusiasm than actual ability" would tend to imply to fanboys and girls everywhere that WAR's success or failure is entirely due to the machinations of that weird cracked-out british dude with the sunglasses.

Not that he's wrong per se, like woody allen said, 90% of success is showing up. You need dependable people, not manic depressive geniuses who take two week sabbaticals to explore their psyches munching on psilocybin and quaaludes and drinking absinthe in the desert. But I don't think the public will really get that. In fact, I know they won't. They aren't.

We're still quoting Milo Cooper's "porsche performance upgrades" bon mot what, 8 years later, and he was just some random modeller. But EQ1 was a truly significant landmark in the genre; WAR very likely won't be.

[Sjofn]

Doesn't this release date pretty much run head on into Spore's? 

I totally had this same thought! They'll be lost under the "OMG SPORE IS SO RAD." Poor dears. :(

[Modern Angel]

You know who he is? He is every Games Workshop middle management or up guy you will ever encounter. It's obnoxious as fuck but way back in the day when I worked in the retail US arm that was exactly how my manager, district manager and regional manager were. And my good buddy in England who worked for them heard the same stuff.

[Merusk]

You know who he is? He is every Games Workshop middle management or up guy you will ever encounter. It's obnoxious as fuck but way back in the day when I worked in the retail US arm that was exactly how my manager, district manager and regional manager were. And my good buddy in England who worked for them heard the same stuff.

Seems like that would be the case since he's also the GW-liaison then, doesn't it?


He's got a point with the 3-star talent 5-star drive thing.  It's said in such a way that if you execute it in that manner you're going to have problems, though.  Perhaps worse than a poisonous demoralizing cynic in your organization is a boring or lackluster product because of poor execution.  Proper management can corral or compartmentalize the cynic, little can be done to make a poor product better with talent already doing their best.

[Modern Angel]

Right, which was my point. There's a company riddled with those guys who have a one true wayism, Games Workshop uber alles viewpoint as their stock continues merrily down shit alley. So of course GW is going to send one. It's not surprising but it still irritates me on an almost visceral level.

And then there's this recent trend of MMO talking heads trashing their competition in not so subtle ways. Between him and Gaute Goddager, neither of which is going to eclipse WoW, talking shit about WoW... yeah. I'm just saying that we all pilloried McQuaid for doing essentially the same thing. This isn't really so different.

[UnSub]

I'd be more worried if it was Mark Jacobs saying that.  Barnett's just a crazy p.r. frontman type, all MMOs have that type. 

They are the type that get MMOs into trouble.

No-one cares who said it - a mod, the Creative Lead, the janitor - if it is by a red name, it has substance and people will complain if it doesn't come true.

McQuaid, Garriott, Barnett, Emmert et al - being enthusiastic is great, but telling players your plans, then failing to deliver, leads to a lot of unhappy players. Emmert appears to have learned - he's refusing to talk about ChampO in depth until everything is nailed down.

Interestingly, Pardo's attitude towards team management appears nearly the polar opposite to Barnett - everyone contributes, everyone vetos.

And as for burning the heretics... the problem with people who listen to God tends to be that they don't listen to anyone else. Sometimes the heretics may not be wrong.

[schild]

I don't think Emmert has learned. I think he has PR people and CRMs cuffing him. Or at least, they better be ^_^

[Trippy]

I'd be more worried if it was Mark Jacobs saying that.  Barnett's just a crazy p.r. frontman type, all MMOs have that type. 

They are the type that get MMOs into trouble.

No-one cares who said it - a mod, the Creative Lead, the janitor - if it is by a red name, it has substance and people will complain if it doesn't come true.

McQuaid, Garriott, Barnett, Emmert et al - being enthusiastic is great, but telling players your plans, then failing to deliver, leads to a lot of unhappy players. Emmert appears to have learned - he's refusing to talk about ChampO in depth until everything is nailed down.

Interestingly, Pardo's attitude towards team management appears nearly the polar opposite to Barnett - everyone contributes, everyone vetos.

Yup that is Blizzard's game design philosophy. It's why you really never heard about the lead designers in Blizzard games until Blizzard realized how huge WoW was going to be and wanted a "face" to put with the game and Rob became it (he isn't even the original lead designer on the game and came in late to the process).

[Tannhauser]

I think Mr. Pardo hit it on the head in the interview.  Nothing gets in the way of you playing the game.  The UI is slick, the action is butter smooth; spell, cooldown, spell, cooldown, add, sheep, spell, dead etc.  There is no wrestling with the camera or the UI or a hitch as some graphics load.  In WoW all that shit stays out of the way while you can focus on the action and thereby the fun.

Speaking of fun, I read an interview with some WoW guys before the game came out.  They were playtesting and they kept asking themselves "Am I having fun?" 

Forget all the badges, rep, gear, the bottom line when you play a game should be fun.  And I think that was the key for WoW, they were focused on the fun.  Sure there as some not fun times, like a zepp run, but overall they succeeded. 

[UnSub]

I don't think Emmert has learned. I think he has PR people and CRMs cuffing him. Or at least, they better be ^_^

He says he has learned. We'll see.

"Show, don't tell" needs to be the basic communications strategy of every MMO pre-launch (of any content, be it launch or an expansion or just an update). It's less fun, but a whole lot more sensible and professional.

[tmp]

Interestingly, Pardo's attitude towards team management appears nearly the polar opposite to Barnett - everyone contributes, everyone vetos.

Pardo's attitude seems to be actually quite bit different from that if you read what he says... it sounds more to me like "the squeaky wheel gets the grease":

It depends, too, on the team's dynamics. I've worked with the Starcraft II team for nearly ten years, and I know who the creative and social cliques are, and I know which groups I should bounce ideas off of. I know that if I have a user-interface idea, I know who on the team cares about that. I know who's going to complain if it's not good... so I go to those people... If I have an idea for a new dungeon encounter in WoW, you start to learn who on the team is going to care most about it, and so you go to them... Just make sure you're talking to the people who are passionate about the areas of the game.

in a sense "people passionate about something" isn't really that far off from the "5 star drive, 3 star talent" -- both put loudly voiced passion first.

[UnSub]

I think that is if he's got an idea - what I found interesting is that he doesn't mind if other people put ideas in, but that they can be vetoed elsewhere. I'm sure it's not a perfect democracy - Pardo's ideas probably don't get vetoed that often, if at all - but it sounds a lot more flexible than Barnett's "burn the heretics!" ethos.

[Ratman_tf]

MMOs are not artistic creations. They are businesses.

The irony is that they're in the business of entertaining. Which involves some artistic creation.

[tmp]

Some clarification from Barnett on his points:

So I gave a talk at Develop and someone decided to cull some hasty notes from the 60 mins and try to boil it all down.

I appear to have upset people on two points:

1) My view that playing WOW can influence your thinking and you need to be careful about that.

2) That a poor attitude is more dangerous on a team than almost anything else.


Of those two points a few views have arisen.

That I forbid people to play WOW (not true)
That I think playing WOW is bad (Also not true)
That I don't play any mmos (not true)
That I am a fool for having my view (jury still out)

That I am claiming that I only want to hire mid talented people (not true)
That heretics are defined by people who have a different view to me (not true)

I used heretics because its a nice Warhammer word. If you wanna get business like it would be best fit. Someone with the right attitude and poor skills can be developed, but someone with the wrong attitude needs some serious time to turn them around.

If you have ability but an unsalvageable poor attitude (a bad fit for the company) then better to let them go, its better for the company, its better for the person and will be better for the team. The 'black hate' that malcontents can generate is damaging and dangerous, my advise is based from ten years working with all manner of brick and mortar companies and seems as relevant for the computer games business as well.

The core driver is to try to intervene and help the people with attitude and morale issues to see the light and join with us in making the game. Burn the heretics is as much about a statement of management intent as anything, we will not tolerate 'black hate' from the shadows. We will not sit by and allow people to just fester with caustic talk and cheap shots. We want your worries out in the open, your concerns known and addressed and communication root and branch with team members.

Of course you could just take the notes hastily pasted on a web site as the answer as well, appears quite a few already did. And they wonder why I don't go to GDC.

[Miasma]

His "black hate" comment is interesting but he doesn't seem to understand where it comes from or the solution to it.  Whenever I work on a new project if some of the key people are sour on it it really does hurt the entire team and makes development slow and painful, he is correct.  The problem is that if the key people have "black hate" there is probably a very good reason for it, that is why it is so powerful and can have such a damaging effect on the project.  It is usually created when the developers don't feel like they are being listened to, that decisions are being made in an arbitrary manner with no basis in reality.  This would be the project manager (as in his own) fault.

Warhammer has gone through so many redesigns and delays that whoever had the "black hate" was clearly entirely justified in feeling that way and he should have not only listened to them but actually admit they might be right.  I am guessing he is the type of guy who gets an idea in his head and then absolutely refuses to believe it could be flawed until all the people under him work on the bad idea, finish it, present it and only then when trying to use it does he realize it was a mistake.  That wastes a huge amount of time and effort.  The people under him have probably scrapped far more code than what is actually going to make it into the game, that's the type of stuff that creates his black hate.

[amiable]

MMOs are not artistic creations. They are businesses.

The irony is that they're in the business of entertaining. Which involves some artistic creation.

Well you could make the same argument about movies.  Ideally a good movie makes a lot of money and is a good artistic creation (Dark knight).

But usually terrific artistic creations that make no money are considered failures (Grindhouse), and movies that are terrible but make a lot of money are considered successes (Meet the Spartans).

[eldaec]

MMOs are not artistic creations. They are businesses.

The irony is that they're in the business of entertaining. Which involves some artistic creation.

That isn't irony.


On the subject of Paul's comment, it was a silly thing to say, but only because anyone in any management position should be aware that most of what they say will be happily quoted out of context.

[Goreschach]

On the subject of Paul's comment, it was a silly thing to say, but only because anyone in any management position should be aware that most of what they say will be happily quoted out of context.

Out of context?

The way he's having to backpedaling now, quoting him out of context would have been beneficial.

[Montague]

So basically, don't take anything Paul Barnett says on the interwebs seriously, because it's all hyperbole.

Got it.

[Soln]

1) let's see what this guy does post-WAR (I don't know what he's done pre-WAR)

2) regarding #11 -- this is the bias of an individual contributor / evangelist.  Not a manager.  If people are complaining, there's usually a reason.  And it's the manager's job to alleviate it either by addressing the concern or helping the complainer(s).  This doesn't mean necessarily firing them.  I get the whole negativity cancer ward issue.  It's just that it's juvenile and short sighted to think you can threaten people into line. 

The just-do-it attitude this overweight, over hyped guy is mouthing off about only work sfor these kinds of come-to-Jesus projects that are the hallmark of consumer software.  It's a bully mentality that ultimately doesn't work when you need to manage a live service.  Yes, it gets your project done with 70-100 work weeks, but it's not sustainable.  And it's usually the drama queens who espouse this kind of approach because they know no other way of getting results.

[Margalis]

99% of what developers say is worthless. Most of them know how to talk a good game, they'll say all the right things even if they are doing all the wrong things. It's barely worth following what devs say about their own game.

My theory on games and most products is as follows. There are two ends you can work from:

1: Get rid of all the annoying shit.
2: Add in good stuff.

If you do ONLY 1 you'll end up with something pretty good but uninspired. If you do only 2 you'll end up with something that is endearing but ultimately flawed. If you do both you've created something great.

#2 establishes an upper bound on game quality, and #1 the lower bound. Without some interesting new stuff there are limits to how good a game can be, but enough annoying shit can sink any game. It's amazing how many games you play that could be substantially better with minor tweaks - they don't have huge problems in design or inspiration they just have so many rough edges.

I'd also point out that adding cool new stuff is genuinely difficult and requires inspiration but sanding off rough edges is just a matter of resources - it's craft, not art.

[eldaec]

1) let's see what this guy does post-WAR (I don't know what he's done pre-WAR)

I imagine what he will do is end his secondment and go back to pissing shareholder capital up the wall at Games Workshop.

[Simond]

http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1041804

Folks,

A quick update:

1) NDA lift is indeed coming very soon but not this week. We've still got a few things to knock off the "Must do before lift" list before I lift the NDA. But it is going to be sooner, rather than later. Still plenty of time to go before launch.

2) Lots of news coming this week (hopefully). It should be tomorrow but when you are part of a big corporation and have lots of partners, sometimes things can take a little longer than you would like. I have no doubt though that the news will be worth the wait.

So, I think the rest of the week is going to be a very good and very interesting one for WAR fans.

Mark

Now that's just plain odd.

[eldaec]

What is odd about it?