This is longer than I intended, but there was a lot covered in the presentation. Thought ya'all might be interested. I would have just tacked it onto the
much better coverage the staff here has been giving, but they didn't create a topic of this one yet :)
At the Austin Game Conference this year, Jon Grande of Sigil Games and Rich Vogel of BioWare Austin hosted a session entitled "'New' Challenges Facing MMOG Development".
Overall, I felt they cast a blind eye to a number of emerging trends, but the stuff they covered about the "core" marketplace (basically as defined by diku-inspired games) was pretty good. And insightful.
The presentation was about 45 minutes of talking and 15 minutes of Q&A. The talking portion was supported by a
Powerpoint show, which Jon has hosted on his
Team page at Sigil Games. You can read that presentation at whim. It says stuff that's fairly straight forward. But when they were describing individual points on the slide, I found I disagreed with them about half the time (mentally, of course. I wasn't raising my hand to argue with them or anything...)
Industry Standard UI Early on, the talk was about capturing users and giving them a fun and easy to learn experience. Common sense rule there, but they went on to say that perhaps WoW's UI should become an industry standard UI by which all MMORPGs follow.
I can appreciate why they say that. After all, this is two companies arguably working on games that will follow the same methodology that WoW followed. Hotkeys, macros, chat box, yadda yadda.
But my problem with this statement is that this assumes the entire genre going forward is going to focus on derivative EQ-style experiences. By itself that is the death of innovation, because this assumes the same game mechanic throughout at a time when the very breadth of this genre is replete with examples to the contrary. But I'll go more into that below when this comes up again.
PC is on the way out And Consoles are on the rise. Makes sense, again, except it flies in the face with emerging platform
independence trends. Designing an MMO for a console is very different from a PC. Keyboards are not the norm. Internet connectivity may be there but the publisher of that Console may have an oppressive business requirement preventing things like easy subscriptions or item sale-based revenue flows. Bringing diku to consoles is easy. Making it as relevant and affordable is something else.
Further, with computers lasting longer and being passed throughout the household as new ones are bought, we can expect PCs to be around, and relevant for gaming, for quite a few more years at least.
You need to choose a platform to
start with, but even AAA single-player title developers can't afford to not consider multiple platforms. MMORPGs can afford that even less.
Oh, and they see that Brick & Mortar retailers will be critical partners for the short term (next few years at least). I tend to agree. We all talk digital distribution, but it's still young, and frought with different types of challenges that traditional retailers don't have. The big benefit also is that traditional retail comes with embedded secondary advertising. They
want people walking around their store, so feature items that grab attention and make impulse purchases. The web does not easily facilitate impulse purchasing for the average consumer, outside of closed systems like iTunes.
Import Single Player Developers Here is where I
completely agreed with them. The point they made was that the industry has long been mired in conventions invented during the MUD days. The focus on resource gathering (whether plants or gear) has overshadowed the need to have fun doing it. So they recommend adding single player game developers to the core design and development team so that their insights into having a
momentarily fun experience can be integrated with the thought process.
This is important, and we're seeing it already, with games like Tabula Rasa and Age of Conan escewing normal diku conventional UIs in favor of something more engaging to play. In realtime. They are both largely still about resource gathering, but wrapped in a narrative shell and with a different UI to prevent the "more of the sameness".
Trade-offs They have been around awhile so have seen and discussed the same stuff we all see and discuss. One slide in particular talked about setting
realistic goals by understanding what is truly important for launch and making trade-offs as a result:
- Breadth vs Depth
- Quality vs Scope
- Polish vs Additions
Each game will want something different, but their opinion is tha you focus on Quality, Polish and a deep experience over a broad one. It's hard to argue with this point, particularly in light of history. Notable quote from the slides:
Build a simple by deep game
Build enough content at launch that people cannot see the horizon
Get to playing the game as soon as possible, even if that means using middleware
And: get your entire company, full of cross-functional specialists to play it. Gauge their reactions. If they're not logging in on their off time, if they're dreading the weekly build play session, if they make excuses, then there's something wrong with the fun factor of it. This is really important. People complain about not playing their own games enough, so really need to understand why. If it's not fun,
it's not fun. Fix it before the public sees it because otherwise they're just going to point out the same thing publicly and loudly. Notable quote:
How do you know when it's fun? When you get your designers and artists playing it instead of wanting to go home
Do this by building "vertical slices" of the game, experiences that can be had, to test out the game
play. Game systems can be built in parallel, but concepts, notably for UI and motivations, need to be tested, even if built separately from the core system. Build this vertical slice many times for every system. Test throughout development.
And of course, give yourself more time to build and test. Because that's easy...
Item Sales and Innovation They, like many, see this as a Panacea for future revenue flows. That's fine of course, but this is where I wanted to talk about innovation again.
Item sales ingame, as defined by veteran developers almost require a diku-inspired experience. The above assumes the future is all diku really, which is myopic in my opinion. And wierd, coming from companies that fear comparisons to WoW more than anything (because their games are/will-be similar in mechanic).
The point is to
differentiate. If you sell weapons, and they sell weapons, and your game which isn't out yet is similar to theirs which launched two years ago, therefore targeting the same player, they win. Why try and make the same game then? To tweak what's been tweaked indefinitely?
That'll work for some, but others think differently. From the games mentioned above to Stargate Worlds to Star Trek Online, to web-based MMOs to mobile-based MMOs, there are a lot more people
not copying EQ than those that actively are. In my opinion, WoW capped that course of action.
MMOGCharts Myopia The blind spot I think they have though, predictable given their history, is with the emergence of web-based MMOs. By some estimates, it's not WoW that's the biggest MMO in the world, but rather Mapplestory (UK-based, coming to US). But its business is different, it's barrier to entry almost as low as possible, and the qualities of the game play just that different.
I call this "MMOGCharts Myopia" because it seems as though people only talk about the games that hit that chart. Good for SirBruce and his consulting gig, but bad for companies that want to think beyond the 9,000lb gorilla that is WoW. The basis of comparison on those charts is, to me, largely mitigated in relevance by just how many games do
not use traditional subscription accounts/we-hate-RMT approach to reporting and gauging their own success. Given emerging trends, I see less games coming with that traditionalist approach too.
Conclusion Overall a great presentation. I disagreed with about half of what they said, but it was all very intelligent and spoken through real experience so valuable all the same.
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