Raph is no longer taunting us (Metaplace)

[Yoru]

Also, the age of the rockstar developer isn't over until my fabulous game design career comes to fruition.  Otherwise, how am I going to get groupies?

(Emphasis mine.)

I need Signe's help here. Signe, how many of those laughing-pounding-the-ground-until-your-ass-falls-off smilies can you muster?

[Endie]

Especially when your last house burned down from top to bottom.

Unusually poor taste comment?

[schild]

Especially when your last house burned down from top to bottom.

Unusually poor taste comment?

Yea, pretty weak.

[Nyght]

They'll be no one to stop us this time!

 :-D

Slacker... yep definitely, slacker. And proud of it.

[Signe]

I'm too tired to find any right now.  I am mustering a laughing-pounding-the-ground-until-my-ass-falls-off smile on the inside just for you.  It makes my eyes itch.  ouchie.

[Venkman]

As much as I hate to say it, the guy is right. It's why I ragged on Bartle being involved. SW:G was a train wreck. It's put up or shutup time. Had I been Raph, I'd have said nothing and shown something amazing when I was > 50% done. But that's just me. Sometimes it's just too early for grassroots. Especially when your last house burned down from top to bottom.

Yes, it burned down. Yes, for a time he was man on the scene.

As much as Raph is the face of SWG, he didn't come out and say he was making SWG done right, nor a diku, nor anything analagous to what is currently measured as success by folks who want SWG done right or a new diku. So to say it's "put up or shutup time" is assuming the wrong thing about what he's doing, and for whom he's making it.

I also don't think it fair to blame the house burning on him. We'll never know if the concepts of SWG were valid because the entire thing was a CF on the executional side. Raph didn't code the thing.

[Ironwood]

 

[Akkori]

Personally, I have alwasy blamed those assholes at LA for SWG's problems, followed closely by the asshole suits in SOE. People like TOrres and SMedly, well, 'nuff said. As a previous poster said, it's money that runs the game development, not ideals. But, now that Raph has his own nipple... um... Areole... whatever.... company, and can make what he wants, maybe we will see the "definitive" Raph-Game. I think it could be fun. Too bad we'll have to wait a year to see anything......

[Venkman]

Ironwood, was the eyeballs because I didn't tote the company line of blaming Raph for all that is wrong in the world? If so, please note I'm not looking for a job with Areae.net. I have one I love already :)

Akkori, I agree. Hard to judge what it's going to actually be though, because nothing has been stated about the experience ;)

[Endie]

Come on, now: we have our own very special thread for SWG and NGE dissection.  Let's leave the nice people alone.

Honestly, it's like the old "no internet political argument can go for long without someone invoking the nazis" thing.

[Ironwood]

Ironwood, was the eyeballs because I didn't tote the company line of blaming Raph for all that is wrong in the world? If so, please note I'm not looking for a job with Areae.net. I have one I love already :)

In a way.  Mostly a rolling eye at the whole thread.

Must be nice to have a handjob for putting a website up and arranging a get together with your buddies, when all your previous serious efforts to 'get your point across' have turned to the very ridicule of the internet, number two after Daikatana.

I'm firmly in the camp of 'Results Then Praise' rather than the other way about.  I don't think I'll ever see any results worthy of praise.  This thread makes me agree with Schild and some bloke who apparently popped on and registered just to sling a brick at Mr Koster.  This always makes me a little uncomfortable.

I look forward to 2 years of forums with some wonderful ideas followed by a huge grunt as yet another turd is pushed out the sphincter of this bloke with a perfect grouping system that matches players according to the garishness of their myspace website.


Hey, you asked.

[Venkman]

That's exactly why I asked. I just wanted to get a read on your position is all. And believe me when I say I don't take it personally.

I don't have any expectation yet. That was part of my point. History can be a guide, but without taking all inputs into account, it can be a false one.

People are predicting success or failure based almost entirely on UO and SWG. My point is that this is inappropriate only because nobody knows anything about Areae. At all.

Suppose Areae has nothing to do with what he's done? Is Raph a bad leader for just about anything he ever tries to do going forward? I only single Raph out because of this thread, but this question applies to anyone who's ever been involved in a failure and wants to continue working anyway. I'd ask this about anyone. Suppose F13 tanks? Would the community leaders here be forever scarred from working on another community site? Heck, look at developers in general? The Sims Online tanked and yet Spore is Robot Jesus.

[Cheddar]

<grumpy words>

Someone needs a hug.  Signe, get a hug smiley in this thread STAT!

[stray]

I judge Raph's activities in light of A Theory of Fun, just as much as I do UO and SWG.

I think he's reevaluated a great number of things. We'll see though.

[Signe]

I couldn't be arsed to look for a hug smilie so I'll give you this instead.  Hope it's sufficient.

[El Gallo]

The co-founder made this post over at Fires of Heaven.

Hello, I’m John, I’m the co-founder of Areae along with Raph.

Historically, I haven’t ventured out into the community much because honestly there are people better at this than I am. More frequently, I’m the guy behind the scenes making as much of a positive impact on the product or team as possible. I saw this thread and felt the need to jump in. Since I don’t do this very often, be patient with me for a bit as I give you a little background about me.

The things I consider myself good at include picking the right people for the right job, setting up the best environment in which a team can succeed, picking out industry trends for success, and when I’m directly managing a development team, I think I’m pretty good at making the right decisions that come up every day on implementation strategy and keeping a team on track.

I started in MMOs 15 years ago with a pay-for-play mud called Legends of Future Past. I joined the team about 6 months before launch, designed and programmed many of the game systems, and then helped launch and run the product. My next stop was Simutronics’ GemStone III, where I was a programmer and designer. I moved into producing, and my first game was DragonRealms. At the end of my stay with Simutronics, all of the development and live teams reported to me. After Simutronics I joined Outrage (maker of the Descent series of games), but a year later I realized my passion wasn’t just games – it is multiplayer games.

Soon after, Rich Vogel hired me to produce Star Wars Galaxies, which I was very excited to do. I’ll come back to some of the early days of the decision making on SWG in a bit, let’s skip over that for a moment. I ran the SWG team for the first 6 months after launch, the last publish that was still under me was player cities.

At the end of 03 I got hired to be the director of development for the SOE San Diego studio. This essentially made me the #2 guy, reporting to Rod Humble who ran the studio. A few weeks after I arrived, Gates of Discord shipped, which was very educational. :/ Rod (who, by the way, was great to work for) left later that year, and I took over running the studio as the VP of development, pretty much right before EQ2 launched. The last couple years I’ve been running the San Diego studio, up until a couple weeks ago when I had the opportunity to join Raph.

I’ve had my share of successes and failures at SOE. Things I am proud of include choosing Scott Hartsman to run EQ2, and I think he’s done a spectacular job. I’ll also take credit for pushing hard within SOE for longer development cycles and the first sign of that successful strategy is with the quality of Echoes of Faydwer.

Sometimes the studio head job was defined by the marriage of business strategy and game design. This year, the San Diego studio (which is responsible for the live support for PlanetSide), introduced the recruits program – essentially making the game free for new players. It was highly controversial internally, but in retrospect it was a very successful way to breathe some new vitality into the game and the result was quite positive for both the community and the company – the best kind of win.

Big parts of that job included recognizing what you are good at, more importantly, recognizing what you are bad at, and most importantly, picking the right people for the job. My #2 guy became Nick Beliaeff, who did a spectacular job with the console development teams. While Untold Legends had mediocre reviews on the PSP launch, it had spectacular sales. Though Field Commander had great reviews a year later on the PSP, it didn’t sell as well. I count all of these things as successes at SOE.

I’ve also had my failures. Though I’m proud of what we were able to accomplish on Star Wars Galaxies, I think it’s fair to say everyone wanted a better product. In hindsight, the first questions are on the choice of a virtual world for the Star Wars License, and the time period within the fiction we chose. In order to understand the decisions you need to put yourself in the shoes of the people making them at the time that they made it.

SOE had EQ (the best dungeon crawl at the time), and development teams for PlanetSide (a first person shooter), EQ2, and Sovereign (RTS). With SWG, SOE specifically did not want another game with the same style of gameplay as EQ, Planetside, or Sovereign. We chose a virtual world – the most successful one to date was UO and we had the team of people who worked on UO who were assigned to build the game. SOE didn’t have a virtual world, nor was it in the process of building one. It “fit” within the product strategy, even if in hindsight it may not have fit with the license. At the time, I supported this decision, and our tagline became “live in the Star Wars universe”.

Similarly, Lucas Arts had their own requirements – because the first three movies hadn’t been made or released yet, the only time period we could choose was the “classic” movies, or episodes 4, 5, and 6. Because we wanted the greatest access to the most Star Wars characters (most of them were still alive), we chose between episodes 4 and 5.

In hindsight, there’s a lot of ground-level decisions the team could revisit. Did we make a decent virtual world? Eventually, there were elements of our virtual world that I was quite proud of. Was Star Wars a good fit for that type of game? Honestly, “living in the Star Wars universe” in a way that could begin to meet the community expectation turned out to be a lot harder than any of us thought.

So that's a lot of time to spend talking about hard lessons. One thing that most people would agree is that while Raph may not be the guy to build what people expect to be an adventure MMO, his drive and desire is virtual worlds, and to date, he’s worked on some of the most successful virtual worlds that have been made.

What we're doing, bluntly, probably isn't going to be a huge draw for many of the people reading this board. But it's obvious that at least a few people have some curiosity. Letting you know a little bit about who we are, and how it related to some of the things you're already thinking, seemed like the right thing to do.

If you made it this far, thanks for your time,


John
Areae, Inc.

http://www.fohguild.org/forums/mmorpg-general-discussion/26343-kosters-new-company-4.html

[Venkman]

Why would FoH get the attention of a company not making a game for them (going by the descriptions at Areae)? Has FoH become more broad than just end-game raiding in diku-like games? As in, should I bother stopping by there?

[stray]

They are the Bizarro F13.

[tazelbain]

F13 = jaded gamers who shune the grind/busy work.
FoH = jaded gamers who embrace it.

?!?

[stray]

Their in-game communties don't implode either. They actually....Do things.

I think we represent the solo mindset more.

[Thelurker]

The co-founder made this post over at Fires of Heaven.

Hello, I’m John, ETC ETC

Why tell us about all this. Why come here and pretend that you want to hire people, when you clearly have more than enough contacts and friends with experience?

Stop telling the fanbois about yourselves, and go make a game. Talk through your actions.
My bet is you never ship a game. Starting off on the wrong foot already. You are already more interested in the wrong things to get it done. Namely, being in the public eye before you have anything worth talking about.

[El Gallo]

Why would FoH get the attention of a company not making a game for them (going by the descriptions at Areae)? Has FoH become more broad than just end-game raiding in diku-like games? As in, should I bother stopping by there?

current stats.  F13:

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Welcome to our newest member, areyouserious

So it's a fuckload bigger.  And I think they probably have a higher ratio of people who actually pay subscription fees.  It's pretty WoW/EQ2 focused, but there's some Eve action over there too.  I like it here better, but I post over there sometimes.
 
 

[Venkman]

Their in-game communties don't implode either. They actually....Do things.

I think we represent the solo mindset more.

Some of us come from established meta-game guilds, depending on the game/type. However, for the most part, I would agree with you. When it's not a diku, for example, I generally join an F13/Bat Country guild here if they'll have me :) But we're all sorta game-jumpers, so it never really lasts a long time en masse. Seems like eventually it will contract to about 5-6 full-timers.

So it's a fuckload bigger.  And I think they probably have a higher ratio of people who actually pay subscription fees.  It's pretty WoW/EQ2 focused, but there's some Eve action over there too.  I like it here better, but I post over there sometimes.

Thanks for the info. Their focus on WoW and EQ2 is great for their numbers and members but I prefer places that have people like Signe and Slyfeind who'll try anything that requires an internet connection :)

[Endie]

So it's a fuckload bigger.  And I think they probably have a higher ratio of people who actually pay subscription fees. 

There is a subscription option for f13?  Do I get a special pet?

[CmdrSlack]

So it's a fuckload bigger.  And I think they probably have a higher ratio of people who actually pay subscription fees.

There is a subscription option for f13?  Do I get a special pet?

The special pet was preorder only.

[geldonyetich]

It probably helped perpetuate the power of FoH when the World of Warcraft development team exclusively consulted some of their top members to develop a game that caters to them.  Little wonder their boards are plastered with WoW art these days.

So anyway, glad El Gallo crossposted that over here.  The best paragraph (IMHO) is:

SOE had EQ (the best dungeon crawl at the time), and development teams for PlanetSide (a first person shooter), EQ2, and Sovereign (RTS). With SWG, SOE specifically did not want another game with the same style of gameplay as EQ, Planetside, or Sovereign. We chose a virtual world – the most successful one to date was UO and we had the team of people who worked on UO who were assigned to build the game. SOE didn’t have a virtual world, nor was it in the process of building one. It “fit” within the product strategy, even if in hindsight it may not have fit with the license. At the time, I supported this decision, and our tagline became “live in the Star Wars universe”.

About time somebody let the cat out of the bag.  John's saying that SWG was married to incompatible gameplay to suit its licence because SOE pulled an EA inspired, "We don't want anything that would compete with our existing products" move.  So they took much of the development team involved in the only other virtual world and made that the foundation of SWG.

Did you guys even see the movies?  Of course.  But they were just in their own little game development routine world, too afraid to rock the boat to actually make SWG a unique an interesting game.

[Strazos]

I don't think it's really fair to compare F13 to FoH. Totally different focuses. People would go there for WoW/EQ info....not so much here.

Also, they're louder.

[Sky]

So it's a fuckload bigger.  And I think they probably have a higher ratio of people who actually pay subscription fees.

There is a subscription option for f13?  Do I get a special pet?

The special pet was preorder only.

It was a pet Harrison Ford.

[Signe]

Harrison Ford emailed me once.

[schild]

Area....e giving FoH even a head nod makes me lol. Anyway...


Darniaq,

Most people who fail don't go around telling people how to make games and how we're in the wrong mindset and write books about it. I'm not saying Raph is a failure. I'm just saying that up until Right Now he's been all barK and no bite. So when I say it's put up or shutup time - that's where I'm coming from.

[Raph]

So, all bark and no bite of course assumes that the two bites I took somehow don't count. Which is classic "but what have you one for me lately?" And that's just how it goes.

Of COURSE we need to focus on the product. The whole point of the site was to attract resumes -- specifically, resumes from outside the incestuous circle of MMO devs. Get some fresh blood.

We're not going to talk about the actual product for quite some time. I expect another few articles and interviews about the company launch just because there's pent-up interest. Then we can run quiet for a while.

I think everyone's right to be skeptical, btw. After all, most projects don't ever get off the ground. :)

[Nonentity]

Guys, I think you're all really missing the most important question of all.

Can I cut up corpses with a bladed weapon?

[El Gallo]

So it's a fuckload bigger.  And I think they probably have a higher ratio of people who actually pay subscription fees.

There is a subscription option for f13?  Do I get a special pet?

The special pet was preorder only.

Yeah, but the artbook sucked 

[Morat20]

I'd apply. I not only am from outside the incestuous circle of MMO devs, but totally lack releveant experience in game design. I'm perfect. Sadly, I kind of like my current job (although the pay is crappy) and have no interest in moving.

Sadly, your company is SOL on attracting a moderately talented coder with vast experience in dealing with the computer illiterate. (IE: Rocket scientists. They can make rockets, but they're unable to master the complexities of "Right click and select 'paste' okay?"). I know you'll miss me. However, I promise to be freely available on a contract basis, at a merely ludicruous hourly rate. :)

As for the product proper: If you're starting with the mindset of "No game can be great to all gamers", then more power to you. Wide appeal is good, but it's also a trap -- if you try to appeal to too broad a base, you're going to end up with bland gameplay.

[Thelurker]

So, all bark and no bite of course assumes that the two bites I took somehow don't count. Which is classic "but what have you one for me lately?" And that's just how it goes.

UO was 1997. You are right, it doesnt count any more. Great game it was, but 10 years ago. It's a new MMO world. Also you weren't the only one to work on it. Don't claim individual credit for a team project.

SWG sucked. Nuff said there.

Taking credit for the good of a project is easy, even when there is very little good there. If you are going to be the one to step out in the limelight and pimp yourself all the time, then you should be willing to take the negative hits as well. So yes, it IS your fault for the bad things in those games. Or is it just the good things that you touched?

Does Raph have experience? Sure! Has he worked on games that still exist? Sure!

Now take all of this self professed experience and knowledge and make something that doesnt suck. All without so much self-fluffing that you seem to do on fanboi forums. I'll be tickled pink if you ship something decent. I'm doubtful as hell, but I'll be glad.