MMO Gaming

In game advertisements. Some people find the very notion sickening. Big companies paying out hundreds, thousands, or maybe even millions of dollars to get their ads stuck in our games. And the worst part is, we aren’t seeing any of the benefits. They still charge us fifty or more dollars for the game, and in the case of MMOs, usually a monthly fee of $14.99 as well, and still they stick in ads.

It feels kind of like a slap in the face to know that these companies are pulling in money from every direction possible. Then they have the gall to tell us that making games is expensive, and that extra money from advertising isn’t covering costs. As if it’s our problem that they are in the business of making games. A little hint, don’t bitch about something you choose to do.

If you make games for a living, don’t cry to me about how hard it is. It’s like those parents I hear whining to their own kids about how the kids don’t know how hard it is to be a parent. Well, you know what, the kid didn’t have a choice in it, you did, so suck it up and deal with it.

It’s something I’ve seen far too commonly. The defense by developers is almost always the same, some variation of “Making games is expensive, if you want to continue enjoying the game than we have to make some money off of it. That’s just the business.”

Yeah, we’re all crying because you do something that you enjoy. It really helps the rest of us working in jobs we may or may not like but that we perform anyway because it provides us the necessities. No, go ahead, tell us all about your money problems. We’ve never faced anything like it before. We are all completely business inept. Hold on, let me find a cat for this, he should hammer the point home.

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Over the past couple of days I’ve noticed several posts in my feed reader covering betas, leaks of information (beta or otherwise privileged information) and even a bit about NDAs and breaking them. I’ll probably reiterate here some of what I said in an earlier post, but that’s okay, the things I said then are just as true now.

First I’d like to address an issue with several posts/comments I’ve read about the topic. I’ll group all these people together and let’s just say that these people believe in the “magic patch theory” of game betas. The “magic patch theory” is something I just made up, feel free to use it as you will. Basically the Magic Patch Theory boils down to the fact that certain people believe that at some point during the beta testing period there will be a patch which completely changes and fixes all the problems of the game.

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Rhyming not intentional but awesome regardless.

All this talk about the NDA on PotBS being lifted got me thinking. NDAs are annoying with the way they are currently handled. Don’t get me wrong, the idea behind the NDA and having testers agree to it is solid. Of course, those who actually care about the NDA aren’t the ones who would bash a game still in a testing phase anyway, but that’s another topic entirely.

Tobold, in a comment on his post (linked above) gave a quick and easy rundown of the purpose of the NDA which I think is one worth repeating.

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Games are expensive to make. Getting back that money isn’t easy. Let’s do a few examples to show this.

Ten million dollars. That’s how much it costs you to get your game out. That means you have to sell two hundred thousand boxed copies (at $50 a piece) to make back that money…and that would be assuming you actually received all $50 of that money, which you probably don’t (at least not for the majority of the boxes.) If your game costs more than that (and most do) then you have to sell even more copies.

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Convergence is near, at least if EA is to be believed. Though I’m sure some people have plenty to say about that, I’ll refrain from anything else relating to EA in this post and instead discuss what they were saying. This idea is not really anything new, but I did glean a few interesting tidbits I wanted to share with everyone. But, let me preface this all by saying that I’m not so sure we’ll be seeing what he is talking about quite as soon as he believes. I’m not sure the money is there to make it worthwhile for the big companies no matter how good it may be from the viewpoint of the consumers.

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…in the game industry. We need more creativity, more skill, and less talent. We’ll get better games without it. For those of you who don’t follow yet, or don’t understand the subtle difference I’m implying I’ll lay it out for you. Talent is a natural ability. Skill is an acquired ability. My point is this, one is given to us, the other we work for. If we are skilled in some craft it is because we have worked hard at it, if we are talented that isn’t necessarily the case. The problem is no one seems to be looking for skill and creativity in people, they just want the talented ones. If they had skilled people perhaps they would find out why it is better to go with them in the first place.

Okay, so this is basically just semantics that I’m crying about here but too bad. People need to learn to ask for what they want properly. If you wanted talented people, those who have a natural ability (and may very well coast by on that ability) then go ahead, I’ll take someone skilled who is going to work every day to show they can do things as well, if not better, than those with a natural aptitude.

What prompts this? I read five articles today covering several different games all of them mentioned how “talented” a certain designer/director/producer, etc. is in making the game. Unfortunately that talent seems to make them lose touch with reality. The skilled person always works to stay at the top of his game, to be the absolute best he can be, the talented get by with what they already have. I don’t need or want the most talented people, I want the most skilled with the most creativity working on the games I play. Maybe then we wouldn’t have products that reek of great ideas gone awry and instead end up with great products, based on great ideas, built by those with a great amount of skill.

skill, talent, mmog, mmo gaming, aptitude, game design

It was a bit of a rant yesterday and I changed what should have been one argument and through in a couple others so that my main point didn’t really stand out. This morning though I made a few comments over at Darren’s site to really specify what I meant. I’ll quote the important bit here.

I don’t think anyone really does “get it� yet, and that’s my biggest concern. I say, you say it, we all end up saying it whenever we hear a developer make a logical statement like this…�Oh, they ‘get it’� but if they have to say it then they already don’t because it isn’t a byproduct of any work they do, it is a thought process that they have to specifically undertake.

Why is it that I get the feeling these developers, every meeting, have to repeat the phrase “Quality is good� so they get it through their heads? They just repeat it constantly so they won’t forget…because it isn’t deeply entrenched in everything they do. And that is the entire problem, as I mentioned before. Quality requires a dedicated thought process when it should be second nature.

That’s my real argument. Brent made a comment on yesterday’s post which said this:

Good observation. One never hears film directors talk about their products in the way you describe - because it should be obvious that they’re trying to make a good film, right?

That’s basically exactly what I wanted to say, I was just far too frustrated by what I’d been reading recently to not type it all out as a rant.

Let me put it this way. Assume you are going to get a house built. You hire some construction company to do this work for you and when the work starts you hear the supervisor constantly yelling at his men to “do a good job” and to “do quality work.” How does that affect your confidence? If it was me I’d be searching for someone else to do the work…immediately. Obviously there is a problem. They should be doing quality work because it is their job. Any work they do should be “quality” work. No one should have to tell them to make sure they keep the walls straight or to securely screw in the drywall. It needs to be second nature. And if we wouldn’t accept anything less than quality in other industries why should we in the game industry? Why should we praise those who go out and tell others how important quality work is when in any other field that would be tantamount to us immediately searching for more qualified people to do the job?

It seems like Darren is trying to stir up trouble asking if bloggers are considered press. Here’s the best way of saying it. Sometimes, yes. Not every blog or blogger is press but some most definitely are. It seems Darren’s definition is that press reports facts and news. If so we have a lot fewer press outlets than people are claiming. Blatant lies, half-truths and ignoring facts seem to be a regular part of the news media’s agenda. Newspapers, magazines, television, etc. all ignore things each and every day that the majority of people feel are important to “journalistic integrity.”

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Well, I’m here, on vacation but I’m still going to take a few minutes to write. Of course it is on my laptop, which has seen better days. The right shift key is gone. So is the “U” key. Oh, you can still press the metal and it will register…sometimes but it isn’t exactly fun. I didn’t realize how much I use…that key until I couldn’t anymore.

But, as far as MMOs go I don’t really know. I haven’t had the chance to play anything these past few days obviously. I have been playing my DS, which is still a ton of fun. I also haven’t really seen anything that is going on so who knows what’s going on. I guess some of the bigger news is that SOE has announced The Agency will be a free to play game. Good. More games need to go to this route. I wish I could find a quote I read a few days ago by one of the ArenaNet guys about how developers and people know that the subscription method is not the only way to make money. Good. Someone needs to say it. I’m sick of trying to defend paying a monthly fee to pay a game. Don’t get me wrong I don’t particularly mind a fee, as has been stated, as far as hobbies go it’s pretty cheap…that doesn’t mean it is necessary though. Anyway, this no “U” key is starting to get to me now and I’ve stabbed myself on this piece of metal one too many times, so thats it for the moment.

I mentioned in a comment on my post yesterday that we need to start ignoring the hype machine. Here’s why. It’s all a load of crap. Triple-A titles are not good games (in this case I am using the term “good” to actually mean “innovative”.) Innovation is bad for business. If a person isn’t familiar with something they usually don’t like it. I, for instance, am not a big fan of EVE. I agree it is very cool sounding, but I don’t like it. That’s because I’ve only spent the 14 day trial in the game and I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. It was new to me and would require an investment of time. I was playing WoW then and had been for a while, I didn’t feel I wanted to wait to experience my fun, I could get it immediately every time I logged into my tiny gnomish tank.

EVE, of course, is still good business. With a subscriber base smaller than several other games out there (all of which were put out by major developers/publishers) it manages to work well and make a profit obviously but let’s face it, the subscriber base still is smaller. They aren’t yet competing with Blizzard, NCsoft, SOE, etc. All the next-gen games (for the sake of argument I’ll refer to the “big 3″ in this as my basis those being Tabula Rasa, Age of Conan and Warhammer Online) are not innovative. Or rather they aren’t really taking things to the next level. They are improving on a few things, changing a few things and calling it a new game but it isn’t any more realistic or interactive than my sock drawer.

That’s because, when it comes down to it, they want to make money and the best way to do that is low barriers to entry. In this case those low barriers are not system specs but the ability to pick up the game and play it. To do that you need to be familiar or you need to be very, very good. Guess which is easier?

The “A” in this case is for asinine. As seen here. For those who read my blog regularly you probably notice that probably 4 out of 5 times I highlight something another person wrote it is to agree, or to generally agree and throw a different spin on it. This is different. This time I disagree, and I plan to rant about it. As in all things an opinion is an opinion and it doesn’t have to be liked but I certainly mean no disrespect by what I am about to write.

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