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Originally Posted by Utnayan MMORPG players have never been able to articulate their needs in my opinion. I remember people bitching about travel times in EQ taking too long. Then when portals in POP were introduced, they stated travel didn't have any meaning anymore and made the world feel smaller.
That's just one example off the top of my head, but there are plently of things in where people just need to make a game and let it go the way they want to design it. Enough of the focus groups. Enough of the marketing polls. I didn't see Blizzard asking the public what type of game they should make, and they have a blockbuster on their hands because they hired from the community who knew what MMORPG'ers wanted. They hired gamers. They hired people that want to play their own games. The only problem they have now, after hearing this from Gamblor while playing WoW, is that now they need to fine some oracle programmers that actually like to play games due to that policy - and the good ones are usually not that into gaming for the most part.
You need to quit worrying about what is going to take in so much cash, and just make a fun accessible game based on developer experience and the cash will roll in anyway. |
One thing I know about our company is that it is full of gamers and more specifically online gamers. This extends into every single part of the company.. from our General Counsel who met his wife playing EQ to our finance group (our CFO is someone that I will put against the best of you in CounterStrike). Our legal team has 4 lawyers.. 3 of which have over level 60's in EQ and one (our newest) who never gamed before and has a level 50 in EQ2. Our CS group is filled with people from our playerbase... and many on our dev teams actually came from CS. I myself prefer FPS's, and BF2 is my current obsession.. and it's a pretty brutal habit. And yes, like others.. I too get pissed when my weapons get nerfed or my helicopters lose missles.... People on the "outside" don't realize it, but in this industry.. you better darn well like playing games a lot. If you don't, frankly the hours are mind-numbing and the pace is always extremely tough. I promise you, Scott doesn't like getting a call at 3am telling him a database head blew.. or someone found an exploit and it's spreading. Joe Smith who's an insurance agent might make the same amount as Jim Smith who's a game programmer.. but the hours sure aren't the same... and neither is the job satisfaction (well ok.. I admit this based on the premise that everyone would want to make games if they could).
When we set out to make games we make them first and foremost as something that we want to play ourselves. Heck we've started some pretty cool stuff the public doesn't even know about.. and cancelled it.. all because the games just weren't feeling right. Then we have other stuff that from the get-go we feel has that magic. Focus groups are only to smooth the rough edges and are just there to make sure you see the forest from the trees and hopefully you see that before it gets out to the public.
