Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Cadrid]

Originally Posted by J Capozzi

So, you either hire fresh blood and give them a voice, or start weeding through the plethora of posts by the "armchair designers" in attempt to gain a better perspective on the game.

Hiring fresh blood comes with a whole set of problems, ranging from integrating them into the team (politics and all, no easy feat) to slapping them in the face with the cold hard reality of production schedules, limited resources, and mistaken assumptions.

Gleaning good data from the forums is tricky, because it's VERY easy to fall into the trap of finding a viewpoint that matches your assumptions/notions, and blowing off the more hostile or differing viewpoints. But you also can't look at the forums and blogs and emails and decide that EVERYONE is right, that's a recipe for disaster as well.

Then you have those people with the unenviable job of PR spokesperson. They're usually hired because they've earned the respect of the player base and are articulate. But once onboard, they're generally not given much respect by the dev team (or even disliked by team members before they were hired), and that's not a good situation to be in.[/quote]

Maybe I'm just overly optimistic, but it seems that a company could get the best of both worlds, with control over what does and doesn't get spread to the community, yet allowing for their name to remain intact and (relatively) devoid of any "brown-noser" or "corporate shill" labels. Between the beer and turkey my brain fails me in coming up with any solid plan, however there must be some PR head-honcho or corporate strategist that could devise a proper system for unifying the two extremes into an effective moderate.

Originally Posted by Capozzi

Even if the dev team isn't hostile to the PR spokesperson, the new guy may not know who to turn to for the correct (or as close to correct as possible) answers. And if he does get answers to questions, they can often be filtered through several layers of interpretation. Not hard to see how garbage in turns into garbage out in that situation.

This sounds like an issue with inter-corporate communication and structure, as opposed to faults with the dev team and PR folk. If the company wants their PR group to do an effective and precise job of soothing and informing the masses, they would need to have access to the core functionings of the game (the basics of how things should work in general) and the various design ideas and changes that occur with each build. Otherwise, they are doomed to only get part of the picture, and as a result, doomed to be on the recieving end of a great deal of ire from fans.

Originally Posted by Capozzi

Combine that with now being a "voice of the corporation" (limiting what they can say and how they can say it, and who's actively editing what they say), the inevitable player knee-jerk ("..he's a sellout..") and a reasonable (but mistaken) assumption that he should ALWAYS be right, and you end up with a bad reputation with some players.

There will always be "some players" that play conspiracy theorist/pessimist/anti-establishmentism and toss the "He's in their pocket!" card down. It's inevitable. The key is in diffusing whatever powder keg of angst they may try to light as a game undergoes various stages of change and evolution. With proper PR management (as well as keeping the dev team at least mildly humble) any attempts at rabble-rousing from this minority should be a non-issue.

Originally Posted by Capozzi

And even if the PR person does "get it", and understands the issue(s), he's got the uphill task of selling the dev team on a solution, or even acknowledging that there is an issue.

This is why the dev team needs to consider alternate options they may not have considered, and not dismiss player opinion as simple discontentment and myopic spite.

Originally Posted by Capozzi

Long story short, blaming a single PR person like Moorgard (or Absor, or Abashi, or Tweety, or...) for some things is simply making them a scapegoat.

Agreed. If players are truly upset with changes made in a game they should focus their fury on the developers and suits behind the changes, not shoot the messanger(s). Unfortunately, the majority of the time those to be held responsible for poor decisions are out of reach and, as with many angry people, players will berate and punish any suitable surrogate they can find.

And on that oh-so-cheerful note, Happy Turkey Day, everyone!

[Gnome Eater]

Kendrick, my base disagreement is that I think the idea of a separate PR person vs developer is a failure at the get-go.

I would much rather receive sporadic communication from a developer who is busy with the inner-workings of the class and who can explain in detail why certain decisions were made, rather than hearing it third hand from someone who has absolutely no hand in the technical decisions of the game.

What also works well but doesn't exactly please the community are the 'l33t beta infos' channels that a lot of guilds had. A lot of friends earned the respec of developers, and usually had extended talks with developers about the maths or relative balance.

I don't expect developers to post everyday, but I am in the minority camp where I would rather hear extensive mathematical explanations every once in a while, rather than constant PR spiel from someone who lacks any understanding whatsoever of the game.

[Abalieno]

Eve-Online is giving a good example of good communication (also here).

They address larger topics with dev blogs, they read and talk on the boards, keep the players always informed and the community reps don't replace dev communication but integrate it.

It's not perfect. But better than what we see everywhere else.

[Abalieno]

Originally Posted by J Capozzi

making changes to a class was based on more on educated guesswork and gut feel than scientific analysis.

Due to the lack of documentation, designers that actually played the game had a potentially huge advantage over the designers that did not play (or who played less hardcore), because the player/designer had better "instincts" and a feel for the overall gestalt of the game.

People who don't play the game shouldn't even be allowed to set their foot in a game design position.

Scientific analysis is worth shit. Spreadsheet game balance is worth shit. This is a very basic concept that most good designers know very well. What works on a spreadsheet in many cases doesn't work in practice.

What I mean is simple: "scientific analysis" is still a partial point of view and in any way absolute.

Surely not better than the "gut feel" of a designer who plays and knows the game closely.

Game design requires sensibility, not math.

[Ngruk]

Originally Posted by Abalieno

People who don't play the game shouldn't even be allowed to set their foot in a game design position.

Scientific analysis is worth shit. Spreadsheet game balance is worth shit. This is a very basic concept that most good designers know very well. What works on a spreadsheet in many cases doesn't work in practice.

What I mean is simple: "scientific analysis" is still a partial point of view and in any way absolute.

Surely not better than the "gut feel" of a designer who plays and knows the game closely.

Game design requires sensibility, not math.

I agree 100% almost. One of the fears and one of the pitfalls of making sure that your designers play is this. You might have what, 10-25 designers on a game during production? If you are intent on make A great game instead of their great game you have some incredible balancing to do as you weigh the design intentions of 10-25 players who, for the most part, have very very hardcore playstyles.

Designers tend to be pretty hardcore players. Having a design team that doesn't sit on a single narrow point of focus (which hardcore players tend to do with things they are passionate about) is a challenge.

The initial core group of designers in GMG have a chemistry that I don't think is prevelant in a lot of places. Every one of them is 100x more creative than I am, and none of them looks at me when I throw an incredibly STUPID game idea out (which unfortunately happens once a week I thnk) and says "Yes sir".

Their jobs, and they know this, is to, while designing what we are designing, educate me on the technical design aspects that I lack the experience to consider while thinking of design and the vision. I think I have done a pretty good job learning to this point, but it's certainly a work in progress.

The other huge plus is every one of them gets twice as excited about someone else coming up with a kick ass idea as they do when theirs is just as good, if not better.

One thing I've felt has always been a strong suit of mine was the ability to foster and promote the team gig. It's not about "dress down Fridays' or "Jelly of the month club" to foster accountability and team here, it's about making each and every person in this company care and matter. All the while making sure every single one of them sees what we are doing as partly their creation, which contains their creative ideas.

It's been pretty amazing to watch it unfold.

[Ngruk]

One more thing. In the same manner I meant 'soon' much earlier in this topic, look for a press release 'soon' on GMG announcing one of its first leadership position hires.

Not that we need to, but I am hoping as these press releases come out, the arguments about us being like everyone else, or this being a pipe dream with some rich guys who don't know squat can go by the wayside.

Once the names get out there it's my belief that even the hardest of hardcore detractors out there will at least acknowledge we aren't stupid I am sure they can still find some things to flame and argue about, that won't likely ever change, but the leadership group I've been able to put together I think, in the end, will knock some people for a loop.

[Abalieno]

Maybe he is the guy up there who just arrived on this thread? ;p

By the way, listening the players doesn't mean giving them exactly what they asked. What players say should never be ignored, in any case. But it should be interpreted.

Originally Posted by Ngruk

Once the names get out there it's my belief that even the hardest of hardcore detractors out there will at least acknowledge we aren't stupid I am sure they can still find some things to flame and argue about, that won't likely ever change, but the leadership group I've been able to put together I think, in the end, will knock some people for a loop.

You should hire someone who has solid ideas and demonstrated the desire to innovate then, not leftovers from SOE or Sigil ;p

Hey, if it was me I would go knock on Dave Rickey's house and BEG him to work for me. There are some people out there who have demonstrated to have very solid ideas and talent, sadly some of them didn't have their own chances and I would still like to see what they can do.

Instead I see many people who are excluded, mainly because they didn't accept some compromises, while the same faces continue to be everywhere and guarantee that absolutely nothing changes (this is a general comment, not directly about GMG).

[Ngruk]

Originally Posted by Abalieno

Maybe he is the guy up there who just arrived on this thread? ;p

By the way, listening the players doesn't mean giving them exactly what they asked. What players say should never be ignored, in any case. But it should be interpreted.


You should hire someone who has solid ideas and demonstrated the desire to innovate then, not leftovers from SOE or Sigil ;p

Hey, if it was me I would go knock on Dave Rickey's house and BEG him to work for me. There are some people out there who have demonstrated to have very solid ideas and talent, sadly some of them didn't have their own chances and I would still like to see what they can do.

Instead I see many people who are excluded, mainly because they didn't accept some compromises, while the same faces continue to be everywhere and guarantee that absolutely nothing changes (this is a general comment, not directly about GMG).

Ok let me ask you this then.

Let's put on our 'realism' hats a second.

Say you got to open a gaming company.

Next say you had around 50-60 million dollars budgeted to produce a game.

It's pretty much a one shot deal. If you make this work you do something unprecedented, if not you've spent 50-60 million dollars and you're pretty much SOL.

Now when assembling that team is your focus on people who are cool, creative, and innovative but have no experience at actually launching a game? Or is your focus on people that have been part of launching AAA games and people that may not have been in lead roles getting the game out the door but have played major roles in supporting those games?

I can also add this. When you sit down in front of corporation/company X, to talk about potential partnerships/co-publishing, they don't give two craps about how innovative and creative you are if you don't throw down some names and resumes of people that are leading your little excursion with some big league credentials and ability.

Basically launching a game is a billion times more work than you think it is when it's 6 friends sitting around saying "How cool would it be if....".

At some point after that phase you enter the 401k, medical, dental, vision, relocation, engine license, benefits etc. part of the process and it quickly gets to put up or shut up.

I can totally see why people in my position, at this point, would turn to people within the industry that have been there and done that. It's a HUGE amount of money and ENORMOUS risk. Getting people to work for/with you that have shipped games, regardless of how good the game was, seems to be what a lot of people do to mitigate risk.

I am not saying I did or didn't do that. I think when I hit that stage awhile back, and realized that I was light years past the point of no return, I began to meld a team of people from different camps, with very different pasts, that I knew I could count on for the next x years to be still standing, still passionate, still dedicated to each other and the company, after the long hard process of producing a game had been completed.

[Cadrid]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

[...] enter the 401k, medical, dental, vision, relocation, engine license, benefits etc. part of the process[...]

Not to digress from your attempt at reasoning with why experts are chosen over the "unproven" (for lack of a better word), but is GMG seeking to license an engine, or planning on creating one from scratch? If you are looking at licensing an engine, are there any ones in particular that strike your fancy, or is it too early to even muse on what engines may offer the proper power and utility to GMG's upcoming title?

[Gaereth]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

Now when assembling that team is your focus on people who are cool, creative, and innovative but have no experience at actually launching a game? Or is your focus on people that have been part of launching AAA games and people that may not have been in lead roles getting the game out the door but have played major roles in supporting those games?

Yes and no to both.

To not take advantage of those that have experience finalizing a product similar to what you are trying to produce puts you behind from the very start.

There is also the old axiom from Ben Franklin - The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If you are trying to create something new and innovative yet take too much from existing sources then it tends to become a whitewashed version of that which you sourced from.

So its a balancing act....bring in enough existing talent to get the project running properly yet inject enough alternative and new talent to make sure you aren't simply recreating the wheel.

An interesting and fun problem to have. :P

[Cadrid]

Originally Posted by Gaereth

[...]There is also the old axiom from Ben Franklin - The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If you are trying to create something new and innovative yet take too much from existing sources then it tends to become a whitewashed version of that which you sourced from.[...]

It goes without saying that playing the role of broken record in any industry will get you nowhere. Innovation and fresh views, backed by experienced talent, is the only way to reinvigorate any industry that strays toward the path of "been tehre, done that".

This does not mean that the architects of such visionary change have to be armchair designers or loquacious, living megaphones for change. There are enough talented individuals within the gaming industry that have the imagination and hindsight to pick the good from the bad, and understand (and implement) new, improved, and fun features.

Having experience in the MMO industry does not automatically make an individual a one-trick pony or formula-driven zombie. It simply means they have the capability and understanding to implement fun, functional content and mechanics given proper leadership and the breathing room to test their ideas.

[KharzaWHA?]

On the subject of creativity, and innovative games.

To Ngruk:

If you want to make a great MMORPG that will interest me, do one thing. Take a second and analyze Dungeons and Dragons, from a game design perspective. Look at it's history, where it came from, and how it's built.

Take a second and look at how the play mechanics in a tabletop/PnP game differ from a Computer game, especially an MMO. Notice how in a tabletop game rules and situations can be edited by the group, on the fly. Look at the developer pipeline for a CRPG, and make note that those same gameplay changes in the PnP game can take months to code, bugtest, and implement in an MMO. If you're not doing it yourself, get your game devs to think about how their game must differentiate from a PnP game, simply because it's NOT a PnP game.

Take a second and look at how the social and human perspective mechanics in an MMORPG differentiate themselves from other game types. Look at what sort of perspective a player in an MMO has, and how PVP, when coupled with player perspective, affects the perception of class balance. Get your designers to think logically for a second about a class that is supposed to be an untouchable shadow, with powerful sneak attacks. Or, what a class with the best support abilities ever gets to do when they're eventually solo. Because in both cases, you're setting yourself, as a designer, up for failure on some level. And there are other cases like this, which I'm sure smarter people than I can find or know already.

Take a second and look at your competition, and what they're doing and where they're good. Blizzard has years of experience delivering very high quality games. Re-hashing D&D into yet another WoW clone is going to be a hard road to follow, for anyone, even if it's done with quality surpassing WoW's. And I would think that a new company, even if it's built from experienced employes, would have a tough time surpassing WoW's construction quality.


I'm telling you this, not because you asked for it (indeed I believe you asked to NOT get it) but because I'm not interested playing the same old crap again. I've already gotten fed up and pissed off at a poorly designed, excellently implemented game. I'd personally find a new look at the mechanics and structure of an MMO much more interesting, even if it's the same old skin of a fantasy world. RPGs, whether tabletop or computer, don't seem to have evolved very much. I think they could use it.

Also, I'm telling you this to provide you some insight into how I think and how my personality works. Which is why I think you're really here. To see how hardcore MMO geeks think and operate, and how you can use that knowledge in building your game. Because you didn't win a world series by being stupid, and if I was you I'd be interacting with my prospective customers to figure out how they work.


P.S. I'm sorry for the "asshole highschool teacher" writing tone. It's all I know.

P.P.S. Do you ever get annoyed by people using baseball analogies? Seems like that would get very irritating after a while.

[Abalieno]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

Ok let me ask you this then.

Let's put on our 'realism' hats a second.

Say you got to open a gaming company.

Next say you had around 50-60 million dollars budgeted to produce a game.

It's pretty much a one shot deal. If you make this work you do something unprecedented, if not you've spent 50-60 million dollars and you're pretty much SOL.

Eve-Online may be an interesting model.

I'm very skeptical about a new studios being able to produce a huge MMO from the get go and become a major player in this market. But I think it's possible to build something "focused" and then letting it grow.

You start small and focused, then you move from there. Making the right moves. Depending on how you "play", you may be able to go very high. You don't go challenge WoW in the open, but you can work to get there when the time is mature.

Eve-Online at release was a major failure. It was in a state so poor that it was just destined to last a year and then be forgotten. But instead of leaving it in that state the devs have continued to work on it constantly. Not with marginal updates as it happens with all the commercial MMO out there today, but with significant changes at the core, so that they could progressively move toward the original goals, and then move from there to build something truly unique, with an incredible depth.

And the game very slowly started to grow from there and it is still growing today.

Compare the trajectory of CCP with the trajectory of Mythic. They are exactly INVERTED. CCP is growing way past the most optimistic expectations, while Mythic surrendered to EA's acquisition after they canceled an entire game late in production (Imperator) and let die their major potential (DAoC). And this not because of "technical competence" but because of management and decisions at the high levels.

DAoC started really high for a game coming from a basically brand new studios. Mythic was able to achieve something impressive. But from there they drove it to the ground. Instead CCP started from the ground, with a terrible launch and financial losses (their major investor "quit" shortly after launch) and are slowly becoming a major player.

Now when assembling that team is your focus on people who are cool, creative, and innovative but have no experience at actually launching a game?

That's a mistake, it's obvious.

But it would be interesting coupling experience with inexperience. It's not a choice between one or the other. It's about taking something out of both so that one feeds the other. A game project for a brand new studios is also a constant learning process.

In the longer term it is also essential that you don't just have experienced old guys on the same chairs, but also that you TRAIN new talent. So that you don't just "leech" big names and "worth" from nearby companies (only to be leeched when at the worst time by someone else) but also produce that talent. Become a stimulus for other people, introduce new faces in the industry. A laboratory of ideas that keeps things alive.

As I wrote somewhere else: a company that pushes the evolution of the genre instead of being victim of it.

I think that good game companies should become academies when you build a culture and produce talent instead of just "stealing" it from somewhere else and using it up.

Basically launching a game is a billion times more work than you think it is when it's 6 friends sitting around saying "How cool would it be if....".

That's why 6 friends don't sit anymore around a table to make a game. But, hey, Blizzard wasn't much different than that, at the beginning.

As it takes a lot of time to make a game, especially an ambitious one, it also takes time to build a game company, and a solid one, from zero.

I can totally see why people in my position, at this point, would turn to people within the industry that have been there and done that. It's a HUGE amount of money and ENORMOUS risk. Getting people to work for/with you that have shipped games, regardless of how good the game was, seems to be what a lot of people do to mitigate risk.

And in fact it isn't "worth it". We have seen some excellent failures as a proof of this.

Actually I think that it is much more efficient to "mitigate risk" by working on something focused and with something concretely innovative and valid, more than just hiring people with big names. MANY, many MMO are launching today already STALE. And many of those ARE coming exactly from the BIGGEST names in the industry. It's almost like the "importance" of the name is becoming proportional to the failure. Look at all that money that Sigil is going to waste with Vanguard.

That's a perfect example of a team filled with huge names, with huge budget. In your theory of "risk mitigation" Vanguard is going to be the most successful game ever.

Sure. Let's talk about this in a year. And you know what? Its bigger problem won't even be the game design, but the technical execution because they totally screwed their priorities from the very beginning.

So, sure, experience is a risk mitigation, but surely not less important than what you focus for working on. Technical execution is one thing, and today it is still something very hard to achieve, as a MMO is still a very complex project. But the real core remains what you are trying to do.

A WoW clone won't go anywhere even with the best technical execution. There will be PLENTY in the next years and there will be plenty of spectacular failures, believe me. But they won't come from the smaller studios, but from the bigger ones that went suiciding.

You cannot copycat the bigger player in the hope to get a slice of their pie. And this is exactly where "management" matters more. Where you decide to put your money on. Because there are MANY projects that are going to fail miserably no matter how much money was thrown at them. And no matter how big are the names working on those AAA failures.

Instead a good, ambitious but still focused and relatively "modest" project (and focused on delivering a different "feel", not the same derivative crap) could do wonders. It could have better chances to achieve its goals and "surprise". It could work much better with "risk mitigation". It could become a positive model that everyone will try to copy later on. And even if you don't reach ALL your goals, you'll always have in your hands something valid, to be proud of, and on which you can continue to work to get closer to those goals.

Instead of exploding in a spectacular cloud of fireworks (or fade into irrelevancy).

By the way, try to find time to read this. It's from another guy at SOE who knows what he is talking about and comments indirectly some of the things we are commenting here.

[Ngruk]

Originally Posted by Cadrid

Not to digress from your attempt at reasoning with why experts are chosen over the "unproven" (for lack of a better word), but is GMG seeking to license an engine, or planning on creating one from scratch? If you are looking at licensing an engine, are there any ones in particular that strike your fancy, or is it too early to even muse on what engines may offer the proper power and utility to GMG's upcoming title?

This is one of the steps we are in the process of right now. To be able to know the exact answer to this you have to have your design fleshed out, front to back though. Every important detail of what you want your game to be and do needs to be talked through and decided on.

What we are doing is taking multiple passes at the existing middleware that's out there to give our art/animation/tech people multiple looks and multiple Q&A sessions with the techs that designed them.

It'll be a long process before we decide on an engine, or decide to create our own proprietary engine.

[Abalieno]

The problem with middleware is that it has both advantages and disadvantages. In EVERY case.

Often it isn't a choice as it's just about trying to do something or give up, so the argument isn't simple.

But it is true that middleware also creates a dependence. If you build your own stuff, you can decide in which direction steer it, you can have a design and then model the game after it. With middleware you'll do the opposite. Trying to fit your design into what the middleware can do, and do well.

For a MMO this is even more important, as the dependence from middleware increases along the development. It's both an enabler and a chain. Short term good, long term bad.