I pity the developer...
Polishing the polish by Julie Whitefeather
There was a time when if anyone this side of the Pacific Rim had admitted to playing an “import” game they would have received a quizzical look normally reserved for people who extolled the virtues of Bill Clinton at the Republican National Convention. Back then, reactions to an enthusiastic support of the Micro-transaction business model would have been garnered right along with the same sort of reactions reserved for people who intended to marry their sister.
Yet what a difference a year or two can make.
Here we are and an import game named “Aion Online” is the talk of the town (and most blogs) and the “it” place to be for many a gamer. There are a few blogs creeping up here and there, with sometimes proud announcements that they have un-subscribed to Aion Online. There have even been the occasional well thought and long considered reviews that announced simply “it sucks.”
For all that, however, Aion Online has been out for at least a year in Korea, and to my understanding is quite a success there. Yet the increasing popularity of import games has created a new phenomenon in gaming hasn’t it? Aion Online, and other imports as well, may have been out in other countries for quite some time. In fact, the games in question may even be so polished that their glow would provide significant candle power. But just let audiences in the U.S. have access to the game and all bets seem to be off. The good devs at NCSoft have to start polishing their game all over again.
Pity the poor developer, who works their fingers to tiny little nubs. As the announced release date approaches the developer will expect to spend so much time working on the game that their own families will start to look unfamiliar. The day of open beta finally arrives, and some blogger, who has spent less time playing the beta than they did on the crapper that same day, promptly announces the game “sucks”. The release date comes and goes and blogs all over the internet begin to announce the short comings of the game, nearly always conflicting, and sometimes within the body of the same article. Some bloggers decide to enlighten us as to what buying Aion means about us (wow I’m glad that debate is over), while still others try and tell us that Aion Online is nothing more than another version of WoW: two games that are about alike as pigs and eagles (they both have feet and that’s about it).
While gamers debate amongst themselves whether games move too fast, too slow, are too easy, too hard and a myriad of other perceived “problems” it isn’t just the game developers who are listening to and reading the comments across the internet – investors are listening as well. As we recently discussed with Dr. Richard Bartle on the No Prisoners, No Mercy show, rather than spend so much time complaining about games, we should spend some time praising developers who are willing to try something new, even if we don’t agree with their reason for doing so. When economic times worsen, investors are always far more cautious. Few will be willing to invest in anything that is not already “tried and true” and western gamers by and large are not doing anything to change that.
In the end, I pity the poor developer who has to spend part of their day trying to beat down the reputation for success attained by companies like Activision/Blizzard and Electronic arts, while they spend the rest of their days trying to please a fickle western gaming audience. All the while they also have to deal with some imbecile who thinks one game is like another simply because they share some of the same basic game mechanics. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if occasionally, just occassionally, some producers of mmos threw up their hands in disgust, flipped U.S. gamers the proverbial “bird” and said go buy a console game and “play with yourself”.
See you online,
Julie Whitefeather