“Fallout’s glitchy debut hasn’t occasioned many debates about the level of polish expected in a game at release, and Amazon has yet to be carpet bombed with one-star reviews. People seemed to be annoyed at the news of the game’s flaws, but they were annoyed while on their way to the store to buy it. It seems the gaming public has largely shrugged its shoulders and gotten over the fact that Obsidian is going to release games that don’t work perfectly at launch…This is why games are released buggy and unfinished, with developers beginning work on patches as soon as the game is out the door: we tolerate it.” – Ben Kuchera, Arstechnica.com, Fallout: New Vegas is buggy as hell; where’s the outrage?

The quote above caught my eye as I sifted through our news feeds just as we released No Prisoners, No Mercy Show 73. The reason, of course, is that we are been outraged at the buggy release of the game and said so loudly in our Mad as Hell feature. In the case of our listeners, it seems, we were not alone. Here are some comments to our show over at www.virginworlds.com:

“MMO apologists have been saying for years that we should fogive bugs in MMO’s because they are so hard to make. The last two single player games I’ve purchased (Civ V and FO:NV) have been horridly buggy. The game industry is really becoming a bunch of snake oil sales men.” -  Checksix

“My ‘Fool me once’was when I bought Obsidian’s fecal matter in a box titled ‘Kotor 2 – The Sith Lords’. They wont get a chance to fool me twice, I still want my money back. The part of the interview where Vlad was talking about developers staying humble made me think about the Diablo 3 class panel at Blizzcon. Those guys didn’t seem very humble to me.” – Token

“All I’ve been hearing about New Vegas is how buggy it is. It doesn’t surprise me, though, as it’s coming from Obsidian and not Bethesda (as the developer that is). They’ve never been known to release an un-buggy game. Look at KotOR2, Baldur’s Gate 2, and Neverwinter Knights 2. All had to be patched extensively. NWN2 is still really buggy to this day. Hopefully they can get the Fallout bugs fixed swiftly though.” – JMO

I understand that few developers are capable of producing a sufficient bottom line to espouse the attitude for which Blizzard is so famous – “It’s done when it is done.”  It may even be that Blizzard has set the bar for quality so high that many developer or publishers will have difficulty pole vaulting over it. Still, considering the number of studios that have closed its doors I didn’t expect publishers to reach the point where they were willing to limbo under the quality bar.

I understand how they can do it of course – the reason they can do it is that as gamers we have become enablers.   One of the side effects of popularity of digital download is the ease of patching the game.  As a result we seem to have become complacent, telling ourselves the practice of selling a poorly finished product is acceptable.  The rough equivalent would be going to a automobile dealership, only to find that all of the cars are missing their wheels.  If the dealer told you “Don’t worry about it, we will mail you the wheels later…trust me” would you even consider completing the purchase?  Yet as gamers we seem to have reached the point where we will tolerate developers or publishers who are willing to finish the game on our dollar rather than sell us a finished product.  This isn’t limited to single player games either – more than once the members of the NPNM team have bought in to presale hype and purchased a game, only to encounter an MMO that is nearly unplayable.  One classic excuse we were given by a developer for common frame rates of three frames per second was “it’s a high end game.”  In the end, even if it means I have to wait for a “game of the year” edition (or its equivalent) or do without the game altogether rather than purchase an unfinished product.

See you online,

The NPNM Team

“If there’s a bright center to the universe, you’re on the planet that it’s farthest from.” – Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker talking about the desert planet of Tatooine

“For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: all glory is fleeting.” -  George S. Patton

Gamers are a fickle lot. Every time a new mmo has an announcement date, there is always the hope that it will be the one – the one that saves all that is wrong with mmos.  The release date is reached and the virtual shores of new worlds are flooded with virtual residents.  When Warhammer Online (War) opened its doors, tier one, Empire pairing, was the place to be.  Then comes the turn of the wheel, the toss of the dice, the virtual crap shoot that is the estimation of how many servers to open.  A few months out and you could shoot a cannonball down the center of many War servers and not hit anything.  Where have they all gone? Some voices within the community will tell you that once their virtual visas are up, they will migrate back to the shores of whatever virtual home they have chosen – in many cases World of Warcraft (WoW). 

Not everyone migrates like a flock of virtual gaming birds, flitting from one mmo to the next, looking for the next fix.  Sometimes a game comes along that grabs and holds our attention. When that occurs, the inevitable race to the top ensues, where leveling proceeds at a pace that would rival the fastest land speed records.  When that goal is reached developers/publishers are beset with the problem of what carrot to dangle in front of players to keep them going.  But no matter how many carrots a developer comes up with, no matter how much content a team can create, there will always be players that can burn through it faster than it can be created.  When this happens many players log off…many but not all. 

This gives rise to the places where players go to be seen. In almost every mmo I have ever played the place players to go been seen is the bank.  What magic is it that casts the spell on players that causes them to congregate in places like the banks at Ironforge, Stormwind and Dalaran? As far back as Ultima Online (UO) I have seen players flock to the plaza in front of the bank – in UO it was the bank of Brittania.

What is it that drives players from virtual shore to virtual shore, ever seeking the certain je ne sais quoi?

Is it because, as George C. Scott surmised (or whoever wrote the script) as General Patton that we, “all admire the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, big league ball players, the toughest boxers?” Interestingly enough, that part wasn’t in the speech delivered by the real General Patton to troops in England, on May 17^th, 1944. Perhaps the real General Patton didn’t include the part about fame in his speech because he knew all glory is fleeting…Oscar Wilde, Veronica Lake , Hedy Lamarr , and Billie Holiday all died penniless.  Does America always love the major league Ball Player?  They used to love J.R. Richard, starting pitcher with the Houston Astros; by 1994 he was living under a bridge in Houston, Texas.  Perhaps as gamers our search for the next virtual fix are what keeps adding names to the list of mmos that includes,  Auto Assault, Asherons Call 2, Earth and Beyond, and Tabula Rasa…with All Points Bulletin by Real Times World’s coming way to close to the list for any kind of comfort.

Perhaps as gamers we are always seeking for that certain something, that je ne Sais qua, that bright shining center of the universe.  But when we never find it we keep driving on, keep moving, hoping to find some places where the light shines the brightest, some place where we can finally breathe easy and say “at last I have arrived.”

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Side Notes

Gold Sellers redefine the word “desperate”

If you have entered the hallowed halls of Azeroth lately, wether on the horde or alliance side, you will have seen gold sellers redefine the word “desperate.”  Gold sellers have programed hordes of synchronized sleeping bodies in routines that would turn Esther Williams green with envy.  Does this constitute gold spam if the bodies spell out the name of a web site? We aren’t sure, but we will just bet that the program that does it would be considered a hack.

Fallen Earth

Take me back

 If you are one of those who have left the province, as Icarus Studios put it in a letter to a former subscriber on the NPNM team, they are giving you a chance to re-subscribe for $10 off the first month and a “Clone Psychoactive Shot”  that has five charges of +15% experience points boost each.

State of the Game

We wanted to make sure that you all had a chance to see the content under discussion in this months State of the Game message from the Fallen Earth Development team.  You can see the content discussed below – take a look at the entire letter here.

Combat
We’ve been taking a very in-depth look at two core systems of Fallen Earth—Combat and Factions. Over the next several months we will be making changes as we continually adjust and improve these two systems.

Specifically for combat, we will be changing some of the formulas to create a more fast-paced, exciting combat experience. Major changes coming soon involve adjusting high levels of mitigation, tweaking the random damage spread and making armor require statistics (like Faction or Strength) and character level (rather than Armor Use skill). However, Armor Use skill will still determine how well armor performs. After these changes are in place, we will be making adjustments to Faction skills, Mutations and regular skills, and a balance pass for Items.

Progress Towns
Progress Towns, a PvE feature, will add all-new content to the Wasteland.

Within certain areas, factions are attempting to build new towns…while the remnants of Alec Master’s forces are trying to tear them down. In Progress Towns, players can run all new missions in an effort to build a town, from the ground up, for their Faction. While special defenses may be crafted to help protect and defend your newly formed faction town, beware, it won’t be an easy task to maintain control.

Faction Control Points
Every Faction has planted flags throughout the Wasteland to claim parts of the Grand Canyon as their own. Players who are in a PvP area or World PvP flagged can claim one of these flags for their own Faction. Claiming such a flag, or multiple flags in an area, may grant benefits such as Faction-specific guards, buffs, or harvest nodes, but you’ll have to battle it out to keep your flag flying.

Color Customization Options for Clothing
We are hard at work on introducing the next step of customization options in Fallen Earth in the form of customizable social clothing. We will do a special dev journal on this feature and are very excited to bring this to all of you!

Camp Improvements
We are also taking a look at the camps system and will be improving certain elements. With the improvements, players will have the ability to place camps on a wider selection of terrain. Additionally, camps will no longer disappear when their creator logs out or moves out of range. We hope to see this system continue to evolve and improve as we move forward.

Mobile App

We realize a lot of players are anxious for the premium mobile companion app features to be released, and you can expect to see the update available within the next few weeks on the Fallen Earth website. With the update, you will have the ability to fully craft items, send/receive in-game mail and attachments and buy/sell at the Auction House!

We’ve got lots more in store in addition to these awesome new features in the September patch, so be sure to keep an eye on the FE website! And to give a glimpse at what you can expect to see hit the server in December, we’re working on some major systems—Factions and Clan Strongholds. Stay tuned for more details!

Let's open the news to the back page...

Welcome to the back page for Friday, August 14, 2010

Yes, I said August 14th … Yes, I do know what the date really is, and it’s not that I’m superstitious or anything (knock wood). Still,  you can never be careful. O.K. so its Friday (fill in the date) during the month of August 2010.

The Man, The Legend

O.K. so Dr. Bartle is due to receive the first Online Game Legend award from the Game Developers Choice Online Awards .  Dr. Bartle co-authored the original MUD () with Roy Trubshaw . Aside from numerous articles, and being a professor at the University of Essex, he is also the author of Designing Virtual Worlds and Artificial Intelligence and Computer Games. So it’s safe to say that when it comes to designing virtual worlds, not only did Dr. Bartle write the book, he pioneered the subject it was written about.  We are pleased that Dr. Bartle is receiving the award, he is truly a legend. Don’t forget to take a look at Dr. Bartles Q’Blog about his legendary status.

Hearing Voices

What do Michael Dorn (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Blade II), Rene Auberjonois (Boston Legal, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Kris Kristofferson (The Blade Trilogy), Matthew Perry (Friends) and Wayne “Mr. LasVegas” Newton all have in common? They are all scheduled as voice actors in the next edition of our favorite game series – Fallout New Vegas. One of our favorite features in Fallout 3 was the Three Dog character who was the radio D.J. in post apocalyptic Washington D.C.  It turns out that New Vegas will have its own radio D.J. as well, voiced by none other than Wayne Newton:

“That his essence endures such desolation suggests Newton’s spirit “could almost survive anything,” says the entertainer, 68, a Vegas fixture for more than 40 years, whose show goes to the MGM Grand this fall.” – Wayne Newton, in USA Today

We aren’t hearing voices in our heads – yet.  Starting on October 19th we will be.

Just Shocking

O.K. we will admit it. No one on staff here has ever played a game in the Bioshock series. There we said it. But what we DO love is steam punk and the latest edition in the Bioshock series by Irrational, Bioshock Infinite is described as “a cross between steam punk and Star Wars Bespin Cloud City”.  One look at this trailer and we were hooked.

News of the release first came to us by way of Edge Online .  A quick search told us Bioshock Infinite is set in the air-city of Columbia in 1912.  As you can see in the trailer, the city is suspended 30,000 feet above ground by giant blimps and balloons.  Here is a description from Techland.com :

“In Bioshock Infinite‘s story, Columbia embodies a hugely public example of American ingenuity and democracy, something for the average U.S. citizen to be proud of. But, Columbia also harbors a secret. After an international incident yet to be detailed, it get revealed that Columbia’s essentially a turn-of-century Death Star, weaponized to a degree that no one was expecting. But rather than try and subjugate the country or the world, Columbia lift so high into the sky that no naked eye can see it and disappears into the clouds. Some time after Columbia’s disappearance is when the game’s story starts. Players will be controlling Booker DeWitt, a former Pinkerton agent. DeWitt’s a rough-and-tumble fixer, a man who prowled the seedy docks of New York City and busted up strikes. He gets things done for the right price. A new client needs him to find a woman named Elizabeth, who’s been imprisoned for 15 years. “ – Techland.com

Mind you we aren’t big on first person shooters (we still prefer the over the shoulder view thank you). Still we don’t care if it’s first person or not – we love the setting so much we will play the Bioshock Infinite even if the gameplay stinks like last weeks fish.

The Great Communicator

No, we aren’t talking about the late President Ronald Regan (that was one of his nicknames). What we are talking about is the way things would be if everyone followed the advice of Craig Morrison  in his latest edition to his Feeling Strangely Fine web site. He discusses forums and what we have always called “The unsilent minority”, and “Play the game, play some more, and then play some more…” The last, as he points out, is something that developers are often accused of not doing, but as listeners hear Mr. Shannon Posniewski (executive producer, Cryptic Studios) tell our listeners on Show 59 that just isn’t so.

There is a balancing point here however.  In any business good marketing is making your product meet the needs of the consumer, no matter who those consumers are. We can see what happens when a developer tries to force their community to play the game the way the developer wants – just think about Warhammer Online and the whole RvR lakes/Scenarios situation. But trying to be all things to all people doesn’t work either.  As Glen “Famine” Swan told us on Show number 55 if they gave their community everything they asked for there would be spaceships in Age of Conan.  Still, as we have all seen with World of Warcraft, simply having a game with a medieval setting doesn’t necessary preclude spaceships in the game.

La Traviata Revisited?

We love Star Trek – the entire No Prisoners, No Mercy (NPNM) team.  In fact Julie has a lifetime subscription to Star Trek Online.   This is perhaps why, when Fran and Julie were watching The Big Bang Theory recently and the show opened on the main characters playing Klingon Boggle it was a bit too close for comfort. Mind you we don’t speak Klingon, but if YOU do and will be in The Hague, Amsterdam on September 9-12 you might want to stop by the Zeebelt Theater.

According to an article that crossed our news desk recently a group called The Klingon Terran Research Ensemble will be presenting a Klingon Opera entitled “U”.   Considering the nature of Klingon we hear in the movies the whole thing has the possibility of turning out to be “La Traviata”    – but let’s hope for the best.

The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team

Riddle me this…

Quick what do Donkeys, people and multiplayer games all have in common? Give up?

They all have a**holes

Next one – this one’s easier.

What do Tabula Rasa, The Matrix Online, Auto Assault,  Asheron’s Call 2, Earth and Beyond,  Motor City Online (let’s hope Need for Speed by the same publisher does better), Hellgate London,  Fury,  Face of Mankind,  Independence Day Online, Legends of Kesmai, Sims Online, Saga of Ryzom…

And the Unions of Soviet Socialists Republic (U.S.S.R.) all have in common?

That’s right. That one’s easy. They all shut down. Yet at the beginning no one ever thought they would.  Sure, people tell themselves something like “Motor City Online” is likely to shut down one day.  But a country, for crying out loud who expects an entire country to shut down? Back in 1922 the U.S.S.R. must have seemed like a great idea. Likewise, nobody, and I mean nobody – be it developer, publisher, or investor, wakes up in the morning and says “Hey I know! Let’s make an mmo that nobody will play, lets flush our money and effort down the toilet and I mean flush hard.”

But occasionally cold hard reality slaps your plans in the face. Or as Robert Burns once put it, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men, gang aft agley”.

But why?

As Mythic (or the artists formerly known as mythic I am not sure) found out you can build it, and they will come  – but they won’t necessarily stay. Now mind you Warhammer  Online certainly hasn’t failed yet, and as we have seen with Age of Conan, it is possible for the gaming community to consider you down and out for the count, yet come back fighting much later.

We could speculate endlessly why this game or that failed, citing reasons, and giving opinions.  And opinions, as well all know, are much like the same thing that donkeys and people in the riddle above have in common – and yes everyone has one (and we don’t mean a donkey).  We could consider game mechanics, the presence or absence of an end game, the creativity (or lack thereof) of quests, and much more.  However, the one thing all these factors have in common is the players. The players are the one factor you can’t program; and that’s why we have things like emergent gameplay.

The Horseshoe Nail

There is a rhyme, quite ancient, that is often said to refer to the death of Richard III of England at the Battle of Bosworth Field:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

What has this got to do with games? Everything.  As everyone in business knows (and game developers and journalists should not but it doesn’t always seem to dawn on them) when you lose a customer you haven’t just lost a customer – you’ve gained a detractor.  And that detractor tells a friend, who tells another friend, who in turn tell still others. The whole thing continues on exponentially until it becomes an avalanche of players leaving a game like the proverbial lemmings jumping into the sea.

But it has to start somewhere.

A few nights ago I was playing Eve Online when I noticed the local chat channel flashing.  What this means, to those of you who don’t play Eve, is that the channel is active. The reason it works that way is because most players have several channels open at once.  I opened the channel to find one player berating another:

“And while you are at it, why don’t you just hire someone to read it for you.”

For those who don’t already know, Eve Online is a skill based game (which by the way immediately refutes the foolish notion that such a thing spells doom for any game that uses said system). Since Eve Online has such a wide scope (sort of like an ocean that is 6 inches deep) there are A LOT of skills.  I followed the conversation and it turns out that the experienced player was berating the new player for not finding out the answer for himself, doing his best to belittle him.

The odd part of all this was that the experienced player could have simply directed the new player to the help channel where all his questions could be answered in depth. Maybe the experienced player thought his mamma didn’t love him, maybe his dinner settled wrong on him; maybe he was simply a big fan of displaced hostility. Whatever the reason, had that been the new players first experience it might have also been his last. Fortunately another voice chimed in:

Not everyone is an ignorant sh*t.  If you have questions there is a help channel where you can get all the advice you need. Simply click the chat balloon in the up right hand corner of your chat window to find it.

The source of said voice then sent the new player a million isk for starter money. I know because I was the source of the voice. Later on it turned out that the “new player” was simply an experienced combat pilot that wanted to learn about mining and industry, and had a few questions about it. Shortly thereafter the “new player” opened a chat window, and we spoke for awhile.

“You know, I’ve never seen a nun call someone an ignorant sh*t before”

“Did I say ‘sh*t’? I meant ‘git’ of course.”

There are, of course, myriad factors at play in the success or failure of any given game, including external market conditions of which the publisher/developer has no control. The remainder of the factors, however, will begin with the players, and their reactions.  And while it may certainly be true that player “ignorant sh*t” above is but one player, collectively those like him create an atmosphere of hostility that can easily drive new players away from games. Fortunately, Eve Online doesn’t have a need for an “end game” if only because it is doubtful that anyone has ever mastered all of the skills in the game. But in games that are level driven there is a definite need to find a way to continue to interest players.

Rob Pardo once did an interview where he discussed player turn around, pointing out that there is a constant influx of players into WoW, the player base continually rotating. Now it is unlikely that anything will ever kill the 800 pound Blizzard zombie gorilla. But a game with a smaller player base is a different story (as it is with any smaller company). They can either find a carrot to tie on a stick and dangle in front of older players/customers or they can find a way to attract new players.  While new players logging on to an atmosphere of hostility is not likely to be the sole reason a game closes down, it will certainly be a contributing factor.

So let’s turn aside for a moment from you experienced players who care about your favorite game.  No, in this case I address the few a**holes present in every game.  The next time you find ranks of players thinning in your favorite game, and the future of your virtual world looks gloomy, think back on those new players you abused, look in a mirror and say to yourselves…

Pucker up Butter Cup – you caused part of the problem yourself.

For those of you who may not have noticed yet, one of our favorite websites, Lorewriter.com, has gone permanently dark – the owner of the site having gone on to bigger and better things.  Even though I appreciated it while it was there, too often we don’t appreciate something until it’s gone. There are those in artistic circles that claim the best way to become famous is to die…die young (in this case the website not it’s owner) leave a beautiful corpse and your work will certainly appreciate in value.  While the absence of a favorite web site is hardly the same as an absent friend it has given me pause to  consider one of the subjects we discussed at the end of show 58 (out soon) with Tipa from West Karana.  Here is an exchange between Samantha Murphy and the author of World of Warcraft predicts the future, William Bainbridge:

In the book you say: “WoW may have the potential to become the first real afterlife.” How?

Every movement a player makes in WoW is recorded, even their interactions with others. The avatar captures their social self. To what extent the avatar is its controller is a philosophical question, but the avatar can outlive its creator and continue functioning in WoW as a non-player character (NPC). Research is under way that will make NPCs behave more like specific people.”

As I said on the show, author Bainbridge may be a wonderful person. After all I don’t know him, not even by reputation. Still, whether one considers the concept outlandish (I do) or not, it is far from being the first concept that is “out there” of which we have received notice in our email.  Indeed, a few of the emails we have received are still floating somewhere around the outer stratosphere.

What also brought this particular subject to the forefront was the fact that our own Sister Fran has returned to World of Warcraft (WoW) after taking a break from it, and indeed all gaming, for the last 49 days.  It was easy for me to take a break from Warcraft for that long of course.  No, it was no challenge at all.  In fact, when she asked me if I wanted to run a few instances with her I replied that I would rather go to the dentist for her instead of Azeroth; the former being a bit more enjoyable for my tastes.  All this worked together to consider what it would be like if Wow was indeed a “post-religious future” as author Bainbridge suggests.  This conjured up mental image of the First Church of Pardo of perpetual subscriptions. Such would be one of my concepts of hell – stuck in Dalaran for eternity.

Leave the money and get out

Groucho Marx once said that he would never a join a club that would have him as a member. The more I think about those words, the more they ring true.  As we discussed last week, there are many aspects of the gaming industry that leaves me feeling like a commodity instead of a customer.  People like Zahn Ye, of Game Vision, on the other hand, don’t make me feel like a commodity…his concepts of free-to-play game design make me feel like he should leave a 50 on the dresser and get out.  This is far from being limited to the industry that creates one of my favorite pass times.

Some of you may remember the commercial that actor John Houseman made years ago, for investment firm Smith Barney, where he touted “We make money the old fashioned way – we earn it.” Now granted, as anyone you know who may have lived through the Great Depression in the United States can tell you, the arts tend to do well in bad economic times; it is simply a matter of a need for escapism. Still, there seems to be an inverse relationship to economic downturns that my Economics professor back in grad school never considered; lately, the worse times get, the more creative ways business finds to wheedle money out of you. Take a look at a utility bill some time and go down the list of itemized “fees”. Other business’ connected with our hobby seem to be taking a page from this notebook as well.  The FCC has been stymied in their attempts to prevent Comcast from throttling the internet to the point where playing your favorite mmo may one day be like trying to push an elephant through the neck of a beer bottle.  In some circles Zyngas game Farmville has become known as “Scamville” . Mythic Entertainment at least, is now offering to make good additional fees their customers may have encountered as the result of the recent overbilling. While it was nice to see a change in attitude, offering sincere apologies after the blogging community pointed out that what happened was hardly an “inconvenience” is a bit like asking a member of the clergy to sell you an indulgence. It felt a lot like our mothers had to tell them to apologize. Between this and people like Zhan Ye, it leaves me with a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth – kind of like someone urinated in my morning coffee.

It left me feeling that John Houseman (or someone like him) should be making a new commercial that says “we make money the old fashioned way…we steal it.” 

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

(posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster)

Yet no matter how much a developer does to answer their critics and give their customers what they want there will always be those for whom the glass is not merely half empty, but the other half is full of toxic waste. One developer who was a guest on our show once told us “if you lose a customer, you don’t just lose a customer – you gain a detractor.”  Would that it were more people had the attitude espoused by Mr. Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve:

“One thing that you hear [Valve] talk a lot about is entertainment as a service, it’s an attitude that says ‘what have I done for my customers today?’” – Gabe Newell, co-founder Valve

Still, even if it were the case – Even if the development industry was full of nothing but Gabe Newell clones the task would still be a monumental one.  To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, you can please some of the people some of the time but someone will always be ticked off all of the time. Even when you discount the customers, spoken of by Glen Swan (one of the community managers from Funcom featured on show 55) who want a spaceship in games like Age of Conan, finding a median in the often conflicting customer demands is problematic at best. It is an exercise in multiple regression that might have even befuddled Einstein.  It is something that many a developer, I am sure, has only considered possible by changing the name of the developer’s studio to “Free Lunch.”

Even that would likely not work for long for as we all should know (and don’t seem to) there is no such thing as a free lunch. Some see the “free to play” business model as the savior of the industry (or at least their little corner of it) hoping to repeat the success of Turbine.  But free to play doesn’t mean free for everyone, and if it does, doesn’t mean the entire game is free – someone, somewhere, has to pay to keep the servers open.  When Cryptic Studios first announced the subscription plus cash shop model for Champions Online, and now STO, many players seem to forget that companies like the 800 pound Blizzard Gorilla have been doing it all along; it is just recently that they have opened an actual shop instead of calling things a “fee.”  Unlike games like Allods, which is designed to be unplayable if you do not support the cash shop, STO is designed (at least so far) so that you can ignore the cash shop and never be disadvantaged. Even so, it seems that what is good for the Blizzard goose is not good for the Cryptic gander these days. It’s a bit odd, however, that those players who complain the loudest, the “un-silent minority”, are those players who no longer seem to be playing the game. It doesn’t help matters when the impression some players have of cash shops are those created by Gpotato, which seem one step short of two big guys named bubba, waiting for the players in a dark ally, demanding their wallet.

In the end, no matter what developers try there will always be those players who are not happy deciding that the game is not for them, but are determined to bring the game down and the company that makes it along with it.  There was an old expression that was prevalent when I was growing up, and is just as applicable now as it was then.  It especially applies to those whom are determined that if they don’t like a product no one else should either:

Don’t get mad and go away – just go away.

 Dear Allods Community,

We are happy to announce that we will be making revisions to a majority of the Allods Online item shop. These changes will go live sometime during the week of March 1st.

We would also like to extend a thanks to all of our players who have submitted constructive feedback through email and the forums. The team has reviewed each one of the hundreds of submissions we’ve received. We’ve restructured the pricing based upon your feedback in conjunction with the data we’ve reviewed and communication with our developer. Consequently, we’ve revised pricing so that more people can participate in this feature of the game.

Thank you all for your constructive feedback and support. Please continue to send us your thoughts to allods_suggestions@gala-net.com, and we look forward to seeing you in the game!

Sincerely,
The Allods Team

As nebulous as the wording of the announcement is, this just may be good news for all of you Allods fans out there.  On the other hand (see hand reaching out of toilet in the picture above) I wouldn’t exactly call this a matter of “being responsive” to the community.  This is the same “Allods Team” that originally announced the drastic increase in prices was intentional, despite the general outcry.  No doubt somewhere back in the home office, someone on the Allods Team that holds the purse strings saw the very real possibility of the game going down the toilet and decided that maybe…just maybe…they shouldn’t flush an otherwise great game down the toilet.

Thereby hangs a tale…

And thereby hangs a tale, as the immortal bard would have said.  Imagine if you will you walk into a auto dealership, or perhaps even the home office in Detroit.  You march in to the office of the president of General Motors – no appointment, no pleases, no “mother may I” and plop yourself down opposite that is, no doubt, an expansive desk so large that you could easily build a football stadium on it and still have room left over to subdivide lots.

Pointing out of what just may be a window with a view that shows the factory below it  stretching out like a vast kingdom, You look the  CEO dead in the eye and say the following…

“You see all those red cars down there, coming off the assembly line?  I don’t care if you have already run 10 thousand of them off the assembly line, call them all back. I don’t like the slope of the roof and I want you to change it.”

No, of course, there is a very real possibility that you would have been arrested simply for trespassing.  That is, of course, unless you happen to be the government representative that has been in charge of the last two bailouts of General Motors.  Other than that,  the only way you are likely to get off of the trespassing charge is by pleading not guilty by way of insanity - and the simple fact that you just suggested changing the design of a car after GM ran off 10 thousand of the same model means you just might win your case for mental instability.

Lets take it one step further, and closer to home.

Most people are acquainted with the term “buyer’s remorse”. For those of you who are not, that is when you buy something and find out shortly thereafter that the same item went on sale.  In fact, there are many people who seem to enjoy buyers remorse because you often see the same people (and sometimes across the breakfast table on Sundays) looking through the advertisements trying to see if your recent purchase went on sale.  Some retailers have become so conscious of this that they offer price guarantees.

Now imagine if you will that you have just purchased that shiny new computer.  You know the one. That same computer you have had your eye on for the last month. Yes, thats the one…the  one with speed that rivals a Cray supercomputer and more ram than the Sahara desert has grains of sand.   You finally decided to break down (and believe me at the prices most retailers offer you would have had to have a breakdown) and you buy it.   You take it, and the second mortgage that was necessary to buy it home.  The next Sunday you are in the mood for some angst and you purposefully go looking to see if it is on sale.   The results of your search show that in the ensuing week since your purchase, the pace of technology being what it is, your brand new computer, your brand new expensive computer has been replaced by a pocket calculator with more computing power.  Later that day finds you marching into the office of the store manager demanding a refund…

Only to be told that the reason you got the computer at such a “reasonable” price to begin with was that it was on sale.  Now you realize at this point that the whole reason your shiny new computer, which is now more useful as a boat anchor, was that the unscrupulous store manager was trying to unload them because he knew that in one weeks time they would be worth a load of dingo dung. Now in the real world, if the purchase really did cost the same as a second mortgage, and the retailer under such circumstances refused to refund your money, he would soon find himself charged with fraud by the local attorney generals office so fast it would set land speed records.  In more reasonable circumstances you simply found the computer that you bought for $900 dollars went on sale the next week for $850 dollars and there are a good many retailers that would give you store credit for the difference.

But make the same demand on a nation wide basis?

Well you can just kiss that demand goodbye before the words even leave your mouth me bucko, because the result would then be “business is business.”  But what if the same demand where made of a game publisher (assuming that publisher doesn’t have the name Activision in it anywhere and isn’t headed up by Mr. Bobby Kotick).  Lets say…oh, I don’t know, lets just pull a name out of the air and say “Atari”.   The good folks at Atari know that they are in turn owned by what is (at least in many estimates) a French company that just happens to be the largest manufacturer of video games in the world.  Now they know that the people who own their company didn’t get to be the largest manufacturer of video games in the entire world by putting up with low profit margins.   Needing to make a few more dollars to reimburse what was no doubt a very expensive game to produce they decided to have a sale, and as a result offer sixty days of free game time along with it.

If this where any other industry other than the video game industry this would no doubt be considered par for the course.   But if there is one thing that the Allods debacle has given us that is that when players really do speak their mind as one and demand that changes be made they will be made…for better or for worse. 

But what if Atari didn’t back down? What if all those Star Trek Online players out there decided to raise so much hell that Satan himself would have decided he didn’t like the competition? What if they simply decided to say “O.K. everyone out of the pool” and pull the plug on the game? Never happen? Think about the game “Gods and Heroes” that was already in closed beta and being developed by Perpetual Entertainment – you know those people who were originally developing Star Trek Online – Perpetual Entertainment pulled the plug. 

I am happy that companies like Cryptic listen to thier target market; and that they are doing no matter what some detractors may say.  It’s great that game developers take action on when demands are made.  But it can go to far, because game developement by committee doesn’t work when most of the “committeed members” don’t work for the developer.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

*Gets out her professional project manager’s hat and puts it on*

Good morning class,

 Today we are going to learn lessons that even long time professional game developers sometimes fail  to learn. Did you all bring your texts? Very good. Please turn to page 20 of the March issue of PCGamer Magazine.  Mr. No Prisoners, No Mercy Webmaster will you read for us?

webmaster: Yes ma’am.  The article is entitled “Serious Business”. It is part of a regular feature entitled “Dev Man Talking.” This month features Mr. David Brevik, Studio Director for Gazillion Entertainment. (I think he’s a smart man Ms. Whitefeather). Anyway the article is about “How do developers strike a balance between profit and artistry – former Diablo Lead Designer shares his wisdom.

Julie: Very good webmaster. Please  read the last sentence for us all.

Webmaster: Yes Ma’am. It says, “In the end, everyone wants their games to succeed.  Finding the balance between our pure artistic game concept and the realities of business will be the only way to create the complete circle of yin and yang.”

*Julie continues*

Okay class, pay attention. Today we are going to learn about price versus demand.  Everyone knows that factors like supply and demand affect the price a developer can attain for a given product.  In the video game industry, the supply of virtual goods is infinite.  The primary determinants of demand will, therefore be price, and of course the quality of the product.  Look at the chart I have put on the board class.   There you will see where Activision/Blizzard has priced their cute Panderan Monk pet.  Remember a month or so ago when every assho…every person and his brother flew into a rage about the price of a monk costing ten dollars? Now if we have done our studying we know that Blizzard sold enough of the Panderan Monks, that by donating 50% of the sales (which by the way some dirtballs have complained about) that they have raised $1.1 Million dollars for the Make-A-Wish foundation. The reason for this is that by pricing the monk at an affordable level of ten dollars the Activision/Blizzard corporation remained in what is called the inelastic portion of their demand curve. And what does that mean Webmaster?

Webmaster: Inelastic demand is when an increase in price causes a smaller percentage decrease in quanitity demanded.

Julie: Very good Mr. Webmaster. Now take a look at the demand curve for the Allods Online Cash shop.  Note the recent and drastic increase in prices that the developer Gpotato has stated is not an error.  Note the level 10 rune that our friend Keen from Keen and Graev’s gaming blog said cost six thousand eight hundred and ninety dollars.  Can you say six THOUSAND class?

Entire class:  SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS

Julie: Very good class, I knew you could. 

Webmaster:  Times are tough teacher, Gpotato must think we have money coming out of our ass!

Julie: Yes, that’s funny that you should put it quite that way Mr. Webmaster. Now lets look at the price demand curve again.  The Allods Online cash  shop is far into what is called the elastic portion of their demand curve. What does that mean Mr. Webmaster?

Webmaster: That’s where an increase in prices causes a greater percentage decrease in the quantity demanded.

Julie: Very good.  And with such dramatic increases in price where have the profits for Allods online gone Mr. Webmaster?

Webmaster: In the toilet with the rest of the crap.

Julie: And?

Webmaster: And unless they wake up, and pull their collective heads out of their bums, unless they have a parent corporation that is floating in cash, like say a drug cartel, they can kiss their game goodbye.

Julie: Very good Mr. Webmaster. Go to the head of the class.

As the chief engineer reports during the maiden voyage of the “Stargazer-E” (depicted above), the 10^th Rule of Acquisition states “greed is eternal.” 

The Stargazer-E is a heavy cruiser, and like all ships in Star Trek Online (STO) upon reaching the next full rank, the first one is free. Well…free only in the sense that you have earned enough merit by completing missions, both pvp and pve, to earn rank.  “Rank” in this case is Ensign, Lieutenant, Lieutenant-Commander, Commander, Captain, and Rear-Admiral with 10 grades in between each major rank.  As always, of course, there are those detractors, who will continue to insist that STO is a bad game based on a single, if not well thought out, justification “because they said so” – and believe you me their justification certainly is not well thought out.  As my character stood there at the promotion ceremony (depicted below) several thoughts ran though my mind…

The first, of course, is that you can tell when people are engrossed in the game when they bother with an optional promotion ceremony (there was a line to do this). The second thought was about the merit that is part and parcel, and least in some part, to obtaining bridge officers and their training.  If you want to requisition personal equipment for ground combat, as well as Star Ship equipment, you must earn medals such as medals of achievement, and medals of bravery. You can, of course, purchase lower level equipment from vendors or for sale by other players through the exchange. The quality of the game mechanic that uses Star Fleet merit (all you WoW players can think of it like honor…sort of) and medals is that they can’t be sold or traded. And that is where the 10^th Rule of Acquisition comes in to play.

Greed is Eternal…

Never underestimate the incredible drawing power of greed.  Richard Garriott once described World of Warcraft as being “a system of inventory management.”  This may be (and it certainly is) but the simple fact of the matter is that greed works. 

The 287^th Rule of Acquisition…

The 287^th Rule of Acquisition, which I shall unabashedly call Julie’s Rule, is An MMO is not just a game – it is a service and a business.  And as a business, the goal of the publisher of every mmo is to make a Dollar, Yen, Kroner, Won, Euro or any of the other myriad currencies.  As such it is obviously their goal to keep players interested in playing the game, even when they run out of levels.  The biggest hindrance to this of course is the players who rush to the level cap and say “so now what do I do?”

It is not enough I succeed…

If the gamer who participates in an mmo is to be kept interested there are several possibilities, the hardest of which is simply providing more to do.  That “more” can take several forms, such as actual game content, meaningless achievements (hey, at least you get a pop up window right), and the easiest way espoused by the 288^th Rule of Acquisition (which I call Pardo’s rule)…

It is not enough to succeed, you must been seen to succeed.

After all, what good is it to have obtained the “uber sword of uberness” if it looks just like any other run of the mill sword. The uber sword of uberness must look resplendent; it must shine like the sun, it must hum with power and inspire all who gaze upon it with envy (or at least awe).  Let’s face it, what people really mean when a game developer sells a cosmetic perk is that they don’t want anyone else to get it the same perk the easy way.  Players want to be able to engage in the age old (well maybe not age old as the tradition doesn’t go back much further then Ultima Online and maybe Meridian 59) tradition of bank sitting. Bank sitting is, of course, where players gather, a place where they go to be seen.  Everyone wears what grandmother used to call their “Sunday go to meeting best.”  This, after all, is why people earn the uber armor of uberness…not just be able to get even better armor but to show other players they have earned it.

The Uber Starship of Uberness

Recently the executive producer of Star Trek Online, Craig Zinkievich, announced the intent of Cryptic Studios (developer of STO) to expand the ship interiors available to players. This, of course, presents a tremendous opportunity for Cryptic Studios and where to take end game.

Anyone who has ever played Everquest 2 (EQ2) knows that one of the major pastimes is being able to purchase ever larger player housing.  But the outside of that player housing all looks the same. When I purchased a home on number 1 Antonya Bayle Lane I entered my house through the same door as everyone else.  The interior of that house was the same as everyone else who owned that same house.  What was different was how the house was decorated. The decoration system in EQ2 was second to none. You could put furniture anywhere.  It wasn’t like Lord of the Rings Online where you can only put certain bits and bobs of décor in a certain (and very limited) number of pre-set positions. Some of the furniture could be made of course, but much of the best pieces had to be earned. If STO where to take a page from this particular book and allow the uber (insert name of cosmetic ship or personal item here) to be earned but only with merit or medals so much the better. The drive then, or course, is for currency that can’t be sold by the ever infamous “gold sellers.”

However it works out it is certain that those who denigrate STO simply because they have a burr under their proverbial tail will continue to do so. The rest of us will continue to enjoy the game including the raid content, the borg content, and the ship interiors when their time comes. Until then…

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

(posted by The Webmaster for Julie Whitefeather)

One of the subjects that was suggested by Saylah of Mystic Worlds (and one that I am sure we will end up using) was to have a show were we had another round table discussion about what each of the guests looks for in Star Trek Online (STO) and in Eve Online.  This would, of course, necessitate using guests that have played, one or the other or both. Fortunately we know people (including members of the No Prisoners, No Mercy Team) who fall along all three of the delineations. 

One of the factors in what a gamer looks for  in a new game may very well be not finding it in the last game they played. It was not that long ago that I read an article about marketing mmos that pointed out that when someone leaves your game, you don’t just lose a subscriber, you gain a detractor.  That is certainly true – at least in many cases.  

Sometimes people leave a game because they are bored with it.

However, leaving a game because you are bored with it doesn’t necessarily mean there is something wrong with the game you have left. Perhaps it has run the course of your interest, or you just don’t feel like leveling up yet another alt. “Bored” can come in several shades of meaning where games are concerned.  You can be bored with a game mechanic, bored with the content, and bored with the boors.

In Aion Online I left purely because of some of the game mechanics used.  Both Star Trek Online and Aion Online make use of quests that can be repeated.  The difference between the two is that in Star Trek Online not only do the parameters of the quest/mission change, so do the settings themselves.  This is one of the benefits of using instanced content – the setting change be changed every time it is entered. procedural generation can be used, generating content algorithmically rather than manually, creating a level that changes whenever the game needs it to, the player needs it to or both.  Hellgate London made use of this technique extensively to keep content fresh. There is a nice discussion of procedural generation here. In the end, it was because Aion Onlines repeatable quests were about nothing more than “go kill 10 more rats” that bored me to distraction.

Now and then a case presents itelf where the market presents the player with a new opportunity in the same genre.   This, of course, is one of the benefits of competition in the market place – it can, and often does, drive improvements in the product being marketed as the manufacturers of the product vie for both the consumer’s attention and dollars.  A limiting factor in this particular case occurs when the product addresses what is a limited market. Many is the time that a large manufacturer doesn’t address the needs of a smaller market because by definition that market is limited, and in turn limits viability and profitability – and so we have what gamers have come to call the “niche market”.  In this particular case Star Trek Online has an intellectual property (IP) that may very well expand the number of players that are interested in a game with an outer space theme.  Caution should also be taken any time we consider that a given market is only “so big”.  If nothing else, one of the lessons that the success of World of Warcraft taught us is that the market can surprise us by being bigger than our estimation of it.

On rare occasion, as the No Prisoners, No Mercy Team is seeing in the case of Eve Online versus Star Trek Online,  detractors come out of the woodwork, not because they have left a given game, but rather because they still play it.  As I have always said, hell hath no fury like a gamer whose game has been scorned.   Lately we have received an increasing number of spams by individuals who purport to be Eve Online players (they may just be people who simply don’t like us…in that case the line starts to the left, make sure to take a number).  The general nature of the spams (or so I am told – I never check the spam filter, I just hit the “delete” button) when we write about Star Trek Online often turns to those individuals who feel it is necessary to enlighten us as to all that is wrong with STO.  The webmaster tells me that the missives go on to attempt to convince us how much superior one product is over the other, and that a truly unenlightened being wouldn’t dare play a game of which the author of the email does not approve.

I will borrow an analogy from Tobold and say that I don’t like cooked carrots (it changes the flavor). That doesn’t mean the carrot is bad simply because I don’t like the flavor after it is cooked. Likewise there is nothing intrinsically wrong with either Star Trek Online nor Eve Onine.  However, in the case of Eve Online, one of the lessons to be had from games such as Warhammer Online come in to play: Mark Jacobs pointed out that the major game mechanic that embodied the reason for Warhammer Online was the realm versus realm combat.   What I saw, while I was playing the game were the many players who took the path of least resistance and spent their time in scenarios (battlegrounds for all you World of Warcraft players out there).  In the end, no matter how Mythic Entertainment tried to entice players out of the scenarios, they couldn’t control how their customers made use of their product. Likewise the developers at CCP may be incredibly talented, but short of actions that would drive away many of their long time customers there is no way to control the way Eve Online players use their product.  Beau Turkey once wrote an interesting article where he maintained that Eve Online was a pve game (I will try and find the url later).   Even if CCP did want the game to be geared toward pve there is very little that can be done to keep it that way if their customers chose to do otherwise. As a senior producer friend of my said, “gamers will always find the path of least resistance.”

In the end there are many games likeEve Online where the developers either can’t, won’t, or don’t care to even attempt to change the way their product is used.  And that is often where the “bored with the boors” enters the picture.  The odd little side effect of that particular quality, that shade of the word “boredom” comes into play when those individuals who have chosen one path in their pursuit of happiness feel the need to enlighten those “poor souls” who “just don’t understand.”  We often see individuals who have not only been busy hurling handfuls of crap over into our virtual back yard when they see things in a different light than we, but sometimes include their e-peen measuring stick…to which I can only reply, “we’re nuns,and we don’t care about your e-peen”.  I might also add that some of those measuring sticks are very, very small.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather