Tag Archives: design

NDA’s Are Bad

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Let’s say you have a new product coming to market.  You budget about 10% of your overall budget to PR.  That’s a fair chunk of change on a $100 million project.  Now let’s say you realize later on a few things.  You have something that exceeded your expectations and you think there’s solid interest.  You also realize that your PR budget allocation wasn’t well allocated, in that what you spent didn’t really get you much or that you spent the money elsewhere.

Today’s internet is exponentially more interconnected and fast than 5 years ago.  I get a dozen tweets a day, multiple facebook posts, tons of feedly, a sub-Reddit and then the old school emails.  I can watch a stream on twitch or a series on youtube, with voice commentary.  What a team of 10 can do for a company pales in comparison to what 1 person with social skills and a solid social network can do (e.g. the Lazy Gamer comes to mind).

You know what NDA’s do?  They protect assets from espionage (no really, that’s what they are for).  The end result is that any word of mouth becomes basement driven and usually negative.  People are much more willing to be skeptical than trusting, certainly without evidence.  One post that says “stay far away” without content to back it up will do more damage than a PR video showing combat.

NDA’s today serve a single purpose in the minds of gamers.  They hide bad games from the masses until launch.  Aliens – Colonial Marines is a prime example.  Movies that do not have critic screenings are the same (R.I.P.D. is a recent example).  You either are confident in your product when you allow people to test it or you are not.

That brings me to the elephant in the room.  EQ Landmark dropped their NDA yesterday upon launch of alpha.  Alpha is before beta and always lacking polish.  But given that it cost $60 to get into alpha, they know everyone wants to have a good experience, so they are likely to talk about it in a positive light, even if there are bugs.  This is a really smart move because you now have a few thousand people talking about your game and generating hype. WildStar is driving me mad with their player streams because it looks just like the game I’ve wanted to play for years.

If TESO doesn’t open the doors this coming week, or Bethesda doesn’t start with a massive PR blitz, I have a strong feeling that they are going to get swept under the rug.  My Feedly on that game is near dry right now, and you know it’s going to fill up with EQ:L soon.

Dungeon Keeper and Gamification

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Last told, I installed Dungeon Keeper on my tablet to give it to the man.  The man being EA.  DK is in the same vein as all the other Clash of Clans clones – though I’m not sure anymore which came first.

Anyhow, the premise is simple.  You have a base, you can build things on the base to increase your offense and your defense.   You can summon a squad of monsters to attack other players (offline PvP).  Everything is managed through 2 main resources.  Gold and some alternate.  In DK, this is stone.  All items can be upgraded, which takes time and a minion of sorts.  You buy more minions with real cash.  Most games start with 2, then give you a 3rd one after a few weeks of play through alternate means.

Upgrades are the meat and potatoes of this game and where the real world cash impact occurs.  An upgrade can take 5 minutes or 2 days, and you can speed it up.  You should be spending money for time not for anything else.  At least, that’s the defacto model for these types of games.

The other resources work on a balance approach.  You can harvest them on the base, typically at a decent enough rate to pay for a low level upgrade in an hour or so.  The start of the game is usually pretty quick, to get you into the meat of it all.  You can attack other players, but that’s usually not forced for the first 2 days.  Raiding others typically returns enough materials to equate to 10 or so harvesting hours.  You just have to be strategic of your targets and your minions.

EA being EA, they went a different route.  There’s a tutorial (in all of these games) that lays out the basics and sends you on your way.  Typically after the tutorial, you can play for a solid hour tinkering around and then come back every 30 minutes to tweak some upgrades.  It keeps you interested.  EA decided to end the tutorial against a money wall.  You harvest ~100 resources per hour and the first upgrade is 5,000.  The second is 15,000 and the third is 50,000.  My harvesting spots are at their current maximum level without upgrading the “heart” of the base.  They take 10 hours to make 1,500 resource each and the upgrade in the middle is 50,000.  That works out to 60 hours of waiting.

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Raiding other bases doesn’t work much either, since they are in the same boat.  A solid 90% of the bases are under 1,500 resources each.  It costs me about 1,000 resource to get those.  At best I make 500.  Out of 50,000.

And I won’t get into base redesign, where the largest and most important part of your base cannot be moved.

I think it’s pretty funny that they could have taken a direct copy of any of the dozens of Clash of Clans clones, used the exact same mechanics and provided a better game.  I mean literally, cut and paste the system but change the art.  Zynga would not have messed this up.

Way to keep up the good work EA.

Setting Expectations

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Jewel has a post on the apparently bad vibes on the TESO Collector’s Edition.  I put in a few comments and that got my wheels spinning for my own post. Related to that original post, know that I never by a CE. I haven’t bought a box for a PC game in nearly 5 years.

I mention the project I’m on from time to time.  500,000 users are there so setting expectations is so vitally important for success that I would say it’s above and beyond anything else.  If you promise the BMW and deliver a Ford, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Gartner Hype Cycle

Absolutely every single product goes through this cycle.  The only difference is how high the peaks and valleys become and how long you stay there.  iOS is in a valley right now, android in a peak.  WoW, at the tail of of an expansion is in productivity mode but WoD news is restarting the cycle on the way up to a peak.

First, a flashback to 3 previous big name games.  Star Trek Online, Rift and Star Wars TOR.

Star Trek Online

Had a closed beta, massive NDA up until a month before launch.  Stress tests and open betas meant the game was largely unplayable for the masses before launch.  The hype machine was on though, so most people were at a peak when the game launched.  A month later, the valley appeared.

Rift

This had no PR for a long time (and a name change) then it decided to do a near 3 month open beta.  Word of mouth was extremely positive and the peak was sustained well after launch. I know I bought a year’s sub because of that beta and the positive hype from other players.  People were able to explain the Rifts, dungeons and player customizations to other players.  You knew what you were buying.

Star Wars

Super hype machine here.  Remember those videos?  Super closed beta (I was in it), massive character wipes, very little word of mouth on the game.  The game launched at least 2 months early, hit the peak in the first couple weeks and then hit the valley.  They had an over 90% server consolidation before month 6.  No one who bought the game really had a clue as to what they were getting into, other than Star Wars!!1!

Now for the two next ones.

The Elder Scrolls

There is no hype machine here.  If anything, word of mouth and community engagement has been abysmal.  The recent grouping video aside, what has anyone seen that would say “I want to play that”.  Beta is ongoing, many people did the stress test.  There’s a huge NDA and the game is launching in 2 months.  There doesn’t seem to be a peak for this game and that’s a real shame.  There’s a bunch of new ideas, new playstyles but the general vibe is so darn negative and Bethesda has done next to nothing to fix that.  If you asked me what there was to do in the game, I would be very hard pressed to say anything other than PvP right now, because I haven’t heard or seen anything else.

WildStar

Pretty decent hype machine here.  Up until the holidays, there was a weekly reveal with video.  Now it’s more sporadic.  Closed beta is active but the NDA only covers 15+, so it’s easy to find a stream of the game or data.  General player vibe is very positive.  There are AMAs, discussions with the developers, integration into a bunch of fan sites which is doing a decent job of hype.  I know there’s going to be guilds (with a different set of mechanics), dungeons, raids, PvP, housing, warplots, costumes, character diversity, 4 alternative paths…I can do these things from start to finish.’

 

Clearly, I am aiming more for WildStar to succeed here because I have a better understanding of expectations and people playing the beta are having fun.  TESO still has time to turn things around.  Drop that NDA, get people playing, get the videos out, get the AMAs.  Do something people, there’s a tremendous opportunity here.

What is Niche Today?

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I mean really?  Is EvE niche?  They are near 500,000 subscribers.  SWTOR?  They pulled in $132 million and have a few million players.  How about EQ, who was at the forefront for a few years but never hit the million mark?  Maybe Lineage is niche because no one in the west plays?

I read statements about niche products (such as Pantheon) and have to scratch my head.

In 2004, the average MMO player was 26, half had full-time jobs, a quarter had kids.  80% played with someone they knew.  Bell curve that out for 10 years (wow, it’s been a while) and you’re looking at a much older MMO crowd.

The total subscription market has already peaked (in 2011) and has dropped from 22M to 18M.  That’s 2008 levels – so mid WotLK.  A 20% drop is a lot of money.  Now this isn’t in terms of active players, given the rise of F2P.  That market is clearly growing.  WoW made $200M in micro-transactions.  They have about 2M US subscribers, so that’s $300M.  Think about that a second, WoW makes nearly as much money in micros as it does in subscriptions….and they make next to no subscriptions in Asia.

So while subscription games are waning, there’s evidently more people playing and more money to be had.  MMO’s as a genre can no longer be called niche.  Can games within the genre be niche?  Is that from a design perspective or from a market perspective?

Game design is simple.  Get money, make a product, sell product for more than you paid. Any game that doesn’t follow that mentality either gets cancelled or shut down.  Niche, today, just seems like an excuse for when this happens.

Cohesive Design

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Going to deviate a bit here, or rather return to a favorite topic – design.

I read the following article on Gamasutra from Stephan Frost on how to manage development of an MMORPG.  It got the brain juices flowing.  First, background.

I work in IT as a lead systems integrator/architect.  My job is to take extremely complex systems and make sure all the pieces fit together, while meeting business, security and functional requirements.  That pretty much means, on budget, on spec and on time.  My current project has about 500,000 clients and a team of about 100 working on it.  Ok, background complete.

If you played the recent Deus Ex you (and the world) noticed that the boss fights in that game made no sense when compared to the rest of the world.  The former was all run&gun and the latter was extremely open ended.  That’s a lack of systems integration, where people use the same tools, have the same goals but get there in different fashions.  It creates a jarring feel when players go through it.

Independent Design

Independent Design

In the MMO space, there’s the leveling game and the max level game and, for the most part, these systems are also not integrated.  WoW has next to no links between the various systems – pet battles don’t mess with scenarios don’t mess with raids, etc…  It means there’s no conflicts between systems but it also makes it feel as separate games.  GW2 has an interesting approach where all content is auto-leveled.  RIFT links a few systems together, mostly around you know, rifts…

For a team of 100+ people to work together and ensure a cohesive experience for the consumer, they need solid direction.  In IT, certainly architecture, we have Concepts of Operation (ConOps) and architecture designs at the reference, technical and detailed level.  The ConOps gives a high level picture of how the client is going to consume the service and sets expectations.  You’d see raids, housing, crafting, exploration in a ConOps, including how they interlink.  A reference architecture is a ‘behind closed doors’ guide for similar systems.  Say a art style guide, so that all the assets are similar.  A technical architecture is one level deeper, explaining the various components in that system.  A raid guide would say something like, it has 24 people, this type of class diversity, this number of bosses, the expected completion time, and how it interlinks with other systems (tokens, crafting, etc…).  The detailed architecture is explicit in design.  It would be for a single raid, explain the flow of the zone, the boss abilities, themes and so on.

Think about the WotLK expansion and the raids that came from it.  Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader were extreme opposites in terms of detailed design.  Before someone started coding those zones, there had to be a plan for people to connect to and milestones to reach. Raids don’t just magically appear from some code.

Now think about how an entire game maps out, with 20+ teams working on their various systems.  Classes, crafting, zone design, quest design, lore design, raids, housing, travel, art design.  Either they work in silos for 2 years and meet later on, in a massive clash of conflict or you plan it out right so that each one accounts for the other and there’s an open path of communication.  Jim in the housing group says to the other leads, “Hey, I think it would be great if we could see housing items acquired in other systems.  It would give prestige to players and provide an extra carrot in the other systems”.  “What a great idea! Let’s see how we can work it in.”

Integrated Design

Integrated Design

From a player perspective, it means that each system has an impact on the other and that you can make progress across the entire game, regardless of what system you prefer.  You like to craft?  Well, it’s used in housing, raiding and questing.  You like exploring?  It impacts the world by putting in trade routes and creating new spawns.  It means that when you move from one system to another, you don’t have to learn a completely new game.

I really appreciate Stephan’s post on the matter.  It provides clarity on the complexity of system design.  Hopefully more developers can provide similar insight into their work styles.

 

Start of the Dominos

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4 MMOs in one shot.  Is that a grand slam?  As reported in a few spots now, SOE is taking the bold move of shutting down some MMOs.  Pretty much half of their line up, since all that’s left is Planetside 1/2, DCUO and EQ 1/2.  Let’s go over what’s going bye bye.

Free Realms

This was the first, at least to my knowledge, F2P-from-the-start western game.  I’m pretty sure Smedley had his kids design it, what with the significant focus on pets and cusotmization.  It certainly had monetization done right and laid the groundwork for many games to follow.  I honestly thought this was the most successful F2P game in SOE’s lineup but perhaps the playerbase just moved on to less aggressive models.

Star Wars: Clone War Adventures

I actually beta-ed this one.  Just a set of mini games from a lobby.  The best part of Star Wars in 30 years took an arrow to the knee when Lucas cancelled the show.  Selling to Disney certainly did not help with license renewal.  I fully expect a Disney Infinity tie-in by summer.

Wizardry Online

You remember this one, what with the permanent death penalty and absolutely horrible western reception?  No?  Well that makes sense.  This game was pretty much proof that a an Eastern F2P designed game won’t work in the west.  I am surprised it lasted this long as it exemplified pretty much everything western audiences hate about F2P and gaming in general (low risk vs. reward tolerance).

Vanguard

Considering the money SOE threw at this game, I was a little surprised.  Perhaps it’s the result (or cause) of McQuaid’s kickstarter.  I played it for a while and to be honest, it’s a game with great ambition and next to zero follow through.  I find it odd that Istaria is still around and Vanguard is going away, given they both had similar ambitions – just minus the whole “Brad”.  For some time now, I’ve been under the impression that Brad McQuaid got lucky with EQ in that there was no real 3d competition at the time.  He did bring uncompromising vision to the genre, it would have been nice to see that in other games.

What’s it all mean?

Very little to be honest.  All the games were aiming for a market that moved on to greener pastures.  Your MMO is either here, showing signs of life, or it’s dead.  It looks like SOE is throwing a lot of money into EQN/Landmark.  Should be an interesting 2014.

Power Gains

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Clearly, I play a lot of games.  I also have a passion for numbers.  Makes for a rather OCD compulsion to maximize output.  I don’t mind, I get pleasure from it.  I used to write guides (the last one was for Marvel Heroes) and that’s paid for this hobby.  What I find as an odd pattern is the oddly non-linear power gains.

Let’s take a step back for a bit.  Older games had no power gains, what you started with was pretty much what you ended up with.  Mario doesn’t get stronger in Zone 8, you just get better at playing with him.  The proliferation of RPGs since then, combined with faster processing power to compute those numbers, means that nearly no game today will release without some power increase over time.

I like the Batman series as the power gains are % based and somewhat linear.  Sure, you might get a bit stronger, say double from the start, but that really doesn’t have a huge impact.  You are exceptionally better at stringing combos and avoiding damage by the time the power unlocks are available, so you really don’t notice all that much.

MMORPGs are different.  You start off dealing say, 10 damage.  It’s a rather linear gain from that point until max level, which we’ll put at 100 damage.  This is base damage, linked to level.  Then we need to factor in your equipment.  Well designed games have gear that increases your output by a noticeable but still marginal increase.  This way, as you gain power at max level, through gear, you’re not turning into some robot god of immortality where all the previous content is irrelevant.

WoW’s power gains are an extreme example.  One piece of gear in MoP is better than some characters had as TOTALs in Lich King.  The numeric increases are so large, that they offset any base level (acquired from just plain leveling) gains.  The item squish coming in WoD is going to try to fix this.  I personally think this is a good thing, as the game will return to a skill-based one rather than a simple numbers game.

I’m watching streams of a space beta, recollecting my time in another beta and trying to come to terms with which one, from a playstyle perspective, seems more prone to a skill-based system rather than a numeric one.  I like skill.  I think gear has it’s place, as a reward for skill, in that once you acquire it, you need to concentrate less on details more on delivery.  It doesn’t make content trivial, or rather should not.  It just takes a bit of the edge off.

I’d like to see a return to brain power, instead of CPU power.  I think we’re ready.

Control Schemes

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I’ve been playing video games since Pong and at each iteration, there seems to be a more and more complex control scheme to get things done.  We’ve gone from turning a single know to having 100+ keys to press, sometimes 4-5 at a time.

Back in the day, sometimes the control scheme itself was the game.  Good luck getting Arkanoid/Breakout to work with a crappy mouse.  X-Wing/TIE Fighter with a joystick?  No chance.  Ever try to play street fighter on a controller without 6 attack buttons?  Once you have the controls down, then the game had a completely different light.  Sure, they were challenging as games, but just understanding how to play them was enough of a battle.

I remember the original adventure games, mostly from Sierra.  They were all text entry based, no need for a mouse at all.  Then a few standouts, LucasArts most notably, prompted the adventure game to go into the mouse business.  The game was still an adventure but try to argue that finding the right sequence of words to get things done wasn’t half the battle in the first place.  “Set sights on gun” got me killed in Police Quest for a few weeks.

The Wii / Kinect / Move phase…what a fun 5 years that was.

When we start looking at the MMORPG genre, the original games where pretty limiting.  Mouse was for movement and text was for doing things.  UO was a ton of fun typing in (or more specifically macroing) spells.  Everquest’s skill based system changed the paradigm a bit.  Now you had skill buttons to click with the mouse but the actual timing was pretty simple.  Well, maybe not bards.  WoW was next, at least as a big dog in the playground.

Now comes the age of the keyboard turner.  WASD was the default movement on games for nearly 15 years by this point.  WoW supported it, and built nearly all their mechanics around it.  By then providing challenging content that required ever increasing reflexes, keyboard movement became the next hurdle.  If you didn’t understand circle strafing (which most no one outside of FPS did), then you needed to learn a new skill.  Naxx and the Heigan Safety Dance is a perfect example of an encounter designed around control scheme and nothing else.

WoW’s skill bloat certainly didn’t help anything.  A poor default UI (the UI today is built nearly entirely on community mods) led to complex classes needing automated systems.  HealBot is a super example of a single UI element that combines multiple entries.  With a simple click you can do 4-5 things at once.  Great!  Shitty design that you actually need this mod to play the game though!

SWTOR followed in the skill bloat problem and then tried to make money off the problem with hotbars.  That was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back as nearly every other game that’s come out since then has a limited skill bar.  Sure, you still have 20-30 abilities to choose from but you can only ever use a small subset (~10) in any given fight.  This makes it a lot easier on the player to figure out what to do and easier to balance as well.  It makes for a smaller, more intuitive UI.

The next big change was active combat.  This stemmed from a WoW addon that put markers on your screen to avoid certain spots to not take damage.  As the game grew, more and more of these “red circles” showed up to the point where today’s games run near exclusive on that model.  NeverWinter’s combat is all about this.  There’s more active dodging than anything else.  Small amount of skills, plenty of movement, makes for a highly skilled game.

Now we start looking at the next two games coming down the road.  TESO uses a telegraph model, similar to WoW.  It also has a very limited active skill set.  Combat is relatively slow, which allows for some strategy.  Admittedly, this is extrapolated from PR footage but combat so far seems to be more around the “sort of do this” style that thoughtful, targeted motions.  Soft targeting is a large part of this.  Think of shooting a fireball in Skyrim.  The farther away you are, the less likely you are to hit a moving target.  A fireball in WoW hits 100% of the time if you have a target.  Players will have a challenge adapting to this more analog system of “sort of hit” compared to the digital one where “it hit or it didn’t”.

Wildstar uses a hardlock system, telegraph combat and a limited (though seemingly less limited than TESO) combat model.  If you’ve seen any videos it looks like WoW on crack.  There is constant movement, constant attacks and differing types of attacks within the same skill.  Press and hold for more damage, AE attacks (with 5 corresponding colors), multizone attacks (hit 1,2 or 3 times).  Think about that a second.  You need to be constantly moving, which means Mouse + WASD.  You need to be pressing buttons, aiming AE attacks and holding buttons down.  This is mouse + holding keys.

I want you to take a minute the next time you’re at a computer and hold your mouse in one hand, W+S pressed down in the other, then press and hold the 6 key while making circles with the mouse pointer.  We’re really at this point?  What kind of physical skill level is now required to play games?

I’m running out of hands.

All You Need to Know

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Recent studies about digital sales in the US, which drives the majority of game development we hear about, shows the spread of targets.  This ignores games from the East and Europe, mostly.

This doesn’t show competition, which is much greater in the F2P field than in the subscription field.  MMORPG’s list of games has F2P ahead by nearly 5:1 in terms of quantity of games (again, not quality).

The point of this post is that video games are a business.  Businesses succeed where the money is and investors are more likely to take a chance in a big pot of money than a smaller one.

There is a ton of money opportunity in the F2P sphere compared to subscriptions.  Same with competition with Mobile and PC DLC.  If you’re wondering why your subscription game isn’t working out, sometimes it isn’t about the game itself but every other game around it.  If a game takes $200 million to make your game and your potential market share is 9%…and you only get a small slice of that 9%… the math is pretty easy to see.

The market has shifted drastically from a few years ago.

Quick Things

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Computer capped out, trying hard to get it fixed. Everything is on mobile while commuting. Should be done by end of weekend. You forgot how much crap you accumulate until it’s gone.

I think the following article is an excellent proof that game design today is done wrong. Square announced 2013 finally put Lara Croft in the black.

Think about that a second. A game that sells 4 million+ units barely turned a profit. What kind of budget are these games working with? How can you possibly use a new IP with that kind of budget?

How can the game medium move forward if games can only be successful if they sell 5 million copies. How many games a year sell more than 1 million? 

Just boggles the mind.