No, We Just Can’t Have Nice Things, Can We?
This probably isn’t going to be a popular entry with some of you. But you know what? Some things just need to be said.
So, checking my bloglines, Abalieno (the Hedda Hopper of MMOs) has some surprising and disturbing news: Jeff Freeman, a designer at SOE Austin, yanked his blog after yet another “OMG LOOK WHAT HE SAID!!1!” post on the SWG forums linked to it.
Now, it quite obviously wasn’t corporate pressure that caused this – after all, SOE folks from John Smedley on down have plenty of blogs, and Raph Koster’s is probably the most visible in the industry. No, it was a feeling I’ve often felt after many an inopportune post – the feeling that your customers are using your words as a cudgel with which to beat your coworkers.
And, let me tell you. That feeling SUCKS. Working on an MMO is (and I’m trying not to be overly dramatic here ) in some ways a lot like serving in a warship during battle. You get a lot of crazy stuff crossing your desk each day, and a lot of silly stuff, and you rage a lot at pretty much everyone within arms’ reach, but at the end of the day? You are crazily loyal to your shipmates. They’re right there with you, and you rely on them to get through each day without yet another ulcer, and they rely on you the same way. And don’t get me wrong – most of the time it’s worth every pain in the gut. I really, really like reading reactions to patch notes I helped bring about and watching people go “woah, cool”. It’s why I’m on this crazy train.
And when you wax philisophic on your personal blog, as generally as you think possible, and it’s picked up and used as a stick to beat you and your coworkers with over Incredibly Important Issue #73075 on your game’s message board? That feeling SUCKS. You let your team down. They’re taking hits now and it is YOUR FAULT.
In my time at Mythic, I’ve always had the ultimate cop-out – I don’t actually work on design. I’m a coder. I fix things. Don’t get me wrong – I can pick out a WHOLE RAFT of things our players are mad about that are directly, 100% my stupid fault (and no, I’m not going to actually TELL YOU which they are, because I still have a small shred of self-preservation active) but the game’s design issues aren’t on that list. And that’s what most game message board posters care about. (Although I still can’t get through 3 pages of the VN boards without wincing and going “oof, my bad”)
So when a designer of an MMO has a blog, he’s going to take some hits just for being a designer. And when that game makes, by any measure whatever, some radical and controversial decisions about its future, that designer is going to be second- third- and fourth- guessed by players who want someone to string up and lynch for My World Gone Awry.
And you know what? Lynching isn’t in anyone’s job description. Not even the community people – after a certain point the abuse goes past a point that even they’re paid to put up with. So, without exchanging a single word with Jeff in… well… ever, I can totally understand where he’s coming from. He doesn’t want to be the stick that’s used to beat his team with.
And this is really unfortunate, because the industry NEEDS feedback, both from the players to the designers and from the designers back to the players. Hell, I’m a firm believer that the design of a game needs to be clearly communicated so that a player can actually come to the conclusion “I don’t want to be here”. I don’t want unhappy people in my game. If my game is not for you, I don’t want you to waste your time and money on something that will make you miserable. Yeah, millions of customers would be great, and yeah, it’s not the designer’s game but the players, and you know what? At the end of the day, if you’re not having fun, stop. I think I repeated that phrase 6 times in my book, and I say it two or three times every player gathering I go to. Because I believe it really strongly, and I think that the disconnect between “why am I here” and “why aren’t they listening to me” is one of the most toxic elements of any massively multiplayer community.
But players don’t want to hear that. They want to hear “you are listening to me, and you agree with me, and you’re going to do what we think is best for the game, because we know the game better than you.” (Which, most of the time, is correct, I’ll grant you.) And when they hear something different, they go absolutely ballistic.
So the next time you wonder why more MMO designers don’t have blogs, or post on message boards? Yeah. We can’t have nice things.
(Before you think this is some kind of windup for me shutting down my own blog? Yeah, my co-workers only wish I were that smart.)
What you are saying is true Brian. I wasn’t trying to justify it. I was trying to explain what happened and why it happened and why THIS CASE is different then generic forum rage.
I didn’t say it was right only that: THATS HOW IT IS in this case. Don’t personalize this to me. I didn’t do it.
The final point being, if you don’t treat your customers fairly, there is a good chance they won’t treat you fairly either. Why doesn’t this apply to you and Scott? Goe said it first thing:
“Smart enough to avoid the need.”
Come on guys. The answer to this is not hard. Make a private board and vet the participants. A Terra Nova with limited responce.
Brian beat me to the punch, fucker; indeed… there is only so much a company /will/ do in sole regard to self-interest. Letting themselves be run over by greedy, abusive customers is almost never one of them. And if the loudest players only act on selfish motives, why the fuck shouldn’t the people providing the game service???
Nyght, again you miss the point. You don’t reward bastard stepchilderen for proper behavior that should come without bribe…. likewise as aufero hinted at, you don’t invoke changes on gameplay simply because a few neurotics hopelessly addicted to your game also happen to be screaming the loudest and most obnoxiously. Of course, because we have such wonderful pillars of charming self-expression and assertive communication voicing their concerns over gameplay issue #20817334, problems effecting the aphony gamers (usually the majority) tend to not get noticed.
Also, have you ever considered the type of person that would piss on Jeff’s face enough for him to shutdown his personal website isn’t in any way unique to SWG? O, I get it… people who develope and produce games with major customer relations fuck-ups shouldn’t be allowed to have personal websites/pages?
“I didn\’e2\’80\’99t say it was right only that: THATS HOW IT IS in this case. Don\’e2\’80\’99t personalize this to me. I didn\’e2\’80\’99t do it.”
Sounds like endless apologetics to me. Is there some incidental player-bias going on here that you haven’t spoken about yet?
(A shame Brian Green got to the obvious counterexample to the crap ‘anology’ first. I wanted to declare World War III on you for such poorly hidden, blatant double-standards, so to speak.)
Another thing… what the fuck does Jeff’s blog have to do with Scott shutting down his own blog? Why should scott have to be silent because a few shitheads can’t behave themselves in such an anonymous enviroment? Once again, [b]you’re right[/b], FUCK true accountability. They “can’t have nice things”.
Dasshole.
Alright. I surrender.
Once you figure out how to get accountability on the internet, I’m sure this will all be solved. In the mean time I guess you can’t have nice things. Blame me if it makes you feel better.
Doesn’t even have to be your own game; the one time I commented on Jeff’s blog, I came back to find that instead of opening a discourse, a bunch of forumites had turned it into a dung fight, and shortly afterwards he yanked all the comments. Kinda like throwing water on a fire to discover its an electrical fire =/ Taken me a long while to recover any enthusiasm for blogging or blogs in general.
Really sorry to see the end of your blog, Jeff, and thanks for sticking it out so long.
Hey Scott!
Close the comments, this is getting silly.
It was basically nailed in comment 3 anyway. A dysfunctional relationship with a serious power imbalance, both sides convinced they are the victims.
Which is probably a twisted sign that the non-gameplay stuff: communities, guilds, etc. are working too well at times. People want to leave the games but are trapped in guild-relationships where they don’t want to betray their friends by leaving. Ah.. mammal herd/pack instincts rule again.
MMORPG’s are like love.
When leaving the first love in your life you are suffering trauma. After the second you are cautious. After the third you think “there are plenty more in the world if this one doesn’t work out”. After the fourth you will hop into bed with just about anybody…..including going back to old relationships just to make sure you made the right decision.
SWG was my first. Since then…AO, Horizons, EQ2, COH,WOW, and COV.
I’m at the point where I will “hop into bed” with any MMO. Like I have done with real love, I am very careful about emotional investment, because the games (like people) evolve over time into something different than what you were first attracted to.
I agree Mick. You also learn not to pay 6 months in advance…
You represent the company you work for. Of course, naturally, it’s going to spill over from one venue to the other, despite any boundaries you would wish to impose.
Welcome to real life.
http://www.damnedvulpine.com/archives/004488.html
Happy V-Day.
You say that as though I am implying it shouldn’t be this way.
I mean, it wasn’t for a couple of years, but now that it is that way, well, yeah, that’s just the way it is.
I haven’t shed any tears over it.
Everyone can say ‘listen to the players’ but that’s harder to do than you think. Even when you listen to the players they all don’t always know what they want. They argue alot among themselves and sometimes aren’t aware of some of the limitations in design and implementation to be able to give an idea that will work well.
I’ve learned after being in front of the community in one way or another over the years to be pretty guarded about what I say even to my close friends. I think it’s a shame though that people end up having to shut down inciteful and interesting blogs just because they’re getting heat from players for it. No one deserves that no matter who they work for unless we’re talking about a government scandal or something. In this case we’re talking about a game that at anytime people can hit ‘cancel’ on their account manager for and be done with it. Like Scott says, sometimes you need to learn when it’s time to walk away. If it’s no fun, then stop. Take a break. If you go back to it, then great. If you stay away from it, great. It’s a game meant for entertainment and shouldn’t be your life. It’s just harder for MMO players because when you divorce from the game you are often leaving friends behind but sometimes it’s a sacrifice you need to make for sanity’s sake.
Players never know what they want.
Never, never, never. Only don’t argue that they don’t. Not with them, anyway.
If players knew what they wanted they’d have jobs making their own games.
Game designers can have nice things (among them blogs on which they discuss their abstract ideas of game design).
I read Jeffs blog pretty regularly, and it had some nice food for thought in it (especially in the essays section – girls cheating when playing jump rope, permadeath, advancement through quest progression, …).
I think a few factors played together to cause the recent uproar at the SWG boards about Jeff’s blog.
In an entry labeled “Shenanigans” Jeff talked about Star Wars Galaxies and his role in the design of the NGE (albeit as far as I remember the words “SWG” or “NGE” were never used). The basic statements were that he is not the only one responsible for the NGE design, but that he had his part in it (he did not state which parts were his ideas and which parts he didnt like, if any). This was the first time his blog got dragged to the official SWG forums, as far as I know.
In his last update before he took his blog down, he specifically stated that “MMOs need complexity”. The problem with this statement was that the NGE is widely perceived as a dumbing-down of the game, a perception that was underlined by SOE and LA public relations (”kill, get treasure, repeat”, to quote Nancy McIntyre of NYT fame).
A large part of the player base still playing SWG at that time was not interested in a dumbed-down game, though (the players wanting a less complex game already left for other games), and talking about games needing complexity after taking part-responsibility for dumbing down the very game he is the Lead Gameplay Designer for made no sense at all – philosophing one way and designing another way. That is the main reason he got torn apart on the SWG forums for this particular blog entry – the players liked his vision more than what actually ended up in the game.
Should game designers blog their ideas to encourage discussion with other designers? Absolutely. Can I understand Jeff taking down his blog? Absolutely – the question of his ideas being different to the SWG implementation is opening a can of worms nobody wants to get into. Is Jeff right when he says he cannot discuss anything on his blog anymore since it will be dragged to the official boards? Absolutely.
Having said that, I think it is a pity that the blog is no more, as I enjoyed reading it (although I didnt take part in discussing things). Its also a pity that some forum trolls are not able to formulate their criticism in a respecting way and need to resort to flames.
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On another topic I read here:
If people are not satisfied with a game anymore, they can just pack up and leave – no need to argue over it, take it as it is and enjoy it, or simply leave.
This statement is oversimplifying when talking about MMOs in my opinion. An MMO is more than a game to the players, and an MMO is designed to be that way (some more, some less).
Raph Koster believes in two things when it comes to MMOs: Building communities with strong ties and creating a sense of ownership. There are several effects caused by those two (as Koster explains in more detail), but I will focus on the effects that keep players playing the game.
Koster points out that building a strong community is important, since a strong community will keep individual players from leaving the game – there are other players in the game who depend on them, hence they have responsibility for those other players, and holding responsibility for others always means it is harder to just leave. This design idea can directly be seen in SWG, with player cities and the inter-profession-dependencies of the original ones being the most obvious ones.
Creating a sense of ownership also focusses on the individual player, but also on whole groups of players. Koster says that in order to keep a player playing the game, the want for him to possess something in the game needs to be created, and that he cannot take his possession with him if he leaves that game. Legendary items fall into this category, player achievements (successful crafter businesses, for example), and most noteworthy player cities also fall into this category (”This is our city, a city that we built together and a sign of our community, friendship and common beliefs we share”).
I will get SWG-specific one last time here (I know this blog is not related to SWG, but SWG is a good example): SWG was successful in both points I mentioned above.
The original SWG had a lot of community-encouraging concepts: The crafters needed the combat players, the entertainers needed the crafters, the combat players needed the crafter and the entertainers. Also, there was no way for an avatar to become a good crafter, entertainer and combat player at the same time – people needed to choose which role they wanted to fill, and they could only have one toon per server to play with their friends (although changing professions was a matter of days). People could band together and found player cities, and every single individual could have an important role in that player city.
Also, SWG created a strong sense of ownership – it was hard to become a good crafter, but running a successful virtual crafting business in SWG was considered an achievement one could be proud of. The same is true for PvPers defending their hometown and faction base, they could become well-respected by the community. The same is true for PvE players – there were rare loots, and possessing them was something to be proud of, also.
I wont even talk about the achievement and reward that was unlocking the alpha class (whole different topic on its own).
That those concepts held SWG together in its foundation can be seen by reading the comments of current and former SWG players:
“Our guild left overnight” or “I am only subscribing because of the friends I can talk to on the forums”: strong community bonds, whole guilds voted on a game to play next to see each other in that game again.
“I lost millions worth of resources in the CU / NGE” or “Its sad to see our player city become deserted” or “Unbelievable to think of the effort I put into becoming a Jedi Knight when now it is available as a starter profession”.
Because of all of this, the statement “Just leave if you dont enjoy the game anymore” is unfair since MMORPGs are designed not to be “just another game”.