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.)
#1 by Goemagog on February 9th, 2006
Smart enough to avoid the need.
Goe, boo.
#2 by Evangolis on February 9th, 2006
Don’t worry, I promise that the only person I will beat over the head with your words is you.
#3 by Amber Night on February 9th, 2006
I think the reason you see so many players whine forever without stopping is because unlike any other game, MMOs are a relationship. A bona fide sorta-kinda-just-like-in-the-real-world relationship. So what you see on a lot of chat boards is a relationship gone wrong. Sometimes it’s the game. More often it’s the player. They don’t understand that the game has other needs (mainly, to keep all players mostly happy), they only care about their own needs being met. These players feel like their other half isn’t responding to their needs, and they lash out. It’s a classic case of “baby why you gotta make me hit you?” And I suppose the outcomes are just as predictable.
Hmm…anyone care to start a MMO “couples” therapy business? (“now Mythic, I think what Uberkungfuguy is saying, is that he felt that you weren’t respecting his boundaries when you nerfed his Monk…”)
Amber
#4 by Nyght on February 9th, 2006
I don’t think its really accurate to frame it as you have. The circumstances, we hope, are unique.
I have never said a (very) unkind word to any of you. Jeff included.
But SOE’s decisions about SWG were really close to a bait and switch. An unethical business practice at the least.
Now, it’s pretty easy to see that Jeff wasn’t responcible for of those business decisions but as long as he is in the public eye, he is a face of the company. And people will focus on that. Hell just look at the shit Schild has taken over it, and he was only looked at it.
I have a lot of sympathy for the (remaining) folks who are now being pushed out in front of the customers again, to face thier disapproval. But really, is it that hard to see what those customer reactions are going to be?
My suggestion to Jeff is, put your head down, do your job, hope for the best. Closing the blog was a good idea.. probably should have happened sooner.
And my advice to you Scott, would be to do the same thing should Mythic ever do the same kind of bone head shit that SOE pulled. Fortunately, I think all of us believe that is unlikely.
#5 by StrangerA on February 9th, 2006
Now that’s the Lum I remember!
I’ll wholeheartedly agree that people don’t know when to let go – if the game isn’t making them happy anymore, then maybe it’s time to leave it and find something else that they do enjoy. But of course, they don’t want to do that, and lose the character and virtual property that they’ve invested so much of themselves in. Much like Amber said up above about relationships – “I’ve invested so much of myself in this relationship – I can’t bail out now!”
For what it’s worth, I’m glad for the game design types to speak up anyways in their blogs and such, outside of the sanitized PR-speak crap that comes out in mainstream game articles. I guess one thing to think about is how other creative types deal with having their words flung back at themselves – one could have a meltdown on Amazon.com like Anne Rice, or ignore the haters and swim in the money bin like George Lucas. *shrug*
But yeah, for the most part, we can’t have nice things.
#6 by xaldin on February 9th, 2006
The mitigating issue in this is that it was a SWG designer. At this stage I feel little sympathy for any hits they take. I feel they brought that pain on themselves.
In the bigger picture its really about choice. You can be no-name cogs in the machine, unseen, unheard or you can be famous. Each has their gains and losses. You won’t get the benefits without taking the pain.
At least your line of work even offers you the choice of which to be. In mine nobody outside of its very tight knit world will ever know about until one day it might get declassified.
You have many many people who read your words, listen to you at conferences and you openly shape your industry in way that non insiders could see and note. For that freedom you take critisim, constructive and non.
Also you don’t see people just stop your games because that is how you designed it. You get them to form communities, bonds with people. Its not the game you’re telling them they have to leave, its their friends. Little wonder when they don’t take it very well. If you don’t want them to hang around when they aren’t having fun, don’t design the system to act as a social glue.
#7 by Freakazoid on February 9th, 2006
So, why aren’t developers doing what the players tell them?
Seems like such an obvious solution. Bend over backwards to get popularly supported ideas into your game, and they won’t go ballistic.
#8 by Raguel on February 9th, 2006
Because their ideas suck (except for mine, which are l33t). :p
While I’d like to believe it was the suits and not the devs doing, I agree with the bait-and-switch thing: from what I understand, they implemented NGE right after people paid for an expansion (which NGE basically made null and void). I’d be upset. Well, I would be, if I was ever stupid enough to play another SOE game. Fool me once, and all that…
So Lum, what did you screw up in DAoC? I promise not to tell anyone.
#9 by Jiffy on February 10th, 2006
Don’t worry Lum, we still love you. >
#10 by Abalieno on February 10th, 2006
Politicians = game designers
#11 by Trin on February 10th, 2006
“So, why aren\’e2\’80\’99t developers doing what the players tell them?
Seems like such an obvious solution. Bend over backwards to get popularly supported ideas into your game, and they won\’e2\’80\’99t go ballistic. “
There’s a good deal of once-SWG-players (myself included) that believe such ideas lead to the decline of the game. (various concessions for the jedi wannabees in the game). Popular is often not right, but there are good ideas to be found in the playerbase, just hard to weed out from the thousands of others posting their wants.
Even though SWG became unfun for me (so I left), I could still separate that and enjoy Jeff’s blog. His posts will be missed (especially since even his history of posts is gone now, don’t suppose anyone saved anything like say the “Love Story”?). Unfortunately there are too many out there that have to use every avenue to get THEIR issues to the devs even if that means intruding on a personal area set aside for a different outlet than their main job (see Raph’s blog comments the last few weeks).
#12 by Freakazoid on February 10th, 2006
So what if their ideas suck in your opinion? They just might be the fun element everyone’s been looking for.
Considering most MMO developer ideas turn to shit after a while, and that player ideas haven’t been seen in an MMO except A Tale In The Desert (and that’s mostly political stuff, no balance changes allowed), I think someone needs to step up to the plate and try them out.
#13 by Freakazoid on February 10th, 2006
ok, I missed Trin’s post while writing that out. I didn’t play SWG, but the idea of changing jedis seem to kept the playerbase they had IMO.However, that didn’t look like something literally suggested by players, but a last minute appeal to a crowd who were used to keeping their stuff from previous MMOs.
#14 by Trin on February 10th, 2006
Not interested in discussing SWG here, but I wasn’t referring to what happened with NGE, but a time much earlier in SWG’s lifecycle (the christmas holocron and months following).
#15 by Cyanbane on February 10th, 2006
this, is my opinion, is your best post ever.
#16 by Ibn on February 10th, 2006
This was awesome and 100% accurate.
When I started as Asheron’s Call OCR, I spent several hours taking every single post on my LJ and locking it friends-only. Not because I was going to say anything about game design or community management or the like, but because I really, really didn’t want a post like this to come up on the official boards: “Hey Ibn, I read in your LJ that you were out with friends last night, is that why you haven’t commented on my PvP balance complaint?!!!”
#17 by Cael on February 10th, 2006
Well, since this is Jeff Freeman’s blog under discussion, i think i have 2 things to say.
1. Jeff only actually posted one article relevant to his revolution at SWG and the rest were mostly trackbacks and one-off comments. Loos of a communication channel is always bad, but in this case it wasn’t doing much communicating.
2. SOE (as Trin says) really did bend over backwards for a certain large and extremely whiny portion of the playerbase. They got everything they asked for and still cried for more until the NGE happened. It got to the point where the GCW Correspondant (all correspondants were pretty much ignored but i really think that one of all of them was the single most vital channel of data) got sacked and banned from the SWG forums for repeatedly stating that the number 1 issue in PvP was a deliberate alpha-class which could and did annihilate all non-alpha players.
It seems to me that bending over for the majority of the forum-yellers while ignoring the broken parts of your product is terrible policy. I can only suspect LucasArts as the driving force, since they don’t do this with any other title.
In any case, the point remains – this abandoning of vision and theme in your ongoing game is always going to be a mistake.
Ignore the forums.
#18 by StrangerA on February 10th, 2006
Ibn also has a good point – MMO players are scarily-obsessive, and will stalk anyone who they even *think* works on their game.
A coworker of mine mentioned receiving death threats from players, and the company itself removed most of the signs on their exterior, along with getting their physical address/site blocked from the mapping sites out there. Some fans also took the time and trouble to find a stray Livejournal entry of one of these employees and barraged them with IMs wondering why such-and-such was happening.
The fact that the people making games are just people who need time away from their work and such isn’t clear for some out there.
#19 by Larry Lard on February 10th, 2006
\’e2\’80\’9cSo, why aren\’e2\’80\’99t developers doing what the players tell them?
Seems like such an obvious solution. Bend over backwards to get popularly supported ideas into your game, and they won\’e2\’80\’99t go ballistic. \’e2\’80\’9d
What do you do when part of “the players” says one thing, and another part of “the players” says something diametrically opposed?
You can’t please all the people all the time. Design is choosing how to fail. Witty aphorism #583. In short, you NEED a Vision, and there’s going to be at least one forum loudmouth who doesn’t like at least one part of it.
The question is how you deal with it.
#20 by Sanya on February 10th, 2006
We’ve had this conversation before on this blog. As I recall, it boiled down to “Your twelve bucks a month does not entitle you to talk shit about my mother” versus “You need to get a thicker skin and accept being threatened with rape over a video game.” /shrug
I’ll openly admit I regularly give Scott crap about this blog, but not for the reasons you might think. He has only rarely posted things that will make my job harder. The issue at hand is that he has no sense of self-preservation. The only thing that saves him, I think, is that once upon a time he was famous in a creepy internet way. If he were anyone else he’d have been crucified long ago, both internally and externally. I can’t decide which is more pathetic.
Our tell all books are going to be AWESOME.
#21 by Michael Neel on February 10th, 2006
Don’t like the heat, stay out of the kitchen. It goes both ways you know, players should leave and designers should leave the blog world if they can’t handle things.
If you want open communication then you have to accept it’s not going to be all rosey. As game devs (and Mythic is no better) fail to engage their side of the conversation, it is only to be expected the other side will become more bitter and hostile.
Devs fail to understand that popular is almost always right, but popular is not always the most vocal. Sometimes they stop listening all together, sometimes they give control of design to the marketing people (we can sell and expansion if you raise the level cap, so raise it and rebalance), and sometimes they try and chase the vocal needs and never understand the popular view.
Mythic had a great idea in the start with team leads. In the first months of the game, the TL reports were awesome as TLs rejected the vocal and went with the popular. But Mythic failed in communication. They wouldn’t comment on a TL report, they wouldn’t talk of an issue. Patches came and went and we had no idea if the reports were even read. After a while you feel the TL’s are just scam to keep us off devs.
Why is this such a hard thing? Are you unable to find people who know how to interact with a community? Look to the large open source projects then, like firefox, and see how they deal with everything in the open. It’s not that you say something and don’t do it, there will always be the vocal who will call out that. The majority are smarter and want to know why things changed, what changed, etc. They will unstand if you have good reasons (a problem if you don’t have good reasons, as it should be).
Right now I don’t think things are going to change a whole lot as long as the market is in high demand as it is now. Really, there are not that many options for the size of the player base and that means companies can continue to stay tight lipped without a loss to player base. Games don’t loose (many) players over issues, they loose them when a new game comes out.
Anyway, with the way things are you can’t hardly blame the players for being “hostile” with dev blogs, all other forms of communication are shut down. Just for the record I am one who “stopped” but I miss the people I played with and at least once a week consider starting back up just to get intouch with them again – and that is why you have your people who play while they hate the game, and why this issue isn’t going away.
#22 by D-0ne on February 10th, 2006
All I’ve ever wanted from a game developer was an honest answer and an honest philosophy of game design. Say what you believe, tell the truth about game mechanics and don\’e2\’80\’99t apologize for it.
What so often happens now days? Namby-pamby, bullshit marketing strategies that are in reality pseudo-design philosophies, all about making everyone happy and attempting to appeal to everyone. These marketing peudo-design philosophies (I blame Raph) are bad. These marketing decisions just lead to deceiving the customer and ferment hate among those who pay the salaries.
#23 by Grinless on February 10th, 2006
Quoting Freakazoid : “So, why aren\’e2\’80\’99t developers doing what the players tell them?
Seems like such an obvious solution. Bend over backwards to get popularly supported ideas into your game, and they won\’e2\’80\’99t go ballistic.”
Basically: Are you fucking crazy ???
Anyone who think the players as a whole, not individual mind you, should be the one in charge should immediately remove himself from the gene pool.
Nothing is stupider than a playerbase (check out any MMORPG forum for sanity’s sake).NOTHING.
#24 by Jeff Freeman on February 10th, 2006
I can’t clarify my blog postings on the official forums. Clarifying on my own blog, once it made it to the forums – read by a lot more people than ever read my blog – wouldn’t have done any good.
There can’t be a concept of “my personal website” and “the official forums” if everything game-related that I post winds up on the official forums. This puts me in the position of never posting anything on my personal website that I wouldn’t post on the official forums (and if it’s something I can post on the official forums, then I should just do that).
So there are pros and cons to blogging. The pros were that I could throw out half-baked ideas and get challenged via comments and trackbacks to finish baking the idea. And of course, the ego thing. That’s great.
The cons outweigh the pros though, so this wasn’t a difficult decision on my part.
#25 by Xyntar on February 10th, 2006
I hated to see the shit hit the fan over on the SWG forums Jeff, I enjoyed reading your blog and I’m sorry to see it go.
#26 by Boanerges on February 10th, 2006
There’s always a fine line about this stuff. There’s generally 3 players involved in MMO development
1. The Devs (not counting coders, entirely different animal)
2. The Players
3. “The Man” (as Jedi put so eloquently)
Players are the diverse group. Geniouses and fools thrown into one swarming mass. They know the game backwards and forwards and find each and every little thing out about this world the Devs have made. They can do this because they have fools, who, as any coder can attest to, are some of the most ingenious people on the planet. I’m certain most coders would have “How the HELL did you do that?” tattooed on their foreheads if it wouldn’t scare women away.
Devs are the dreamers. They are paid to dream up the things you do over and over (and over and over) without you realizing you’re doing the same thing over and over. They have this little vision in their head of how things should work. Unless they are steeped in player feedback they tend to build this idea and throw it out there and leave it to players to figure out how it works, regardless of how much or little it makes sense.
The Man is the guy who takes the money from the players and determines how best to invest it. Capitolism 101 tells you that if people are paying you lots of money for X and you want more money then you take some of that money and you invest it in things to make you even MORE money. So The Man is the person who gets more devs, servers, bandwidth, etc. Typically, however, he also is on a leash himself to the behind the scenes people (hidden player #4) who typically own some percentage and want a return on the money they’ve given to The Man.
And thus the dance begins.
When The Man begins to think he can replace a dev or set policy you have disaster. The Man does not know what players want, he only knows money because, for the most part, that is his job. The Man can sometimes relate to players but seldom he even play this game he is responsible for. He is too busy being management. If you need proof of this folly then look at the EQ expansion Gates of Discord (never was an expansion so aptly named).
The Devs run amuck when they lose sight of what players want. See early EQ development. Things were done in a vacuum with little or no player input and the results were players stuck in a world where it was the Devs way or the highway. Devs, even with input, sometimes still come up with bad ideas.
Which comes to…
Players are too diverse to please universally. If it were said that “Dev X wants to put in a rainbow” you’d have people jump down his throat for any number of reasons ranging from “I hate rainbows” to “We don’t need rainbows, we need more X”. Players like this always exist just like there’s always players saying “Oh, YES! I love your game! More rainbows! Can I have your children?”. The reason you don’t see them is they are typically drowned out by people screaming profanities telling you how bad things are, etc, etc. These are your culprits holding various blunt instruments wrapped in your words.
Players are best read when you find those few people in the community who are level headed and not prone to profanity riddled posts but actually give you that rarest of the rare post: the logical rant. Suddenly the concerns become clear and can be addressed, win lose or draw.
I would have to say that, in this case, the dev in question needs some more battle experience. Players will always twist your words. This is nothing unusual (see politics, Supreme Court nominations hearings, etc) because, as stated previously, Devs dream the world they play in and if the player doesn’t like it they feel as if they were ignored. Thus, from perceived ignorance comes anger and from anger malice (see Unknown Jedi comment). I don’t think he let his team down, I think he let himself down.
What he needs to understand is that he, too, is human. Perhaps his comments were ill advised but that’s why you need discourse. Not everyone will villify you for a mistake and people need to know that, yes, you can admit when you made a mistake. More often than not, admitting a mistake was made and apologizing will go a long way with the players. Furthermore, it means you make sure that everyone understands the point you were trying to make. From here it looks like he just gave up rather than continue the dance. That is the real tragedy here.
#27 by Idlethought on February 10th, 2006
I think in many ways this is the result of poor SOE PR – the management/marketing/PR handling of the SWG changes has been outrageously appalling.
Everything any of the Devs writes is viewed through the twisted lense this ill-judged nonsense has created. Stupid, stupid remarks about ‘less reading’ that are grist to the mill of everyone on the forums keen to churn up more trouble.
Well, there are plenty of coding/design/production values problems that make it worse, but it’s the PR foul-ups that really set the original tone.
Disclaimer: I play SWG, sort-of-like the combat mechanism changes, but on the whole find the game less engaging at the moment.
#28 by Heather Sinclair on February 10th, 2006
the sad thing is, while players say they want better feedback, I really don’t believe they do – while yes, they do want to be told their issue of the moment is being worked on and stuff for them is being added, that’s not really feedback, because they don’t want real feedback.
I believe there are certain universal conversations amongst development teams, like when a system needs to be dumbed down, which players are more important than others, how to exploit player psychology, or what can be done to draw out a subscription as long as possible so even the player that hates your game will continue to pay month after month. These are the types of conversations that whenever players get wind of it they throw huge fits, because nobody wants to be told that a system had to be dumbed down for them, or that a system was designed to be nothing more than a skinner box with the player as the rat, or that their feedback is less important than another player group, but these are the types of conversations that I really think devs need to have.
anyway, I don’t really know where I’m going with this, I guess I just don’t see the purpose of a design blog when the ‘design’ parts are self-censored for the sake of the players, as much of a shame as that is.
#29 by scottj on February 10th, 2006
This is a warning.
This is NOT an appropriate venue for the discussion of SOE’s decisions regarding SWG. I do not work for SOE. I’m pretty sure SOE as a corporate entity doesn’t even like me very much (working for the competition and all that). I am not going to turn my blog over to disenchanted SOE customers who see this as a bully pulpit on the offhand chance someone at SOE may read it.
Further SWG-specific posts will be deleted.
Thank you and drive safely.
#30 by scottj on February 10th, 2006
anyway, I don\’e2\’80\’99t really know where I\’e2\’80\’99m going with this, I guess I just don\’e2\’80\’99t see the purpose of a design blog when the \’e2\’80\’98design\’e2\’80\’99 parts are self-censored for the sake of the players, as much of a shame as that is.
Speaking personally, I don’t particularly filter my opinions based on how the players would take them. I do try to avoid specific games whereever possible (because trust me, that way lies madness) but that leaves an awful lot of leeway and ways to anger people. Angering people I’m OK with!
#31 by Freakazoid on February 10th, 2006
“Anyone who think the players as a whole, not individual mind you, should be the one in charge should immediately remove himself from the gene pool.”
I’m not asking them to be the ones in charge. I’m asking that the devs try a few of the most popular ideas. If they dont’ want to, then at least offer them a reason why.
There are plenty of examples right now of small things in MMOs that would make people happy. Paladins in WoW wanted an option to do more damage while sacrificing healing and defense, but they never got it because it went against The Vision (nevermind that Priests have that option). Armsmen in DAoC wanted an option to make crossbows a competative spec and wasen’t given a reason other than “they don’t want to”. Bow users in DDO just want a reason why ranged is so gimpy compared to melee and spells, and they aren’t getting one.
It’s when all these small things compound on eachother that people get irritated. And when you don’t fix them for months at a time, that irritation can turn to explosive rage.
I’m not asking that developers bend-over for big changes like eliminating permadeath from jedis and whatnot. The big, fundamental changes developers can keep (although that could still be the problem, but I’ll leave that up to the dev to figure out). The smart players only ask for an even field of play with a solution they think works.
#32 by Esquilax1138 on February 10th, 2006
Since my original post got deleted, i’ll sum it up.
If a dev uses a blog to let everyone know just how little thought and regard for his existing player base goes into the changes they make to a live game, then ya, they are going to get flamed to hell for it.
#33 by vortexala on February 10th, 2006
Great post, Lum.
And Jeff, you should’ve known the forums were going to take anything you posted that was remotely game related and use it against you. Those forums have always been bad, and they seem to have gotten even worse in the time since I stopped going there(not that my absence is in any way related to that).
Maybe whenever you move on you can bring back the blog. Was usually a few interesting posts there. Gonna miss those.
#34 by Jeff Freeman on February 10th, 2006
If I bring it back, there won’t be any game discussion on it.
I don’t think I have enough to talk about to have a blog without talking about game design, though.
I’m sort of a boring person, you see.
#35 by Walter Yarbrough on February 10th, 2006
My personal blog only talks about online poker.
In intimate boring excruciating detail.
-Walt
#36 by Xyntar on February 11th, 2006
Or bring it back ‘anonymously’, if such a thing is possible. Which… yeah, probably not with the intarweb.
#37 by Idlethought on February 11th, 2006
I think it’s sometimes an issue with communicating ‘The Vision’. Ultimately the vision is very often no more than ‘it should make a profit, preferably because people are having fun’.
When you do have a strong vision, and when the players take on parts of that vision and buy in like the rabid semi-sane obsessives that we .. I mean they are and then the Vision gets tweak.. The designers will get called on ‘violating the vision’. If they then post on their private blog something that can be read to imply their own tastes are not entirely in-line with what the perception of the new improved vision is. Bad stuff is going to happen.
Jeff was probably in error posting those both the ‘arcane’ comment and the ’shenanigans’ comment – free speech is good, obvious troll-fodder blog posts not so good.
I can appreciate the problem though – if I had a blog where I expressed what I really thought about the sort of technology I work on, and someone discovered it, I’d probably be looking for a new job. Even if I edited myself and my opinions mercilessly I’d leave myself open. When there’s a few hundred or even thousand people actively looking for an open wound to exploit.. you’re doomed.
But, I even if I had anything intelligent to say, I’m so wrapped up in confidentiality agreements that I wouldn’t really be able to say it anyway. So not being allowed nice things isn’t a particularly special position to be in.
Luckily I can still opine on stuff I know nothing about..
#38 by Psychochild on February 11th, 2006
Ah, I noticed Jeff’s blog was gone when I was going through my own links lately. :/ Too bad. Sad to think that eventually all dev blogs will go away if this keeps up. It’s obviously more important for people to grind their personal axe than to let devs share ideas and attempt to move the industry forward.
The internet isn’t a kiddie pool, indeed.
#39 by Nyght on February 11th, 2006
I went to a restaurant the other day where I was served cold food.
I tried ask them about it there but there is this huge ‘no complaints’ sign and some kind of device prevents any direct interaction with any of the managers or anyone with enough authority to actually do anything about it. So I called their company hotline and was told ‘tough shit, you ate it cold didn’t you?’.
So when I saw one of the managers walking down the street the other day, outside of the restaurant, I stopped him asked about the cold food and what he intended to do about it.
He told me he didn’t want to talk about it, it was company policy not to, and then went inside his house.
That a fair analogy? He is certainly agrieved to be put in that situation but I honestly don’t think I’m the one that did it. I just want what I paid for.
So yes Brian, my fair treatment as a customer is more important to me then that restraurant’s expansion of their menu selection. Sorry, it’s just business. I don’t ‘owe’ the ‘industry’ a thing.
#40 by slog on February 11th, 2006
It’s close. A fairer analogy would be that the Restaurant was a McDonalds and your complaint was the bathrooms are too far from the counter and should be painted in Pastel Sandstone instead of Yellow.
#41 by Jeff Freeman on February 11th, 2006
I don’t believe it is possible. That’s why I stopped even using a psuedonym years ago, and blog under my own name. I don’t ever want to get it in my head that the things I’m posting are in any way anonymous…
‘Just seems safer that way.
#42 by Be0wulf on February 11th, 2006
Freakazoid:
I have never seen a game bend over for players MORE than SWG.
You know when it started? Just around the time they took out the hologrind for Jedi, and put in a quest series. There are countless examples of SWG bending over for the players. In fact, thats one of the larger complaints out there right now..
One of the largest problems with listening to the players too much (with all games), is that you can’t listen to all of them. And when you can’t listen to all of them, the others feel slighted, and they get louder. Then when they get loud enough they get their attention too. Then you end up with this constant inbalance of different players yelling about different things.
When you don’t listen, they yell. And when you do listen, they yell louder.
Honestly, it is the nature of the beast. And unless you remove the “community” from which these games depend on, you are always going to have that push and pull.
#43 by Nyght on February 11th, 2006
Hey Slog. Making it clever in an F13 kinda way doesn’t make it more correct then mine. Multiple months of money were prepaid by many customers, who were unable to play the game in a way anything close to what they had previously enjoyed on almost no notice. They were offered no options, refunds, or methods to ‘opt out’ as Scott suggests we should do.
That is why this situation is unique, why so many customers are angry.
#44 by slog on February 11th, 2006
The point went over your head Nyght.
#45 by Idlethought on February 11th, 2006
In this specific case the analogy would be closer if it was a whole horde of irate customers chasing the manager down the street with a variety of improvised weapons after someone thought they overheard him saying how, personally, he preferred his food nice and hot.
Also, there would probably have to be some confusion over whether the food in question was tomato or gazpacho soup.
#46 by Aufero on February 11th, 2006
Scott’s blogging advantage is that he lost all his sanity points years ago in encounters with Azathoth, idiot god of chaos, whose modern incarnation is the internet.
Sorry to hear about Jeff’s blog. The reasons for taking it down are obvious and inarguable, but I can’t help feeling it’s a loss. (Even though I only stopped by every few weeks.)
#47 by naum on February 11th, 2006
If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
One must be prepared to deal with criticism when in such a prominent position, or they should just keep their head buried in the sand. No matter how good you are, or how many folks you please, there’s always going to be a chorus of hate mail and zingers directed your way, no matter the righteousness (or lack of righteousness)\’e2\’80\’a6
#48 by Aufero on February 11th, 2006
“If you can\’e2\’80\’99t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.”
By that theory, the only people to do with gaming who should be communicating with the public are jackasses and the insanely narcissistic. (I’m assuming Buddha doesn’t work at a game company, he’d be slightly out of touch with what gamers usually want.)
Dunno about you, but I prefer to occasionally encounter the ideas of people who don’t sound like they’re one of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named’s alternate personalities.
#49 by Psychochild on February 11th, 2006
Nyght wrote:
That a fair analogy?
Sure. But, you know what the ultimate answer is? Don’t eat at that restaurant again. (Or, for the slow kids out there: Stop playing the game if you hate it so much.) Simple, eh? The answer isn’t to go to the manager’s house and spray paint “COLD FOOD SUCKS” all over it. If you keep going back to the same restaurant paying for and eating the same cold food (and, of course, repeating the same complaints), it should come as no surprise that nobody takes your complaints seriously.
However, if you feel the company has truly engaged in fraud, then find a lawyer and file a class action lawsuit to get everyone’s money back. Stomping your feet and holding your break and spewing stupidity on someone’s blog is not the answer. Until you’re ready to do something about the situation instead of just whine, nothing is going to change.
I don\’e2\’80\’99t \’e2\’80\’98owe\’e2\’80\’99 the \’e2\’80\’98industry\’e2\’80\’99 a thing.
Likewise, you should then realize that the ‘industry’ doesn’t owe you anything in particular. Specific companies usually outline their responsibilities in the license you agreed to when you got the game. If you feel you were defrauded, there are a lot more effective ways of seeking recourse than harassing a particular individual trying to discuss general game design issues in a public forum.
Realize that the more you restrict our ability to discuss between ourselves, the less advancement the industry will have as a whole. Things progress much faster when we can all discuss issues and think “deep thoughts” about the issues at hand. As a concrete example, a post on Jeff’s blog got me thinking about random numbers. Because of that, I implemented some random number generation code that generates random numbers without replacement and shared it with others. Yeah, it’s just a small step forward, but it was a step forward.
So much for enlightened self-interest, eh?
#50 by Jeff Freeman on February 11th, 2006
It’s not an issue of “dealing with criticism”.
The issue is that we cannot have philosophical design discussions on the game’s official forums. Since anything I post about game design on my blog is the same thing as posting on the official forums (since it winds up there almost immediately anyway), I can no longer post those things on my blog either.
And since that’s pretty much why I had a blog to begin with, it just doesn’t make sense to me to keep it up.