Remember the offhanded link I posted a while back to the spurned EQ2 ‘fan’ site that quickly turned into a community manager’s worst nightmare? At some point it turned from juicy drah-ma to full-on psychotic dev stalking.
I wonder, if I searched their archives, if there would be complaints from players about how developers clearly never played their own game. Because, for damned sure, after that little display, it’s safe to say that no sane SOE developer will be caught dead in EQ2 for quite some time. Clearly, they have commited the cardinal sin of working on an MMO – in some cases actually playing one, and now they must pay. Oh, they must PAY!
This is a good example of why, as a game developer, you ideally should never let anyone in an MMO know who you are, ever. And you absolutely shouldn’t let people know that you work on the game they play. (And it goes without saying, you shouldn’t then cheat, or send out patch notes a week early on your guild message board, or just simply attract the attention of the appropriate gender in your Ventrilo channel with your el33t access, or anything ethically sleazy like that.)
For most developers this isn’t an issue, because, frankly, after working on an MMO for 5 years or so, the absolute last thing they want to do is look at it in their limited free time. But this is a good object lesson in how what you think may be a harmless confidence can blow up in your face. Because spurned fans have a way of taking those good intentions, blowing them out of an aerosol can, and lighting them on fire.
#1 by DJ Larkin on March 31st, 2008
I had one “Public” character that was shelved as soon as I started working on DAOC. All my actual play characters were only known to myself, to the point that I didn’t even tell my coworkers my character names. I’ll probably do the same thing with WAR.
I don’t want anyone showing up on my doorstep at 3am because I pwnd them.
#2 by SirBruce on March 31st, 2008
It does seem that although LFG may have been unfairly treated when they got removed from the Influencers program for possibly spurious reasons, what Snark has done since then in response as demonstrated that SOE was right to suspect that these people weren’t really that trustworthy and would eventually bite them in the ass sooner or later. SOE may have underestimated the extent of the fallout, but hopefully they aren’t taking it out on any employees (except those that were revealed to have been doing something truly improper).
#3 by Evrett on March 31st, 2008
Can we blame wow for this ? Eq2 is considered to be a relic now and likely the only people applying for jobs with that team are folks who didnt make it anywhere else..eq2flames isnt a pretty place but years of SOE standoffish treatment of the customers tends to generate that sorta thing. Now the serfs are kicking back as it were..both eq2flames and SOE devs (except domino) deserve eachother..SOE would be smart to get some fresh hands running that ship
#4 by Ibn on March 31st, 2008
Thank you for reminding me, again, why I don’t want to work in MMOs for the foreseeable future. And I even moderated the AC forums using my real name!
#5 by Adam Tiler on March 31st, 2008
@Evrett
I am curious: who exactly considers Everquest II to be a relic? The game still holds a significant percentage of the MMO market share. Its paying subscription numbers are great than City of Heroes/Villains, EQ1, Lord of the Rings Online, and Tabula Rasa, to name the big ones. Just because a game is one-fiftieth the size of the major player doesn’t reduce it to irrelevance.
Plus, in my opinion, it’s a decent game, but that’s not really the argument. Runescape is a crappy game, but it comes in second in subscription numbers.
#6 by random poster on March 31st, 2008
“And you absolutely shouldn’t let people know that you work on the game they play. (And it goes without saying, you shouldn’t then cheat, or send out patch notes a week early on your guild message board, or just simply attract the attention of the appropriate gender in your Ventrilo channel with your el33t access, or anything ethically sleazy like that.)”
See thats what i’ve never understood, a developer if he’s thinking like he should should never be tossing his job out there. There is no reason to do so. Hell nobody in my guild knows what I do for work (and my RL friends don’t play in he same guild as I do so they don’t know my character names). If the info gets out that you play as such and such class under such and such name well then there’s really no one to blame other than yourself. Especially if (as some of the devs from, well almost every MMO it seems) you toss out insider information, help your guild with stuff that wouldn’t be possible unless you were a dev that sort of thing.
That said I don’t agree with what was done on that site. It completely overshadowed what may have been a legitimate complaint and makes SoE look justified in what they did.
#7 by random poster on March 31st, 2008
“Its paying subscription numbers are great than City of Heroes/Villains, EQ1, Lord of the Rings Online, and Tabula Rasa, ”
It’s also smaller than Lineage, Lineage II, Eve, Final Fantasy XI which are all older games that are considered “relics” and it barely has more subscribers than EQ1.
#8 by Klaitu on March 31st, 2008
Just you wait, Jennings! You PKed me back in UO! Well, I’ve been lying in wait, all this time, just so you’d least suspect my revenge! I would have had it by now, if it weren’t for that damn bird protecting you!
You’ll see! I’ll show you!
#9 by Klaitu on March 31st, 2008
Oh, and coincidentally, I know that Turbine doesn’t publish their subscription numbers.. ever.. so the claim that X mmo has more or less than LOTRO is pure speculation.
#10 by HitNRun on March 31st, 2008
And it goes without saying, you shouldn’t then cheat, or send out patch notes a week early on your guild message board,
Or, if you do, you should at least have enough respect for the way things are done to do it as an anonymous leaker.
This is really just a subset of the inexplicable phenomenon of trusting people who you’ve never met except in an anonymous exchange of voice and text to be loyal friends or cohorts.
#11 by hsinclair on March 31st, 2008
For the most part it’s easy to remain anonymous as a developer – when it gets scary is when there’s coordinated stalking efforts against you, and there are very, very few people who’s privacy can hold up against that kind of effort. There’s just too many places where players can find out the real names of people who have worked on a game (like, well, the credits), and if there’s ANY point on the internet where your real name has been linked to ANY handle you’ve used in a game, even if it’s from before you started working in games at all, any stalker with enough patience WILL find out who you are, especially if they have forum admins who have your private info on their side.
THAT is why people are so upset – you’d have to be a crazy hermit that never kept any game friends and never used the same character name twice and never signed up for any forums ever in order to avoid a serious stalking effort.
#12 by Tzi on March 31st, 2008
I work part-time for a very, very small game. I make my income from teaching. Though my students know I “do something with games” — I’ve made a point to never tell them which one. Do I love and trust the majority of my students? Yes. Do I believe that one of them might be misused by an upset or malcontented player? Yes again, so the wall stays up.
#13 by Moorgard on March 31st, 2008
I have to disagree with Scott on several points. I actively played EQ2 all the while I was on the team at SOE–not because I had to, but because I loved the game. I had a max level character and raided weekly in a good-but-not-obsessive raiding alliance.
My guild was a mixture of other devs (who, believe it or not, also enjoyed the game) and non-devs who were friends that had proved to be trustworthy. I never had a single problem with my “secret identity” being compromised, and I eventually had a number of cross-server connections with members of our community summits.
As with most things, I think being successful at this kind of thing is a matter of keeping expectations clear and choosing your friends wisely. People knew that I played to have fun, not to listen to gripes or feed people l337 secret infoz. Sure, folks would let me know if something was broken, but that was valuable information which I was happy to look into for the good of the game. To a person, these people respected the position I was in and never did anything that negatively affected my playtime.
It can be done–you just have to be smart about it.
#14 by Aufero on March 31st, 2008
Giving developer access to people who run a site that encourages flames and drama about your game may not have been the best idea ever.
Of course, it worked out (slightly) better for SOE the last couple of times…
#15 by Matthew Weigel on March 31st, 2008
I take the completely opposite approach. Players know who I am on the boards, know who I am in the game. In both cases, my character is clearly flagged as an employee of NCsoft, and I identify as a developer rather than a GM.
I also don’t cheat, and say the same things on world chat and on the boards and in private messages… I try to keep discussions public (either world chat or the boards)… and I’m convinced it’s a good thing, frankly.
#16 by UnSub on March 31st, 2008
I think this whole EQFlames thing is near perfect evidence on why you don’t want fansites becoming more important than your official site. They get delusions of grandeur. It probably won’t be too long before devs start hiding their real life contact details just in case – I’m aware that Sporkfire (CM ex-DDO / current ChampO) had his home address details posted online by an over-zealous fan.
@Moorgard: You took the precautions, but you got lucky too. All it takes is the wrong friend of a friend of a friend to find out who you are in-game and you could be getting /t ever few seconds from players with axes to grind / agendas to push. Lum’s right in that the best option is to never let the player base know your player handle and, if you have to come into the game in official capacity, come in under an official handle.
#17 by Scott Jennings on April 1st, 2008
Just to clarify (it wasn’t made that explicit in the post): there’s nothing wrong with a developer having an active account in/playing their own game – in fact, “eating your own dog food” is recommended in almost any technical endeavor.
Just make sure it’s either very public (in which case, when you’re online, you are a representative of The Company at all times, so let’s hope you’re good at that!) or very private.
#18 by ubvman on April 1st, 2008
SOE seems to be the poster child of corruption at the moment, but that I think is the result of arrogant management and more than the usual number of stalker bois. Personally, I believe that the stuff exposed in EQ2 is endemic in the industry, everything on the QT and the down low. Really its just “video games” and the temptation to sneak a few “hints”, tips and epicz out to your friends (and your toon) must be overwhelming.
Anyone ever considered how much more toxic this would be if RMT (either legal or otherwise) became common in the industry? Instead of some virtual e-peen points, there would be RL major incentives to actually raid the company till for some REAL DEV CORRUPTION for dollars. I would think if the corrupt dev working for a major MMOG is clever going about it and work closely with the RMT farmer corps – he could clear 6 figures easily and 7 if he is really good at it. Food for thought.
#19 by krones on April 1st, 2008
CCP knows how to handle delicate situations involving their playerbase. SOE doesn’t. They hide behind the truth, and all the shit keeps piling on and on. Corrupt devs? Big deal, every MMOG has em’. Being upfront with your playerbase is a good move.
Players leaking developers play character handles was a very shitty thing to do. Most, if not all those devs on that list that had nothing to do with that drama bomb, but I’m not surprised given how jacked their decision making is and inaction by the CM Team for whatever reason. It could’ve been avoided. Bad policy, and bad management are at fault. SOE should learn from CCP, or expect to repeat the same mistakes in the future.
#20 by D-0ne on April 1st, 2008
SOE has been the poster child for corruption within their games since 1998. How many stories of SOE employee caught cheating/manipulating the rules have their been over the last ten years? Ten?
Considering these are the people who control the games and influence greatly what is said about the games, anyone with a bit of common sense would draw the conclusion that SOE has some serious ethics problems.
#21 by kalain on April 1st, 2008
Meh, outing devs at random is bad. They’re just people trying to have fun.
Outing devs who actively exploit their positions by knowing more information than anyone else does is Fine. Emailing a supervisor may be a good starting point, but the players should be allowed to know when something’s rigged.
As much as people hate WoW’s instance heavy design for the whole lack of major spawn camping, it is a nod in it’s direction that even if another guild is playing with a stacked deck it doesn’t really hurt you.
#22 by Coke on April 1st, 2008
I like the so-called “dev stalking” thread. It’s kind of like the smoking gun, “keeping them honest” type of thing. Of course if one is on the other side of the fence I imagine they wouldn’t like it one bit. Things like underlings at a game company cheating to help their guilds is the type of thing that would have ended up on the old LtM website. Look how far the worm has turned…
#23 by Pat on April 1st, 2008
I’m curious. Why do people talk about how SOE had this coming because they’ve been coorupt for years?
Wouldn’t sane, normal people not subscribe to services that are run shoddly? Why stick around for years? Heck, I love Warcraft and even I take a breaks for a few months between major content releases.
#24 by Moorgard on April 1st, 2008
UnSub: “Lum’s right in that the best option is to never let the player base know your player handle and, if you have to come into the game in official capacity, come in under an official handle.”
I’m not saying there aren’t dangers, but I still disagree with you. Hell, every single post a dev makes on a public board has some degree of risk associated with it. Being successful at any kind of customer interaction means never forgetting who you are and what your responsibilities are–and never letting the players forget it, either. The fact that some people haven’t been very good at maintaining such perspective doesn’t mean you have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
#25 by Richard on April 1st, 2008
Moorgard, it shouldn’t matter if the player base knows who you are, so long as they know that things will be handled in a fair and honest manner and devs will be required by their company not to engage in anything that would be deemed to give an unfair advantage. It helps if there is open communication, but that’s secondary to transparency overall.
Unfortunately, there are so many stories of SOE mishandling things and treating their large MMOs like small sandbox MUD with admin’s doing as they please, it’s a joke.
The problem is time and again from Brad’s double standard to the current silliness, everyone who is a long time gamer knows SOE doesn’t police or seem to even care about ithe integrity of their games.
#26 by Calandryll on April 1st, 2008
Going to agree with Scott on this one. My main question is what is the benefit to telling your guildmates that you work for the company? I can’t think of any.
If the purpose of playing the game you work on is to make sure you have your finger on the pulse of the game, wouldn’t it make MORE sense to not let people know you work for the company? That way you can get a sense of how people play and what they think without worrying about people filtering themselves.
Fact is, even if you as a developer act in a 100% appropriate way all the time, employees being part of a guild that also includes non-employees can (and usually does) give the impression of favoritism. While that may not be true or fair, imo, that outweighs the benefits of telling people who you are, which again I can’t think of any. I’m curious, those who do think it’s a good idea, what are the benefits in your mind?
I absolutely agree that devs should play their own game, the more the better. But unless you’re logged in as a GM or in some other official capacity (in which case you aren’t playing) keep your identity to yourself. You’ll probably gain more useful information about the state of the game if people don’t know who you are.
@Moorgard: I do agree 100% with the comments on your blog about the community manager owning the message though. It’s something I’ve been saying since I started on UO way back. There has to be one consistent voice and all too often there isn’t.
#27 by SirBruce on April 1st, 2008
Klaitu,
I don’t want to derail this thread (I swear I had nothing to do with the other posters quoting my sub numbers) but as far as LotRO subs are concerned, it is, at the very least, *informed* speculation. LotRO publicly stated they were the 2nd largest MMO developed in North America, using reported data (i.e. mine) for the other MMOs. That basically meant they were ignoring RuneScape, Dofus, etc. and saying that after WoW, they were bigger than EQ, EQ II, CoH, etc. This means they had at that time at least 200K subs. Having also access to their box sales figures, I can tell you they can’t have 500K subs. So it’s reasonable to say with 90% confidence that they had 200K to 300K subs, and I always err on the side of caution in my reporting, so 200K it is.
#28 by D-0ne on April 4th, 2008
“Wouldn’t sane, normal people not subscribe to services that are run shoddly? Why stick around for years?”
I haven’t played a SOE game in four years… But I can and do read and follow the online gaming industry as a hobby and have do so for the last ten years.
For some people online gaming is a phase. For others of us it’s a life long hobby and for others it’s a career. Many of us here are now in our forties and we’ve been playing online games since the 80’s. Ah, Baron Realms Elite… Good times.
#29 by Viz on April 5th, 2008
krones, it may be true that CCP now knows how to deal with it, but it sure did take them a long time to learn how.