(Edit: it appears that bells are unringing, or at least the subject of this note took to heart some of the no doubt polite and reasoned criticism that arrived in his email and throughout the Intertubes. In particular, the everything-was-screwed-up-but-what-I-did parts were replaced with an honest mea culpa. So, as you read this, realize that I’m beating up on someone who’s trying to make good on his mistakes. And after that, I might go and punch some babies or something.)
Dear Mr. Rubenfield (I don’t really know you well enough to call you “Dan” and definitely not well enough to call you “Lord_Pall” like some internet weirdo):
OK, you can blame friends who should know better for baiting me into responding seriously. Despite the fact that SWG in general, and the NGE in specific, is basically the Derek Smart of MMO discussion. You bring it up and all the oxygen of coherent discussion just is sucked out of the room. Flames do that.
And why is that? Because in the space of two weeks from the player’s perspective, the entire structure of SWG was tossed aside and replaced with what you freely admit was the result of a few weeks’ mad crunching.
We told them. “If you do this, you will lose all 200k subscribers. It is that significant.”
It was explained that we would gain more due to the marketing push and relaunch.
So, we pushed forward.
Dude. Srsly. You CAN’T DO THAT.
At some point someone – your producer, probably, that being his job and all – should have sat everyone down and said “you. can’t. do. that.”
Those 200,000 customers – customers - you blithely dismiss as “dregs” and “weirdos” – are paying your salary. You can’t just blow them off for the mythical millions of people looking for a better game. Want to make a better game for them? Sure. As you said:
“Can you change an MMO drastically after it launches?”
Categorically, NO.
If we were to do it again, and wanted to make those types of changes, you have to make a new game.
Relaunch with a new title.
Or shut down Galaxies and relaunch for real.
You cannot change it at runtime.
And if you had kept your blog entry at that – just that – it would have all been cool. Hey, the designer of the NGE learned a valuable lesson. You can’t yoink a game and replace it with candy. Even if the candy is yummy. SCRUMPTIOUSLY. The customers – customers - not freaks or weirdos, customers – paid for a game. Not candy. They are paying a monthly fee for a game.
Maybe none of the team LIKED that game particularly. Maybe the higher ups were demanding millions of subscribers to pay for Lucasarts licensing fees. I dunno. I wasn’t there. You were.
But… dude. Srsly. YOU CAN’T DO THAT.
Especially this. Dude. Srsly.
We launched, the marketing push failed, and we lost subscribers.
It was a misread at an organizational level. Marketing, Production, community. You name it.
Epoch grade fuckup.
But.
The fuckup was NOT the changes.
Oh, no, you didn’t.
Oh, no, you didn’t.
You didn’t just point the finger for NGE’s commercial failure at everyone but yourself.
OH NO, YOU DIDN’T.
“It was a marketing failure.” (yeah, marketing makes or breaks games, plus everybody dislikes marketing, it’s easy to blame them!)
“Community dropped the ball.” (yeah, you know, the community person who was FIRED a week after trying to deflect the rage of a community, who for SOME STRANGE REASON en masse felt betrayed. I WONDER WHY.)
Dude. Srsly.
You completely changed the game. You ripped out the guts and replaced it with random bits from other systems. With two weeks notice to a community that you just sold an expansion pack to.
No, really, I’m sure there’s enough blame to go around. I’m sure marketing dropped the ball. I’m sure community could have been handled better (pro-tip: letting them know a bit further in advance may have been a good idea).
But your design – your work – was so smash up wonderful that everyone BUT you was to fault? Everyone BUT you was to blame?
Srsly. Dude.
So. Your final anecdote:
A cancellation email from UO came in. A diatribe, really.
It want on and on about how shitty the game was, how it was the worst piece of crap he’d ever played.
So, someone called him to find out some information.
They asked how long he played for.
His answer?
2 years.
So, what lesson did you get from that, anyway? Because, judging from the rest of your post?
I suspect you didn’t get it. Srsly.
DUDE.
Regards,
Scott Jennings
#1 by Darkojin on July 19th, 2008
As someone who played before NGE, and has played for quite a bit afterwards (though I have “quit” twice), I have a few things to say.
First off, the NGE as it currently stands, is a million times better than the initial launch of it, but it still sucks. Up until a few days ago, someone at SOE had made a major blunder, and had allowed a bit of coding to slip though, that allowed people to have absolutely no cooldown for any specials, and everyone decided to have server wide PVP wars, where EVERYONE was abusing this to hell. The same bugs that were there before NGE are still there (Specials not firing, characters getting stuck in random areas, etc). But even with these massive fuckups, it is getting better. They have taken out most of (but not all) of the ‘Twitch-based shooting’ and re-implemented auto-aim and auto-fire. Professions have some variants with the Expertise system. The problem being, that alot of the Expertise was half-assed as well, and almost everyone takes one of two viable options, anything else, and you are fish bait anywhere. So yes, the game still has problems.
Secondly, if I remember right, the NGE was in devolpment for over six months, according to the Letter from the head Dev at the time. Basically we were all told that the NGE was planned from the get go, and the CU was just a slight shift towards it, by dumbing things down, and making it less complex, with the NGE being the final dumbing down of the game. We had 32 professions which you could mix and match (personally, it was fun being a Doctor, Bounty Hunter, and Creature Handler at the same time), and we are now down to 9, 12 if you include the different Crafter class variants. Jedi was taken from being an unlocked Epic class, to being a starting profession, with all “Elder Jedi” given bath robes for their months of hard work.
The current dev team headed by Deadmeat, seems to have their heads in the right place sometimes, and the rest of the time, it still seems to be firmly planted up their ass. They implement something great, and then they implement something that no one asked for, that sucks horribly, and we find ourselves asking “WTF?!”. As for the 200k subs number, with as many people as I know, that have multiple accounts, I really have to wonder exactly how many people still play this game.
The NGE discussion will last for quite some time, hell its already been 2+ years. It will last for one major reason, a lesson to people of just how to fuck up a decent game, for something that they think will work, without really focusing on what DOES work. They cant even get more people to play, because by now pretty much everyone knows what they did, and new players have to wonder “could they do it again?” “Could the game I am about to play cease to exit and become something else?”. They dont have the product on store shelves, and the current download off of their site is months and possibly years behind on updates, and takes about 24-26 hours on a 7 meg pipeline to update (yes, I had to do this). What they need now, more than anything, is to focus on the people that are still here, that still play this game, that have fun with it (occasionaly), and for fucks sake, FIX THE BUGS. Then maybe they will have a product that will be worth the time of putting on shelves, and getting more people to play.
#2 by Foxstab on October 22nd, 2008
The commets here reflect the article title and its introduction.
Behold the greatness of the Internet: the flaming masses, seemingly haven’t even read Mr. Rubenfield’s posting, rush to condone, scold and so on Mr. Rubenfield based on a few cleverly picked pieces of text excerpted(sp?) by Mr. Jennings, self-admittedly, to beat upon this dead horse.
This may come as a shock to some of you, but Mr. Rubenfield also wrote:
“Note – To those who think I might be pointing fingers. I say it out loud, Italicized and Bold.
I fucked it up.”
And it is also made quite clear that he has opposed the streamlining of characters and that what he is proud about is that he had done an incredible work to adhere to the specifications given to him by the XOs – which he had no word on the matter.
Furthermore, it would seem to me that most of the arguments here are more pointed at the management rather than at Mr. Rubenfield, who is NOT part of management, so basically, this a a case of shooting the messenger, or whomever poor person who is in the unfortunate position of being the only accessible icon of a large(ly hated) corporation.
P.S.
I may be nigh half a year late, but better than never.
P.P.S.
Hi Georgia, congratulations on sweet work on WHO (or WAR as they refer to it nowadays). May you never know a NGE.
#3 by Sok on October 22nd, 2008
@Foxstab: I may be nigh half a year late, but better than never.
In that time, though — just a few days after the initial post, in fact — Mr. Rubenfield edited his words quite heavily. (I’m pretty sure this post initially had the “Eat a dick OM NOM NOM” line in it, directed at detractors.) The line you quote was added after the fact, for example, which Scott noted in the edit at the top of his post.
So, yeah, we did read his post before he changed it. You’re now seeing the edited version.