Player Expectations

fallenlords

Much loved and well respected Craig Morrison, game director of Age of Conan and now Funcom  Montreal creative director. Has been giving his insight into The Secret World (TSW).   Craig in an interview with Gamasutra stated he thinks audience expectations are handicapping the MMO genre. 

Commenting on TSW Craig stated that if players didn't adopt such a high expectation mindset, they would see that a game starting with around 100k of players has massive potential.   Craig points to the success of EVE Online and how a small game can build up to something significant. 

Craig references other games such as League of Legends that started from meagre beginnings. Hoping TSW can follow suit Craig believes the keys to success are taking a small user base and building it up with continued investment. At the same time listening to user feedback and tweaking the game in accordance.  With a highly successful beta attracting 500k and initial sales of 200k, it seems TSW might be well placed to be the next Eve or League of Legends.  

Craig also gives his wonderful insight into how the MMO genre needs to evolve in the extended version of the article.  Craig is anti terms search as Sandbox and Themepark, if he had a choice he would remove these from the MMO genre.  Considering these pre-defined terms to be a hindrance to the virtual worlds that are being created.

Pointing to the genre as whole Craig states an MMO at the three year point is a far better game than an MMO at release.  As with all good things it appears MMO's improve with age.  The true potential of the genre is in the way the games are 'slow boiled' and their communities organically built.   Which I suppose ironically raises the question why anybody would buy an MMO at release? But let's not dwell on that point.

Craig states that we should not view a game as worthless because it doesn't have a million players.  Instead we need to see how cool it is to be niche.  Funcom being one of the last independent MMO studios, has a major advantage in terms of technology with their proprietary Dreamworld Engine. Worth in itself 10,15,20 million dollars and five years worth of development.  Pointing out they could make their next 'system-driven' MMO on a very small budget of 10 to 15 million dollars.  Diminutive compared to the likes of Guild Wars 2, The Old Republic or even TSW.

The future for MMO's, from Funcoms perspective, is regular content update.  To quote Craig '...you probably have to remain important and in the mind of your users all the time, and not have too many big breaks between content updates'.  One things for sure, with a savvy go-getting and insightful creative director Funcom have few worries for the future.

Thenextbigthing

Originally posted by fallenlords

Much loved and well respected Craig Morrison, game director of Age of Conan and now Funcom  Montreal creative director. Has been giving his insight into The Secret World (TSW).   Craig in an interview with Gamasutra stated he thinks audience expectations are handicapping the MMO genre. 

Commenting on TSW Craig stated that if players didn't adopt such a high expectation mindset, they would see that a game starting with around 100k of players has massive potential.   Craig points to the success of EVE Online and how a small game can build up to something significant. 

Craig references other games such as League of Legends that started from meagre beginnings. Hoping TSW can follow suit Craig believes the keys to success are taking a small user base and building it up with continued investment. At the same time listening to user feedback and tweaking the game in accordance.  With a highly successful beta attracting 500k and initial sales of 200k, it seems TSW might be well placed to be the next Eve or League of Legends.  

Craig also gives his wonderful insight into how the MMO genre needs to evolve in the extended version of the article.  Craig is anti terms search as Sandbox and Themepark, if he had a choice he would remove these from the MMO genre.  Considering these pre-defined terms to be a hindrance to the virtual worlds that are being created.

Pointing to the genre as whole Craig states an MMO at the three year point is a far better game than an MMO at release.  As with all good things it appears MMO's improve with age.  The true potential of the genre is in the way the games are 'slow boiled' and their communities organically built.   Which I suppose ironically raises the question why anybody would buy an MMO at release? But let's not dwell on that point.

Craig states that we should not view a game as worthless because it doesn't have a million players.  Instead we need to see how cool it is to be niche.  Funcom being one of the last independent MMO studios, has a major advantage in terms of technology with their proprietary Dreamworld Engine. Worth in itself 10,15,20 million dollars and five years worth of development.  Pointing out they could make their next 'system-driven' MMO on a very small budget of 10 to 15 million dollars.  Diminutive compared to the likes of Guild Wars 2, The Old Republic or even TSW.

The future for MMO's, from Funcoms perspective, is regular content update.  To quote Craig '...you probably have to remain important and in the mind of your users all the time, and not have too many big breaks between content updates'.  One things for sure, with a savvy go-getting and insightful creative director Funcom have few worries for the future.

 

I'm starting to get fed up of developers blaming their failures on player's 'high expectations'. Of course we have high expectations we paid hard earned money to play. I'd agree about older mmos that have had time to grow being better than some new releases. Just because it's the latest rarely makes in the best. Unfortunately you either hold on to enough players in order to allow that growth to take place, or you die. Eve is a brilliant game so it had time to grow. I think it's unrealistic to expect players to stick around in a sub-standard game because it will be pretty good in five years time.

Scalpless

Oh, what a load of BS. If this game were made with a small budget and sold accordingly, no one would label it a failure. However, TSW's budget wasn't small and Funcom expected it to sell much better than it did, which is why it certainly was a financial failure. Of course, they may still be able to get it to work, but not because having 100K subs is so awesome.

BruceYee

Oh great, another company taking the "it's the player's fault" stance. Just when I thought Funcom had ditched their old ways.

Rawiz

Well, he is obviously trying to keep his job. If he doesn't know Funcom (Failcom, really) games are always content-lite, then he is crazy.

Also his EVE comments are ridicilously wrong.

itgrowls

This is a case that we've seen time and time again. D3 SWTOR and now TSW. It's the players fault that you have all these bugs or that you allowed them on your launch day or that they haven't been the focus of your updates to squash 80% as fast as humanly possible so no one has anything to complain about. It couldn't possibly be the developers in the slightest could it.

Anyone else tired of them using the really bad gaming model bad marketing practices and bad subscription only model and then when it fails it's the players fault? Because that argument is old and disproven now.

It had real potential to completely destroy the World of Darkness franchise if they had just thought outside the box a little. smh

 

What really happened was they ignored the demands of the players, which always leads to a poor design and a poor result.

grimgryphon

Personally, I wish MMO developers would ignore players more often, and build games based on their original vision, instead of listening to a gaggle of entitlement babies who think spending $60 on a game means the company owes them the world. It's the constant changing of game mechanics to pacify a bunch of whiners that ruins games.

The customer is never wrong...bah. Biggest bulls**t justification ever. The customer is almost never right.