In thinking about games that have a passionate team or committed team behind them, a few come to mind. It's not just small crowd-funded games like Camelot Unchained. Even big money companies like Zenimax have a team behind ESO that seems to care and to be present doing events with fans on a regular basis. Maybe other big games like FFXIV. Even WoW has a lot of interaction with devs posting on the forums.
On the other hand, there are quite a few that just seem like cash grabs, like you don't even know who the dev or the CR team are. It's like they just put a game out with a cash shop and after the founders packs are sold and the initial rush is over, they move on to the next project.
Which games have teams behind them that actually seem to care?
Comments
https://www.engadget.com/2012/04/27/some-assembly-required-ten-years-warp-by-for-vendetta-online/
MJ Guthrie writes:
"What I really was impressed by was the developers' willingness to stay after the event and interact with the players, gathering feedback, answering questions, and just plain being involved in their community.
[...]
For active developer participation, Vendetta Online definitely runs near the head of the pack and might even lead it."
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
A lot of games have died because they were very dedicated to the game they created, and not the game their players wanted to play.
You have the passionate, the disillusioned and the ones who just want a paycheck.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
FFXIV comes to mind immediately. Yoshi P is very engaged personally, and I think it is reflected in the game. I can't think of any single developer more involved with their game and with the players, or a game that suffered a worse launch with such a dramatic turn around.
Blizzard, as much as we love to hate it, and as much as I may not like many of the changes they have made, you can't deny they have a very active and engaged team. They may not be doing exactly what the players are calling for, or always give out the popular answers, but you know they are looking at the data and continually tweaking. I think they spend too much time defending their game rather than the player, but they do make a very concerted effort to make sure they keep a (more or less) level playing field in all their games.
SWTOR and ESO listen a good deal. If they hadn't listened, they both would long since be dead by now. But both are still around and doing well by all accounts today, in no small part because they listened and reacted in time to save the ship. Neither of these are as dramatic as FFXIV's turnabout in my opinion, but ESO is coming close.
Other big games I don't know, I feel a lot of them chase analytics or whatever the next fancy buzzword is (and I think Blizzard is often guilty of this, but they are very good at putting a personal touch on it at least). SoE/Daydream is awful for this, and the quality of their games truly suffers because of it. I think ArenaNet fell into this trap as well, and that's why GW2 wasn't as good as I thought it should be (and never really evolved into anything better).
2. I have a view that works in many things. If you want something go directly to what it is you want. What I want is a good game, thus, I look for a game that looks like its good. I ignore the dev team because although an 'active dev team' might create a good game its not a sure thing. what is the best sure thing on a good game? is if the game is ....good
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I don't mean individually. All organizations have all kinds of people in them. Everyone who's ever had a job knows that. We also know some places are better to work at than others. What makes those places better?
I gave some examples of organizations that seem to be more involved with their games and communities than others. It can be something as simple as having an awesome CR. It can be excellent customer support. Those are organizational things. Decisions were made for it to be that way. That's what I'm talking about.
Other games just don't seem to be run that way. They have non-existent customer support. You don't even know who's idea the game was, etc. There are no people or faces behind the games that a community can ever relate to in a positive way. For example, just today I saw a thread about Cloud Pirates and people were slagging it off because "My.com and the Allods Team."
Sounds like by saying "period" you want to ride high horse. But all that I'm asking is for is recognition of some of the better teams in your opinion and some reasons why.
Some devs also get that caring about the players is good for the game and the bottom line, too. And they are also players.
The Nazis where extremely organized, very effective and very passionate.
But who knows if they could make a good video game.
if you want a good video game...look at the video game for evidence of its quality
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which is why if one wants to know if a game is good or not the best thing to do is to look at the game, not the team that made it
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Typically, with smaller companies, managing this external communication is MUCH easier. It's not that the company doesn't care about how they are perceived, but it's much easier to communicate HOW everyone in the company should be "selling" the company to the media. As soon as you reach a point that you can no longer fit your entire company in a meeting room, you begin to have issues. Smaller teams give the appearance of being much happier or "engaged" because it's not a marketer communicating with the end user.
Also, it should be said that if you're working on a smaller team who is excited with what they're working on, you tend to get on-board with that attitude or you leave the company because you're not the right "fit". Again, once you get bigger, though, it's much easier to have disgruntled people just blend in like background noise.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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ESO and SWTOR know they have a popular IP so feel they can push it to make people spend more money. Playing ESO I constantly run into design decisions that feel like it's only there to get players to spend more in the cash shop or to slow leveling. Like respecs in the cash shop.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I disagree that managing external communication is categorically much easier for a smaller team. If anything it's the reverse, unless you are talking about discussions over the water cooler or one's spouse at home, and that's... stretching the term.
Also, interaction with the community may not define an engaged dev team but it can be a sign of one. Other signs might be frequent updates along with frequent communication with customers (community).
I agree that in a smaller organization you are going to have more people wearing more "hats".
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
I tend to think more simplistically about this.
Signs of a good game is the game itself. peroid end of story.
'engaged' developer on the forums means exactly that and nothing more, they are engaged on the forums.
it doesnt mean they are actually coding
it doesnt mean they are actually good at coding either.
Occam's razor approach to life is surprising reliable and easy.
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I found SW:TOR to be the opposite: they never listened to the community. They ignored the community all through alpha and beta testing, then ignored them all through launch and post-launch, and continue to ignore them today.
Thats why the game launched in such a bad state, with so many bad design decisions that have never been fixed.
Instead of listening to the community, Bioware almost completely ignored them and just focused on what they knew and loved: story. Thats why the game at release (and I assume still now) is pretty crap at everything except the storylines. Its why player retention was shockingly bad and the game was headed for a financial loss before F2P, and is why they've had to be so aggressive with their monetisation strategy.
ESO, I do agree there. They stuck to their own vision initially but have had the good sense to make pretty big changes as a response to launch and the community.
No, I was talking about managing what the company message should be to the media. I suppose it's easier as there IS probably a policy regarding interviews, etc. However, it's much more unlikely that there would be an interview conducted with someone in a small office without the CEO knowing about it, and probably doing an interview prep.
That being said, Sean Murray taught us that if your CEO is off the rails then there are much larger problems. However, the NMS team was VERY engaged from what I could tell. After release? Meh, maybe not so much.
I think that the biggest factor for engagement is the passion of the individuals involved. You can't tell someone to love something. "Hey you! Love olives!!" It doesn't work like that. So it's very simple to get an engaged team at a small company where they have one project on the go. The interview simply goes like this, "Tell me about why you love olives so much." "If you could improve olives, where would it be?"
If those two questions don't eat up at least 20 minutes to a half hour of the interview, I'm calling it. Oh! Olives are obviously in reference to whatever the project might be.
That's not to say that large companies don't hire olive lovers, it just means that they might hire an olive lover at first, and then move them off to a project dealing with strawberries, which they hate.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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yeah Sean Murray should teach people what I have been saying for years (and of course get ignored) which is Dev communication doesnt stand for shit.
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Again, I need to be more specific. I'm not talking about organization as the action of organizing something, but rather in the sense of an organized body of people with an organizational culture. Every organization and sub-organization has its own culture.
I don't really see the connection with nazis here. It seems bizarre to see it come up so often these days.
People working in the gaming industry purely for a paycheck and not because they care about the games are in the wrong line of work. Or at least that's the case for many of the roles in game development. A good programmer, for example, could probably make more money elsewhere, and likely with better hours, too.
The issue with Guild Wars 2 was a multitude of things, but what stuck out for me is that they released the game is jarringly unfinished. There was also a strange conversation about balance I had with Jon Peters a few months before release, where we went back and forth on cooldowns and the level that they could be tweaked. Simply put he didn't what "Messy Numbers." Coming from the man that engineered the beautiful mess that was Guild Wars' damage calculations. That being said I haven't followed the game since the first November when they reneged on their promise of horizontal progression.
Devs who can play at an equal level as the average player of their game
are alright in my book. For instance I hated Kaplan back in the Old WoW
days because Warrior was one of the few classes that could be viable as
any spec, warrior being the class that he the head of balance played
often saw favor. At least he could get glad though. Which is respectable
for the time.
That being said on the other spectrum you have
Warframe, where Scott, their balance director didn't play the game for
the longest time. Lo and behold the balance in Warframe is shit. Energy,
Health, Armor, Shields are so beyond disrepair that any hope for a
challenging boss fight is automatically forfeit. That and you have Loki
that takes a fat dump on every game mode. It wasn't until the summer of
last year that he actually started his play-through of the game that he
had already worked 5 years on. Subsequently the frame that he played
actually got buffs. That being said there's this looming patch that is
supposed to fix damage, armor, and health. Ten bucks says Loki is still
untouched, and still like a magician performing a magic trick, will make
the difficulty disappear.
Finally it's always good remember that
there are always going to be those developers that pretend to be
passionate, because in reality they only hope to make a quick buck.
NO
MANS
SKY
The 'culture' as you describe that is needed to be successful could very well exist and you not know it. all you see is the dev communications to the public which is NOT related to the culutre within the project and sometimes like in the case of NO MANS SKY can be completely misleading to waht is really going on
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The wheels will always fall off on fake CR no matter the game. I'm not saying this specifically about NMS, because I haven't played it.
Lets just say most of them, we seen a few blatant cashgrabs that were poorly made and rushed out.
Most devs certainly seems to care, but I don't think that is strange, I care about my work as well and like doing a good job.
But there are certainly some companies that working for feels like flipping burgers at a greasy fast food joint and I assume most people working for them care more about actually getting their pay then their work. I am certain that making games are a passion for some while just another job for others.
ok you are likely sporting the most bizzare logic I have read in awhile.
'dev communication' 'enthusasim' and 'organizational culture' of which you can not see and would never know if its healthy or not all only applies to MMOs, not other games and despite going into just about any game forum on Steam and finding posts on both single player, multiplayer and MMOs of players screaming and yelling about dev communication and the like it really only applies to MMOs.
lol
that makes about as much sense as 'you cant use No Mans Sky as an example because its a game that starts with the letter N'
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