Dopass.com

So, there I was reading Massively, when I come across an op-ed piece entitled Digital Continuum: Sci-fi, Looking back. Being, as I'm sure I've mentioned, a huge Sci-Fi fan, and dying - as I'm sure I've mentioned - as I am for a sci-fi MMO, I of course immediately clicked over to read the article...

...and found grim bitter disappointment on the other side.

It's, essentially, an article bitching about the lack of Sci-fi games (mmos in particular) that then looks at MMOs that have come in the past and basically bitches and moans about the "lazy developers" who "didn't bother to make new content." In other words, it covers a real and palpable issue (The lack of diversity in the MMO space) and rather than exploring it intelligently, it berates the very people who tried to bring the guy what he's asking for...

...and people wonder why devs don't really interact with communities, anymore.

Look, as much as I'm yearning to do so, I'm not going to rant here. Instead let me just say something that, most likely, is obvious is you take a minute to think about it:

Making games is hard. Making large games is harder.

The more ambitious the game, the more work, time and money it's going to take to get done.

The more time and money a game takes to make, the more likely that game is to ship early, thanks to pressure from the guys paying for it to see some sort of return on that expense.

The earlier the game ships, the more likely it is to have half-implemented work.

When you look at E&B, for example, and you think, "gawd those lazy schmucks! They didn't even implement the last of their character classes!" please take a moment to remember this post, then slap yourself in the face or sock yourself in the dangly bits. Preferably both.

Devs are not, as a breed, lazy. We don't get into projects thinking, "You know what I'm gonna do on this project? Nothing. I'm gonna sit around and play video poker (I mean, WoW) all day and do nothing. That's awesome. Rock and roll!"

No, seriously; we don't. Instead, we go into projects thinking, "This time, this time it's going to be different. I'm not going to let my publisher walk all over me. I'm going to stand up for what I know is right. I'm going to toil away even though I know I won't make enough to pay my rent or feed my kids just for the sake of the game."

The problem is, all the good intentions in the world aren't going to save you from the realities of the business. Don't have the cash to pay your team? Too bad, figure out how to get the game out the door in less time or with fewer people; cuz you ain't getting more money. Don't have the time to implement that feature you know your game is going to suck without? Well, sorry pal, you should have thought of that before you cut back staff just to pay the bills; now there's no one around with the time to implement it. You'll have to do without.

The idea that we just didn't "feel like it" or that we were too lazy to do it really sucks. You know why it sucks? Because every time we see players, gamers or journalists saying it, we die a little inside. We care a little bit less about what you guys want because we feel betrayed. It's even worse when you're the guy who did sacrifice his time, money and soul just like he promised, because you become that guy in the hopes that some gamer out there will say, "Sure the game was unfinished and sure it sorta sucked, but check this out - it has feature Y! Someone must have really cared about us to bother with that." Of course, they never do. (Well ok, rarely do. I know from personal experience that some do, but you people who do? You're the very rare exception.)

What I'm getting at here is that your frustrations about the experience you get often come out as rants against the developers and that's classic transference. What you may or may not realize is that most of those developers not only understand your frustrations, but feel them too. For every poorly implemented feature, there's a coder or designer wiping the sweat from his or her brow thinking, "Well, at least it's in. They were going to cut it completely if I hadn't poured what little energy I had left into making it work, at all."

What worries me most about this habit is the way it makes the relationship between players and devs adversarial. The WoW devs are best known for what? The Banhammer. People would openly ridicule and make fun of the cape-wearing, but at least community interacting, head of Cryptic. They attacked him. Don't get me wrong, he might even have deserved it, but is that sort of antagonism even remotely good for the games? Does it motivate the devs to do anything at all to help you?

How about the publishers? The publishers don't play their games (or perhaps, to be fair, I should say "don't play their own games in anything but a professional capacity). They see the forums and they see players lambasting devs or devs firing back at players and they think, "This property is poison. Look at the ill will it's generating for our brand. We gotta let it die. The longer we keep it going, the worse we're going to look."

It's not surprising to me to see E&B or Auto Assault cancelled before either really got the chance to get their legs back under them and start running. Both games were pushed out early by tiny teams working with a fraction of the resources the real MMO contenders had and both were at the mercy of publishers who flat out didn't understand the niche either game was meant to serve. You take that level of publisher confusion and add onto that the atmosphere of antagonism created by printed comments like, "It's obvious these devs are lazy - the outpost system doesn't even work!" or "My god, 3 whole classes never got implemented, what slackers!" and what do you think those publishers are going to think? They're going to think that both games - despite whatever promise they may have actually had - are nothing but albatrosses around their necks, dragging them down.

The sad part is who suffers for all of this. It's you folks. It's the players. Every niche game you tear apart when you voice your frustrations represents just one more hurdle for the next team to overcome to even justify working within that niche again. Why would someone else make a car themed combat MMO after Auto Assault failed so miserably and left so many people talking about how bad it was? Never mind the realities, never mind that the game was made on a shoestring for a company that didn't even really know what it wanted; what publishers will see is that "car mmo == catastrophe" and now anyone else with a similar idea is, for all intents and purposes, boned. They have to expend time, money and effort to explain how Auto Assault was the fluke and not the rule before they can even get to explaining why the game they're going to make will be cool.

You think space games are any different? You've got to explain Jumpgate, E&B, Star Wars Galaxies, Seed and all of the other totally niche games that tried and failed... and that's before you make your pitch.

OK, so I'll be the first to admit, there's a lot of hyperbole in this stream of consciousness. Things maybe aren't as extreme as I've painted them, but the point remains. Every time the players bag on the devs, the chances for a better game in that field coming along go down because all publishers see are the rants. They never see the passion for the niche, or the game, that generates such hot flames from its ranting community.

Don't think I'm bagging on players here though, this is a two-way street. We devs have to grow thicker skins. We need to spend less time thinking about it - less time being in "us vs. them" mode. We have to spend more time analyzing the rants for the truth behind them and less time knee-jerk reacting to the tone of the invective. We need to remember that players don't know what's going on behind the screen.

Players don't know that decisions that kill their games are often made by people who pay for the games to be made, not the people who actually make them. Players don't really understand that sometimes you have to choose between making the game suck a little more and making the game, at all. And more importantly - players don't know how much of a person's heart and soul it really takes to make a game. We devs need to recognize that and forgive players when they attack us. We need to remember they don't see devs that have no time, money or even energy, left when they see "devs being too lazy to implement feature X properly."

We all need to remember that we got into this, on either side of the screen, to have fun. We need to save the passion for our work, or our friends and our family, rather than wasting it on reacting to frustrations. Better things will happen, when we do.

- Snipehunter