Developing Online Games Book Reviewed

Thanks to Frictionless Insight for putting up a review of Jessica Mulligan and Bridgette Patrovsky's new book, Developing Online Games, a New Riders-published title written by two veteran MMO creators. The review mentions, in particular, that "..the central theme, the nail-it-to-your-face, tattoo-it-on-your-forearm message of Developing Online Games is that persistent world (PW) games, like EverQuest, aren't a product, they're a service. It is a failure to understand this unassuming statement that has caused such trouble for the PW genre." There's also an excerpt from the book available on the FI site. Update: 06/26 15:29 GMT by T : Here's Peter Wayner's review of this book from April.

Comments

Online games....

[Neck_of_the_Woods]

Read my virtual lips...content, content, content...and more content. Rinse repeat.

How hard is it to keep adding new stuff. Take that standard MMO that has done well(DOAC, AC, UO..etc..etc) and just have some guys that do nothing but add content, so much that you can't really do it all and you will have a fan base that does not leave.

Re:Online games....

[Sulihin]

You don't think the existing MMOG's already do this? I think you seriously underestimate the difficulty of adding content that is balanced and interesting. EQ has been adding content since its inception, and perhaps you could argue that it has a fan base that does not leave, but you also have a fan base that gripes about how badly balanced the new content is and how the new content isn't geared towards them and how easy the new content was to master, etc. So simply having any content is obviously not sufficient, it has to be good content. This is partially what is to blame for the typical content power-spiral, as each newly released batch of content needs to outdo the last and the easiest way to do this is to make it bigger, better, more powerful than it was before.

Also, having so much content that one can't possibly do it all isn't nearly as important if you know from the outset that the content is simply more of the same level treadmill over and over. This means your content has to be involved, which takes both more time and more skill to develop as well as more quality control work.

Re:Online games....

[Anonymous Coward]

Read my virtual lips..

money, money, money.

It's not exactly cheap to be developing and programming content 24/7. Never mind balancing it and dealing with all the problems on the old content.

I mean, sure, if you want to charge $90/month/player, you might be able to get away with it. But otherwise? Simply not profitable.

Spreading thin

[sixb0nes]

Hard-core PC gamers may be relatively small in number, but do they ever spend a lot of time and money on their hobby! Reliable estimates put the number of these players at between at least 4 million and possibly as many as 6.5 to 7 million in the U.S. alone, of which at least half play either PWs or retail hybrids regularly online. The total worldwide may be as high as 15 million.

Now spread 15 million across the growing selection of available MMO games - and we'll see how far your game will go.

I'd be interested to see how many people jump ship when a new MMO ships. How many people subscribe to more than one game at the same time, and will they just leave after all the time they've put into their game? Maybe one day you can swap up chars between games if it is developed/published by the same company.

This is all the game developers seem to know.

[darkmayo]

1. Make game
2. Beta test for awhile
3. Release before the game is ready
4. Patch

You have to release before the "next generation" of game comes out.. even tho that next gen game will be releasing early to beat the next next gen game.

Re:This is all the game developers seem to know.

[chrismcdirty]

I thought it went like this:

1. Create game engine that copies all other MMOs.
2. ???????
3. Profit!

Re:This is all the game developers seem to know.

[Farscry]

Actually, the parent comment was NOT offtopic. This relates exactly to one of the book's major points: MMO's are services, not regular games. Too many developers, treating them like games, are releasing them in an incomplete state that's not ready for retail.

In a regular game, we've grown to expect patches. It's why I rarely purchase PC games when they first come out. But with a regular PC game, you pay once, and when it's ready it's ready. The person who bought the game 3 months before me hasn't paid much more than I did (maybe the price drops 5-10 dollars in the meantime), and they've been able to get some enjoyment out of it (unless it's Ultima IX...).

In an MMO, though, the person who is an early adopter will have paid about 20-30 dollars more than me while the game is being repaired and completed.

Unfortunately, many people are either misled or haven't learned from the past, and so companies releasing MMO's continue to benefit from casual consumers going into the store and purchasing the game since it's the "latest and greatest". (Store employees promoting these incomplete games aren't helping the situation)

When the game is finally complete and running fairly smoothly 2-3 months later (or longer in some cases), the initial people who have let their subscriptions lapse don't really hurt the company, who has gotten by with those client purchases for the initial sales period. In fact, they're often able to tout those high sales (and stores place the game prominently in "hot item" categories), which leads to new sales. I would wager that it is the sales from this point forward that constitute most of the ongoing subscriptions; a large portion of the initial subscribers most likely let their subscription expire.

So granted, yes, you could say "well stop buying the incomplete games and the problem will go away!"

To which I say, "yes, I have, but unfortunately it's misinformed customers who have enabled companies to propogate this poor business practice."

Yes, I enjoy MMO's, but this shady practice for new releases is what I have grown weary of. Companies just don't get that the service needs to be ready, not just the client program. You don't open a travel agency just because the pretty office is done but you have no deals with airlines or cruiselines and hope to be successful, do you?

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean you can't download it?

Mulligan at the Austin Game Conference

[Anonymous Coward]

For what its worth Jessica Mulligan will be speaking at the Austin Game Developers Conference Sept 11-12.

http://www.gameconference.com/