Customer Service Jeopardizes Online Gaming?

Thanks to Gamesindustry.biz for their new opinion piece suggesting poor customer service infrastructure is the biggest obstacle to to the growth of online gaming. According to the piece: "The biggest threat to online games today is the industry's neglect of the customer - usually a subscriber. How can a group so focused on giving the customer what they want, fulfilling their inner desires and fantasies in an online game be accused of neglecting this customer?" The writer also advocates partnering with an external subscription management solution if it makes sense, saying: "..overlooking those operational details that support the subscriber (billing, authentication, marketing, etc.) can mean the difference between disaster and success - even for a very good game."

Comments

Do not play well with others...ever.

[silentbobdp]

I always thought other annoying players would be the biggest obstacle to MMORPG success.

Ultima Online

[RealityMogul]

One of my biggest complaints about Ultima Online was that they never sent out any notifications that your subscription was about to expire. They just left it to you to remember to pay them more money as needed.

I wasn't a hardcore gamer so I would easily forget about such things as I did have many other aspects of my life that didn't revolve around the game.

It always bugged me that they couldn't bother to setup a small machine with a 20 line perl script to churn out e-mails.

A year ago I forgot to pay and when I went to logon my account was dead, so I just said screw it and uninstalled it. The in-game problems were enough to make me want to quit, but that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

The real culprits

[lightspawn]

• Buggy, exploitable software
  
• Developers unable or unwilling to fix bugs
  
• Servers shut down either periodically or permanently (hi SEGA)
  
• Boring, repetitive gameplay
  

Re:The real culprits

[Ty]

Developers unable or unwilling to fix bugs

While many online games are very slow to fix bugs, you should not directly blame it on the developers. SQA's are usually in control of what (if any) bugs are fixed. At times, in large companies, the development team may not even know a bug exists.

For example, we had a major exploit in PvP in Everquest on one of the servers with special rules for combat. Two years went by without it being fixed. The actual dev team didn't learn of the exploit until they doing Q&A with a public audience, and were confronted with it. The devs claimed the SQA team had never notified them. However, the exploit was patched shortly after.

Re:The real culprits

[lightspawn]

While many online games are very slow to fix bugs, you should not directly blame it on the developers. SQA's are usually in control of what (if any) bugs are fixed. At times, in large companies, the development team may not even know a bug exists.

I'm sorry, but I'm still bitter about the loss of my Phantasy Star Online character. SEGA knew there was a way for players to completely delete (well, modify beyond recognition) other players' games, but they did not fix the bug and did not disclose it (which would have enabled me to save my character).

They combined this approach with such fine techniques as not letting you back up your game to another memory card and not saving a copy on the server side.

Whenever a software developer knows of a bug that can result in users' data loss, the users should be informed. This should be a law. Any senators reading slashdot today?

Quite true

[Kethinov]

This article is quite true and I can support it with experience. I used to play Ultima Online and had been a long time player. I was part of the PVP (player vs player) niche of the game. While it is true that we were the minority, we still payed our monthly fee and deserved to have fun. Gradually over the years, the developers continued to make changes forcing PVPers to quit. Instead of listening to the overwhelming cries to make a server just for us, they continued to make the game cater to people who enjoyed farming gold and items. The casual PVPer was left in the dust

To make a long story short, they did try to make a server just for us, but they failed to listen to what the PVP customers were trying to tell them. We wanted casual PVP; we didn't want to spend 10 hours a day trying to farm gold and items in order to compete! So because of developer ignorance and failure to listen to customers, they've all but lost their PVP minority. Now the difference between UO and Everquest is minimal and UO's days are quite numbered now that SWG and FFXI are rolling in.

If they wanted to save their game and make it unique they should have offered what no other game had: casual PVP. But it seemed they were more concerned with the short term business model than the long term business model. Drop an insignificant minority here, gain some newbies there, raise subscription rates for 3 months. Seems okay on the surface, but by shunning long time players and relying on a constant flow of newbies, your game is destined to fail.

Re:Quite true

[achacha]

Casual PVPer is like saying a casual serial killer. The only benefit to the MMORPG is that they can be used as a self policing aspect when reputation system is inadequate.

PvP is the scourge that prevented UO from growing and why EQ has over 300,000 subscribers. PvP is a small subset of players that somehow feel that they need to be supported while they drive away many of casual gamers. And there are 50x more casual gamers than hardcore gamers, from the financial point of view, the companies would rather cater to the casual gamers rather than the hardcore ones. Casual gamers still pay the same amount per account and play far less reducing the load on the servers and in the long run reducing bandwidth costs of a hardcore player. Hardcore players are actually financially the worst type of a customer they use up way more resources than their monthly payment "allows".

Most PvPer tend to be griefers, PKers and generally annoying people. Having played UO, I was unable to do anything in the game without someone attempting to kill me, the game became 1 domensional, leave town and run hoping you don't get killed. The only option was to become a PKer and prey on the clueless newbies and ruin their experience, and I chose not to do that.

If people want to PK then they should be playing Quake/Halflife/etc. where the environment is set up for them to kill each other and leave the rest of us MMORPG players to explore the world, group up, research, tradeskill and try to have a good time.

Re:Quite true

[Micro$will]

But it seemed they were more concerned with the short term business model than the long term business model. Drop an insignificant minority here, gain some newbies there, raise subscription rates for 3 months. Seems okay on the surface, but by shunning long time players and relying on a constant flow of newbies, your game is destined to fail.

This is true for any service. It could explain why AOL lost over a quarter million subscribers this year.

Re:Quite true

[Shrubber]

The article is completely right, except for the conclusion. All of the outlined problems do exist. They don't stop people from playing, however. To say the future of online gaming is dim goes against all of the evidence we already have. People will play bad games, get treated like crap, AND pay for it in droves. Sure, there's plenty of people who say they quit such and such a game because of the poor service. Then there's the hundreds of thousands of other people who are still shelling out their money month after month, and are showing no signs of stopping now. The only thing that will hurt online gaming will be bad games. And the only thing that will hurt is the individual game, people will happily keep paying someone else.

PHBs

[pmz]

Until corporate accounting evolves to properly label customer service as a means for profit rather than expense, this will always be a problem.

On rare occasion, I've had a company blow me away with tremendous customer service, and that almost guarantees I'll be a repeat customer. At least, I'll think of that company, again. Customer service really should be viewed as advertising, where it is the company's chance to define their image to customers. Even though the total number of people exposed are few, the power of word-of-mouth should not be underestimated.

The last couple of times I've bought from lesser-known retailers listed at Pricewatch, I'll do a google search for "company-xyz sucks OR 'poor service'", for example. The results can be suprising and help me determine whether a vendor is an acceptable risk.

You don't really need to be a paying subscriber...

[ihatesco]

to feel screwed from the Management.

I remember when I used to play on an unofficial Ultima Online shard

Origin: before continuing please note

• I aknowledge that it breaches your TOS contract
• That shard anyway closed and disbanded and I am not informed what their admins are doing now
• I am not advocating with this article to play on unofficial servers (rather: che contrary, play on official ones dudes, or play free games like muds or free mmorpgs)

Back to us...
I can remember playing on this unofficial UO shard. There the Admins tought the following things:

1. They were the admins and they were going to decide what was the best for the Shard, including:
   • Sudden Gameplay Changes (many of which undocumented or really far far far from the original UO experience)
   • Insane rules about guilds (like this one: "your guild space is sacred and no one can enter into it, HOWEVER, if someone manages to enters in it via a gate and mark the territory, you have to pay them a ransom"... that doesn't make any sense at all)
   • Some GMs really liked to unnerve you asking to stick to roleplay mode (they jailed a group of four girls who entered in one of their houses with their horses and stayed there for some time, just to avoid the horses to be killed by a group of PKs) and the minute later other GMs summon strange beasts inside guilds for entertainment (a red/black flametrowing Oclock which also liked to make jokes), or makes NPC bankers say funny out of character things to people around (yeah so much for the "RPG Mode ON" in the Message of the Day... my a$$).
2. A really childish management of the forums (replying to a professional pk and troll, which was 13 years old at the time, with the :rolleyes: smiley at every single post... and the admin/moderator doing replying with those spammy :rolleyes: was 24...)
3. The ban of the two most clever admins and making a third one to suspend herself temporarily because she was tied to the other two and did not want to impede the management... and all of them were people who really liked to work on the shard and who really did their questing job well (the third of them is a girl who was even neglecting other hobbies, and other friends for that damn server... but she was the one that answered all the Pages, all the damn subscription requests and mails, no Origin... she went to live to Venezuela with her boyfriend some months ago and I haven't heard from her since). All of this why? The comeback of the original founder of one of the two shards that have merged into the one I played.

What is my point with this rant?
I arrive to it in a minute.

Before that experience I loathed Ultima Online since it was sucking my friends in and I found myself alone... but when I started playing it on Christmas, I managed to understand why they liked it, and I began mining, hacking, chopping stuff for hours like them because I wanted my PC become stronger, and I wished to do quests with them.

I also found a very good game guild, I also found "my role" in there and my "part". Everyone else liked my PC and we exchanged our stuff, I repaired stuff for them and they gave me ingots... so I became part of that world.

Unfortunately the Game masters were too much involved in making the game a "continuous experimentation in serverside scripting", a "living lab of game design failures and unfixed bugs", and a "political chess game".

They managed to ruin an otherwise good experience.
Why?
Poor communication, poor understanding, and a really scarce level of humilty.
This is what happens with nowadays companies.
Why, for example, my "railroad transportation authority" has to put loud, clearchannel/disco music at the train stations (yes, in Italy we have Clearchannel radio stations... I am not surprised by it). Does it enhace the service or is it only eye candy?
Is it

Similarities to...

[ae0nflx]

Whenever I think about MMORPGs, I think about the music industry. There are so many similarities, buggy software, restrictive service for exorbantant monthly fees...

The only company, in my opinion that has gotten online gaming right is Blizzard, you buy the game (right...buy...) they provide Battle.net for FREE. hmm. what a novel concept. I would think that most gamers switch from game to game every few months, yes some games last more than others but it is often too much effort to switch gaming services. When I think about what I want in an MMORPG, i think (nerd alert...) of .hack, an anime show. The technology isn't at that point yet, but it wouldn't hurt if the developers could make a little effort to make things more interesting. The MMORPG community needs a savior like Apple was the online music community. And I am by no means suggesting that you have a pay-per-game system, just a more innovative system that would attract more gamers.

What a surprise!

[PapaZit]

Check out the "So what can I do?" section. The answer: "an out-of-the-box subscription management solution". Other tips: don't do it yourself, expect it to take time and cost a lot of money.

Now, skip down to the bottom of the article:

Dale Munk is CEO of subscription management software provider Sandlot - www.sandlot.com

A subscription management software provider recommending that people spend a lot of money on subscription management software. Who'd have thought?

Re:You don't really need to be a paying subscriber

[Schezar]

Here's what killed UO for me.

Macroing.

Macros make MMORPGs fun. Without them, you'd actually have to waste your time clicking on the tree ten-thousand times. With a macro, you can let the computer do the repetitive, boring, tedious tasks while you're at work, and then have fun playing the game when you get home.

If a task in a game can be reliably done with a non-intelligent macro, that task is only worthy of a non-intelligent being.

Re:You don't really need to be a paying subscriber

[ihatesco]

If a task in a game can be reliably done with a non-intelligent macro, that task is only worthy of a non-intelligent being.

If a game requires you to have a non-intelligent macro in order to advance, that's a game I would like to leave only to non-intelligent beings O:)

Surprised this isn't a repost

[Dachannien]

Problems with Customer Service in online games are nothing new. The several people above complaining about CS in UO, of all games, should indicate that.

But the real problem is that CS in an online game is, believe it or not, hard. Reasons for this:

• Customers asking for things they cannot have due to regulations governing CS. These are games, they have rules, and they have to be fair for everyone. If CS grants certain favors to some players and not others, those other people complain. Ironically enough, if CS doesn't grant those favors to some players and not others, the some players are the ones complaining.
  
• Customers asking for immediate gratification through immediate information, even when the knowledge will not gratify them. So the servers are down. "Why why why?" "OMG wehn will tehy b bakc up!!!!1" If you've ever been in an online game's out-of-game chat when the servers were down, you've probably seen your fair share of this. The problem is, there are tons of people asking why, there are tons of people complaining, and many of them will not be sated by the truth anyway. Yes, the servers are down, and the players have reason to be distraught, but unless the company is completely slacking off, someone is working on the problem.
  
• There are usually not enough CS staff for the number of players. This is exacerbated by two factors: one, a small portion of the player base makes an inordinately large portion of the requests received by the CS staff; and two, CS is notoriously underpaid in the MMOG industry. (For reference, EverQuest GMs used to be hired initially as temps, and after the temp agency took its cut, they were making about $8 per thankless hour, while living mostly just north of San Diego.)
  
• Customers suck. Yeah, that's not a very polite way to say it, but drawing from some of the earlier points I made, this summary can be obtained: an inordinately small portion of the customer base complains both constantly and quite rudely to an overworked, underpaid CS team about issues beyond CS's control. Players blame CS for everything, because CS is the front line for a lot of their problems, regardless of where the request should go. CS generally doesn't handle tech support (though this depends to some extent on the company). CS certainly is not in charge of making design decisions. CS has a very limited scope of action, yet customers who do not (or refuse to) understand this continue to levy their complaints against the first people they see - customer service.
  
• Lawyers suck even worse. Ever since the AOL lawsuit regarding volunteer workers, MMOG maintainers have been scared shitless of the implications of being sued. EverQuest was and is, to my knowledge, the only professionally-published online game still to make use of volunteer customer service personnel. While the Guide Program was not the perfect solution to the customer service problem, it provided advantages in terms of cost to the end-user which are unavailable when all of a company's CS staff must be hired. Yes, a company should absorb the costs of customer service when they are making money hand-over-fist, but realistically, no company is going to cut the bottom line to make the customers happy when they have a parent company (with shareholders) breathing down their neck. (Alternatively, shareholders and parent companies suck and will be a thorn in the side of customers until their expectations on return can be brought to a more reasonable level.)

So, yes, CS is hard. Everyone hates you - the customers, the pencil-pushing-penny-pinchers, everyone. Do companies owe us good CS for our money? Yes, of course. For our $14.95 a month, we should be getting the same sort of CS we get from the phone company, the cable company, plumbers, banks, mechanics.......

...and hopefully the irony there was lost on no one.

Re:Surprised this isn't a repost

[the_ed_dawg]

Anarchy Online actively recruits ARKs for in-game help. I believe the only requirement is to have at least one level 50 character, though I imagine they can be as selective as necessary.

However, having sat in a petition queue for over two hours without advancing in priority, I'd like to mention that they should be less selective in their help and look for more quantity. I mean... I was only stuck inside a mission. Beam me up, Scotty!