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How Bioware Makes A Community Work
Gamasutra has an article discussing the procedures that Bioware uses to maintain and grow their online communities based around their games. From the article: "Fans as content creators are another asset. 'if you build it, they will build it as well...' Some members want to add to the community in very real and meaningful ways, and some of them possess 'mad skillz.' '90% of what sustains a community,' Watamaniuk stated, 'is the community itself. You provide the framework for their work. If fans are there creating content, it means that you don't have to create 100% of the content yourself.'"
Of course they need to worry about being SUED for the content their community creates (hot coffee).
Bioware for the most part makes RPGs. For the most part, the gamer that is interested in a bioware game is interested in engaging stories and deep characters, and are likely to also enjoy reading and writing (the staples of any online community).
Bioware also has a fair amount of developer interaction, its not uncommon to see Bioware employees answer questions directly.
Bioware's forums are a great example of success. As described in the article, they listen to all of the complaints and stories of exploits, bugs, wishes, etc. As they were developing expansion packs, the developers would frequently drop in the forums to squash rumors that weren't true, help tease the fans about new features and explain what could and could not be done with the engine. It helped to keep the masses from unrealistic expectations and keeps flames to a minimum.
They also support the modding community quite well which is especially important for a D&D based RPG.
B O R I N G
Interestingly, Pandemic Studios has just added a "Communities" link to their homepage. I wonder if we will see a BioWare-type community environment in the months following the developers' merger.
I often wonder why this mindset has never carried over to MMO games. Alot of people's frustrations with these games are due to the lack of new content being pushed out the door; And to be honest, its quite a load for a developer to take on.
I know there are some games like Second Life that have taken this approach, but its never been done in a meaningful, storyline driven sort of way.
With the recent post about bioware's contest ( too lazy to dig up a link ), it seems like this company definitely has the right idea. Imagine if Blizzard had given the community the ability to integrate their ideas in promoting storyline for level 60+ characters in WoW.
Kent Simon Multitheft Auto
I've talked with Jay before and he's a very nice guy. I suspect many of the lessons he's learned here were painful ones.
It's also interesting what wasn't talked about. I think Bioware has had some very painful interactions with some of the license holders of various intellectual properties (e.g. D&D and Star Wars). Often times, they're stuck being intermediaries between those groups and the community. I suspect the place isn't always a happy one.
From a builder's perspective (I make NWN mods), I very much appreciate developer's comments on the forums as well as releasing good information and tools to aid my tasks. We're essentially unpaid volunteers that increase the value of their product. I think it's important that developers treat these small groups of rabid mod makers quite well. Folks like Valve and Epic and Bioware have generally done a pretty good job with this, one of the reasons people still play Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, and Neverwinter Nights.
Well the article is pretty devoid of useful or interesting information, besides implying that Bioware has the names and addresses of all its customers, so I'll have to create some interest of my own.
*clears throat*
How does Bioware make a community work?
<spiteful>Well, it's certainly not by letting Linux and Mac users create their own content!</spite>
*grumble grumble*
Yeah, I know they did better than most by having even clients/servers for Linux and Mac, but NWN without a content editor is like Quake without multiplayer — its replay value has dropped a thousand-fold. (Hell, I could barely stand to play through the original campaign the first time—BioWare is in more desperate need of quality content creators than they are willing to admit!)
And, yeah, I know there are such open-source utilities as neveredit, but third-party tools don't make Bioware look any more supportive. Last I heard, Bioware wasn't even giving hints about their proprietary package formats, let alone a full specification, so it's all been through reverse engineering.
Interestingly, TFA includes this:
Fans as content creators are another asset. "If you build it, they will build it as well..." Some members want to add to the community in very real and meaningful ways, and some of them possess "mad skillz." "90% of what sustains a community," Watamaniuk stated, "is the community itself. You provide the framework for their work. If fans are there creating content, it means that you don't have to create 100% of the content yourself."
I guess none of the talented artists are using Macs, and none of the talented scripters are using Linux; they are all using Windows, right?
It's still not too late for Bioware to stitch its own self-amputated leg back on. If I had the tools, I would start making content (I am, IMNSHO, both a talented artist and a talented coder) at the drop of a hat.
Last I heard, Bioware wasn't even giving hints about their proprietary package formats, let alone a full specification, so it's all been through reverse engineering.
:).
Excuse me? Sounds you heard a lie last time, you might want to check your sources / and or hearing before you post something like this next time.
http://nwn.bioware.com/developers/
For those too lazy to check, the link contains the official documentation on the games "proprietary" data file formats (and tons of it), sourcecode examples, explainations and help from the tools programmers, etc.
I guess none of the talented artists are using Macs, and none of the talented scripters are using Linux; they are all using Windows, right?
Last time I checked you couldn't create art content with the windows toolset either, you need to use Max or NWmax for it. As a scripter, you can use vi if you want to, there are standalone compilers available for NWScript if you feel like it.
The reason why there is no toolset for linux and why there will never be one has been discussed over and over on our forums and we have been pretty open about it. The development environment that was used to create the toolset was supposed to have a linux version but the company producing it cancelled linux support during NWN development. No secrets here, just business. A full port of the toolset after that point was and certaintly is now cost prohibitive.
We still release client and server patches, for all supported operating systems 3.5 years after the game was released with the next patch (a big content patch with new art, sound, a load of new scripting functionality, etc) coming up sometime in the coming months, but BioWare Corp. is also not a charity, so maybe it is time to revisit some of the expectations you have there
Regards
Georg
BioWare