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How Not To Make An MMOG
garylian writes "Some of the folks here might remember a Massive game called 'Mourning' that went into development and never really went anywhere. Apparently, it went Gold, but it wasn't even close to complete. Some former fans have a riviting Q/A with one of the former programmers. Highlights from the article include the fact that one of the game backers was a internet porn-lord!" From the article:"The game was going nowhere, no one really believed in its success. We all knew it was going to fail, but we were kind of reluctant in admiting it. Those who realized this and had better opportunities, left. Those who were blinded by different reasons or had no other choices, remained till the end (or maybe had different reasons.) It's not that we didn't try to change this direction the game was heading to... We did, but no one was listening to us. " The interview is well conducted, but you should obviously take this with a grain of salt.
> we didn't have a design document and as such we could not deliver.
That's the biggest of many difficulties pointed out in the interview. I think it's just as important that the HR process sucked; they eliminated a qualified applicant in favor of an unqualified friend, didn't take action when the friend verbally abused the staff, etc.
It was also a bad sign that the programmers (game designers) were not allowed to talk to the customers (fanbase). While of course there has to be a limit on everything, a certain amount of customer/programmer interaction is important to developing a project that pleases the customer, rather than the designer.
It doesn't bother me that this interview got a bit personal at time. Better that than happytalk-B.S.!
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Summary, we didn't have a design document and as such we could not deliver.
That's not unusual in the game industry. The design document is usually a formality for the developer to present to the publisher to get the first check. When you get the alpha build from the developer, that's when it becomes obvious that the design document was no better than toliet paper. If you try to hold the developer (and sometimes the publisher's producer) accountable to the design document before issuing the next milestone payment, the rationalization, jutstifications and excuses add up pretty quickly.
When I was a lead QA tester at Atari, I was often forced to based my test documents on the game instead of the design document. The only exception was Dragonball Z: Buu's Fury for the GameBoy Advance, which had a 200-page design document that detailed everything. That was my favorite title to work on and it had a great developement team.