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BioWare On Tracking Player Feedback
simoniker writes "BioWare's QA director Phillip DeRosa has written a piece called 'Tracking Player Feedback To Improve Game Design' over at Gamasutra, which deals with how game developers can use statistics, even before a game is released, to improve gameplay. DeRosa "...explains how the Mass Effect creator has set up and executed code-based monitoring of key metrics to test, analyze, and refine its projects through playtesting." Is this approach sensible, or could it be more like movie producers 'pandering' to test audiences?"
Unlike movies, in which taking into account the opinions of test audiences is thought of as compromising artistic vision, video games are made for players to play interactively. It's not just their money that matters, it's their ability to play and have a good time. The best game designer in the world doesn't always get it right. Playtesting is not just done for marketing reasons; it's absolutely imperative if you want to make sure the game is as good as it can be.
I piss off bigots.
I think it depends on the size and scope of a test audience. If they're picking up a group of 15 year olds at the mall on a weekend and having them sit down to play the game for a half hour, than yes, it is definitely pandering to a certain audience (this conversely could be said if they pick a few college aged gamers who spend several hours at a time on the game). However, if they have a decent beta/playtest application and select a good cross section of who they believe will be playing the game, then I think it's sensible.
The ultimate goal has to be to create a game that the most people will find enjoyable, but we all know that "you can't please all the people all of the time."
Baldur's Gate games were amazing, but saying they've gone downhill since is a bit of a stretch.
KotOR was awarded game of the year by a ton of publications, and is generally agreed to be one of the best XBox games ever.
Jade Empire was received well and agreed to be one of the best RPG's of the year.
Neverwinter Nights was also a franchise that was well received and supported by an active community.
Sorry, but a little less bioware player tracking, and EA Games corporate restructuring. Take us back to the days when Bullfrog was making kickass games and stuff.
Isn't it weird when something can be so far from its roots even when its so new.
Seeing as I have played none of those games, my only counterpoint can be towards your argumentation:
OF COURSE there is going to be a "Game Of The Year". Being the top of the pile can just mean that the rest sucked worse. Like political elections.
Music's been around for a little while. You telling me it doesn't pander?
Hell, commercial art sluts like Thomas Kincaid could be called pandering.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
The community was the only thing that saved NWN from total disaster, as a game it *SUCKED* and it sucked hard. I would like to say that bioware was never been truly a consistent top tier developer. Kotor was above average, but bioware is pretty hit and miss, since different dev teams for different games do not all produce equally.
Neverwinter Nights was also a franchise that was well received and supported by an active community.
Neverwinter's community was generally die-hard tabletop RPG fans who wanted to recreate the experience online. They used the DM and builder tools to create single-and multi-player modules as well as persistant worlds that managaed to capture the pen-and-paper experience like no other computer game before or since. You could actually have a living, breathing DM generating custom content on the fly. You could create mini-MMORPGS like Arelith, Forgotten Realms:Cormyr and Layonara where a hundred players could adventure, craft and whatever else on their own and then go on custom and unique DM-driven adventures. Aside from certain MUDS (of course) there really hasn't been anything like it. And hell, it ran on Linux and Mac !
If Bioware was listening, and I mean really listening, they would realize that this was the reason the game was a success, not the lackluster single player campaign or modules (which were only playable for the "hey, I'm playing D&D!" factor, not the story themselves.) There's a real call for a new "online role playing game construction set", D&D or d20 rules or not, to replace it, and Bioware would be just the company to make it. They most likely won't, as they probably think it would hurt sales of their single player games or some future MMORPG, but there is a community and market of role players who are begging for a GM-created and driven experience instead of another linear 40-hour single player story or massive multiplayer grind and gank fest.
(And no, Neverwinter 2 just isn't cutting it as a replacement-- it's too bloated and only runs on high-end Windows systems, and the tools simply aren't there to create modules and worlds on the scale of the original.)
Music is very old. Maybe it's like Alzeihmer. Start like a baby, grow up and end up a babbling idiot, like a baby.
The fact that you can identify sectors which (in your opinion, I should note) "pander" to what people want (what a sin!) doesn't indicate that it holds true across the entire industry.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
That is your opinion.
I for one sincerely enjoyed the original campaign, it wasn't the *best* I've ever played, but it was very enjoyable for me.
I think too many people say the community is what saved NWN.
Bioware's internal surveys and statistics always indicated that the singleplayer portion of NWN was far more popular.
It's one of the reasons they launched the Premium Modules program (which was very successful until Atari killed it).
I do admit that the campaigns in NWN were as not as detailed as the BG ones, but the third party modules and Bioware's excellent support for the game more than made up for it. Player modules like "Tortured Hearts" and such were top notch, not to mention the persistant worlds. NWN is the only game where I bought copies just to support Bioware because the extensibility of the game gave me a lot of hours of entertainment.
NWN2 is a disappointment for me, IMHO for third party modules. Its impossible to put as many areas into a NWN2 persistant world as a NWN1 one, just due to the much larger memory footprint. I'm hoping things will get better with the expansion.
Neither are most movies and most novels. They're light entertainment.
Video games are an art FORM, just as painting is an art FORM, but not every painting is a work of art, nor is every game.
I piss off bigots.
There's nothing wrong with easy games. The market for them is substantially larger than it is for hard games, and that's why the industry is moving in that direction -- and about time, too. It has treated the less-skilled player with contempt and derision for far too long. You're an old-time hardcore gamer, so you think of easy games as bad ones, but the days when the industry would pander to the hardcore gamer's every whim are over. Don't worry, though, I'm sure a few companies will still make games for your little niche.
I piss off bigots.
Actually, Bioware is working on this. It's called Dragon Age, will be based in a new, bioware-created world, and will have a full-featured editor from the start. It is not based on d20 but on a newly developed, probably more computer-friendly character+combat system.
Too bad it will take at least another year until its done.
The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before. - Neil Gaiman
"That is your opinion."
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As if this statement says ANYTHING about game quality. The Dev team even admitted the SP campaign was pure crap! That right there says quite a lot.
Yes thats right, since I actually own the piece of crap called NWN. It was totally mediocre to anyone who's played RPG's for the last 20 years, so I'd say my opinion has a bit more weight behind it then a D&D fanatic or some newbie gamer with no gaming history under their belt. How one experiences NWN is directly related to the amount of games they have played and what kind of gaming history they have.
I will respect bioware for their valiant attempt in NWN because they really made an attempt at making great tools for the mod community but it ended up making the game itself a mediocre pile of crap and no one with serious gaming acument can dispute this. I really WANTED to like NWN, lots of good things ended up in the game but the gmae really needed another 2 years in development, NWN was like a game who's potential was never truly realized, period.
"I for one sincerely enjoyed the original campaign, it wasn't the *best* I've ever played, but it was very enjoyable for me."
Then you are either:
1) Inexperienced gamer or
2) Have a very low thresh-hold for enjoyment
"I think too many people say the community is what saved NWN."
Give me a break, many people on the forums complained about the utter crappyness of the single player experience compared to their (biowares) previous games like Baldurs gate, BG2, and other infinity engine games not made by them like Torment and Icewind dale. The truth is NWN basically attracted all the really strange D&D fanatics & weirdos who didn't really care much for game quality. The truth is I compare the majority of the people who bought and liked NWN with the likes of people who bought and liked the matrix or 50 cent games, I have the same respect for them as I do say creationists. As hard as that may be to swallow, I know gaming in's and outs I have played nearly every game under the sun and I analyze games to find out what makes them percieved as "good" to different gaming demographics. The truth was the barrier to playing NWN was very low, since it took a page from MMO's with their automatically controlled gaming mechanics (i.e. the user just pushed menu buttons), WoW and NWN have the exact same mindless interface for the drooling hordes, which I can understand from but the content simply could not make up for the borefest of crappy single player content.
And yes the community did a lot to save NWN, most of my enjoyment from NWN came from playing other peoples mod's and the single player and sp campaign was truly horrible. The fact that you had one single character you could truly control in the party which was handled automatically (robot avatar) made for a tenuous and boring game with little for the player to do then sit and drool through the SP campaign.
If you enjoyed NWN over those prior games, I have to say you are among the reasons why gaming is taking a nosedive in quality to serve the mass audience of mediocrity.
"Bioware's internal surveys and statistics always indicated that the singleplayer portion of NWN was far more popular."
Of course but because something is popular doesn't make it good. I'm not the only one that feels that gaming is backsliding into mediocrity.
http://www.gamespot.com/users/Cube_of_MooN/show_b
Yeah, of course media that have been around a while still pander. Commercial writer sluts like Tom Clancy pander too. I'm not saying old media doesn't pander. But artists in those media at least have some non-pandering art to look back on when deciding whether to pander or, you know, actually make art.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The other difference between games and writing and most visual arts is that their requirement of being interactive means that they must primarily entertain. Add to it the high costs of production, and this means that game producers are always going to have to write what their consumers want. Still, even most "artistes" do that, it's just that their audience tends to like being challenged with new ideas, and their primary motive is to communicate, not profit (again, distinguished from the commercial whores)
Funny that you mention Clancy -- he certainly writes better game scripts than books. Or maybe it's because the only real comparison I have to Splinter Cell is Metal Gear Solid (nice games, but the writing makes anything else look good).
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
"The Dev team even admitted the SP campaign was pure crap! That right there says quite a lot." The Dev team said no such thing as far as I am aware. Please provide your source for this statement. Then you are either: 1) Inexperienced gamer or 2) Have a very low thresh-hold for enjoyment Assumptions tend to get people in trouble. I have been gaming on the PC since the early 1980's. My threshold for enjoyment is "not very low" -- it's just that I happen to thoroughly enjoy the story and artwork in the original NWN. I have hundreds of PC game titles on my shelves, some good, some bad.
I never said I enjoyed NWN "over" prior games, just that I enjoyed it. Although there are some prior games I didn't enjoy as much. For example, I never could bring myself to finish Baldur's Gate I, even though I finished NWN I. Why? I just wanted to play it for the story and quests, I didn't want to control each individual member of my party. Your preference to do so, and insinuation that it is a inclination towards mediocrity is a opinion not shared by the general gaming public at best.
Before you accuse me of not understanding or being a true D&D fan, yes, I do have the Player's Handbook, etc.
Of course but because something is popular doesn't make it good. I'm not the only one that feels that gaming is backsliding into mediocrity.
Businesses exist to make money. Game developers make games. Therefore it follows that they make games their public wants to play because that makes money. If people want to play games that folks like you see a mediocre, then more power to the game developers for making them. Life is too short to take things that seriously. Fun is fun. There's a reason that Nintendo is so successful right now, and its because they aren't catering to Ivory Tower gamers like you.