Post by Morreion on Aug 3, 2010 9:16:16 GMT -5
Loading...System of a Town (Ten Ton Hammer)
Great article. I've had gripes about how MMOs that I've played have been run, but I am quite sympathetic to devs who have to deal with all sorts of player feedback that often is contradictory and very strident.
I noticed some of this when I was a volunteer staffer on the VN Vanguard: Saga of Heroes board back in 2007. You got a little bit of good feedback, but the bulk of the commenters were negative with a decent amount of trolls. It's simply human nature that negative feelings are communicated much more often than positive feelings. It was easy to develop a 'circle the wagons' mentality because of this, and it burns you out.
So, while I've seen some boneheaded MMO dev decisions, by and large I am sympathetic to them, because they have a tough job; and let's face it, if they don't do a good job, they could very well be unemployed.
A developer I talked with recently compared running an MMORPG to running a small town government, the primary difference being what he called "hypercommunication." Instead of a group of selectmen to represent the voice of the community or a town hall or city council meeting where citizens can voice their concerns, the most vocal citizens of most MMORPGs can assemble mob-like any time, day or night, and demand to be heard. Heard, that is, not necessarily as a group, but as a collection of individual opinions that devs must singly address or ignore at their peril.
Now, running a small town government is no easy thing. Anyone that's ever sat in on a council meeting will never wonder again why Stephen King built his popularity primarily on destroying small New England towns in creative ways. Every small town has a collection of half-crazed paranoiacs who probably had a legitimate gripe at one point or another, but gripes have a way or twisting the gripee into a manifestation of their ugliness if you don't drop them at some point.
Now, running a small town government is no easy thing. Anyone that's ever sat in on a council meeting will never wonder again why Stephen King built his popularity primarily on destroying small New England towns in creative ways. Every small town has a collection of half-crazed paranoiacs who probably had a legitimate gripe at one point or another, but gripes have a way or twisting the gripee into a manifestation of their ugliness if you don't drop them at some point.
But imagine, if you will, a small city which is active outside normal business hours across all the most populated time zones hosting a significant number of those gripees, who are themselves emboldened either by anonymity or a constant craving for attention. Add to this the abiding belief that the mayor could instantly change things for the "better" if they weren't so lazy / greedy / invested in projects the player community supposedly cares nothing about.
If I sound like I'm sympathetic to devs on this point, you couldn't be more correct. Constant communication between people in an office setting is hard enough, let alone communication between developers and a playerbase in the thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions. The core of this hypercommunicativeness is the official forums, which like democracy (to paraphrase Winston Churchill) is the worst system of MMORPG representation except everything else that has been tried.
If I sound like I'm sympathetic to devs on this point, you couldn't be more correct. Constant communication between people in an office setting is hard enough, let alone communication between developers and a playerbase in the thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions. The core of this hypercommunicativeness is the official forums, which like democracy (to paraphrase Winston Churchill) is the worst system of MMORPG representation except everything else that has been tried.
Great article. I've had gripes about how MMOs that I've played have been run, but I am quite sympathetic to devs who have to deal with all sorts of player feedback that often is contradictory and very strident.
I noticed some of this when I was a volunteer staffer on the VN Vanguard: Saga of Heroes board back in 2007. You got a little bit of good feedback, but the bulk of the commenters were negative with a decent amount of trolls. It's simply human nature that negative feelings are communicated much more often than positive feelings. It was easy to develop a 'circle the wagons' mentality because of this, and it burns you out.
So, while I've seen some boneheaded MMO dev decisions, by and large I am sympathetic to them, because they have a tough job; and let's face it, if they don't do a good job, they could very well be unemployed.
