"To compound the problem, PGI has begun reversing its stances on a number of features, which include “no coolant flush” and “no third-person view,” in order to garner more players and make a higher profit."
By higher profit they probably mean any profit at all. Gamers have zero ability to read between the lines. This isn't a bunch of greedy devs driving Ferraris that want more money to buy a Lambo. This reeks of a desperate hail mary to save the studio and avoid shutting down. The game is probably a total failure and they are doing anything and everything they can to not lay the whole team off.
Gamers have a right to be angry I suppose. Go ahead. Be angry. If a company can't make payroll it doesn't matter of it's community is angry or happy.
This is a problem anywhere the customer is completely disconnect with the costs of the product they consume. To the a feature is a costless idea that simply can be implemented by saying the word. As we know in real life every feature has time, money and community costs -- many of which are hard to estimate.
It's why I can ever work in the videogame industry, a fickle and unsympathetic user base who often has no comprehension or respect for the scale of the product they are using.
Actually, for a videogame community, the MWO community is pretty mature and helpful. But if people spend $100+ on a promise of a game concept and no progress towards that happens in a couple of years, they will get grumpy even if mild tempered.
I think PGI could have saved themselves a lot of grief by:
- Getting private matchmaking out much earlier than May this year. It's been requested since day one, and would have kept the hardcore folks busy until community warfare.
- Learn the art of tweaking game balance. They drop patches every two weeks. Instead of making huge, sometimes game wrecking, balance changes every three months they could have nudged the balance slightly each patch. "Missiles seem slightly too easy to avoid - making them 3% faster" doesn't make anyone blow a gasket. "Bumping missile speed 75%" will.
To the a feature is a costless idea that simply can be implemented by saying the word. As we know in real life every feature has time, money and community costs -- many of which are hard to estimate.
Except this is an example of features being added that the community didnot want.
Obviously I don't have any numbers for the game - none have been published. But I am a player, and I wouldn't say either of those items are make-or-break features.
There are quite a number of features or promised features that have elicited rage from the community and I think the way these have been handled continues to fuel that rage.
The game model is based on the wildly successful world of tanks, and the core fan base is older with deep pockets. Everyone I know who plays has put in at least $50-100, and some I know have spent as much as $700(!).
If the studio is on the brink of disaster, sure, I could see hail-mary moves being made. What doesn't seem to make sense is not making those moves be crowd pleasers.
It seems like the lead designer really is both disconnected with the fans and loves to troll parts of the community. And the community managers that have been put in place compound the problems.
If the game isn't making money it's a shame - but it's probably a mismanagement issue.
If they're not making money, I don't see how pissing off their current player base in favour of garnering an unknown number of a hypothetical different player base is a good move. Heck, they could have split the product into classic-league MWO (no coolant, no 3rd person view) and modern-league MWO and captured both markets. It really boggles the mind.
It's a shitty situation. Presumably the company is not sustainable on their current income. They may be able to shrink the company to survive on that income, but that sucks. So they probably need to increase income. They could increase income from the current player base, but that basically means milking which sucks. So they need to increase the player base.
It may be that the existing game is great as is, they just need to find players who want to spend money on that game but don't know it existing. User acquisition is a big deal these days. It's very difficult to do well. That assumes it can be done. If a game is too niche then the potential audience just may not be big enough.
So they went with the next option, change the game to try to increase the size of the potential audience. This has a high risk of alienating your current base, which is what happened here.
Like I said in another reply, it's a shitty situation all around. Shitty for players. Shitty for devs. Shitty for company owners.
By higher profit they probably mean any profit at all
This comment just took me back to my time in The Matrix Online, and the perpetual anger the community had with Sony and their lack of development/interest/activity etc. Of course it turned out they had a few hundred subscribers that simply didn't cover costs of keeping the game online let alone improving it.
Mistakes were certainly made by Monolith and subsequently Sony, but that's not the point. It's hard when you're emotionally invested in a game to accept poor communication and seemingly inevitable wind down, especially when the game is purely online.
Off topic, but I still have my 'Matrix Online' box-included world map hanging somewhere. Every time I glance at it I feel disappointed about its' eventual fate. That community , while apparently small, was one of the most dedicate and loud gaming communities that I have come across.
Comments
"To compound the problem, PGI has begun reversing its stances on a number of features, which include “no coolant flush” and “no third-person view,” in order to garner more players and make a higher profit."
By higher profit they probably mean any profit at all. Gamers have zero ability to read between the lines. This isn't a bunch of greedy devs driving Ferraris that want more money to buy a Lambo. This reeks of a desperate hail mary to save the studio and avoid shutting down. The game is probably a total failure and they are doing anything and everything they can to not lay the whole team off.
Gamers have a right to be angry I suppose. Go ahead. Be angry. If a company can't make payroll it doesn't matter of it's community is angry or happy.
This is a problem anywhere the customer is completely disconnect with the costs of the product they consume. To the a feature is a costless idea that simply can be implemented by saying the word. As we know in real life every feature has time, money and community costs -- many of which are hard to estimate.
It's why I can ever work in the videogame industry, a fickle and unsympathetic user base who often has no comprehension or respect for the scale of the product they are using.
Actually, for a videogame community, the MWO community is pretty mature and helpful. But if people spend $100+ on a promise of a game concept and no progress towards that happens in a couple of years, they will get grumpy even if mild tempered.
I think PGI could have saved themselves a lot of grief by:
- Getting private matchmaking out much earlier than May this year. It's been requested since day one, and would have kept the hardcore folks busy until community warfare.
- Learn the art of tweaking game balance. They drop patches every two weeks. Instead of making huge, sometimes game wrecking, balance changes every three months they could have nudged the balance slightly each patch. "Missiles seem slightly too easy to avoid - making them 3% faster" doesn't make anyone blow a gasket. "Bumping missile speed 75%" will.
Except this is an example of features being added that the community didnot want.
Obviously I don't have any numbers for the game - none have been published. But I am a player, and I wouldn't say either of those items are make-or-break features.
There are quite a number of features or promised features that have elicited rage from the community and I think the way these have been handled continues to fuel that rage.
The game model is based on the wildly successful world of tanks, and the core fan base is older with deep pockets. Everyone I know who plays has put in at least $50-100, and some I know have spent as much as $700(!).
If the studio is on the brink of disaster, sure, I could see hail-mary moves being made. What doesn't seem to make sense is not making those moves be crowd pleasers.
It seems like the lead designer really is both disconnected with the fans and loves to troll parts of the community. And the community managers that have been put in place compound the problems.
If the game isn't making money it's a shame - but it's probably a mismanagement issue.
Making money on free to play games is hard. Damn hard. Dozens of games have followed the World of Tanks model and catastrophically failed.
A failing game is always a shitty situation. Shitty for the players. Shitty for the devs. Shitty for the studio stakeholders. No one wins. :(
If they're not making money, I don't see how pissing off their current player base in favour of garnering an unknown number of a hypothetical different player base is a good move. Heck, they could have split the product into classic-league MWO (no coolant, no 3rd person view) and modern-league MWO and captured both markets. It really boggles the mind.
It's a shitty situation. Presumably the company is not sustainable on their current income. They may be able to shrink the company to survive on that income, but that sucks. So they probably need to increase income. They could increase income from the current player base, but that basically means milking which sucks. So they need to increase the player base.
It may be that the existing game is great as is, they just need to find players who want to spend money on that game but don't know it existing. User acquisition is a big deal these days. It's very difficult to do well. That assumes it can be done. If a game is too niche then the potential audience just may not be big enough.
So they went with the next option, change the game to try to increase the size of the potential audience. This has a high risk of alienating your current base, which is what happened here.
Like I said in another reply, it's a shitty situation all around. Shitty for players. Shitty for devs. Shitty for company owners.
By higher profit they probably mean any profit at all
This comment just took me back to my time in The Matrix Online, and the perpetual anger the community had with Sony and their lack of development/interest/activity etc. Of course it turned out they had a few hundred subscribers that simply didn't cover costs of keeping the game online let alone improving it.
Mistakes were certainly made by Monolith and subsequently Sony, but that's not the point. It's hard when you're emotionally invested in a game to accept poor communication and seemingly inevitable wind down, especially when the game is purely online.
Off topic, but I still have my 'Matrix Online' box-included world map hanging somewhere. Every time I glance at it I feel disappointed about its' eventual fate. That community , while apparently small, was one of the most dedicate and loud gaming communities that I have come across.