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Old 01-24-2003, 04:33 PM   #1
Threshold
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Main Premise:

In think in many (if not all) industries, the temptation for any business is to sacrifice quality for quantity. That is what gives us things like AOL and Everquest.

There are, however, exceptions. Blizzard is an excellent example, imho, of a company that continues to devote itself to producing HIGH QUALITY games despite their success. They do not seem to make decisions based on what will sell vs. what makes for a great game.

Thus, I think a critical portion of your initial premise comes at the end: "The answer depends on your personal priorities."

On these points I think you have painted with a bit too broad of a brush. As you also noted, not all hobby games eschew popularity for quality. In fact, I would posit that some of (please note, I said SOME OF) the hobby games are the worst "popularity whores" of the genre. Think of the thousands of MUDs out there where there is little or no thought given to doing something new or interesting. Instead, they just race to see how many snippets and downloadable areas they can plug into their game, and then try to cobble together the latest "fad" classes that people will get excited about (ninjas, dragons, vampires, etc.).

Further, consider how many hobby muds are nothing more than:

1) A group of angry players/coders/builders from Mud A who set out to create Mud B and their core design philosophy is "Mud A sucks! We're going to make Mud B everything Mud A SHOULD HAVE BEEN but isn't because Head Admin of Mud A is a nazi!"

2) A single person who doesn't work well with others (and thus cannot get a builder or coder position on an existing mud), so he downloads some source, pays $10 for some server space, and posts a "LOOKING FOR HEAD CODER" message on web forums and usenet.

3) A single person who is unwilling to learn about mud development by working their way up on any other game, so he downloads some source, pays $10 for some server space, starts hacking away, and posts "LOOKING FOR CODERS & BUILDERS" messages on web forums and usenet. Note that the difference here between this person and any other person starting their own mud is that the person I am referring to here is the type of person who would not even CONSIDER building for some other game even just to learn through experience about mud design and administration.

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I do not think every commercial game follows the AOL model of development where the only thing that matters are: 1) The number of customers and 2) The bottom line.

In order to illustrate my point, I can best speak about my own experience in creating and running Threshold.

From the first day I started making Threshold, my design philosophy was a simple corollary of the "If you build it, they will come" idea: Make the kind of game I would like to play, and people who want the same thing will come. Those who come, will be thrilled to have finally found "IT!".

In the course of following this design philosophy, I have made many decisions that have DRAMATICALLY reduced the potential "customer base" I could have built were that my own goal.

Firstly, you must be 18 or older to play Threshold. Right there I am already cutting out a HUGE portion of the market for onling gaming. From playing games, I got sick of dealing with immature 13 year old punks, and as I got older I became less and less comfortable with having to worry whether or not the things I was doing or saying were appropriate for "kids" to hear (should there be any kids present). So as a player, I didn't want to have to deal with kids and I didn't want to have to worry that there might BE kids present if I was saying something not appropriate for kids.

[NOTE: I freely acknowledge that there are many people under 18 that are FAR MORE MATURE than people 20, 30, or even 40+ years old. But when you make policy, you are dealing with generalities. In general, children under 18 are not very mature. Furthermore, there is no alternative solution to the problem of adults feeling uncomfortable when they are worried there "might be young ears present".]

Secondly, I made Threshold *RP REQUIRED*. I would say that the overwhelming majority of online gamers fall into 2 categories: 1) People that have no interest in RP and 2) People that have passing/some interest in RP. They want to RP now and then, but not all the time. There is a third category of people, those who want to RP all the time and stay IC at all times, but that category of people is MINISCULE compared to the first two. By establishing a rule that alienated the first 2 groups completely, I cut my potential customer base down by at least 80% (if not more).

Thirdly, I do not tolerate twinks. If people make an ass of themself during their free trial period, they are gone. If they treat the newbie helpers with disrespect on the OOC newbie help channel, if they go on PK rampages that are totally absurd and have no IC justification, etc. they are nuked and sent packing. If I just wanted their money, I could easily just ignore it, let them pay up, and then wait for the sheer mass of the IC player run society to squish them into an oily stain in the dirt. But I do not want my players to have to deal with such people, so I weed them out early.

Fourth, when it comes to game development, I design the things I think are cool and fun. I discourage players from trying to engage in "feedback by mob rule" because I don't want to make decisions based on quelling the mob. This is not to say that we do not solicit player input and feedback. We have NUMEROUS commands that facilitate sending in suggestions, feature requests, corrections, etc. and also encourage it via email and on our web forums. We also take pride in the fact that we implement TONS of player suggested features on a continual basis. But the point is we don't add something just because 100 people think its 'kewl.'

Fifth, we do not engage in "game inflation." This phenomenon is something you see on many (if not most games). Game inflation is when every new area has monsters worth more xp, with better loot, better weapons, better armor, etc. This gets people all excited because they feel like they can get all this great new "phat lewt!". In my opinion, it makes the game absurd in the long run. However, it definitely seems popular and it keeps the drooling masses coming back for more, so it certainly delivers numbers. However, as I have stated before, that is not my priority.

----------

So to summarize, I completely agree with you that when numbers of players becomes the first priority quality and innovation suffer.

I disagree, however, with the assertion that this phenomenon is particularly common in commercial games vs. hobby games. On the contrary, I think you see the most extreme and eggregious examples of this in non-commercial games where the admins are engaging in some kind of ****ing contest based on how many players they have. (I do grant you, however, that in total there is more innovation going on in the total of all hobby games than in the aggregate of all commercial games.)

Further, I feel there are many commercial games (and gaming companies) where the priority is making the best game possible rather than the best selling or most popular game possible.

I know that is my personal design philosophy, and it seems that some other excellent companies (like the aforementioned Blizzard) work in a simlar manner.

I would agree, however, that such companies are less common than the "lowest common denominator" type, but I feel it is important to make the distinction.
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Old 01-24-2003, 07:16 PM   #2
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Old 01-24-2003, 08:28 PM   #3
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Actually, Blizzard has been condemned by its Diablo (the only Blizzard game that I follow, so maybe other games as well) player base for over two years for its lack of effort to maintain the integrity of Battle.net and the balance of the 7 different classes.
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Old 01-25-2003, 10:51 AM   #4
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Old 01-25-2003, 12:28 PM   #5
Threshold
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Old 01-25-2003, 12:32 PM   #6
Threshold
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Battle.net issues have nothing to do with game design though. And considering the money Blizzard has invested into servers and bandwidth, people who complain about a free service are turds.

Also, the main people whining about balance between their classes are the .0001% who compete for a spot on their ladder rankings. With 5+ million people playing each of their games, the miniscule few competing to be on their top 10 lists is incredibly infinitessimal.
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Old 01-25-2003, 04:01 PM   #7
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I don't like blizzard games much. They seem so... derivative.

About Player base: No matter how well built the game is generally, if there is no one else to talk and play with, it isn't very enticing for people to stay and continue playing.

I've logged on to muds which seem very nice, but only have no one else on, so I log off. And all muds which have good player bases have low quality stockiness...

I guess I'll keep to my old mud, as nothing compares, and I've tried many...
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Old 01-25-2003, 05:03 PM   #8
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Old 01-25-2003, 06:49 PM   #9
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When I mean derivative I mean that they're not very original.

Starcraft is essentially Yet Another Dune. Warcraft is roughly the same.

Diablo is a simplified rogue/nethack with pretty graphics. Mindlessly repetitive too.

Both have been done before.

And I'm getting this thread right off topic. Sorry. Going to PMs from now on
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