MMO Rant #1: Overhype
How many times have you followed a game for multiple years, only to be thoroughly disappointed by the game when it finally entered beta or launched? I’ve done this far too many times. Seriously, far too many times. I can’t even count the number of times this has happened to me on one hand.
I blame overhype. The game gets announced years in advance. How many years? Sometimes it’s on the order of 4+ years before they plan to release the game. “They,” meaning the publisher or developer responsible for announcing the game so early on in its development.
A little information is given immediately–enough to get some of us interested. They give us the genre, some of the main features, and generally a bit of the background story. I, being a fan of everything fantasy and science-fiction, tend to then seek out all the information I possibly can with every single MMO that gets announced (because just about every MMO that exists falls into one of those categories).
So I spend time researching all there is to know about the game, I jump on the forums for the game, heck, I even used to make fansites for the games. Slowly but surely, information is revealed about the game I now follow. Slowly but surely, misinformation spreads and we all get our hopes up about features that will probably never make it into the game, assuming the game actually comes out at all.
Here’s the most fun I have with MMOs: I follow the game for a year or two, then it dies. Completely. Why the hell did you announce the game if you weren’t sure you had any kind of budget to make the thing? Damnit that pisses me off. I mean I understand that you have to try to get some followers to get investment, but it still pisses me off when I’ve become involved with a community and followed a game only to find it disappear. See: Ultima X (made a website), Dragon Empires (made a website), Wish, and many others.
Nine times out of ten, I will follow a game for a long period of time and have an idea of what the game is going to be in my mind, and when it comes out I’m utterly disappointed. See: Horizons, Shadowbane, Dungeons & Dragons Online, and others. The biggest problem is, I’m never alone. The developers paint a picture of the game into the minds of their fans, and we all tend to agree on what it is supposed to be. Then it comes out, and it’s nothing like any of us dedicated fans had envisioned.
Developers, stop painting a bullshit picture of your game. Don’t talk about pie in the sky features unless you already know they will make it into the game. Don’t talk about how hardcore your game is going to be if you back out and make the game more casual in the end. Don’t promise that 50,000 players will be able to play simultaneously on a server, only to launch the game with a 2,000 player limit.
Stop with the false promises. Don’t create false expectations for your game just because you want to hype it up, because it’s going to piss a whole lot of us off. Don’t announce your game 4 years before it’s going to come out unless all you do is give us a small idea–a tiny inkling of an idea–of what it’s going to be without promising us the world and falling through on that promise.
Mostly, don’t tell us the game is something that it is not. Sure, it may get you some extra hype in the press. But it’s going to hurt you really badly in the long run, because players are going to immediately realize you were lying to them, your reputation is going to suck, and many of the first impressions of the game are going to hurt it forever. Word of mouth a key ingredient to the success of an MMO, and overhyping it then not meeting the expectations of players is a great way to get bad word of mouth.
Final Fantasy JUMPED to my mind on reading that.
The newest one isn’t even out in the US and they’re already talking about the next one. Give a game a year or even 6 months to shine on its own before you start casting shadows with its next version.
[...] Ryan Shwayder, opisa? na nerfbat.com zjawisko rozdmuchanej reklamy gier (overhype), kt?ra potrafi prowadzi? w najmniej niebezpiecznym przypadku do zawodu w?r?d graczy a w najgorszym do kompletnego niepowodzenia tytu?u. S? dwa g??wne rodzaje problem?w zwi?zanych z overhype. [...]
i especially love it when websites for upcoming MMOs use words like “revolutionary” or “innovative”. and talk up their games like they’ll be completely different from any MMO that’s come before.
and then when it comes down to it, they’re really just your standard DIKU, loot & level game.
same shit, different name.
hmm, they will stop announcing games 4 years in advance the day nobody will care.
As long as people will get hyped for nothing, there will be someone that will try to fill that need. People like to get hyped and they’re given what they want.
So the problem doesn’t come from the game developers but from the players…
I only play an MMO Dev on TV, but perhaps this is a vicious circle of sorts?
Is it the case that an embryonic MMO can only find the money it needs by convincing publishers, or eccentric venture capitalists, that there is already a *significant* online interest in the thing? Or at least, the impression of such interest.
Perhaps there is a necessity for the MMO to create it’s own market via the above-mentioned over-hype, in order to get the thing made real?
I’ve been burnt in that above way before several times though and it is annoying. Was a passionate Horizons fanboy around the time of Anarchy Online’s early days – by the time the game had actually been released, I couldn’t care less. I loved the idea of Auto Assault when it was first announced, but again, was bored of it well before it was ever released.
Now, I look forward to nothing and the games I enjoy the most seem to be the ones that have been going for some months or years, that I just sub up to on a recommendation, or whim – taking myself by suprise!
Yeah, that’s the gist of it. Basically, by announcing early, you get folks like, well, all of us, who follow the games early and form attachments. We’re unlikely to switch what game we follow, and the result is that we’re “locked-in” customers — unless the people making the game fail to launch or fuck up tremendously during the pre-launch period, that community will translate into day-one purchasers.
The big vague promises are of course a problem. On the other hand, if you actually deliver on them, boom! You win huge.
The web philosophy is “launch early, launch often.” If you cannot launch the game, launching info about the game is the next-best thing. But just as good would be to launch the game itself iun solid but limited shape, and keep upgrading. This is how you get on the J-curve path followed by titles such as Puzzle Pirates, Runescape, and Second Life.
Yeah a few games pop into my mind too when I read that. Such as Horizons, Wish, Dark and Light, and Vanguard. I Really don’t know why they do announce something 4 years early, well yeah I guess I do, it is to get money to make the game. I also hate when they say the release date is “this winter” and then suddenly its next winter… and then it is next spring… yeah that makes me really sad:(
Classic ‘blame the victim’…
Apple has a nice system. They throw a huge media event showing new lines of products, and Steve Jobs says “Oh yeah, you can go to the store and buy this today.”
Announce it and ship it at the same time. Brilliant!
Of course, startup game studios that need to find a publisher don’t have the luxury of doing it the Apple way. They need to build hype well in advance of launch if they hope to compete in the MMO marketplace. Hype leads to preorders, and preorders lead to shelf space. Companies with deeper pockets have a bit more breathing room to hold back, but the traditional marketing mindset makes them want to jump the gun and talk about their upcoming games anyway. And the reality is that if you want your game covered in magazines and on huge web portals, you need to schedule stuff out months in advance.
My ideal situation: Company calls a press conference to annouce their new game. They show lots of in-game footage, detail exactly what features are in the game, and hand out press kits filled with screenshots. They conclude by announcing that their beta signups open that very day, and open beta begins in exactly one week.
Hey, a fella can dream.
It’s effective advertising, why would they stop? Think of it this way…A lot less people would rush out to buy the hamburgers that we see on TV if they pictured em as they actually come, all squished in their sad little paper wrappers, instead of the glorious, mouth watering images that they provide.
This is why clothes are shown on thin, hawt models. It’s why personal body spray commercials show boys being tackled by gorgeous women. It’s why people are hired to take pictures of the food you see on restaurant menus.
Hype is what gets people to buy and will always be a main form of advertising for business. It’s kinda up to the consumers to realize this and take it all with a grain of salt.
While the advertising might be effective in promoting box sales for the games that actually DO release, I think the point is more that they spend all this time blowing smoke up our butts about how the game will look and function and it?s not actually that game when it releases, if it does.
EQ2 wasn’t what a lot of people expected upon release, and even though it has currently revamped huge quantities of its functionality it still hasn’t been able to regain what it lost in the beginning.
Vanguard appears to be suffering from this problem as well right now. Its 3rd generation, revolutionary, evolutionary, and it will bring you a 6pack and a pizza while dressed up as a french maid and looking like Angelina Jolie. It has been hyped as a ‘real’ game compared to World of Warcraft and has built its hype as the ‘true’ successor to the EQ throne.
Blah.
Only one game has done it right recently, by having a non NDA beta, by being completely open to its fans and lifting up its skirt and showing everything special it had to offer before it even released. But it was only able to do so because it was a fantastically complete and fun game even in the early parts of beta.
This should have been a lesson for everyone else, but I still see people poopoo the approach and continue to build games and have betas where the game isn’t even close to being complete OR fun.
Ask yourself….what would have happened had EQII dropped its NDA 6-8 months before release???
Or more currently…what if Vanguard had dropped its NDA a few months ago??
The days of playing loose and fast with how complete, how fun, how innovative your game is when no one can talk about it are over. We are a much more discerning consumer than we used to be and we are looking for the game you have told us you are making. We are expecting you to actually do what you say you are going to do and make it fun for us to play for the next few years and by God we will pay you to have that right.
So shut the heck up and make something that you can show us. Make sure you are actually going to provide what you have led us to believe you are going to and please don’t tell us what you THINK you might be able to do in a few months or years in some cases.
I don’t care if the game will work great on hardware in 3 years….how does it work now?? I am going to play it now you know and if I don’t enjoy it because my average little computer turns into a smoking hunk of slag while running your game you have lost me.
Essentially it?s “SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!!!” or please shut the heck up.
Only one company has done that and it is reaping the benefits of it. I would have bet money that other companies would have noticed it by now and started working towards a similar goal, but it really appears as if they truly want to place it into the anomaly category and ignore the lessons inherent in its success.
Well….good luck with that.
MMO Rant #1: Overhype
Essentially, while hype and buildup may work fine for a single product, it can be extremely damaging to a product based on consumer relationship, like a game SERIES or a subscription-based MMO.
The game reviewers have lost credibility for playing up the hype when they should be cutting through the crap. More players are relying on other players’ reviews- and when these are expressed as “letdowns” then sales will suffer.
If launch day for your MMO is marked by “not as good as I expected…” how many will stick through the subscription?
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For ages, my friend followed the Fable development as something totally revolutionary, only to be thoroughly disappointed in what needed cut to bring the game to launch. After that, anytime he’d get excited about any game, I’d dismiss the hype with “it’s just gonna be the next Fable.” Do you really want your brand to be seen in *that* light?
I absolutely agree with you Ryan! You hit the nail on the head with this post.
Word of mouth is key as you pointed out. All of my friends who play MMO’s do so because I thought the game was great and recommended it to them once they expressed burnout with the games they were currently playing. My friends and I seem to bounce around together from MMO to MMO and the one thing we always talk about is what we like about the new game vs the old game and what we miss about the old.
Personally I don’t care what magazines have to say about video games because magazine publishers know about as much about me as they know about their own kids (they might know a little, but not enough to change my mind). With that being said, my friends and my wife know what games I like to play and thus they know what to recommend. I enjoy laughing about the hype that is created for most games because who doesn’t enjoy a good round of BS everynow and then? What I don’t enjoy is false promises, crappy user interfaces, or insane timesinks once the game is released.
The Apple way only works because Apple has a big devoted fanbase that become day one buyers of ANYTHING they put out. Not too many MMO companies have that.
It comes down to putting their money where their mouth is. When those early stages of development are announced, companies shouldn’t even talk about plans for certain areas of gameplay. The reason being that most likely whjen it comes to implementation, it won’t match up to the ideaology of the concept.
Not living up to the concept is what turns players and customers off from a project.
On the flip side it is important too for players and fans to not take every drop of information as though it is the life energy of the universe. Sometimes it benefits a developer to put forth an idea and see what others think of it. In practice, it may not work that way. Players tend to take those words as gospel and build an expectation that the dev team can’t hope to achieve.
Lesson: Only divulge ideas that you can reasonably implement
“The Apple way only works because Apple has a big devoted fanbase that become day one buyers of ANYTHING they put out. Not too many MMO companies have that. ”
If everyone who bought an Ipod also bought a Mac, we’d all be making MMOs for the Macintosh right now.
Most of the people who buy Ipods aren’t diehard Apple fans. They buy Ipods because they’re an easily recognized market leader; i.e. every other kid in class has one. While Apple certainly has its fanatics, they aren’t the ones making them huge. It’s the people who recognize the brand and know that an Ipod means quality.
The fact that Apple talks about new products as it releases them only enhances that image of a company that can be relied upon to deliver. Now *that’s* something not a lot of MMO companies have.
My problem has always been the disparity between what a developer says and what is actually shown. “Our game has innovative combat unlike anything you’ve ever seen.” Followed by the release of a video showing 6 players attacking a monster, tank in front, everyone else is to the back and sides, auto-attacking with some button clicks. Where is this awesome combat he was just shilling?
At this point, I could almost care less about seeing in game footage… you have graphics! yay! *snore* … instead, show me a video taken with a camera of someone at a keyboard actually playing the game. Frankly, a game may look cool as hell, but if when I bring it home it turns out that I push two buttons repeatedly, or worse just push two buttons and relax, to do what the video showed me, I won’t be playing long.
I agree with what was mentioned above: you often need to overhype your product if you want to attract enough attention. Particularly if the attention you want to attract has access to a checkbook. Showing off a bit of popularity can help loosen the purse strings since it appears you’re less of a risk.
The other problem is that, frankly, hype works. If Game X promises you blowjobs and candy canes while your game promises solid gameplay, people are going to pay attention to Game X. Those with faith in humankind might say that the people know that a game can’t magically produce oral sex and sugary treats, but they still fall for it. I suspect that in some ways people hope that the hype turns out to be true even though the odds are agasint it. In the end, being honest doesn’t get you the good attention.
Finally, you have the issue that people actually want the hype! In Meridian 59 we don’t say much about what we have in the pipeline because we understand that we might not be able to complete the project. Yet, people clamor for more information, reassuring us that, “We understand if you don’t complete everything!” Rants like Ryan’s above reassure me otherwise.
If you don’t talk about the ZOMG REVOLUTIONARY! things you’re doing, people will start to assume you’re stagnant.
My thoughts.
You example is a strawman creation Phsycho. Its an extreme that some people would enjoy but it is in no way viable or believable.
However, if you hype your game as evolutionary, revolutionary and a true 3rd generation game then it should actually be those things. When it turns out that its mechanics, visuals, and most game play elements are merely a rehash of existing games with a splash of a twist, that tends to turn off a huge chunk of the player base.
Hype is wonderful and great as long as it is actually something that is a realistic part of your game.
Oh I know exactly what you are talking about. I can not wait until we can officially talk about it.
You know what annoys the hell out of me…
A developer spends 5+ years and so many millions of dollars trying to make a game… it flops, and then where does all the product go?
I mean a game that cost $20M and 5 years to make still has a lot of capital in it, despite sucking.
Where do MMO’s go when they die?
Is it all just wasted? Adrift in the ether of IP?
There are a LOT of games out there which are dead and/or dying… what is going to happen to those engines/art/lore/etc when they finally kick off?
I remember you from EQ through EQ2 and I agree with your point and have voiced the same.
However, EQ2 has been guilty of the same offense. I find it curious why you didn’t mention that. A complete revamp after a game goes live for a year isn’t exactly over-hype, but it’s a misrepresentation of a product, which is basically what you are complaining about. It would be interesting to see what your view is on this at post-soe-employment in retrospect. Legally however, I doubt we’ll see that.
SWG, EQ2 and the upcoming on SOE’s list, Vanguard, are all guilty of this same offense. Vanguard was announced even before it had a name IIRC and that has undergone many face-lifts in its hype and it’s not even out yet.
Hype will generate attention but what most devs fail to realize, is it’s going to garner microscopic analysis they weren’t bargaining for.