The Elder Scrolls Online

Sorry to piss in your cheerios
ZeniMax Online Studios

Denaut_sl said:

The funny thing about this is that you should basically redo a zone over and over for a while until you get the game right. This is also known as pre-production and you do it with a team of like 10-15 people so it isn't so expensive. Unfortunately, the way it usually goes is that kind of stuff happens when you have a team of 100+ people. That is very, very bad.

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This is because the 10-15 people are all close friends of management, which is how they get picked to be on those small teams... and they all drink the koolaid, and it isn't until there are 100 people working on the project that suddenly it's "omg 85% of the people think this place sucks" instead of "100% of the people love this area".

P.S. As long as job requirements for video game companies have listed "has shipped 3+ games" to even have a resume considered, you will continue to keep getting the same screw-ups working on title after title.

Antarius_sl said:

This is because the 10-15 people are all close friends of management, which is how they get picked to be on those small teams... and they all drink the koolaid, and it isn't until there are 100 people working on the project that suddenly it's "omg 85% of the people think this place sucks" instead of "100% of the people love this area".

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Right. I think, ultimately, the problem with the games industry is that it is overall very, very unprofessional. It grew up in a different time than say the movie industry did, without any of the trade guilds or unions and therefore doesn't have the same sense that design, art, and management are professions that are difficult, require specific skill sets, and are very different from each other.

Not to say the movie/television industry is perfect but in general the people that are the cogs in the machine (writers, lighting techs, producers, etc) are much more respected as skilled professionals than their rough equivalents in the game industry.

I don't think you can combine "makes a profit" with "total fuckup". That's all most companies (or their publishers) give a fuck about. It's soulless people all the way through. They fit the mold. It sucks, but that's the world. If the games they lead made their money, what do they care if fans were ultimately disappointed or it get negative reviews, or if it's "dead" in 3 months? Noone gives a shit.

The major issue is that customers are mostly kids and kids salivate about graphics more than anything else. Parents pay for games and don't even know what they are about. There is little accountability in the industry, because customers are uncaring as they can possibly be. The vocal minority rarely matters.

I think current games are mostly shit, not only MMOs, with some nice gem inside and a few passable ones that wasted a lot of their potential.

So Utnayan, do something about it. Get your shit started, get some people together, invest in an idea and make the game you want to play. Maybe McQuaid and Schilling could tilt at you for a change.

I bet you could throw footballs over mountains too. But you know, you can't be arsed to go buy a football.

Yeah, I broke out a Napolean Dynamite reference.

I mean, I get that you're passionate, but holy shit man, do you ever realize how crazy you sound? Like you estimating opportunity cost and lost revenue on something like a game (or even worse, a MMO) is that easy and straight forward to do. If it was, it'd be done. But you can't predict the future as much as you think you can.

"Am I dumb enough to put my own money behind it? No" But you're saying it's a SURE FIRE BET! After all, YOU'RE leading it! How can it be dumb when you'd bring stuff in so under-budget and on-time (or better), when damn near every single other software industry in the world cannot do this. I mean, what's your credentials (not saying you don't have them) for even SUGGESTING you can do all this so much better than the rest of the world? For my own "qualifications" to have some idea what I'm talking about - I'm a 10 year software developer, and done everything from "contractor working in a silo" to "leading a team on a 14 million / year project". It's never simple or straightforward, and if anything is unpredictable, it's software. You never know what kind of issues will crop up. You do your best to educate and be careful, but things will still not always happen on time 100% of the time.

And the more "top talent" you try to put on one team, the more dysfunctional it will be. You have to have variety. See: long list of failed projects that thought they'd succeed by hiring nothing but expensive fuckers. I've even seen it locally where you get 2-3 very smart and very opinionated guys on one team and it all grinds to a halt. Yet they'll thrive on other projects/teams and lead their respective projects to excellent standards.

I'm not saying you don't have right points with the same shit-birds shitting up the industry and doing the same boring shit over and over. But you act like it's got an obvious fix, and YOU could be the salvation, but ya know, effort.

Zeb Cook...I had an experience with that guy when he was at CoastCon one year. It involved giving him some dollar bills for "tipping" some lovely ladies. He was a really cool guy though, would hang out again if I had the chance.

Denaut_sl said:

Right. I think, ultimately, the problem with the games industry is that it is overall very, very unprofessional. It grew up in a different time than say the movie industry did, without any of the trade guilds or unions and therefore doesn't have the same sense that design, art, and management are professions that are difficult, require specific skill sets, and are very different from each other.

Not to say the movie/television industry is perfect but in general the people that are the cogs in the machine (writers, lighting techs, producers, etc) are much more respected as skilled professionals than their rough equivalents in the game industry.

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Yeah, it always amazes me when people in the industry expect to work long hours because it's the standard. A lot of that can be fixed by hiring management who are professional and have schooling and experience for the job. How many times have you worked with a producer who was promoted from design or another department that really had no experience actually producing and keeping multiple teams on schedule? Since everyone is friends, there seems to hardly be any repercussions for missing deadlines.

I used to work long hours but then I got married and decided I wasn't going to spend my life at work. I now show up and for the 8 or so hours I'm here and I'm focused. My work is always done and I always find that I even have time to read forums... My production is always greater than the people that always seem to work 10-14 hour days all the time and are always behind. Unfortunately I see that all the time in this industry and then they wonder why they get burnt out. Like you said, a lot of developers have a casual approach to work and never understand that they are supposed to be professionals. These are the same people who roll out of bed at 9:50 and try and make it to work by 10am while some of us have already been working for 2-2.5 hours.

I can't speak for other genres, but MMO's seem to aim too big and always underestimate how long it will take to complete and then end up in situations like 38 or shipping a game that had no time for polish and half the size they set out to make in the first place. Add in how many times the projects get reset because what they try doesn't work and that extends production time by a year or two. The other issue in MMO development is this attitude of throwing something in that is half finished thinking you'll have time to come back later to finish it and I guess I can't blame them because they know it will probably get changed 8 times before someone decides on what eventually will be the "final" way it needs to be implemented. It's rare to see people implementing work in on a first pass where it's functional, working and it only needs minor polish to get it ready for completion.

I believe a low budget MMO can be made that would do very well with a small team. As long as that small team was setup to make a game, design tools and not change systems every other month so that you can be in production and not spinning your wheels for 6 years before you realize you need to have a game out before everyone gets fired. I see current MMO development teams like old EQ raiding. You have 50-60 hard core workers who know what they're doing, another 50 average workers and then 100 or so warm bodies that are collecting pay checks and are only hired to throw people at the problem of not enough time to finish the job.

Schags_sl said:

I can't speak for other genres, but MMO's seem to aim too big and always underestimate how long it will take to complete and then end up in situations like 38 or shipping a game that had no time for polish and half the size they set out to make in the first place.

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For every thousand strikes at the leaves of evil, there is but one strike at the root. This is the root of many of the mmo industry's woes- sustainability (or lack thereof). People often cite the "leaves" of failed mmos- incomplete content, lack of polish, half-baked mechanics, and inability to move beyond he established paradigm (WoW)- as the cause of failure. In reality, the "root" of many of these issues is the developer's inability to sustain their project due to poor management, faulty resource allocation, bloated budgets, and inefficiency.

The sheer cost in terms of money/time/resources of most MMOs cause them to collapse under their own weight. To fix the games you must first fix the industry (as others have mentioned). Most of the failed MMOs that have been mentioned were so costly to make that they had no choice but to be absolute block-buster hits out of the gate or fail. There was no in between. There was no time to start small (or niche') and grow larger over time. This is one reason games tend to start with "bold" ideas and finish with tired and repetitive ones. When time starts to run out and the reality of what it means to fail comes crashing down, companies panic and fall back on "tried and tested" paradigms with the theory "It worked for WoW, it could work for us too!"

The MMO company that succeeds is going to be smarter rather than bigger. It's going to have talented, hard workers rather than the traditional industry "superstars." The successful MMO will start with a small, realistic budget and small, realistic subscriber requirements- things that allow the MMO to be bold and risky while allowing the MMO time to grow.

It's amusing how the people who call UT crazy seem to be obssessed with him. fuck spelling.