Pot-Stirring Time

[Crystalion]

If you want to make a difference in your favorite games

Right.  With the developers having a "we know what is right and you know #$%& attitude" our input really matters.

They could tell every poster here at the Lounge to piss off and die

And have done so, over and over again by their actions.

When hope is gone, all that is left is bitterness and style.

The commentary is not to influence the designers -- they aren't listening.  We know, because they've said so.  The commentary is to blow off steam against idiots who make games for the masses.

Well, I've used (as have probably most of you reading this) a lot of different software, including quite a few games, so I tend to put my developer "indifference" rating on a relative scale for that. For example, at one end of the scale: I thought that through much of EQ's life cycle that the developers were pretty cruel to players; at the other end are developers that release the full source code to their commercially obsolete games (i.e. no further revenue likely).

Another relative scale I use--since I've been in the industry--is to forgive or overlook problems when I have a pretty good idea under what constraints the developers have to operate. This includes, but is not limited to, such things as:

1) company controlled by non-gamers (or even game haters)
2) company direction/actions controlled by bean counters
3) company in chaos because corporate parent is a flake, or hostile
4) company in chaos because key personel leave
5) product a platform support nightmare (e.g. because OS sucks)
6) product too complex (e.g. Mythical Man Month factor--no amount of bodies can help)
7) product work to do too overwhelming (e.g. short on man-hours for ship date)
8) etc. etc....

To help you get into this line of thought... imagine you find it convenient to go into McDs and order a burger, even though you don't prefer to do that usually (innumerable reasons)--would you typically vent your distaste on the girl behind the counter taking your order? I, for example, think that McDs mostly sells expensive junk. I occasionally find it convenient to eat there. I have never, iirc, been deliberately rude to a counter person (although occasionally they do mess up, of course). Aside from the fact that that I believe courtesy to be the oil of lubrication that keeps the engine of society from exploding due to friction, I also believe that workers at fast food places usually have what might be termed a sh*t job (albeit a useful/necessary one, for them and society) and I sympathize with the difficulty of their situation.

Now (game) software developers actually have a lot in common with the movie business (Trip Hawkins was one of the first major movers to realize this, though perhaps he overstated the case for investor relations and the coolness factor). There aren't that many of us, and we work on a project for a fairly short period of time, for consumption by very large numbers of people, the more the better ($ for us), and though the product can stick around basically forever, most of the use/gravy ($ for us again) occurs shortly after release, unless the product is "a classic".

Over time these businesses have discovered that putting extra effort/content (as opposed to just extra marketing) into a product, post-ship, can be profitable if the product has a large ongoing audience. Thus "special edition" DVDs, and expansion packs, etc.

However, you, as a customer, probably should keep in mind that this is a "cash" business--like drug dealing. We takes your money, and then we don't want to see you ever again (unless you have more money for us, of course). The game business is competitive and pimped. That is to say, the corporation skims the profits (they aren't re-invested to the benefit of the customers, except incidentally) and no company wants to skip doing a lucrative product so they can pour time and money into a soso or losing product (again, always judged by net $).

Arguing about customer relations and reputatation building would be fine here, were there actually some shining star company that did those so perfectly that everyone else would have to as well, or else they could not get any customers. This kind of thing is called "raising the bar", btw. George Lucas did it for special effects in mainstream movies, to offer an example. But investment in bar raising is very iffy compared to investment in marketing and distribution. Thus most bar raising in the games business occurs when a company has a $uccessful product and decide to make a $equel--they raise the bar for themselves, because this pays off getting more money from existing customers (whereas fixing/improving those customers existing product typically would not--Bill Gates has experimented with making software into a subscription model, with some success, but generally it makes the customer too aware of the software company being, in some sense, a blood-sucking leech, so it's a difficult strategy to make work).

So, does D2 and Blizzard have problems? Yes. Should we, in our frustration, lose sight of the big picture and assume they are eeeee-vil? I think not. While I'm personally mildy annoyed that v1.10 has taken so long and that many bugs I consider of importance have been around seemingly forever, I nonetheless can see quite clearly that a small number of people inside Blizzard have been granted an incredible leeway to do an excruciatingly long deathmarch to an amazingly large free-expansion of the game. Re-orging things to make life easier for modders is, by itself, a surprising and wonderful development, which can not be justified by any bean-counter acceptable rationale that I can see.

Since, like actors, developers receive large amounts of public praise and approbation (aka sh*t), this development is even more unusual... clearly you garner more praise by leaving old stuff to rot and be forgotten, while you move on to the latest-and-greatest.

Do I wish the QC (quality control) for D2 were higher? You bet. Do I understand why it isn't and sympathize with Blizzard? Definitely.

Am I grateful that v1.10 is coming? Yep--apart from wondering whether I should be doing something more productive with my time than playing games (sorry, I guess that was off-topic).

YMMV.

p.s. for PR reasons it is *not* in any game company's interest to allow it to be known publicly that they ever feel any customer should "piss off and die", but, of course, being human, some developers probably entertain such thoughts and share them privately--I imagine a number of actors have thrown darts at pictures of movie critics. Realistically speaking, however, the Blizzard lurkers could just stop lurking, and, as Bolty implies, neither they nor Blizzard would be measurably affected financially. I would prefer LL to be polite and for Blizzard to lurk, since they are likely to find facts and insights here that occassionally they have time to act upon, to make the game better.

edit: for grammar and punctuation (still more, I know, but I don't have endless time to correct myself--certainly my run-on style could use a lot of cleaning up... maybe I'll fix it--in version 10 ;) )

edit2: four ain't to gud et spelin thangs, lyke me gramma.