An interesting division is happening in game publishing and game development. No, it’s not the oft-mentioned indie game developers versus big game media. It’s not PCs versus consoles, either. In some ways, it’s a return to the past: passive versus interactive, but taken to a meta level.
Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen something of a furor surround the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 . First came the news that the latest entry in the franchise would have no dedicated servers – which also meant no user generated maps and no mod tools. On top of that, it was revealed the multiplayer maps would be limited to 9 vs. 9.
The other thing that happened to me last week was listening to latest Three Moves Ahead, the podcast produced and hosted by Troy Goodfellow of Flash of Steel, which was an interview with Chris Park, developer of the RTS AI Wars. It’s well worth a listen.
What struck me was the difference in attitude between Activision / Infinity Ward (developers of Modern Warfare 2) and Chris Park. AI Wars has gotten a lot of buzz, partly because it’s a somewhat different take on the RTS genre, but also because Park and his small team has been incredibly responsive to the AI Wars user community.
At first blush, this may simply sound like another Indie versus Big Publisher dichotomy – but it’s not that simple. Large game developers and associated publishers can also be tuned into their user communities. They may not be able to respond as quickly as a small developer with a single title, but they can still listen.
What’s more, I think, is that it’s also a return to an interesting argument I used to hear back in the heyday of the old Computer Gaming World.
Back then, the idea was that PC gaming – and, by extension, all video games – heralded a new era of interactive entertainment. It was believed back then that electronic gaming was something new, a move away from the passivity of couch potatoes being spoon fed their entertainment by the TV networks.
It turns out, of course, that the writers and editors of that era were working from a set of assumptions that proved incorrect over the longer term. The fight isn’t between interactivity and passivity. It’s between top-down paternalism and grass roots user involvement.
On the gaming front, you now have companies like Activision, taking a highly paternalistic attitude: it’s our game; we know what’s best, take it or leave it.
On the other side, you have developers and publisher who, to varying degrees, let the user get involved. It can be pretty low level stuff, like handing out development tools to the users, as we’ve seen recently with Borderlands, Dragon Age and the Unreal Developer’s Kit. It can go deeper than that, too. Stardock, for example, will get users involved in early betas, and even alphas of a game, as they’re doing with the upcoming strategy title Elemental to get user feedback during the critical stage before the game is feature complete and the design is frozen.
Neither approach offers any advantage in the quality of the game. I have every expectation that Modern Warfare 2 will be a very polished game that offers a great experience. There’s no doubt in my mind that Elemental will also be a great title.
On the other hand, today’s generation of web-driven users who are flocking to social games – which are often driven by the players themselves – signals what may become a sea-change in the overall behavior of the gaming audience. Players will start expecting more responsiveness and less paternalism from their gaming experience.
We’re actually seeing this battle play out in the larger field of new media. Rupert Murdoch, for example, threatens to block search engines like Google from offering search results from his publications. It’s old media, at its paternalistic worst. If articles from Murdoch’s publications never show up in search results, who will read them online? What will advertisers think of this?
How it will all shake out is anyone’s guess. Interactive media, whether it’s gaming or the Internet, is still very much an evolving animal. As the new generation of developers and users connect with each other, it will be increasingly difficult for the old generation to walk back that high level of interactivity and user involvement that’s expected today. The fight will be an interesting one to watch.
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Darrin
November 9, 2009 at 2:20 pm (UTC -7)
Most consumers (or “users”) don’t have or want a role in the development process. That’s not paternalism, that’s how the movie, music, and games industries generally work.
When I want to see a movie, I just want to be fully entertained for 90 minutes or so, and then return to my regular life and goals. I don’t want to do any work nor do I really care about the process of making the movie.
The Unreal Developer’s Kit and similar dev tools are awesome products that are shared with the development community, but regular “users” have zero interest in that kind of thing. That doesn’t “get users involved” at all as you say.
Loyd Case
November 9, 2009 at 2:34 pm (UTC -7)
You make it sound like it’s an either/or thing, but it’s not. Sure, not everyone will use a dev kit or even mod tools. But Stardock’s process for getting very early user feedback, and Arcen games high level of responsiveness to user requests are another way of keeping the players involved. This is quite different to Infinity Ward patting users on the head and telling them “we know best.”
Max Heim
November 9, 2009 at 2:54 pm (UTC -7)
One case where paternalism directly affects users is when the game won’t even let you change interface settings like key commands and mouse buttons. This has been cropping up more and more, and it’s particularly irritating — yeah, they might have created a “perfect” interface (so they think), but what if you’re lefthanded? Or you had to sacrifice a finger to your yakuza boss? It’s not only arrogant, it’s lazy.
Sorry, pet peeve…
trip1ex
November 9, 2009 at 7:09 pm (UTC -7)
The difference is the big games have big budgets and need to sell a ton of copies. And in those cases you can’t make your game just for that core audience who are a very small part of your audience. And in turn the PR is going to be aimed at the mass audience more than the core audience.
Small-time developers though sell almost entirely to that core audience. So they are going to listen to that audience big time. And that audience enjoys that involvement. The average joe doesn’t care, but the average joe isn’t their target.
Also I don’t think it often pays to listen too much to the community. Surprise is entertainment. Sure it backfires sometimes, but a certain amount of mystery and surprise and going off in a direction you didn’t except is entertainment.
As Henry Ford once said, if he’d asked his customers what they wanted, they’d have asked for a faster horse.
Stewart Stronski
November 10, 2009 at 12:03 am (UTC -7)
I think there is a lot of validity to Loyd’s position. All too often the only interest is to rush out the latest sequel in the Franchise X series. There is often little incentive for EA or whoever to listen to the gamers’ opinions because the game is probably still going to turn a profit even if it is not up to the same level as it’s predecessors.
My personal peeve has to do with the intransigence of some companies when it comes to patching their games, or in many cases even acknowledging that a game needs to be patched. I’ve actually been told a couple of times that I should format my system to remove any possibility of conflicts before they could offer any further advice. Maybe I’m just muddle-headed in thinking that a game should normally run without needing a clean install if my system meets the stated requirements!
I even recall a couple of cases where the publisher basically acknowledged that there were issues but refused to pay the developer to put out a patch because the game hadn’t sold enough copies. Seems like sort of a self-defeating attitude to take: Joe Blow sees a game he might like and hits the forums to research it, only to find a mass of disgruntled users and no prospects for any improvements to the game. Needless to say Joe finds another game to spend his money on.
Rob Zacny
November 10, 2009 at 7:02 am (UTC -7)
Couple things that I think are missing from this discussion so far:
Community passion and involvement saves you marketing money. Activision has emptied its toolbox in pushing Modern Warfare 2, and I have no doubt they will receive ample rewards, but few game fit into the “mega-blockbuster” category. Infinity Ward and Activision have staked their futures on their ability to keep churning out expensive to produce, expensive to market crowd-pleasers.
If a loyal and active community is out there evangelizing your game to friends, and singing your company’s praises, that’s a lot of heavy lifting that is being done for free. It also helps ensure your game has legs. It’s easy to create buzz prior to release just through top-down marketing, but much harder and less rewarding after release. Again, you want community to be driving sales six, eight, twelve months down the road.
One final point: communities produce talent and good ideas. Team Fortress and Left 4 Dead have their origins in community projects. Creative Assembly has used ideas for Total War games that were first employed by modders. They have recruited modders into the development teams. The industry is full of such examples.
Paying attention to the users is a low-cost, potentially high-reward strategy. There are few downsides to at least making a show of listening, unless on some level you resent the idea that you should listen. There is a word for that: hubris.
Brandon Champion
November 10, 2009 at 9:14 am (UTC -7)
When Doom came out it became quickly apparent that an active community, fueled by developer support, was THE way to go. I know I’ve bought several $30-$40 games solely for the purpose of playing a mod and never played the content on the disc. Let the community have as much control as possible and everyone will benefit.
Rob Thornburgh
November 10, 2009 at 5:45 pm (UTC -7)
I agree with Loyd that this is not about big developers versus smaller ones. It seems to be the difference between companies that want to control their product and look inward for ideas versus those that see the importance of looking to their audience for feedback. Referencing back to one of Loyd posts from a few days ago, we are in an era of near instant communication and it comes across as anachronistic when a company take the “paternal” approach to developing software. Heck, I am not even that big into multiplayer gaming, but it does rub me the wrong way when one of my favorite franchises casually brushes aside concerns raised by their loyal audience.
Even Microsoft appears to have become aware of this, based on their approach to Windows 7. They opened the betas and RC’s to anyone who was interested, and seemed to be almost begging for feedback and approval. You even see it in their current, albeit slightly lame, “Window 7 was my idea” advertising campaign.
Tweets that mention Paternalism versus Users: Shifting Paradigms in Game Publishing « All Topics « Improbable Insights -- Topsy.com
November 9, 2009 at 11:59 am (UTC -7)
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by loydcase, Troy Goodfellow. Troy Goodfellow said: RT @loydcase: Paternalism versus users: my take on the expectations gamers today, and what they want from publishers. http://bit.ly/3lZugH [...]