Comic for Wednesday 10/14 (Early High Res)
Sorry, this is going to be one of my "here's how I wish the world worked" posts.
I was originally spurred to touch on the subject (and importance) of developer communication by the latest game-as-service, The Avengers, but it's a topic that becomes more and more important as any game shifts from "we shipped it, that's it, it's done" to an evolving, long term experience.
I feel that it's especially important in the early days for developers to establish a rhythm of communication with their prospective player base, even when there's no real news to report. And I feel that's the part where a lot of devs derail; if they can't offer exact, specific details or concrete announcements, they opt to stay silent, and I strongly believe that's the wrong approach.
Even popping onto twitter or reddit to say "Hey, we're still listening and working on stuff, and we'll share details as soon as we can" is better than complete radio silence. Because it imparts a sense attention that helps the playerbase weather any lulls in content updates or bug fixing. As a player, if you're investing time in a game without a clear, finite "end point", you want to know that it's still alive on the other end; that your concerns are not being hollered into a void.
Crystal Dynamics was silent as the community pondered about balance fixes, what a content roadmap might look like, whether certain things were even on their radar. When they finally responded, they had some helpful information, but they only did so because a large publication (IGN) reached out to them to get information. It was not a great way to handle communication with the players of a new game who just want to know they can expect attention to all the quality of life issues a newborn game might have.
On the other hand, while researching the framework for this discussion, I also realized that the vocal playerbase for these games could stand to adjust their respose/reactions a bit as well. While I thoroughly empathize with the desire to see your new game purchase evolve and increase content, and get new features, the timeline from zero-to-complaining about it seems to get unreasonably short at times.
Every time a game-as-service is held up as a success story, or a "how to do it" comparison (let's say Warframe or perhaps Destiny), the vocal contingent seems to conveniently forget that those games have been out for years. They have had years to grow and tweak and add on new content to get to the place where they are a bountiful example of "things to do." And all of them started in the exact same rough, barebones place.
So there are some developers that understand the important of communication, and some that don't. Likewise, there are some players that are reasonable with their expectations, and some that aren't. And I think the healthiest community for these ongoing projects we're calling "games-as-service" are when both sides work together to meet in the middle.
Yes, the developer has to verbally, and sometimes continually express where they're at and what they're doing to improve the game, even if they're vague about it. But the community should understand that these things take time, and that perhaps a game that's intended to live 1, 2, maybe three years does not also have to be the only game you play. That you can play in bursts, sometimes seriously, sometimes casually, sometimes not at all. Play other things and then circle back around to touch base as the game evolves.
Typing this, I can already predict a myriad of responses. "I just wait and buy the game a year or two later, at a discount, after it's been patched and had expansions." Yes, excellent approach, good for you. But this argument doesn't really apply to you then, does it? These games can't get to a place where they're patched and expanded without the people that jump in at the start and play through the evolution, can they? As a non-customer you neither care about their communication nor are you one of the vocal contingent losing your shit on social media.
Or perhaps "Maybe the developer should just release a finished game then", which is a wonderful argument (in fact, it's a great subject for a discussion all on its own), but it ignores the concept that games like these, and MMOs, etc are never really "finished". They're intended to be grown and expanded, so given that caveat, who is to say how much or how little constitutes a "finished" amount suitable for release? If WoW shut down tomorrow, knowing the full breadth of content the game would eventually contain, could you objectively call its launch state in 2004 "complete?" It felt pretty good at the time, but in comparison now it feels a little basic.
So the TL;DR here boils down to this, without any "whataboutism" tangents: A) I think developers need to be more proactive about communicating, even if all they're doing is communicating about future communication. B) Players that choose to board the train early on in the trip need to exercise more patience about the fact that maybe some track is still being laid.
Comments (11)
I'm going to read all the comments. First I want to put this thought out there. Games as a service can work does work in some cases. Unfortunately for me the ones that I have experimented with end up being loot pinata games. It's no secret that I like the loop of classic Monster Hunter. You are rewarded with parts that are indeed random but you have some control over the randomness. You've earned your items and you crafted your stuff. Besides some things, Decorations, you are not beholden fully to the RNG Gods. Neither are you distracted by the gotta get all the shinies while in the game play loop. That being said I am enjoying Genshin Impact which is more or less "What if someone made a full game out of Dragalia Lost?" I'm always finding a new Mechanic a new place some event.
The best communication I've seen in an EA is actually Star Citizen. Incredible transparency all around, amazingly crazy community (in terms of money invested in what is still an alpha after 8 years...), almost non toxic. But yeah, with that amount of money raised from the Kickstarter and ever since, having dedicated people for the comm is quite easy. For a small team of normal guys, I wouldn't advise communicating much more than a monthly newsletter, per mail. Investing in any kind of modern day social contact with the mostly toxic gamers is not good for the soul. At all.
I think another pretty good example is FF XIV. I can't talk about the original launch, i only played after the relaunch (which was basically a new game) but the communication was pretty regular and the community was also reasonable with their expectations, at least if i remember correctly. And they have kept that up over the years. Many people i know in the game (myself included) have phases where they play the game all the time, phases where they just do the dailies/weeklies and phases where they don't play for months, but keep they coming back for the new content every once in a while.
I can understand the frustration, but as a game dev its also a very hard thing to uphold. Especially for a smaller team it can often be almost impossible to keep up good communication, and usually "We're still working on it, we can't tell you an exact release date yet, sorry" doesn't bode well with the community -- it often summons the exact response you're describing. And as a small dev team, that frustration hits the devs themselves full force, instead of a whole load of intermediary community managers (as is the case for bigger devs) So instead, they are silent and go into crunch mode so they can deliver something (which will then be taken in very quickly by very enthusiastic players, while the dev team gets more and more "Oh why don't you do XXX" comments)
I understand a smaller development studio may not be able to dedicate an entire postition solely to community outreach, and I don't even expect daily updates from triple A companies. But even basic communication frameworks like roadmaps, or monthly roundtables can help the community feel like stuff is moving forward even if they aren't seeing it realized in the game yet, wouldn't you agree? That SOME communication is better, which perhaps still causes frustration, is better than complete radio silence in which all manner of rumor and theorycrafting are allowed to flourish?
I bought into a couple "early access" games years ago when the thing started. I quickly determined it was best just to wait for the finished product. Even from the gameplay perspective, I always found it hard to go back and "replay" the game after every update because there were changes to experience, or simply because saves were broken by the new update.
EA games (in this context, Early Access, not Electronic Arts) are very hit or miss. Some are exemplary. Subnautica, Rimworld, Satisfactory, Factorio, Oxygen Not Included, all of which are *well* worth having even during EA (or when they were EA, for those that have since launched), both to support the devs and because the games were excellent and worth playing even fairly early in the EA process. Satisfactory is a great example of a game still reasonably early in its EA period, but that I've still been able to sink almost 400 gameplay hours into. Other EA games are just garbage. They release with lofty promises, seem to be showing regular development, but it never really gels, and the devs end up either abandoning it or shipping an incomplete game and calling it done (or taking the Wildcard approach: ship new content, never ever fix bugs, make wild changes to the gameplay model that no one asked for (Genesis...), and release *paid DLC* while the *base* game is still in Early Access). I've definitely become quite a bit more *skeptical* of EA games these days, and generally only dive in on them when they're reasonably well established and with a review volume that can attest to their quality, but I've not completely sworn off EA games like some peeps did after the whole No Man's Sky fiasco. One thing I think is very noteworthy, however, is that I tend to be attracted to procedurally generated games like Factorio, Rimworld, and Oxygen Not Included. Those games *innately* have replay value, because every playthrough is different, so there's not really as much issue with going back and replaying it later. Games like Subnautica, really anything with a story, I definitely avoid playing during EA.
Grand example of how companies *should* communicate: Digital Extremes (aka DE, developers of Warframe). The devs hold a weekly stream where they go over everything from upcoming features to changes due to feedback to previews of new skins and such they are adding to user-created content like fan art. They have peeps dedicated to pulling questions out of chat so they can answer them on stream as well. It's a grand model. Frankly, I credit Warframe as a success not necessarily just because of the quality of the game (which really is quite good, imo, the gameplay loop is excellent, and they've generally mastered the art of creating things to "grind" for without it *feeling* like a grind), but because they are hands down the best in the industry, in my experience, at communicating with their players and taking feedback to heart. And on the other end, you have modern Blizzard, whose approach to customer communication and feedback can be summed up so well by a quote by their current president, J Allen Brack: "you think you [want that], but you don't". I definitely agree with you that players need to learn more patience, however. I take Warframe in doses myself, because I tend to consume the content quite a bit quicker than they produce it, so I jump in every 3-6 months, play for a while, then go play other game again until it's more fleshed out. I bought Subnautica Below Zero literally the day it showed up, because the first one was so amazing, but I've not even *installed* it yet, because I don't want to ruin the story while it's all still in development. I don't really care how long it takes, because I have confidence they'll deliver an excellent game, just like the first one. I backed Rimworld on Kickstarter in like 2013, but only just started playing it recently (though I *had* kinda forgotten about it between now and then). I take games like Factorio, Satisfactory, and Oxygen Not Included in doses as well, as the devs continue to improve on them and add to them (and really amazing mods come out for them). I think too many gamers forget that *good* content takes time. When devs simply vomit out content as fast as they can, that content almost invariably ends up feeling hollow, rehashed, boring, and as half-assed as it actually was.
In the last panel, shouldn't it say, "What A waste of money!"
I admit I just read the TL;DR part, but pretty well agree.
Spot on