How The Game Is Played

One door most close for another to open.

Its been a great nine+ years at Sun, but I am afraid I must announce that I am moving on. This is both a sad and a joyous time for me. Sad because I leave behind a great many wonderful colleagues. joyous because I am taking a big and exciting step for my career.

If Sun has one really remarkable asset, in my opinion it is the quality of the talent we have attracted. Not only are some of the best and smartest engineers I have ever worked with here at Sun, but we also have some terrific marketing and management folks. because Sun marketing often takes a lot of flack, I'd like to specifically mention a few specific people. There are equally great people in engineering, such as Seth Proctor, Jim Waldo and the entire Darkstar team. And great managers such as my first manager at Sun Steve Wilson, Vicki Abe and Karl Haberl. But marketing seldom gets mentioned positively around Sun so...

My recent work on Darkstar marketing with Jennifer Kotzen has been wonderful. True collaboration I have learned a great deal from her and, I hope, her from me. A brilliant lady, I hope she continues on handling the public face of Darkstar for a long time to come. Sun ia about to debut a wonderful new Project Darkstar community site. Know that she really drove that effort. I think the community will love the results.

Chris Melissinos. Compadre. Partner. Amazing speaker and communicator with a gift for quickly grasping technology, and the most amazing nose for where popular culture is going that I have ever seen. Also one of the few ,men I've ever met who really fits the italian term "sympatico." Sympatico has no english translation that is quite right but I can try to define it by way of describing Chris. Chris has the most open heart I know of. He genuinely wants to like everyone and find the good in everyone. You CAN get on his shit-list, but only by earning it.

Really, I cannot say enough good about this man. When I would call Chris and get his wife, she'd tell him "your other spouse is on the phone" and mine much the same. The journey inside of Sun that led first to javagaming.org and the technologies it spawned, and now to Project Darkstar has been a long and sometimes arduous one. Without Chris there to bolster me when it all got to much, and I to do the same for him, I don't think either of us would be where we are today. I just bought the sports car Ive always wanted/dreamed of. There are two people I will let drive it other then me. My blood-brother Joe, and Chris who is just as much a blood brother, just in a different way.

So, with that said, let me get on to what I am sure you are really interested in. First and foremost this is by no way shape or form the end of Project Darkstar. Two and a half years ago, my leaving the project probably would have been. But project Darkstar has grown far laregr then just my notion. It has a superb and dedicated technical team behind it in Jim Waldo's group. I have no doubt that they will continue to evolve the technology to levels of sophistication far beyond what I ever could have done alone.

I am also not leaving the team without a visionary. if I thought that was true, i wouldn't be able to leave. But Seth Proctor has really stepped up and into that role. He fully groks the original vision and has made it bigger and better in making it his own. ('Grok' is an old sci fi term, meaning to completely understand on both an intellectual and gut level.) I am confident that there are no finer hands I could leave that in.

Karl Haberl, Sun Labs director, is a fine adoptive parent for my baby. He has fully committed to and believes in Project Darkstar, putting an not insignificant amount of his own corporate capital into its success. he has also led the project places I probably would not have chosen to go, was dubious about, and was ultimately proved totally wrong about.

I was, and am still, skeptical about the latest buzz in "Virtual Worlds". I still remember the LAST time this went around. ("desktop VR" anyone?) But what I cannot deny is how it has grabbed the imagination of corporate America. Project Wonderland, Sun's VR toolkit on top of Project Darkstar and a project Karl made happen, has been nothing but terrific for the external impressions of Project Darkstar. It also has proved extremely valuable in driving internal development. In short, I am very confident that Karl will continue to make the right decisions to move Project Darkstar forward as a major and important technology both inside and outside of Sun.

For myself, an opportunity I have been wanting for a long time opened up and I couldn't afford not to take it. I am moving on to be the Chief Technology Officer (Chief Technical Monkey ) at Rebel Monkey software. The point of creating Project Darkstar for me was always that i wanted to use it to create games. At Rebel Monkey I will have that chance. Rebel Monkey is still in run silent-run deep mode so I can't share everything we are doing, but I can say that we are developing something in the casual/social space and that Project Darkstar is an important technology to us. In that regard, I promise I will stay a very active member of the Project Darkstar community, just as a user rather then a developer.

If I have one thing to conclude on, its this: I don't want anyone to think my leaving has anything to do with my belief either in Sun or the future of Project Darkstar. I have quite a lot of Sun stock I accumulated in my 9+ years and I am holding on to all of it because I firmly believe that "the Sun also rises." Sun continues to be a great collection of fantastic talent and Jonnathan is positioning Sun to be a major player in a future that runs largely on open source software. I am proud to be a Sun alumn and don't rule out my returning some day.

Similarly I think project Darkstar is poised on the edge of massive success. The last 2 years have been Jim and his crew laying the groundwork and figuring out the lay of the land. What will come out of the group in the next year I think is going to turn the online game development world on its ear. I am betting my and Rebel Monkey's future in part on Jim's team's work because I am that confident in their drive and capabilities.

if there is one thing I have learned in my Project Darkstar experience, is that it truly does take a village to raise a child. Sun labs is that village and I have no doubt that I am leaving my baby in hands better then if I had continued on with it all by myself.

Leaving Sun means I also will lose the ability to add to this blog, though Sun will be nice enough to keep the existing posts up. For my future blog entries I have created a new blog on blogspot. I encourage you all to join me there:

http://cto-rebelmonkey.blogspot.com

Posted at 11:00AM Jul 21, 2008 by gameguy in General  |  Comments[1]

Short update on AoC

They say the last words on any flight recorder recovered from a plane crash are always "oh shit."

Maybe Funcom is reaching the "oh shit" point on their particular crash and burn. I just received an invite to participate in a survey. The most interesting part was in the last few questions:

With Conan at it’s present state, how long do you think you will stay subscribed?
1 to 3 months
4 to 6 months
over 6 months


If you have planned to stop playing Age of Conan, please tell us why?
Technical reasons (ie. You have problems playing the game)
Gameplay reasons
Financial reasons
Social/Time reasons

Keep in mind this game is only about 3 months old. This is a time when most MMos should be focused on growth of the player base. There were lost of satisfaction questions but not ONE "would you recommend AoC to your friends" type questions.

Reading between the liens, I see subscriber bleed as the primary concern right now. If they actually started *listening* to their users, maybe they could pull the nose up in time. or maybe its too late already. I give it 50/50 odds and time will tell.

Posted at 12:40PM Jul 19, 2008 by gameguy in General  | 

Cimmeria: A community in crisis (Age of Conan)

Or "How the Game is Lost"

I am afraid Funcom is in the process of proving an old adage-- that any MMo lives and dies on its customer service. And Funcom's Age of Conan has absolutely the worst customer service it has ever been my displeasure to experience.

The game design itself is great, in someways even ground breaking. The art is absolutely stunning.

The game itself, is broken. very broken. Their regression testing is so bad that they actually introduced major new bugs in their last patch. (A starting enemy for beginning characters suddenly started doing thousands of hit points of damage, ensuring that no one could successfully start a new character.)

Amazingly, this alone would not necessarily doom a promising game. Hardcore MMO players are an amazingly forgiving lot, really, and will put up with amazing levels of brokeness if they feel the developers are listening to them and working with them to find a solution.

The secret, is that MMOs are all about community. In that regard they can ALMOST operate like open source projects. But this only works if the players really feel that the developers are actively acting in good faith with the community. This is where customer service enters the picture. The way a developer establishes that good faith is with clear lines of communication. This doesn't mean they have to cater to every player's whim or idea of what would make the game better, but it DOES mean giving the players the feeling that they are being listened to. Responsive customer service is a key bridge piece that engages the members of the community when they are most emotional and most likely to feel ignored. Good customer service can heal all kinds of wounds. But BAD customer service can create just as many.

Funcom right now is becoming the test book case of how to do customer service wrong.

Funcom has customer forums. However they do not deign to actually engage with the customers on those forums, despite many many pleas by a great many customers. For the past few months there has been a growing petition on the forums for a minor administrative change. It has over 600 signees to date. the requested change, to the US servers, is something that already exists and is in operation in Europe. Not only has Funcom not said yes, they haven't even given a reason why not. in fact, they have outright IGNORED all the posts for months and not even deigned to say "no" despite further pleas for at least that much recognition by their customers.

The ONLY communication from the Funcom game team comes in the forum of periodic "pronouncement from the mountains" speeches from the head game designer, full of self importance and lacking any of the information the players are screaming for on the forums.

In game customer service is useless, though arguably slightly improved from when the game originally launched. When the game launched, if you had a problem , you could put in a trouble ticket. If you were unlucky, the system would just drop it. If you were lucky, it would sit in the system for 8+ hours. Finally a CSR would get to it, see that you had logged out, and send you a message that they erased your ticket since you were no longer online. You'd get this infuriating message the next time you logged in.

Now, if you put in a ticket, they will get back to you within an hour or so, and generally tell you that the policy is not to do anything about your problem. They will tell you o email customer support to escalate. This is apparently a bit bucket. I've never even received an acknowledgment of on of these emails arriving let alone had someone respond to it. And no one else I've talked to about this has, either.

So, faced with mounting frustration, what do players do? What else, they go to their friends for support. In this case its back to those self same forums that funcome will not respond to.

Well, will not respond is too strong a term. they WILL respond to criticism... by locking and deleting threads. They respond by any questioning of such actions as follows. (A private email sent to me recently)

Dear Cyberqat,

You have received an infraction at Age of Conan Forums.

Reason: Questioning Moderation
-------
Greetings,

You were given an infraction for questioning moderation in the public forums. If something has been moderated then it's not something to open a new thread about the topic. It will only become closed or removed to a restricted forum.

You now have 3 infractions of 6. When you hit 6 infractions then you will be automatically suspended.

Thank you!
-------

This infraction is worth 3 point(s) and may result in restricted access until it expires. Serious infractions will never expire.

I guess the "age of conan" is 1984 and I've just heard from the Ministry of Truth.

Ofcourse, this blog is the true meaning of "information wishes to be free." They cannot silence their community and by trying they are only enraging it further. I encourage others who have been so silenced, in whatever venue, to seek alternate means of expression as well. Such expression is the heart and soul of the internet.

Funcom seems to have invented a new concept: Customer Disservice. A systematic way to take already upset customers and inflame their outrage to the breaking point. I'm not sure how useful it is though, except as an object lesson for future game developers on what not to do.

The train is on the tracks and headed for the cliff and Funcom seems intent on blindly shoving coal into the boiler. Sadly, a promising game with a great start will probably die soon from total mismanagement by a company who never understood that a game service is first, and foremost, a service.

Posted at 09:59PM Jul 11, 2008 by gameguy in General  |