MMO & Game Crowdsourcing and you!

irpugboss

Just wanted to make a post and see how everyone else feels about crowdsourcing in game development.

Crowdsourcing = the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.

Crowdsourcing =/= Crowdfunding (They are two different things)

Think Everquest Next/Landmark, Warhammer 40k Eternal Crusade, etc. use of polls and forums for feedback on development by fans.This is becoming, IMO, a more popular approach by devs not only as a way to generate interest but also to refine their products.

Ah and yes, I know some companies may only do it for face value but regardless I would like to know what some of you guys think about this more open game design and development approach by studios.

So yeah, how do you feel about it when game developers let you help with design as a customer? This could be with the art, lore, game mechanics, business model, etc.

 

Shaigh

It really depends on what kind of game you are making and the prime motivation for playing the game.

 

For a content driven game its up to developers to create the content. Players will give feedback based on what they are playing and they will point out what can be made better but its always developers that should decide on the direction for the game.

 

For community driven games developers simply wont be able to come up with the ideas and create all the tools needed for the game without help from the community.

 

I find that everquest roundtables is mostly nonsense since its more like polling and a way to keep community interested than making anything that is needed for the game. Most of that stuff should be decided by developers and not players. On the other hand I find that landmark is an interesting way to get community to create things for the game, and if we ignore the phallic designs there are lots of great places being created with that tool.

 

I am not part of shroud of the avatar community, but it sounds like they have a community that help create things that is part of the game, which is great for that game.

Caldrin

I like a dev team to listen to feedback from their testers but I dont want them to change the game totally from the view they had of it in the first place.

Sure take the testers opinions and suggestions and try to tie them in with the vision you had for the game but dont change everything so that the game turns out to be totally different from what you wanted to make.

 

Also taking help in model design and so on can be ok I guess as some hobby modellers can make some amazing stuff but others not so much..

irpugboss

@Shaigh;

True the game type does play into it when it comes down to the level of player contribution, and I agree that Everquests attempts at crowdsourcing development seems shoehorned in, but they are going an interesting route of letting players build out structures via landmark for EQN...in theory...we will see how much they use the community for that.though.

I will check out Shards of the Avatar's community, I am interested to see how the crowdsourcing method develops. Thanks!

 

@Caldrin;

Yeah, vote by majority will most likely wreck any specific mission, goals, or vision a project has I'd imagine as well. That and as Malcolm Gladwell implies people don't know what they want until they have it...especially if it has any hint of innovation that we all crave in the game industry now.

I do like what Unity is doing, lowering the bar for entry into game development by crowdsourcing game assets (Models, scripts, audio, sfx, etc.) and even what Everquest proposes to do, Second Life and Sony's player studio. Some of the best helms in planetside 2 are player made. So I would agree that some models made by fans and semi-pro hobbyists should be great additions to a game...but there will be alot of rough to find those diamonds lol.

 

As for anyone who is interested in the concept of people not knowing what they want here is an interesting TED talk about it from Malcolm Gladwell whom I referenced earlier. 

 

I would love to see some more opinions, maybe game examples of crowdsourcing gone right and wrong.

 

Panthien

One of the problems I see, will rise fast. The "they dont care" and the "They dont listen" people.

Dev's/companies already do listen, though there are only few who will run their ideas over with their fans first, asking for oppinions suggestions, idea's etc etc.

 

The problem people dont seem to understand the difference betwine listening and obeying.

sunandshadow

I love it because...

 

1. There are so few MMOs being developed that I want to play, if I can play some kind of role in their design process maybe I can influence more MMOs to developed in a way I can get excited about playing.

2. I'm a frustrated amateur game designer, I have a lot of MMO design ideas I know I'll never get to develop myself, so my best opportunity of seeing those ideas get into a game is giving them away to someone who's making a game.

irpugboss

@Panthien

Yeah, I think the full concept hasn't settled with most developers so they halfa$$ implement even just by listening without any change when the majority says one thing but they do another.  I think some of the more desparate devs see the benefit of hype and marketing from it but not the "ACID" test for their game to develop the best possible game for their core audience before release.

Thats no lie about the obey and listen thing, one thing about us gamers...and MMO gamers in specific is that we are insanely demanding and the vocal minority is crazy aggressive when it comes to their ideas

 

@sunandshadow

I feel ya, thats why I enjoy the idea that there is a slight possibility of getting in some ideas through crowdsource receptive devs. Hmm your answer is also going to make me create a followup poll to see how many people have similar hope to influence a game also because they desire to get into game development themselves

Foobarx

Too many cooks in the kitchen spoils the broth...

 

Old wives tale and yet so true...

Shaigh

Originally posted by krage 

As for anyone who is interested in the concept of people not knowing what they want here is an interesting TED talk about it from Malcolm Gladwell whom I referenced earlier. 

 

I will never look at spaghetti sauce the same way again.

 

Ask players what they want, and the most common answer you get is a new version of their old favorite game, regardless if that game was eq, uo, daoc, vanilla wow or any other game.

 

However, to play games you need proper tools, and while sandboxes are community driven it doesn't mean that themeparks can live without them. Just look at WoW, so many things in that game was added because players said something was missing and without that kind of player feedback it wouldn't have kept 7M subscribers after 10 years. Not to say all changes was for the better, but without things changing over time the game would have withered and died long time ago.

sunandshadow

Originally posted by Foobarx

Too many cooks in the kitchen spoils the broth...

 

Old wives tale and yet so true...

But it's not actually true.  Consider a castle or palace - they have a lot of cooks working together to produce some of the best food in the world.  It works because there's a head cook who has the final decisions on the menu (features have to fit together into a coherent design), and the power to both throw out dishes where the cooking went wrong (parts of a design that aren't working in development or have been voted down by the specific audience intending to eat the meal/play the game) and accept new recipes from under-cooks who have been assigned to experiment quietly in a corner (in this case representing anyone contributing design ideas).

irpugboss

Hehe yep Shaigh that spaghetti sauce used to only come in the one style and go figure we all like a bit of chunky lol.

I think if development was purely based on crowd vote I think a game would end up being a hyper generic creation with feature bloat, there would have to be the final authority from the devs if there is any hope of trying something new and sticking to a vision...well and to keep the project realistic lol.

We've all seen the threads where people pitch their perfect MMO and how much variation there is in opinion within those threads. Even things that are not likely technologically possible (yet) or an insane amount of features for a game in production.

The reverse of this issue would even be that if the devs only gather the vocal minority to their pre-production and production crowdsourcing then they may completely miss the mark with their core audience...we probably would see this alot with perma-death and full-loot open world pvp (which may or may not have ever been done right as far as I know in any game.)

I do think some QA could also be crowdsourced more than it currently is, most companies use betas as soft launches now but should use it as a time to tweak what is tweakable as intended for betas. When something is reported by a majority of testers and not just game bugs but things like very noticeable imbalances, or some design flaws IE remove a bad minigame or oh say factions if possible...such as Warhammer Online ignoring the remove factions petitions and then sufferring player-faction imbalances ontop of factional class imbalances.

 

Slapshot1188

Good method =   Help us choose which of these two features to work on first

Bad method = Lets vote on game mechanics!

 

Azrile

You can´t give players the feeling like they can control the outcome.   Players are stupid and get too emotionally attached to their choices.

Here is what happens.

Devs gives  a choice   A or B.    A gets 55% of the vote B gets 45% of the vote,a nd now you have 45% of players who are actually hoping a part of the game fails so they can say ´I told you so´.   For rules and gameplay, it is ok for the devs to send out feelers, but in now way should they make it a vote, and definitely not say ´ you decide´..

 

Where crowdsourcing could work is with graphics, especially pre-launch when there is a lot to do.   The devs put up 15 of their own created animals,  give specs,  and then give a list of other animals they would like to add to the game.   Maybe each animal that gets selected gets a free month.  The game would end up with hundreds of unique animals, and maybe even different appearances for the same animal.   5 people submit really awesome wolves, so the devs can use one in forest, one in jungles, one on the border of deserts... stuff like that..