Whither Good Design?

I get to see lots of virtual world designs in my self-proclaimed capacity of industry consultant. Most are good in some parts and not so good (but improvable) in others. Some, of course, are so bad as to be beyond remption. A small few, however, are absolutely superb.

Hardly any of these projects make it to launch, mainly because they can't get the second-round funding they need. That includes the ones that really, really should be played.

What I do is a bit like script doctoring in the movie industry. People show me their work, I um and ah, then tell them ways by which I think what they've done can be improved (which always looks like negative criticism because I can't suggest improvements to parts that don't need improving, but that's a different moan).

If I were in the movie industry and someone sent me a screenplay to look at that was outstandingly good, I'd send it to my contacts at production companies for them to consider. I'm not in the movie industry, though. I'm in the virtual world industry. When I see a breathtakingly brilliant design, what can I do? There's nowhere I can go and say, "Look at this, people! You really should be throwing money at it!". Developers only make their own virtual worlds, and publishers only fund one virtual world development each (which they often dump anyway). Venture capitalists listen to the first person from the industry who contacts them, and either hand over the money or reject the whole industry.

The result: originality in pitching and pushiness is rewarded, but originality in design isn't.

Tomorrow, I'm heading off for a week of consulting for a virtual world start-up company. I don't know whether their design will be good, bad or indifferent. I do know, though, that however good it is, there's nothing I can do to help it get made.

Richard

Comments

[Tobold]

1.

Is there a strong correlation between "good design" and "commercial success"? That would be the first requirement for a venture capitalist before he listens to what a game consultant has to say.

But if there is, maybe you can furnish you clients with a final report, saying that the game is good (if it is). They can then use that report as some sort of reference when talking with their funding people.

[blaze]

2.

Just write about in the Terra Nova blog. VC that is interested in Virtual Worlds and is competent will most likely have this blog on their favorites.

[Nathan Combs]

3.

Hardly any of these projects make it to launch, mainly because they can't get the second-round funding they need. That includes the ones that really, really should be played.

How much of it is due to the point raised by Dave R - that devs front load too effort in making new games pretty early for demo purposes? Claim is that they would all be better off prototyping something rudimentary and then worry production once got the design down.

Of course that would require a different evaluation culture: gameplay versus pretty demo. Choice here probably comes down to whether one believes design is biased towards the "visionary" versus "iterative" process... Namely if you are going to bet on frontloading art/assests... need to be pretty sure about getting it right (nearly right) early.

http://www.skotos.net/articles/engines23.phtml

[Richard Bartle]

4.

Tobold>Is there a strong correlation between "good design" and "commercial success"?

Hard to tell in most cases because they rarely get to the stage where they become commercial. That said, there are perhaps 3 I've consulted with over the past couple of years that probably will get that far, and two of these are of very good design (actually, one is excellent).

>maybe you can furnish you clients with a final report, saying that the game is good (if it is).

Ah, but then the people whose designs aren't top class (but who think they are) will be asking me why I haven't written them a recommendation...

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

5.

blaze>Just write about in the Terra Nova blog. VC that is interested in Virtual Worlds and is competent will most likely have this blog on their favorites.

Unfortunately, I'm so tied up in NDAs that I can't post to a public forum about it.

Besides, Terra Nova isn't really meant to be a venue for that kind of thing. It would be nice if there were such a venue, but I don't think it's appropriate here.

Richard

[Wouter Ryckbosch]

6.

I'd have thought that a company as the Themis Group would be in an ideal position to have contacts with both publishers and CV's.

Obviously on the developer side of the market there's a demand for such contacts; but why isn't there on the other side? Is it something about the (online) gaming culture that makes everything happen behind closed doors, with publishers only interested in such a small share of the market - preferably developed semi-inhouse? Or is the difference between the MMO and the Movies industry simply that game publishers don't have the budgets of the movie giants?

[Timothy Burke]

7.

Would it be worth thinking about "prototyping" good VC designs through a renaissance of simple textual MUD environments?

I think about this a lot with games in general, that the creative and economic potential locked up in the computer game/videogame form is never really going to take off until there are relatively simple authoring tools that allow people with good ideas the same relative degree of access to the form that writing allows creators access to novels. This is why Neverwinter Nights disappointed some people, those folks who had pretty good ideas for modules but who found the C syntax used in the authoring tools provided too difficult to use.

[Brask Mumei]

8.

I've got some pretty good ideas for novels, but the English syntax used in the authoring tools proves too difficult to use.

The hard part, IMHO, of NWN authoring wasn't syntax. It was their buggy event model and buggy object model. It should have been impossible to write a script that would crash NWN. When I couldn't find a way to tell if an object had been deleted by another event, I gave up in disgust.

I don't buy the "Easy authoring = cool games" thought process. We already have easy authoring. The C syntax, which is so easily disparaged, is the result of decades of refinement. It is an effective method for getting a computer to do what you want it to do. If you have an original idea for a game, you're going have to learn how to talk to a computer. If you have an original idea for a book, you have to learn to write to people.

And let's not get into the hardware side of things. I cannot begin to describe how infinitely easier it is to write a game today than it was 10 years ago. Or 20 years ago when I was hacking away on 8 bits. You take any 1980 game and you can remake it in Flash or C in likely a fraction of the time of the original authors.

So if we have all these easy tools, where is the gaming renaisance? Why is it that everyone moans: "Lone wolf development is dead!"? Must we conclude that the games we played in the 80's weren't fun?

The gaming renaisance, as much as it ever will be, is here now. Look at the flash games. Or narrow your gaze to those still creating ascii based games in the image of rogue:

http://thelist.roguelikedevelopment.org/

The people with good ideas have no grounds to claim "Tools are not well enough advanced". You don't need to license a Quake rendering engine. You can just throw polys at the screen in random order and achieve interactive frame rates with today's cards. (Of course, your 3d meshes won't be industry standard, but why support high res meshes if you don't have high res art assets anyways?)

So put me down under the "Prototype a working game first". (Of course, I'd also claim the prototype should *become* your game in the end) If your MMORPG isn't fun to play with boxes talking to each other and whacking other, different colored, boxes, then it won't suddenly become fun when you swap in high res models.

- Brask Mumei

[Mike Rozak]

9.

Here's an idea that might work (given a lot of luck)...

There are two potential sources of money for a new VW:

1) Companies that already have a profitable VW. They know their stuff, but aren't likely to buy someone else's idea because they have plenty of their own ideas.

2) Venture capital or game companies without a VW... unfortunately, they don't know the first thing about a VW, which makes them a) heistant to invest, and b) more prone to making investment mistakes.

Given that #1 is a lost cause, why not find a way to educate VC's (#2) about what makes a good world?

a) You already have material in your book, but it's targeted at designers.

b) You could write a 100 page white paper that's targeted at VCs and post it on your web site.

c) You could offer yourself as a consultant to VCs.

d) You could offer a seminar in "How to pick a good VW" at a games conference.

Of course, for any of this to work you'll probably need to get a list of 100+ VCs and send some literature to them offering your insights/services. Maybe one or two will be interested... just having a short list of potentially interested VCs would be handy.

You could also maintain a list of skilled people (designers, developers, artists, etc.) that VCs could head-hunt and hire to be part of the team. (A VW-equilvalent to monster.com?) A VC might also use them as consultants to evaluate a proposal.

Alternatively, people in the talent-pool might be willing to work for penuts and a lot of stock options, allowing the VW to be produced on the cheap. (And of course, an experienced team works 2x as fast (or wastes 1/2 as much money) as an inexperienced team.)

[Mike Rozak]

10.

Here's an idea that might work (given a lot of luck)...

There are two potential sources of money for a new VW:

1) Companies that already have a profitable VW. They know their stuff, but aren't likely to buy someone else's idea because they have plenty of their own ideas.

2) Venture capital or game companies without a VW... unfortunately, they don't know the first thing about a VW, which makes them a) heistant to invest, and b) more prone to making investment mistakes.

Given that #1 is a lost cause, why not find a way to educate VC's (#2) about what makes a good world?

a) You already have material in your book, but it's targeted at designers.

b) You could write a 100 page white paper that's targeted at VCs and post it on your web site.

c) You could offer yourself as a consultant to VCs.

d) You could offer a seminar in "How to pick a good VW" at a games conference.

Of course, for any of this to work you'll probably need to get a list of 100+ VCs and send some literature to them offering your insights/services. Maybe one or two will be interested... just having a short list of potentially interested VCs would be handy.

You could also maintain a list of skilled people (designers, developers, artists, etc.) that VCs could head-hunt and hire to be part of the team. (A VW-equilvalent to monster.com?) A VC might also use them as consultants to evaluate a proposal.

Alternatively, people in the talent-pool might be willing to work for penuts and a lot of stock options, allowing the VW to be produced on the cheap. (And of course, an experienced team works 2x as fast (or wastes 1/2 as much money) as an inexperienced team.)

[Daniel Harvey]

11.

This is probably the most heartbreaking post I've read here. :(

You're killin' me, Richard.

[Wouter Ryckbosch]

12.

Brask > So if we have all these easy tools, where is the gaming renaisance? Why is it that everyone moans: "Lone wolf development is dead!"?

Lone wolf development isn't dead, but the gap between the mainstream, big-budget game titles and the 'indie' development has become larger nowadays - I think. The main reason would be the graphical possibilities, and the expectance of the players in that respect.

I think it'd be hard to impress a publisher without showing anything that is graphically impressive as a demo, nowadays.

[Tom Hunter]

13.

VC's do occasionally invest in virtual world companies, the magazine Mass High Tech recently published a list of VC firms that have ivested in them.

However most VC firms refuse to invest in products that are "hit based". This ignores the point that all products are either hits or failures but it would be a waste of time to try to argue this.

Also VC firms and angels usually invest in what they know and most of them know little or nothing about games.

Gene Mauro at Myelin Media is making a real effort to change the way that at least some games get funded Richard it might be worth contacting him on behalf of you best pics or encouraging some of your clients to contact him. He is a good guy but busy.

I'm hopeful that this problem will gradually go away (or at least change in nature) as the total revenues from VWs rises and more investors start looking for a piece of the pie.

[Tom Hunter]

14.

VC's do occasionally invest in virtual world companies, the magazine Mass High Tech recently published a list of VC firms that have ivested in them.

However most VC firms refuse to invest in products that are "hit based". This ignores the point that all products are either hits or failures but it would be a waste of time to try to argue this.

Also VC firms and angels usually invest in what they know and most of them know little or nothing about games.

Gene Mauro at Myelin Media is making a real effort to change the way that at least some games get funded Richard it might be worth contacting him on behalf of you best pics or encouraging some of your clients to contact him. He is a good guy but busy.

I'm hopeful that this problem will gradually go away (or at least change in nature) as the total revenues from VWs rises and more investors start looking for a piece of the pie.

[Brask Mumei]

15.

Wouter Ryckbosch> "I think it'd be hard to impress a publisher without showing anything that is graphically impressive as a demo, nowadays."

And why is it you have to impress a publisher?

Comic artists used to believe they had to become syndicated to succeed. While that is still a valid path, it is increasingly recognized that it is not the only road to success.

Thanks to the internet, distribution of a game no longer requires a publisher. Even the once exorbiant bandwidth costs of people downloading 600mb files can be cancelled out through the use of BitTorrent.

The key uses of a publisher now seems to be to get money upfront. This is to pay for the large team required to make that 600mb of content. In VW world, it is also needed to pay for the hardware & coloc space required to run the VW, which tends not to be cheap. (The expense of the latter is because of the assumption the initial release is huge. The UO player run shard community shows that running a very small release doesn't have as forbidding costs)

Because of the need of this money, we see many hype-machine VW designed around attracting a large following early so publishers will think: "Ah, guaranteed success! Look at all the forum posts!"

The logical approach to VW construction would thus appear to try and obviate thet need for the money as long as possible. The goal here would seem to keep your game un-hyped. Intentionally use low res models. Focus on game play above all. Release under a code name. Iteratively add more game content & servers. Then, if/when the design is proven in practice, get the funding to do the massive art push, build hype, and release under the final name. The point here is you don't work on prettification until the game is solid.

I highly doubt anyone can do that, though. Even if you could live on rice cakes and develop the first half, I doubt you would be able to secure any funding based on a perfectly stable and functioning game world that only needs a graphic overhaul. After all, you have the crippling disadvantage of not being able to promise blue sky features. You also have the "It looks ugly, so we should not invest" theory, which is ironic as you are asking them to invest in the appearance.

- Brask Mumei

[Jeff Lotton]

16.

"Ah, but then the people whose designs aren't top class (but who think they are) will be asking me why I haven't written them a recommendation...

Richard"

An ethical dilemma ? Honestly, why do you feel obligated to mislead them about your true opinions ?

JHL

[magicback]

17.

VCs are not really interested in how 'good' the design is. They are more interested in how the 'good' design will translate into profits. So business models are their primary concerns.

They fund good management teams with good business model for creating a profitable business.

Richard, you should be the CEO of your own incubator firm and partner with good business managers and VCs as the three pillars of a strong business: strong product, strong managment, and strong balance sheet.

If you look at this space from a financial perspective, lots of online gaming business are getting listed on the stock exchanges and they have millions of dollars in ther war chest from their IPOs to invest in the business!!!!

Contact me if you want more details.

Frank

[Mike Rozak]

18.

Magicbak posted - VCs are not really interested in how 'good' the design is. They are more interested in how the 'good' design will translate into profits. So business models are their primary concerns.

The question, "How does good design translate into profits?" is quite interesting... What makes for a "profitable design"? (which is not necessarily a good design)

There is the obvious answer: More people will subscribe to a good design for longer, because they enjoy the design. Thus good designs are profitable.

Some other "profitable design" issues might be lurking under the surface:

Profitable designs can command a premium price. How does one do this? By licensing known worlds such as Star Trek?

Profitable design allows for anciliary income... such as the sale of in-game-items for real money (controversial), in-game advertising (also controversial), T-shirts, etc. Any others?

Profitable designs have low overhead... low bandwidth, low server usage, fewer support personel (fewer griefers?), etc. Others? How can design influence this?

VCs might also desire a low-risk design, so they know if they have a winner or turkey after investing only a few $M, instead of investing $20M to discover a turkey. How does one design this into a VW? Get it working with low-quality graphics and little content first? (As was posted above) Are there other ways?

[Dr. Cat]

19.

Reality check: It's all about ROI, Return On Investment, and how the likely results in one industry compare against every other industry that exists. Venture Capitalists really don't belong in the online game business in the USA, as it stands today. The risks vs. returns picture isn't rosy enough.

I was actually contacted by nine or ten venture capital firms in 1994, when I put out our DragonSpires demo. That was a good time for VCs to look at MMORPGs, the possibility to get Ultima Online levels of ROI were there. The picture continued to look rosy for a while - almost every game that came out in the first few years got over 100,000 subscribers, Everquest got even more than UO. And the development budgets were small. At one point they were trying to do Ultima Online on a million dollars, they went over budget and spent two million or more. Compare that to the amount of money they made in the end, and it's pretty good.

Today we face a landscape where a lot of games fail totally or get subscribership way under 100,000. And to compete with the hit titles, well, they're spending as much as $25 million or more. Guess what? Even if you succeed in getting yourself 300,000 subscribers for that initial investment, your ROI is only a tenth what it is back when you could do it for just a couple million. The fact that the risk of failure is higher as well just makes it look even less attractive.

Our industry is perhaps a paltry tenth the size of the rest of the game industry. It doesn't have the kind of industry growth or ROI that would make it a good choice for venture capitalists - or for most other investors, either. We need to grow more, keep costs under control, profits high, and develop a number of people who are "near guaranteed hit-makers" before we can become attractive to any investors or publishers other than those very determined to be in this market sector long-term.

I was just at the Austin Game Developers Conference, listening to a couple of panelists discuss an upcoming major title, estimating potential subscription rates, and hinting at the budget for it. (One of the panelists knew but wasn't at liberty to say - it was definitely more than The Sims Online development budget though, he said.) Mike Sellers listened to the numbers, did a little quick math in his head, and said "They'd get a better return on their money in the bond market".

I also remember the opening and closing questions by Daniel Gill (of Puzzle Pirates) on the "Building Massively Multiplayer Online Games on a Budget" panel. At the beginning, he asked how many in the audience were trying to make an online game, then how many would like to. A number of hands. At the end, he asked all his fellow panelists for some of the numbers about how their game was doing, including the development budget it took to make the game. The other panelists answers were all in the 1 million to 3 million dollar range, except Brian Green who'd bought the rights to Meridian 59 for $100K. (It took a lot more than that to make, of course.) I answered that we'd made Furcadia for $50,000 with 2 people, and there was a wave of spontaneous applause. Two million dollars isn't "on a budget" to most people, that's what top publishers were spending to make games back in the 90s!

"Garage Band" games might be where the innovation that grows the industry comes from, even if you have to scrape up a million or two to do it. The big publishers are conservative about trying the risky stuff, and for reasons I well understand even if I don't necessarily agree. They do have a lot more to lose in a lawsuit over user created content violating copyright and/or obscenity laws, for instance. Not just the game that did it, but a big judgement could suck away a lot of the money they've made from other sources over the years.

I wouldn't call it "easy" to make games in C, by the way. I'd call it "easier, but still hard as hell". I started making games in 1978, and I love how much easier it is now. But I still recognize that of the earth's six billion people, most of them can't handle programming in C and never will. Players demand a lot more out of games now than they did 20 years ago too. While it's easy to make a shareware tetris clone or platform game that's equal in quality to the best games of the 80s... Today many see it as a footnote far beneath the pinnacle of Doom 3, where 20 years ago it might have been the main event. We do need better tools so that not just a FEW people can easily prototype and innovate, but so that 100 times more, with less technical brilliance but still with good ideas, can do so. That's why I'm focusing a lot on tools for non-programmer creator types like my scripting language.

-- Dr. Cat

[Raph Koster]

20.

Minor correction, it's Daniel James, not Daniel Gill. Arrr.

[Matt Mihaly]

21.

I don't think it's that hard to get a good ROI on online games. We expect our upcoming fourth MMORPG, Lusternia, to pay for its development costs in its first month of operation. Of course, we're leveraging existing technology we've developed for previous games. Still, just doing figures roughly in my head, I'm fairly certain you could do a text-based MMORPG from scratch, by licensing an existing engine and then writing the game with that, for 100k, which you could make back in the first 6 months of operation. (We'd do it a lot sooner, but we already have a dedicated audience of text mud fans waiting for whatever games we release.)

I don't think the issue is being able to obtain a good ROI on online games. I think the issue is that many would be VW creators, instead of aiming for a fixed goal and shooting for it, instead tie their perception of success to a moving target: the most successful product currently in the market, or thereabouts. While this is understandable, I think it's worth asking yourself, "Why?" I mean, if the answer is purely the potential for the most cash possible (possibly whatever amounts of fame that come with it too?), then sure, I understand that. But as many of these same would-be VW developers would deny that they're just interested in it for cash and fame (which I am sure is true, as there are easier ways to get both than doing a large-scale VW!), why is so much of the talk focused on staying competitive at the top end of the scale? Again, I completely understand the motivation to go big. We've tried and it's looking like we've probably failed at it. But that's ok, as it's not like we will stop making profitable VWs. We just won't be writing ourselves $10 million profit-sharing checks. =)

For example, 10 years ago, a VW with 20,000 players was exceptionally successful. Today, a VW with 20,000 players is just as successful. Sure, there are VWs with far larger audiences, but how does that diminish the success of the 20,000 player game? It doesn't, except in the minds of those who consider the ever-moving-target that is the top of the heap the only target worth going for. And even that's a bit self-deceptive, since what how you define what you're doing let's you define what heap you're trying to climb to the top of (are you trying to be the biggest roleplaying-enforced text mud? The biggest graphical mud? The biggest internet products company? The biggest software company? The biggest company, period?)

Anyway, I suspect if people spent a little less time worried about whether they can make a product to compete with Sony, they might find themselves with more successful products on their hands. It's not an option for giants like EA of course, but it is certainly an option for start-ups. Our plan, given that we seem to have failed to actually get checks written to us from any of the major publishers for a large-scale graphical world on the Feist license, is going to be to release Lusternia, then develop a Feist-based text MUD, and then perhaps attempt something along the lines of Runescape, which impresses me in so many ways. I would love to know how much they had to spend to get 40,000 concurrent users online. If they used our business model, they would rake in the money hand over fist. Even as it is, with an optional $5/month fee, I'm sure they're producing an incredible ROI, despite the fact that the game visually looks pretty bad and is probably ignored by most people interested in MMORPGs. Remember: You are (hopefully) designing for prospective players, not for the Terranova crowd. Sexy and successful are only weakly related.

--matt

[bruce rogers]

22.

"Sexy and successful are only weakly related."

Usually, they are married.

[wow gold]

23.

现在的青少年由于饮食、遗传等原因生理上成熟早，同时身处在这个浮躁的社会，那些被人们盲目追捧的轻浮的流行时尚，到处可见的成人用品，很容易让人们尤其是青少年产生性冲动，了解一些性知识是有益而无害的。
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