Sometimes I forget how much my professional and personal lives are beginning to merge. As a result, last weekend I was in "mom" mode, preparing to take my 11yo son to a Star Wars: Galaxies "Community Summit" at the Seattle Hilton. (That URL doesn't look static, btw, so I suspect that it won't be long before it features a new event.) It didn't occur to me to bring a notebook along, and it wasn't until the event was well underway that I started to realize how much of what I was seeing and hearing related to my growing interest in the social aspects of MMORPGs. My lack of note-taking apparatus makes it hard for me to provide the kind of journalistic detail that I'd like, but there's still plenty for me to say about the experience.
My son starting playing SWG just a few months ago, after the infamous "new game enhancements" (NGE) had been rolled out. When he started, I did a little reading about the game--both here on TerraNova, and elsewhere. I wasn't surprised, given his enthusiasm for the game, to see the general consensus that the NGE was targeting adolescents. Given that, what surprised me most at the Community Summit was how few adolescents were there.
But first, a little contextual framing.
The event drew what looked to me to be around 200 people, most of whom had registered in advance for the event (they accommodated a number of walk-ins, as well). There was no registration cost, and dinner (pizza, a few veggies, and lots of of brownies and cookies) was provided. This wasn't a full "fan fest" style event with focus on social interactions (despite the use of the fan fest URL to promote it)--it was a communications event, designed primarily to get a controlled message out to the fan base, and secondarily to hear what those fans had to say (or at least to appear to be hearing that).
There were five Sony employees there--a woman who runs events for LucasArts, a "game producer" (who sounded to me, and to my son, more like a marketing guy/spin doctor than a producer), and three devs. At registration, players received name badges with their "real life" first names (in tiny print), their character name (in big print), and their server name (slightly smaller than player name). The room was set up with round tables, each labelled with a server name. From 5-6pm they encouraged us to "socialize" with people at our table. From 6-6:30pm we retrieved plates of starchy food from the buffet. And from 6:30-9:00 we had the actual program. It began with Julio, the producer, reviewing the publish plan for the next year. What it boiled down to, so far as I could tell, was "We know there are lots of bugs. We're committed to fixing the bugs. We don't want to keep rolling out new content and introducing new bugs without fixing the ones that are there." An excellent sentiment, but it says a lot about how badly broken their platform is that they had to emphasize this so heavily and repeatedly. After his review, they opened up the Q and A, which went on for over two hours, with easily 30-40 people queued up
If you're interested in the game-related details, you can check out some of the online reports from previous summits (like this one from Austin). Since I don't play the game, most of what they outlined in their publish (aka "patch" or "update") schedule didn't mean much to me. What was interesting to me had to do with who attended, and what they had to say--both in the public Q and A session, and at the table of "Kettemoor" denizens where my son and I were seated.
Of the many people in the packed room of hard-core players and fans, I think probably less than 10% were under 18, and other than my son I only saw one pre-teen with a name tag (guests and parents were not given name tags; we were clearly persona non grata in this context). The bulk of the players were adults, many in their 30s and 40s. There were more women than I'd expected, including 3 at our table--two of whom were there with their real-life partners. One couple at our table had met in SWG, and the woman had then moved from the southeast to the northwest to marry the man. Most (possibly all) of the people at our table were long-time players, who told me that they'd joined on the second day of the game (because, as they patiently explained to me several times, _nobody_ could get online the first day).
Most of the people at our table seemed unhappy with the NGE, and had attended the event because they wanted to be sure the development team heard about their concerns. They were in the game still not because of the changes, but despite them. Their social network was in this virtual world, and they couldn't quite bring themselves to leave it completely. The met-and-married couple (who at one point pre-NGE had apparently had over 20 accounts, for a cost of over $300/month, between the two of them) told me that they'd recently started playing World of Warcraft, and liked it a lot better. And yet, there they were at this summit, still passionate enough about the game to spend their Saturday night in this hotel ballroom.
The question and answer session gave me--and my son--a great deal of insight into both the level of emotional commitment so many of these players had to the game, and the level of their anger and grief over the changes that the NGE had brought. Certain themes came up over and over again--in particular, a chorus of requests for an "adult-only" server, not for x-rated content, but because these adult players felt that the influx of youngsters post-NGE had changed their gameplay in a way they weren't happy with. The producer was firm in his negation of this request, saying that the social tools in the game allowed players to choose with whom they interacted, and asserting that virtual worlds were intended to have this kind of diverse population. This was not particularly well-received by the crowd.
Other consistent themes in the questions had to do with what long-time players saw as a dumbing-down of the game, the gutting of skills-based professions (and the economic devaluing of the fruits of those professions, which left many players with crates full of originally expensive but now value-less items), and an unrelenting focus on "twitch combat" skills rather than complex interactions. This latter point was made particularly strongly by a disabled woman who stood in line on her crutches for well over an hour in order to have her say. The emotion in her voice was powerful, and the sense of loss and grief in her questions for the developers was palpable. (I use "questions" loosely-- most of the people who spoke were making statements more than they were asking questions.)
Also interesting to me were the number of women who got up to speak, and the high percentage of them who were entertainers and/or craftspeople in the game. I pointed out to my son that when they showed iconic representations of each of the various professioins in the game, _only_ entertainers were represented by a woman. (Hey, they're _never_ too young to be educated on implicit sexism, I think.)
And speaking of chauvinism, the low point of the evening came as a young man (mid-20s, I'd guess) with slicked-back hair and a tight leather jacket got his turn at the microphone. Before he even started to speak, I whispered to my son "don't grow up to be like him; he's probably never had a real date in his life." My son was quite offended by my snarky judgement--until the guy started to speak. His question? "When are you going to let us see more big titties?" He then turned around, smarmy grin on his face, arms spread wide, to query the audience--"That's what we really want, guys, isn't it?" Sigh. To their credit, the Sony folks handled this well. The woman emceeing the event wrestled (literally!) the microphone away from him, and when he protested to the devs on the podium that he had more questions, they announced quite loudly that he had burned all of his question time with his remark.
I'll close with a quote from my son's blog, in case you're wondering what the new target market thought of the event:
I went to a developer dinner for the MMO I play most, Star Wars Galaxies. The game producer, mainly a marketer, but trying to make sure the developers didn't say anything stupid, was there, and he said the words "is key" about a thousand times. "Community is KEY." "Content is KEY." "Players are, (you guessed it) KEY." Sure, he sounded like a complete idiot, but he had an awesome jacket. The developers themselves were not so bad, they made it sound like they cared about the kids in the game, but in fact, they didn't. Considering over 50% of the game is kids, they're not too smart. I still love the game, but this thing has changed my outlook on it greatly. I see why so many people quit a year ago, and I agree with them. They took the SKILL out of the game, the aspect that keeps adults worrying if they made the right choice, if they crafted the right items, if their weapons were going to be disabled (which, by the way, they were). Basically, the devs ripped the player's hearts out of their chests, as one man put it.
"game producer" (who sounded to me, and to my son, more like a marketing guy/spin doctor than a producer)
Producers wear many hats. ;-)
With the caveat that I haven't actually *played* NGE (but did quite a bit of time in the original SWG), it seems the fundamental mistake that SOE did was in replacing the old SWG with NGE - given that they're different games, they seem to have decided to alienate their existing customer base in order to attract a new one.
Would it have made more 'sense' to have added NGE as an alternate game, attracting the new players with a different experience while keeping their SWG fan base intact? I understand this probably leads to a nightmare of updating what functionaly becomes two code and asset bases, but don't economies of scale begin to mitigate that? I guess judging the wisdom of the decision hinges on whether or not the original SWG was profitable.
-gary cooper
Posted by: Gary Cooper | Apr 24, 2006 at 16:01
Liz, can open, worms . . .everywhere. The Order 66 discussion started in November on TN can better explain the NGE and our original concerns with it but i can safely say your son probably had good old Julio well pegged as far as being the spin guy, especially now that Ralph Koster has left SWG and SOE completely, he being the creative guru behind the original game.
From my own experience, after playing SWG for 18 months religiously, grinding away, living through all the patches, upgrades, downgrades, bad customer service, half-thought threw changes, poor communication, bugs, typos and complete chaos that became the NGE, i'm glad i switched to WoW. After conforming to the way the game was originally configured, than changing to the combat "upgrade", then having to adjust to the NGE, which basically destroyed the game and remade it into something completely different, i don't miss it.
Posted by: Matt | Apr 24, 2006 at 19:23
Also interesting to me were the number of women who got up to speak, and the high percentage of them who were entertainers and/or craftspeople in the game. I pointed out to my son that when they showed iconic representations of each of the various professioins in the game, _only_ entertainers were represented by a woman. (Hey, they're _never_ too young to be educated on implicit sexism, I think.)
entertainers are not the only ones represented by a woman. Princess leia is the officer as well as the spy. just thought i would clear that up.
Posted by: | Apr 25, 2006 at 02:33
Not in the representations they put up on the screen while I was there--but I'm glad to know that's the case in some of their representations.
Posted by: Liz Lawley | Apr 25, 2006 at 10:27
Sure, he sounded like a complete idiot, but he had an awesome jacket.
I'd just like to say that I wish I was this funny when I was 11.
Posted by: tjvm | Apr 25, 2006 at 12:38
The problem with these conventions/meetings (just as in forums) is that you generally only hear the voice (annoying, bumping screams) of the vocal minority. Must take it all in with a grain of salt.
And your comment to your son on the "slicked-back hair and tight leather jacket" guy bit sounds just as offensive to me as his "big titties" comment to you. Love how you can summarily discount someone just by their looks alone.
Posted by: hikaru | Apr 25, 2006 at 13:07
Liz Lawley:>>"They were in the game still not because of the changes, but despite them. Their social network was in this virtual world, and they couldn't quite bring themselves to leave it completely. "
Exactly. After almost 2 years playing SWG, I quit after they broadsided the game with the NGE and destroyed everything I had striven for and achieved in levelling my full-template Jedi. I played WoW for 4 months, and enjoyed it, but have recently come back to SWG. It seems SOE got the message, and has starting to turn the ship around. I find it truly amazing how many bugs and glitches I put up with; because it's Star Wars, because my friends are here, because of my investment in the game. And my old friends list is, name by name, slowly lighting up once again as veterans return to see if it's fun again.
WoW is an amazing achievement, a gaming opus, but it cannot compare to the depth of sandbox gameplay still offered by Raph's SWG -- even after much of the sandbox was stripped away by the NGE and the sand kicked in the faces of veteran players. WoW is in my opinion the multiplayer equivalent of a single-player game, you ride a rail through it. There are many rails to choose from, each with it's own pretty paint job, but they are still rails from which you have very little ability to deviate from. This is of course part of it's winning formula, it is familiar and accessible even to those who have never played an MMOG. SWG's player housing, deep crafting system, the raw sense of logging in and thinking "what do I want to do today?" is still unparalleled.
SWG players, for the most part, WANT to be Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. They want to live as ordinary citizens in an extraordinary fiction. The complexity of the old game was to be savoured, manipulated like modeller's clay and made to your ideal image of gameplay.
The game is buggy, and it's glitchy, the GCW has been decimated, the UI sucks and the AI is ridiculously easy. But it feels like home, which is a feeling I've not found in any other MMO (and I've tried quite a few since November). Azeroth has a lot going for it, but I always felt like a visitor in that well-trodden land.
Posted by: RickR | Apr 25, 2006 at 14:08
hikaru:>> "The problem with these conventions/meetings (just as in forums) is that you generally only hear the voice (annoying, bumping screams) of the vocal minority."
Your comment sounds remarkably similar to one made by SOE regarding the outcry over the release of the NGE. They were proven wrong when thousands of accounts were cancelled.
Love how you can summarily discount these players' concerns just by their effort to attend and make their voices heard above the raucous din of the game's official forums.
Posted by: Rickr | Apr 25, 2006 at 14:16
Interesting. I think you're right: this is proof of just how powerful this form of culture can be for some of the people who consume it, that no matter how dissatisfying it becomes in every respect, they still want to hold out hope for the possibility of its positive transformation.
In some ways, that may mimic or shadow forms of engagement people have with existing real-world social institutions that seem hopelessly broken, that some people continue to work with them, invest time, try to figure out how to fix the unfixable.
In both cases, the people who represent those institutions or worlds make a horrible, horrible mistake when they try to "buy off" criticism or opposition with public relations cant. If the dedication of some players is amazing, so too is the power of a corporate culture that is utterly unable to move towards honest engagement even when it's got nothing left to lose. If Julio Torres stood up and said, "We've made some very bad mistakes with this game, let me tell you how I see them, and let me give you some ideas I have about how we might change the way we work", how could that hurt him more than getting up and saying, "Players are KEY. Community is KEY. We're going to fix bugs. We're really listening to you!" and so on?
Posted by: Timothy Burke | Apr 25, 2006 at 14:36
Excellent post, and nice to see an 'outsiders' perspective on the social networking and emotional investment that people have put into the game over what is, in game terms, a long time.
I'd love to see a demographic breakdown of the game population and compare that to the attendees at the seminars.
Posted by: almagill | Apr 25, 2006 at 19:39
I honestly find SOEs actions in selecting the NGE as the future path of the game to be absolutely incomprehensible. They took the most progressive and complex MMORPG in existence and turned it into the most simplistic game available - who could possibly have thought this would go over well with the current subscriber base? I mean it takes some in-depth stupidity to make that decision.
I loved the original game, I could put up with the Combat Upgrade (even though it slid further towards more backward thinking games like EQ and WOW by going to a level based system) but the NGE utterly destroyed the game in my opinion. I spent most of my time as a crafter, and they have destroyed the wonderful economy and replaced it with a loot-based horror that seems to combine the worst excesses of similiar systems in games like WOW and EQ. Really disappointing.
I think SWG stands as a living testiment to just how badly you can misread your playerbase, and how badly you can mismanage and misdesign a game as a result. The Marketing dweeb who decided the game needed to focus on "Kill, loot, repeat" really blew it. I hope it can eventually recover from them - and that they have been summarily fired for the biggest f****p in game design since Battlecruiser 3000 :)
I miss the town I built, I miss running my business, and I miss the citizens who helped me build High Plains on Tatooine. I may someday return, but its going to require a lot of De-NGEing first I think.
Posted by: Warren Grant | Apr 26, 2006 at 19:39
"Your comment sounds remarkably similar to one made by SOE regarding the outcry over the release of the NGE. They were proven wrong when thousands of accounts were cancelled.
Love how you can summarily discount these players' concerns just by their effort to attend and make their voices heard above the raucous din of the game's official forums."
I never discounted anyone's opinions. I am merely stating that they are the vocal minority. True, thousands quit because of the NGE. Also true, thousands have stayed because of the NGE. Thousands also have come back because of the NGE. SWG, despite its detractors, still manages to be in the black for LucasArts. You yourself have come back, despite NGE.
You can object all you want, but in the end, you're voting with your dollar, approving of LucasArts' design decisions.
Either you're with them, or you're not. The minority may complain, but they're still subscribing and paying money to go to the fan conventions. They're rabid, annoyed fans, but they're still paying customers. Every fan attending those shows proves to the SWG marketeers that they're doing their jobs.
Posted by: hikaru | Apr 27, 2006 at 13:35
The new SOE Producer for SWG (Rogue_5) has, in a community letter, admitted to SOE's previous mistakes.
SOE has been improving the NGE, and they seem to stick with their plan, this time around. They're also retracting previous mistakes they've done, ie, they've removed armour certifications, are bringing back decay and have been giving entertainers more to do recently, battle fatigue is back in a new form.
Personally, i don't like NGE i even left when it was released, but then again i was never in the game for the game mechanics but for the roleplaying it allows me.
Three days ago, i came back to SWG, and so far i'm having fun ingame and haven't found any bugs that have hampered my fun.
Posted by: George | May 03, 2006 at 05:52
I've managed to save up roughly $14573 in my bank account, but I'm not sure if I should buy a house or not. Do you think the market is stable or do you think that home prices will decrease by a lot?
Posted by: Courtney Gidts | May 18, 2006 at 22:34
Liz if your looking or even still working on something to try and find out what it is about this game that keeps so many 30/40 something’s coming back. The answer like most things in life is simple. Star Wars holds a very solid place in their hearts from childhood. Many, like me remember seeing the movie for the 1st time on big screen. A movie that gave people what they wanted so much after roughly 10 years of being let down from expecting more from a moon landing. Space movies back then were either boring or too over the top. Then comes SW. People freak out and rightfully so. Following an epic storyline, it's hard to go wrong. The formula has been around since the dawn of man. It touches everyone in some way, shape or form. Now we jump roughly 30 years later and those kids are now adults. Now making money and living normal, sometimes mundane lives. Computers are a very big source of entertainment for households and these kids/adults use them everyday. They now are given a chance to live in a small way, in the Star Wars world they grew up with. No more toying around with 4 inch figures that were constructed in someone else's vision. You could make your own toon and live your dreams in this world. Allowing you to either enjoy the excitement of combat (like Han and Luke) or the community of crafters and entertainers (like Watto the flying junk dealer in episode 1), or better yet both. This game allows people to maintain homes, have vehicles, money, change of clothes, etc. Most MMO’s do not. This game allows people to live a dream they have thought of since their 1st night of going to bed after viewing that movie. I still remember sitting in the back of my moms’ station wagon, looking up at the stars and just dreaming after seeing the movie. The first night I stepped into this game I honestly almost cried because I never in my life experienced anything that had brought back my childhood feelings so strongly. I still play this game today, finding it very hard to let go. I am very upset with the upgrade but still, it's my childhood dream that I can live in real life. I can't let it go. When I think of all the work I have done in this game, time I put in this game and most importantly friends I made in this game. Then I think of what happened to my toon, their toons. I get teary eyed. Feeling let down by one of the most influential heroes of my time, Mr. Lucas. Who I also feel could put a stop to this madness if he really knew what was going on with this game. I know he does not have input on the game but I can't help but feel in someway he could fix this. He has the money and the trademark. No one I know understands, not my wife, not my younger friends, mom or dad, brothers and sisters. No one understands other then the players who are like me. This story touched out hearts and imaginations in such a way, that it profoundly changed our lives and we didn’t even know it.
Posted by: Ray | Oct 16, 2006 at 20:42