Are MMO expectations being mismanaged? That’s a question I’ve been going over a lot as I learn more about consumer behavior. I believe the answer is yes — by both developers and players.
Consider the following graphic I made which reflects some of the things I’ve been reading up on with MMO application.
We all have our own expectations going into an MMO. These can be preconceived based on a previous game, completely made up, or influenced heavily by the developers/publishers.
When we actually try the game for the first time, we have our own opinion of how the game performed. This is different for everyone, but there will be a general consensus and average agreement among the majority of players.
The difference between the perceived performance and expectations is the level of disconfirmation that a player experiences. That disconfirmation level feeds back into Game Expectations for the next product, patch, or update released by that dev (not illustrated in the graphic).  Once disconfirmation has been calculated, we can get a general assessment of the customer, or player’s, satisfaction.
If a developer aims for 100% enjoyment or innovation, then players will come to expect that level of enjoyment and innovation. That means next time you’re going to have to meet that same level of enjoyment and innovation or else you will fail to meet expectations, and a high level of disconfirmation will result and players will be unhappy. This is clearly represented by SWTOR. Players expected one thing because the game was so hyped — because it was Star Wars — but the game performed differently and enormous dissatisfaction ensued. Now if Bioware launched another MMO we wouldn’t expect a dang thing from them. The scales tip.
One might immediately come to the conclusion that developers always shoot for mediocrity to keep the scale balanced. That makes sense since it would manage customer satisfaction, but altering how developers communicate with players about upcoming games, or changes to their games like GW2, makes a lot more sense to me. A simple “We want you to know that we can’t always do this” or “We want you to really understand that this is how we’re going to proceed” helps eliminate the transference of disconfirmation back to Game Expectations.
Ever hear the saying about under-promise over-deliver? Over-delivering might be a huge reason why the MMO industry is in shambles. In a way, WoW over-delivered and now it has become impossible to delight customers. The same idea is present throughout various aspects of MMO’s.
Thanks for reading my ramblings. I don’t claim to know what I’m talking about here, and I don’t know if this is even accurate at all, but it was some food for thought that I wanted to share with you all.
“If a developer aims for 100% enjoyment or innovation, then players will come to expect that level of enjoyment and innovation. That means next time you’re going to have to meet that same level of enjoyment and innovation or else you will fail to meet expectations, and a high level of disconfirmation will result and players will be unhappy.”
I think a better example is DAOC v. Warhammer Online…since here we are dealing with the same developer. People had high expectatioon based on a previous quality product – the new game played quite a bit different than expected and there was a lot of disappointment. Star Wars’ expectations seemed to be more generated by that $300 million figure thrown around than the expectation that a Star Wars MMO must be good.
I think that with time there are so many different expectations that it is tough to wrap your head around what people really want. In the days of UO and EQ – you had two choices and one may have been that you want to play without other people being able to attack you (EQ) and the other one where you wanted the option of attacking or being attacked (UO). Each one was sort of a “dealbreaker” for camps firmly rooted within one game or the other. 10-15 years later – every little fart in MMO development becomes a new crossroad and a new set of dealbreakers. By now players are turned off by the slightest change in design philosophy and sometimes by the oddest things.
It becomes incredibly complex to track this….it also may be an opportunity for a new MMO to capture a broader than usual fan base by offering a lot of variety by, for example, offering servers with varying rulesets. These days companies are still high and mighty if it comes to this and they say “oh we cannot run multiple rulesets for our game – it is too complex” – maybe someday you cannot afford to not have multiple rulesets and the company that goes through the pain staking motions of setting their game up in a highly adaptable way might be the company that comes out ahead…?
@Argorius: DAOC and WAR are a perfect example of how disconfirmation transfers to expectations. My own personal experience with loving DAOC, expecting a lot from WAR, not finding it, and as a result losing all faith in the company.
Think you nailed it. Only difference is that I normally call it an expectation vs reality comparison. And the difference is the disconnect. The greater the disconnect, the greater the tension (think of it like an elastic band). Peter Senge utilizes a similar concept in his business book The Fifth Discipline when he talks about the gap between vision and reality as tension (but a tension that can be used like creative energy).
Over-delivering doesn’t seem like the problem today, so much as it is over-promising. In effect, marketing does not convey the reality of the product but instead a fictional product that is often far better than the real product. There’s nothing wrong with reaching for something better, as long as you can actually achieve it. If you can’t, why relay you can? Again the over-promise conundrum.
To be fair to the developers though, MMOs are complex systems to the point of being ecosystems, particularly when you look at sandbox MMOs. Thus the reality or proof of concept of the MMO can’t be fully tested until it’s live. But this is exactly why alpha test stages with real customers, rather than just internal testing, is so critical. In effect, your customers truly become part of the creative development process whereby you aren’t just building it for them but instead building it with them.
I think another factor is these games put their best work into the early levels it seems. So players get into a beta weekend and find the game is fun but then the later levels just aren’t as polished and the warts begin to show which leads to dissatisfaction and complaints begin to arise.
This happened to me in SWTOR, I had low expectations initially based on all I had seen about the game, then I got into a beta weekend and thought it was pretty good. And still think 1-20 the game was fine but later on the game started to fall apart and become tedious.
Similar things happened with AOC and WAR, AoC was notorious for it due to Tortage being so well done and the rest of the game just not completed.
Awesome, sounds like you guys get it.
You’re exactly right about mmos front loading the ‘good stuff’ and raising expectations to an unsustainable level. Is the solution to even out the early content and slowly build, or even out entirely and maintain?
Don’t forget influencing factors like reviewers such as yourself, Keen. Your influence stretches above that of the typical reviewer as you have created a community of people with similar gaming interests.
It’s interesting to think about, and you seldom hear people articulate what they want in a game in precise terms (eg. “I want good PvP, player housing, a good community and no grind” is vague and useless information).
For me and FPS, all FPS are not equal. I look for FPS with a variety of weapons with all different effects/elements. CoD and all the war games are boring because I believe they are all shooting some sort of bullet or rocket-propelled something. I would choose an Unreal-type game over a war-type game any day (multiple types of guns that all have different particle travel times and areas of effect, a variety of melee moves, shields, items to pick up, different strategy for different situations, the avatars are different).
PvE MMOs (imo) suck nowadays because the death penalty is not strict enough. It’s the same concept as using cheat codes on a game, and then losing all interest in playing it. There are also no “surprises” while wandering around: If you’re in a low level area, you are only going to find low level mobs. I miss Seargent Slate obliterating me because I sang the AoE damage song just as he was about to KS the mob I was killing (that asshole). I miss multiple starting areas and multiple places to level. I feel like MMOs used to require some amount of attentiveness.
Diablo 3 sucked (for me) because they took away the decisive character customization (ok yes you can customize, but there’s infinite reversion), removed Power Leveling and standardized weapons. Hard Core angered me because of the unavoidable instant-death in A3 to the kamakazi’s behind doors.
I have little expectations of a game based on the developer and honestly don’t even care (or know) who develops most games. I glaze over the “this was made by the developer of this” type of comments.
Got sidetracked and missed my point:
I wrote a bunch of crap, but realized that maybe the whole fantasy MMO theme has been played out and it’s time to move on. Don’t think that any style of entertainment is eternal: If you do something long enough, it can get boring.
I like that you play and review a variety of games, Keen. I believe there are a lack of fun and long-lasting EQ-style MMOs because:
1. There are a lot of choices
2. They are all basically the same.
3. We (your community) have been playing MMOs long enough that we have refined our expectations into something that is impossible to obtain.
You’re absolutely right about refining our expectations to the point where they’re impossible to meet.
Normally, it’s up to the marketing team for a product to manage those expectations. If I’m selling something and I think my consumer’s are expecting too much it’s my job to deflate those expectations.
Think about this: When a company says that they always strive to make the customer as happy as possible — is that a good thing? No, actually it’s quite damning. If you’re constantly making people as happy as possible their expectations will keep rising. Honestly, I think that’s how games like Darkfall actually survive. Not a soul on this planet was 100% delighted with Darkfall, and expectations rae low. That’s why someone like myself is willing to play again.
The MMO industry is such an oddity here. How can developers/marketing teams deflate our expectations when both they and we have spiked them so high?
I don’t really think I have high expectations anymore. But I’ve seen this done that a million times now.
I need some new gameplay to amuse me. When was the last time a truly unique gameplay mechanism was brought into an MMO? When was the last time you did something in pve besides push your button till the creature died? When was the last time a developer let you truly impact the world? When was the last time you designed a totally cool and unique character class? Why don’t people have to roleplay?
Mmos are not immersive for these reasons, plus others.
What would I like in an MMO? Think Tad William’s Otherworld, the fantasy world the boy plays in, just not plugged into my head. The players controlled the worlds in that book, they were not some lame themepark.
The problem is the eternal problem that cruelly abuses lunatic comic-book-character evil rich people.
Talented, intelligent people aren’t stupid.
If you make your industry a an unpleasant place to work and insist on stealing everything not nailed down from everyone then the vast majority of intelligent and talented people will leave.
But I bet you don’t even know what the Activision headcase CEO did to the founders of Infinity Ward and makers of the Call of Duty series. You know, one of the most successful and profitable games of all time.
Quite a few talented, intelligent people who used to be in the industry do know. Not being stupid, they are no longer wasting their time in the industry.
“If you’re constantly making people as happy as possible their expectations will keep rising.”
For me, it’s a variation of this. Making me happy sets the expectation because I’ve experienced it as a reality. It’s like going to restaurant, having an amazing meal, and thus expecting that same experience each time you go back.
The same applies to MMO games and I think you can concur on this. It is those amazing experiences in the past that have set the expectation bar for your gaming experience because you know they can be done, as you’ve experienced them yourself. So when we look forward to newer MMO gaming experiences, it’s not so much that we’re looking for completely new experiences so much as an evolutionary or iterative experience built on top of past experiences. Yet more often than not we often end up losing the great experiences we expect and gain newer types of experiences that are mediocre at best.
From what I’ve seen, it’s the loss of the social experience in exchange for the individual experience that is the most disheartening to me. Luckily some MMOs like Planetside 2 seem to be getting back to that social experience in a big way.
With regards to your earlier question, I’d rather see a developer craft a quality experience in slow iterative steps because again the games are such complex systems that to craft the entire thing in one fell swoop is extremely hard to do and would take years to do. By building it iteratively, you can test each foundational layer before adding the next.
@Gentle Nova: I do concur — especially with your sentiment about the loss of the social experience.
I’m not sure that the issue is making games that are consistently good. If that can be done, great. I think the bigger problem is some games truly do outperform others. DAOC vs. WAR, for example. DAOC performed so well and then going in to WAR we had high expectations that were crushed. Although I wont’ have those expectations for future Mythic titles, I will carry those expectations when I go to other studios — I’ve experience it before so I know it can happen type thing.
WoW has done this but on a much broader scale. I think that’s as good a reason as any to make a clean break from the themepark model and do something new — realign expectations — and try to start over. Unless you can hit WoW’s performance levels, there will be disconfirmation.
I also agree with slow iterative steps, as long as progress is apparent. From the industry in general I don’t believe I have observed clear improvement in design — maybe tech, maybe some gameplay elements, but not design.
Of course we demand more as better things get offered.
As a consumer I do not care about how much effort and risk a developer has to put into a game. I’m not interested If its not better then whats out there already.
Want my money? Deliver something better then the competition or something new.
What else do you expect? That we accept something mediocre, because that is easier to make?
Also I blaim companies for this problem, as they are the ones hyping games to unrealistic proportions. They got a rock, but tell us there might be a diamond underneath. (they know very well its just a rock)
Hey Keen! Hope you don’t mind, but I’ve been working on an idea about for my column on MMORPG.com, and I’d love to tie this into it. Permission to use your drawing for the piece? 🙂
Sure Victor. A credit back to me is all that I ask. Definitely shoot me a link to the article when it’s up.
Keen, honestly your takes on development and marketing that aren’t game specific are my favorite things about your blog. I really hope that mmog’s stick around long enough for you to get an opportunity to serve as a producer for one. Pragmatic idealism ftw.
I think what you’ve done with your mathy little flowchart is illustrate polish. Polish for me is simply: can I relax and enjoy the game. It’s such an elusive concept for many dev’s but those who get it are weathering the current gaming downturn pretty well.
Now, if you can come up with a practical equation for polish in a game I’ll be happy to wave at you as you drive by in your 7 series.
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