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Conglomoblog: Minecraft, SWTOR, Job Hunting

April 16, 2013 by 11 Comments

Life has been crazy lately.  I spend more time working on campus to finish up the last of my finals (graduating in a week!) in one day than I do sleeping and playing games.  I apologize for the lack of updates around here, but it will improve in just a matter of days.  After that, until I can find a job (Which I am actively looking for — anyone want a marketing guru?) I’ll have plenty of free time.

I’m also bound by a few NDAs right now.  If not for forced silence, I’d have quite a bit to share about a few games.  I want to talk about Marvel Heroes, for example, which is an action RPG set in the Marvel universe, but I can’t just yet.

To kill what very little free time I have, which has mostly been extremely late at night (read: after 10pm), I’ve been playing Minecraft again.  Our community has another server set up, and we’re playing a mod compilation called ‘Feed the Beast’.  It’s neat, challenging compared to Tekkit, and a lot of fun to hop in and build.  There’s something about building, tinkering, and letting my creative (or lack thereof) manifest itself in a game.  Why can’t more games be a blank canvas like Minecraft? So simple, so fun.

Let’s see, what else am I up to lately?  I played a 30 minutes of SWTOR tonight. A friend of mine is playing again just to kill some time and play some battlegrounds.  I had fun playing the single-player game 1-50.  The game is quite charming looking once you get past the low level armor that looks like it’s painted on.  Animations are extremely smooth.  I love what they did with the interface changes.  I hate the F2P crap, but it’s free. As I continue to play, I’ll refine my thoughts and keep you posted.

That’s all for now! Things will pick up again very soon.

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To be, or not to be, MMO

March 26, 2013 by 11 Comments

This past weekend I spent my time playing in a couple of beta tests for upcoming MMOs.  I kept having the same recurring thoughts: Should these be called MMOs?  Should they be marketed as MMOs?  Wouldn’t they do so much better and garner more public favor if they were presented to players in a different light?

Take Defiance for example.  I think it’s a really fun game.  Trion is billing Defiance as a massively multiplayer game.  Sure, Defiance could be construed as an MMO, but I think calling it something else may be better.  The console market doesn’t really like MMOs all that much, and the MMO market doesn’t really tolerate games which loosely conform to their impossible-to-meet standards.   Defiance feels more like an online version of Borderlands 2.  Just the feel of the game alone resembles an action game, a shooter game, and coop experience.

Neverwinter is another example.  Neverwinter feels like an action-rpg closer to Diablo than a MMO.  The combat is action packed.  The gameplay reminds me of a dungeon crawl experience I might find in Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance or, like I mentioned before, Diablo.

There may be a lot of players running around alongside me when I play a game like Neverwinter or Defiance, but those players aren’t what make the experience for me.  I could be playing with a group of 5 or 6 people tops and get the same satisfaction.

Not being MMO isn’t a failing; my gosh it might even be a compliment.  Marketing Defiance as a typical MMO, instead of the next evolution of RPG shooters sorta sets the wrong expectations.  The MMO crowd gets confused, and the RPG shooter crowd avoids it.  Neverwinter could be a more persistent evolution of the action RPG instead of a highly instanced, shallow MMO.  Change nothing about either game, but simply alter the way they are presented to set the right expectations.

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What is your MMO’s Unique Selling Proposition?

March 4, 2013 by 29 Comments

There’s a fairly basic marketing theory known as the unique selling proposition.  I’ve been contemplating MMO design, as I usually do, and made a connection between design principles, the MMO market, and this simple concept.  Many of you share my belief that developers don’t understand their market, their customers, or even the games they are trying to make.  I’m convinced there are some developers (and/or their corporate overlords) who literally believe copying a successful game will yield success.  Let’s see why they are wrong.

Here’s a basic USP template:

For [target market] the [name of product] is [single most important claim] among all [competitive frame] because [single most important support].

Pretty common sense stuff.  You figure out what market you want to target, what your most important claim is (point of difference) within your frame of reference (defines who your competition is) and you give a reason to believe (why you should buy).  Now pick any random MMO in the last 5 years and try to figure out their unique selling point.  It’s pretty tough, isn’t it?  What makes it even tougher is when a company will fill in the blanks, but what they actually do — the product they actually create — doesn’t align with their goals.

How many games come out of the game targeting a very specific market?  I think most say “we want to appeal to everyone!”  How about SWTOR?  What is (was) their single most important claim?  Is it story? Is it their instanced content?  What makes them stand out?  What market did they target, and what supports their claim?  Maybe they could say their rich story is enhanced through fully voiced dialogue, but is that the most important aspect they want to provide their players?  It was certainly one of the most expensive components of their game, and in the end I’m pretty sure most people didn’t care one iota about the dialog when deciding to quit.

A good MMO will be designed for a specific market, with a very clear explanation (supported by proof) of why it is different.  I’m confident that any MMO failure in the last ten years can be easily identified if you run it through a simple checklist, and it’s not something you have to do in hindsight; run any upcoming MMO through the process and you’ll quickly see potential problems.  People don’t want more of the same or a game that isn’t well thought out to appeal to a specific group for a specific reason.  One size fits all design doesn’t work.  Start making some choices and execute on a plan.  Stand out, be different, and own your space.  Easily 50% of oldschool MMO success can be traced back to having a unique idea that appealed to a specific group of potential players.  They did what they did better than anyone else, and what they did mattered to the players.

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Developing MMOs in the Sweet Spot

February 15, 2013 by 26 Comments

niche mmo sweet spotI believe the ideal future of MMOs can be found in the sweet spot.  What’s the sweet spot?  Check out the nifty graphic on the right.  The sweet spot is the niche of the niche; it’s the space where a developer can target a market of players where only that developer is able to meet the needs and wants of those players.

Consider Camelot Unchained.  Mark Jacobs wants to make a RvR game for RvR enthusiasts.  There won’t be any PvE, levels, or loot drops.  He wants risks to be taken and tough choices to be made.  Mark has openly said he knows CU won’t appeal to everyone, and he wants to make the best game for the specific group of people interested in, and passionate about RvR.

One of the most important aspects of targeting the right competitive environment is avoiding your competitor’s offerings.  Look how easy it is to go fall into a position where you still meet what the customer wants, but fail to capitalize on what you do well.  Rift is a great example: Trion made a good game that met the needs of a segment of players and fell within their capabilities, but they went for a space in the competitive environment where several other developers were already positioned.

Why not operate in an area where you dominate?  Why not find a group of players who are passionate about your game (your love group) and who will want to go out and recruit others to your space?  Cater to the right crowd, and if at all possible cater to the right niche crowd, and you won’t be competing for their attention.

This is the space where the most innovation, risk-taking, and progression will take place for MMOs — no coincidence that in 1999-2003 developers were all operating within their own sweet spot.  McMMo developers these days have to make way too many concessions, appease way too many people, and worry way too much about meeting some magical ROI figure for some guy in a suit who has never even played the game.

I think the sweet spot is where we find the passionate developers who simply love making the best game possible for the right group of people.  In the future, I want to play in a MMO industry with plenty of sweet spot options.  Don’t you?

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