BioWare Discusses Community Engagement on The Old Republic

[Andy Chalk]

BioWare Discusses Community Engagement on The Old Republic

If you've ever wondered why developers are reluctant to talk about the new games they're working on, a recent message posted by Star Wars: The Old Republic [http://www.swtor.com/] Community Manager Stephen Reid will go a long way toward giving you the answer.

Most of us like to know what's going on with the games we're most looking forward to, and the more details we get, the happier we are. It's natural, then, that when a developer won't give us the information we crave, we get cranky; it's good PR, after all, and we're going to buy it anyway, so why not just tell us what we want to know, right now?

As Reid explained, there are actually a few good reasons. Readiness is an obvious one, not just of features but of presentation; art assets are an important part of any big announcement and if the art's not ready, then in most cases BioWare [http://www.bioware.com] won't talk. Art is an ongoing process and what's shown isn't always a perfect, final product, but while some gamers don't care about graphics (or at least claim not to) "we don't get that latitude with, oooh, pretty much 90 percent of the rest of the world," he said.

Interdependent systems are also an issue. "Sometimes talking about System 'A' leads directly to talking about System 'B', and if System 'B' isn't ready, then guess what? We can't talk about System 'A' for now," he continued. "The good news is, we can bundle both together for a big ol' bundle of info - bad news is, you have to wait a little longer." Marketing and PR schedules come into play as well, as magazines, websites and television shows which cater to the non-hardcore audience must be accommodated.

But the biggest reason for BioWare's reticence is the die-hard Old Republic community itself. He pointed out that if the studio talked about a feature planned for the game and then had to remove it at some point prior to launch, a lot of people would be angry regardless of the reason. "Every single thing we do is scrutinized, speculated on and often completely turned around," he wrote. "Combine that with a very large community and frankly, we can only be 'so' open, because things can be (and are) misinterpreted. We'd rather be as straight as we can, when we can."

Different projects obviously need to be handled in different ways; two-man indie developers can typically afford to be, and need to be, far more directly engaged with their audiences than a well-established studio working on one of the most anticipated MMOs ever, and whose every move is being eyeballed by millions. Reid's message is an interesting read, not just for Old Republic fans but for anyone who's ever felt that a developer was being unfairly stingy with information about its latest and greatest creation. Check out the whole thing at swtor.com [http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5167882#edit5167882].


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[hansari]

I'm more curious how they decide who gets the horrid responsibility of being "community manager".

Do they draw lots with straws?

 

[Dastardly]

snip

Anyone who's done the "followed since development" thing has seen this happen too often. A feature is mentioned, and that means it's "promised." The feature is then delayed, reduced, or cut entirely, and now it's a "broken promise." Sometimes the worst people to use as your meter stick are die-hard fans of the IP, because their loyalty hinges, occasionally, on an inflated sense of entitlement.

This is especially true with an IP as big as Star Wars. Fans feel that you owe them a specific experiences... or, more often, a wide array of mutually exclusive experiences. They aren't as able to approach the game as a game. The more information you give them, the more ammunition you give them to twist up expectations until the next bit comes out, and the more accusations of "broken promise" you'll have to parry.

Dev blogs for MMOs should always be about "Look what we've done." Not "Look what we hope to do." Even worse sometimes is the, "Hey, what do you think about...?" A question or statement is instantly viewed as a promise, because you put it in print. Don't.

 

[manythings]

snip

Anyone who's done the "followed since development" thing has seen this happen too often. A feature is mentioned, and that means it's "promised." The feature is then delayed, reduced, or cut entirely, and now it's a "broken promise." Sometimes the worst people to use as your meter stick are die-hard fans of the IP, because their loyalty hinges, occasionally, on an inflated sense of entitlement.

This is especially true with an IP as big as Star Wars. Fans feel that you owe them a specific experiences... or, more often, a wide array of mutually exclusive experiences. They aren't as able to approach the game as a game. The more information you give them, the more ammunition you give them to twist up expectations until the next bit comes out, and the more accusations of "broken promise" you'll have to parry.

Dev blogs for MMOs should always be about "Look what we've done." Not "Look what we hope to do." Even worse sometimes is the, "Hey, what do you think about...?" A question or statement is instantly viewed as a promise, because you put it in print. Don't.

I'd just like to put forward an addendum: Peter Molyneaux deserves what he gets every time since he doesn't say something might feature he always a mechanic WILL feature.

 

[Hoplon]

He was damn solid when he was doing this for the CoH community, So this comes as not much of a surprise to those of us from the CoH EU forums.

Bioware's habit of not talking about anything that isn't just in the polishing stage is great, I applaud them for it.

 

[Bretty]

I think a comunity dev talks about this coming up to any MMO release. They did it for WAR, a lot, and they did it for AoC.

The problem is there is a great proportion of us that play these games that have nothing better to do than speculate and twist words. It is really sad, but the internet is a sad place in general.

My fingers crossed that everything I am hearing is wrong about this MMO and that they do in fact still have creative control over this MMO (and not EA) and that they still have a good chunk of the budget for Alpha and Beta testing, and not spent it all on voice acting.

I have heard that EA is now on top of the purse strings and that the # Dev's are in question by EA. This was as of Nov. though so who knows.

 

[Tirnor]

I think it would make a nice article to see one that compared this tendency to not tell you anything that marketing hasn't approved and whitewashed to the simplistic approach of the recently-expanded Minecraft group (which just hit 1,000,000 pre-sales.. not PRE-ORDERS.. not 5$ down, but pre-sales. That's a fair chunk of the 4.7 million that Cataclysm sold.. something I would imagine that Bioware has in their sights.)

I'm not saying that Bioware needs to have a twitter that is as off the cuff and as covering of the day to day details of the whole process, but I certainly wouldn't mind it if they did.

 

[FaceFaceFace]

Having been on the TOR website and read comments, I can see why they'd want to tell those people very little. Look what happened when they mentioned space combat, then it turned out to be a rail shooter. People who were not promised anything and weren't even expecting any space content at all were like "You let me down, now I'm not buying your game."

 

[fu3lman]

Anything BioWare could have done to make me no want to play this game, Lucas already did with everything he's created since Phantom Menace. How about a Willow MMO

 

[ThreeKneeNick]

The thing is that you want your community to be engaged and hyped up before release so you can sell more copies, but you also want to withhold information until the last moment and you want to control its flow. You cant have both, and if you try to balance that naturally portion of that community will see through it and not be satisfied, particularly if you treat all information you release as "we think this is perfect" because your PR department hates it when you are honest.

Remember how Blizzard announced Path of the Titans but then canceled it a few months later? Sure it made news (not because it was particularly newsworthy as much as websites love to suck up to the 12 million players the game has) and made people talk but did anyone REALLY care? The moral of the story is that if you are confident in your game you can talk about it freely, instead of feeling like you have to keep everything under wraps.

 

[Antari]

This just suggests to me that Bioware is about to open a big can of fail. Not shocking really. But either way Bioware has burnt its bridges with me through greed and laziness. I could care less if they sink or swim at this point. From the DLC they've released to the planned Space Shooter element of KOTOR. I have better things to do with my time and money.

 

[Andy Chalk]

Speculation can be, and should be, a lot of fun in the run-up to a big release. The trouble is that people inevitably start taking it too seriously. The Molyneux comparison is very apt; he does the exact opposite, hyping his games while they're still just ink on paper, promising the world and then never quite delivering. Sure, he gets lots of attention along the way, but he hasn't done anything that's actually lived up to its billing since the Populous and Syndicate days. I'll take BioWare's approach any day.