AGC: Sony Online On 'The Market You Have'

Without specifically calling broad changes to one of its flagship game titles a mistake, heads of development at Sony Online Entertainment, particularly its Austin studio, had a message for its audience on the final day and final hour of the Austin Game Conference. In the context of new development methods adopted within the past year by the studio responsible for Star Wars Galaxies, which a year ago saw several drastic changes to the game-world's overall experience, SOE's John Blakely and Todd Fiala issued a warning: "Don't make our mistakes." "I would have done it a lot differently, and I think that's what's really been driving a lot of this," said Blakely, SOE's vice president of development, regarding the SWG changes known collectively as the New Game Enhancements, or NGE. Those changes, rolled out shortly after the previous year's AGC, resulted in several departures of development employees, and a significant portion of the customer population – by some estimates cutting it in half. "But you know, part of my reason for presenting this and talking about it is I want to educate - I want people to learn what we've learned in that process. We took a big risk, and we learned. There was some really positive stuff, and the game now is as solid as it's ever been, our people have done a great job – we got the bug count down to about half of what it's been in the past six months. But what I would have done differently was be more sensitive to the target audience. The audience you launch with is the one you've got." Most of Friday’s talk, "Product vs. Process – Results Oriented Development," was devoted to changes in overall strategies and development methods Blakely and Fiala, director of development for the Austin studio, said were now in place at SOE. Putting it in context of any business, Blakely said the product is "what you're judged by." It needs to be on time and under budget, but after shipping, there needs to be a system or process in place early on to make necessary changes, with necessary priorities. Process, while important, needs to come after establishing a focus on the product, Fiala said. "Think of the Titanic. Doesn't matter what processes were driving that ship through the water. If nobody's keeping track of getting you to your destination, you're going down, and it doesn't really matter." Furthermore, Blakely said, MMOs are products that don't "go away" once they ship. Decisions made during development will stay with the product throughout its life. It's important during the development process, therefore, to have a grasp of the current market, as Fiala put it, "what it is that's causing them to want to buy something." This helps set the developer's mind for what expectations exist among customers, he said, noting that "the players aren't going to actually know what you might've made, they're going to know what you actually make at the end of the day." Ultimately, Blakely noted, "you're making the game for your audience, not for yourself." Developers need to have a command of how the game works, but the players are the consumers. The more people on the team who understand that, Fiala said, the greater chance the entire team can be leveraged for the sake of reaching the target market. The goal, Blakely said, is to learn how to objectify development, so the team knows what it's doing, all the time. The pre-production phase of development needs to be the time to put "stakes in the ground," Fiala said, because if they're not in place, there's a risk of not knowing how to filter what is and is not important in development - "to not let your 'best' ideas be overrun by your 'good' ideas." Having this grasp, Fiala said, can be useful to sometimes deflect some "good" ideas that come from upper management that might not mesh with the established purpose of the game. It's also important for the developers to not feel a risk of someone in charge dropping in on a whim and declaring, "It's all going to change, or something random," he said. Then, while the game is being made, it's important for the developers to play it themselves. Blakely recalled talking to Dave Georgeson, producer of SOE's Planetside, right after it shipped, and asking what the most important lesson learned was. "He said, 'Get the team to play the game earlier,'" Blakely said. Deciding whether the goals of the project are being met needs to come from playing the game, he said, which has led internally at SOE to the requirement that production milestones need to be playable. He recalled one such milestone where not much content was ready for DC Comics Online yet, but the team was able to dress up one building where the mission was to take place, and threw together several other less-important buildings to simulate the city. The team realized at that point, he said, that the backdrop buildings weren't all that important to the gameplay anyway, so they probably saved themselves some time. Other directives Blakely said have helped the SOE teams is the request to play each milestone for 30 minutes, "or until it pisses you off." It might take a transition period before they open up, he said, but eventually developers will rush to fill feedback on internal message systems, and what's more, they'll compete to fix identified problems and clamor for positive feedback in the next round. "Agile" software development methods, including Scrum, won't be adopted right away by any already-established team, Blakely warned, reporting some false starts when SOE began adopting the methods. Fiala said the team wasn't focused on their task list right away, but that eventually changed. Both encouraged project managers to research those methods carefully, but if implemented properly, they can save time and promote efficiency within the company. Like a rugby team moving with the ball in play, a team using Scrum can more effectively move together to make changes when it needs to, Blakely said. Once the finish line for the product is in sight, Blakely encouraged early feedback from outside the development team, including "friends and family" development testing and employees from other departments within the company. If anything in the game has to be explained verbally to these testers, Blakely said, it's a good sign something needs to be changed. Finally, when the product is on shelves, it's important to accurately solicit player feedback, and take it seriously. So what happened with NGE? Blakely said the changes were "a big risk" that represented a push for a new market of customers, but that it "did not intersect fully with the market that we had." Fiala said there was "perceived to be a timing opportunity" related to "product placement and product marketing" of Star Wars Galaxies, and reiterated the importance of listening to "the market you have" when making decisions about a game already in production.