Scott Hartsman - Off the Record

Haven’t abandoned the blog - Typing original content with the busted wrist is a lot more difficult than it really should be. Three weeks to go!

In the meanwhile, here’s an Interview with Ten Ton Hammer that went up yesterday.

The game-neutral concept that’s touched on here is games adapting to their players.

The rules have changed a lot since the days of there only being a single online world choice at any given time. You’ve got to learn as much as you can about the audience that you have, and make sure you’re meeting their needs as best as you can.

Another “duh” concept that falls cleanly into the “more than just the right thing to do; it’s also good business” bucket.

Relevant clip from the interview:

Savanja: What prompted the decision to move nearly all of the heroic content from the overland zones?

Scott Hartsman: The fact that overland heroic content went largely unused was the biggest driver in this decision. It doesn’t take a long visit in any of the global level channels to infer that very few people go through the effort of grouping to adventure in an overland zone, and the logged combat data backed this up. Solo/Duo-capable outdoor content gets played; heroic content very seldom does.

It’s a case of the game adapting to the way people actually play, compared to how they were originally assumed to want to play. People don’t “group up, then wander around looking for something to do” in open-ended hour-after-hour six person play.

People are objective-based, generally conscious of how much time they have available to play, and tend to want to group with people whose goals for the moment match theirs. Taken as a whole, they form groups with the express purpose of going out to do something specific. Many also prefer to know ahead of time that they’re embarking on an adventure they have time to complete. In EQII, both of those specific attributes of grouping can best be addressed via dungeons and instances.

On top of all of that, the split between outdoor/indoor also reduces frustration on both ends and it sets an expectation that people can begin to rely on. Solo/duo folks can consistently enjoy their own play style by not encountering unattainable group content in the overlands. Those group folks who do play-by-wander won’t be frustrated by all of the ‘useless’ solo creatures there – They know to head indoors.

It’s a common misconception that people universally hate change. People only hate change that doesn’t make intuitive sense when they try to reconcile it with their own individual experience and, more importantly, their desires for their future in your world.

That’s the part that you really don’t want to screw up - Losing the trust of the people who actually do see themselves as having a future there. Those are the ones to foster.

The big-ego days are long gone, unless you’re interested in setting yourself up for a potentially painful fall. When you examine your motives for making online entertainment, if you don’t see yourself deep down as being the provider of a service (yes, on the development side), be ready to eventually lose out to someone who does.

(Tip of the hat to Chris Cao who was the first person I heard use the phrase “people are objective-based” in neatly summing up that concept in a lot fewer words than I’d ever been able to.)

- Scott