I wanted to go into more depth about this comment from yesterday:
One thing I think gaming companies really don't understand is that the gaming community has a fairly digital notion of loyalty. When a game is released, we collectively decide if the developers are "on our side." If we think they are, then the love affair begins, and we're incredibly loyal. If we think they're not, we're brutal. Absolutely brutal.
It may sound like a left turn to start talking about sports text-sims in this context, but it's a very good example of how this dynamic is so badly misunderstood. And smaller games, in particular, are very good examples of how this works, because marketing doesn't skew the environment. We still identify with developers on a personal level. It's more of a relationship than it is a purchase.
Some big games still have that feel. Civilization IV did, because Firaxis busted their ass making appearances in forums supporting the game. Galactic Civilizations II has been the same way. Because of that, these games have fiercly loyal customer bases. But most higher-profile games are relatively faceless in terms of who makes them, or those faces are purely for marketing purposes and disappear as soon as the game's shipped.
There are actually quite a few sports text-sims out there, and they really separate into three tiers:
--tier one: Football Manager. Sports Interactive is the gold standard, obviously, after creating the Championship Manager series. And I’m sure their sales absolutely dwarf anything else out there. It’s entirely possible that the annual sales of Football Manager exceed the sales of every other sports text-sim combined. SI was just purchased by Sega this week, and all I can say is good for them. I’m glad they’re cashing a big check—they deserve it.
--tier two: Out of the Park Baseball, Pure Sim Baseball, and Eastside Hockey Manager. OOTP and EHM are both published by SI (good move on their part), and Pure Sim is being published by Matrix. I’m not sure sales are necessarily comparable for these three games, but their depth and maturity separate them from everyone else, and their sales put them above tier three.
--tier three: everyone else. These games generally struggle to hit sales of a thousand units, even though they might have tons of depth and plenty of features. 95% of them will never make it to tier two.
I'm not including single-season replays like Strat-O-Matic, so you won't see them listed here. Single season replay games are a sub-genre of text sims and are pretty hardcore, but I don't find them very interesting, personally, so I don't know enough to talk about them.
Tier three is what interests me. There are dozens of text-sims that surface, gasp for air, come out once or maybe twice, and then disappear. And what fascinates me is that almost every one of these developers/games does exactly the same things wrong: first, they're great at generating data but lousy at displaying it, and second, they don't finish the game before they release it.
The data part is easy to understand. Guys who write sports text-sims, almost without exception, are engine guys. That's the fun part for them. They generate absolutely staggering, massive amounts of data, and the process of writing that code is pretty fascinating. Writing the interface is far less interesting in comparison.
I can understand that, because I do some fairly complex things with Excel at work, and it's much more fun writing the program than it is creating the presentation to display the results. Sometimes the process of writing the program is much more fun than anything the program can actually do.
So this is what we wind up with: staggering amounts of data, ten times more than anyone would ever need, displayed in absolutely impersonal, mind-numbing detail. We're playing a spreadsheet, basically. And you know how many people want to play a game like that? Usually between five hundred and a thousand people. It's a very loyal core audience, but without a fundamental shift in how these programs interface with the user, they'll never reach a wider audience.
Second is that most of these games aren't finished when they're released. And as soon as that happens, they are finished, so to speak.
Here's why: pre-orders are going to constitute a large percentage of the core audience. Anyone else who's curious, though, is going to stop by the forums in the first few days after the game's released. And what will they find? People complaining bitterly about how the game has bugs, and a few of them are probably major. Developers spend the first 4-6 weeks (or more) putting out grease fires. Major features don't work. They put out multiple patches, and maybe the game is relatively complete after a month or so.
Someone who's just stopping by the forums has no sweat equity in the game. It's not a game we've all been anxiously waiting for, that we're willing to see through a few patches. If it's not good to go out of the box, we're going to write it off. And we do.
Look, you don't have a month to get that shit figured out, and I mean that from a business standpoint. If your game doesn't work when it's released, by the time you've fixed it, everyone has moved on. That sounds cold, but the first time a game is released, no one has developed a loyalty to you--yet.
If the game had been finished, with only very minor bugs to be corrected, the developer could be discussing a features pack that would be released in 4-6 weeks instead of answering endless questions about bugs. The forum feedback would be positive, plus the developer would be talking about features--probably at least a few from suggestions that were posted in the forums. Anyone who stopped by the forums would tilt positive based on the feedback, PLUS they'd have something to look forward to. And word of mouth, which is absolutely critical for a game like this, would have people recommending the game to their friends.
It's not just text sims, either. Any game without marketing muscle behind it has to follow this path to be successful. If the game isn't almost bug-free when it's released, it's going to disappear without a trace almost every time.
Here's a short list of what those tier three games need to do to be successful.
1) Finish the game.
Do whatever you have to do in terms of finding enough beta testers. That's on you. If the game isn't finished, we're not going to care, no matter what kind of obstacles you've faced
2) Don't design your own interface.
If you're a data guy and an engine guy, you're the the one person who shouldn't be designing the user interface. Sure, you can find five hundred guys who want to play an Excel spreadsheet--maybe even a thousand--but if you want the game to grow, you've got to give people options to play at a lesser level of detail with a more personal interface. If someone sits down with your game (who isn't a text-sim veteran) and gets lost at any point in the first half-hour, the interface has failed.
3) Make better use of audio. Sure, you don't have in-game graphics, or many graphics at all, but what's stopping you from using more sound clips? Instead of ten e-mails a week, have some of those be sound clips, particularly the important ones. Have more in-game audio, too. Use audio everywhere you can, and make it good. Sound is a dimension, too.
4) Release your mod tools early. None of these games have licenses, and that's fine. But the mod tools need to be out there to let the crazy people who want to spend fifty hours creating a league file with real players to have it ready when the game is released. And maybe you could throw a free copy their way. That would probably make them work another thousand hours.
5) Show your insides. Shaun Sullivan is an absolute master of this. PureSim Baseball has a gigantic .xml file that lets you tweak an unbelievable number of variables, including the A.I. The game is excellent without touching a single parameter, but if there's just one thing you thought you could improve, it's probably in that .xml file. Hey, your users want to help you improve the game. Let them!
6) Don't get defensive. I've seen so many developers get catty in their own forums. They released their game when it wasn't ready, the people who bought the game are pounding them, and at some point they post a few ugly messages. Those messages will have a lifespan a hundred times longer than any positive message you post. Your own words can eat you alive.
What usually happens is that if the game is released in an unfinished form, the forums get so nasty so quickly that the developer inevitably gets defensive or just pissy. And that moment usually marks the time in the emergency room when the resuscitation efforts stop and they note time of death and all those details. Because if people hadn't already turned against you, that's when they will.
I had individual games that are perfect examples of everything I've mentioned, including one small, recently released sports game that isn't even a text sim, but I try very hard to not bust on small developers, particularly one-man operations. Those guys are usually working their asses off, even if they're making mistakes, and I rarely single one out. All I can say is read the game's own forums, and if they're clearly divided, the game's failed. The reason I say this is that everyone wants to like a small game. We all do. Hell, I want to like every game I play. So with that natural positive bounce on their side, if the forums deteriorate into back-biting and arguments about bugs, etc., the game is broken.
Look, somebody's going to get this right. And somebody's also going to a 2D view of the game that isn't just moving dots. There was actually a game way back in 1996 that had the right idea. It was called Total Control Football, and it was developed by Blue Sky Software.
And it was a shitty, buggy mess. Never fixed it, either.
But--and this is the point--the design was terrific. The interface was highly graphic and used objects instead of a million buttons and drop-down list boxes. You could watch the games being played with "real" players and decent animation. Nothing spectacular, but still very immersive. It had terrific potential. Initial sales were lousy, though--probably me and five other people--and it died a quick and inglorious death.
The idea, though, is still out there somewhere. And it's still good.