File this one under "Opinion Piece", folks. Occasionally, we'll get a hell of an email that seems like a good launch
pad for a discussion.
We've received an "industry insider's" take on the John Smedley
letter from a couple of days ago. To refresh your
memory, Smedley wrote an open letter to the community to lay out where he thought the MM genre could go from here. We
didn't think much of it at the time, but it certainly set off Anon…
He writes…
Did anyone read John Smedley's letter to the community?
It's almost shocking what you can read between the lines – and it's a vivid reminder that first movers aren't the
companies that come to dominate. Pioneers end up with arrows in their backs and PBS specials – ask EA about how
it capitalized on their success with Ultima Online.
Smedley's 'letter' seemed like it was aimed not just at the fans, but his own team and Sony. He's approaching
the MMOG business with some kind of newfound humility, trying to say that Sony Online's main goal is to entertain its
users. The fact is that SOE is about to have its precious EQ franchise overrun by World of Warcraft; and rumor
has it that EQ2 is already losing subscribers – something that didn't happen to EQ for nearly 6 years.
Blizzard has the reputation of doing things right, no matter how long it takes. And while WoW is an
evolutionary growth of the genre, it appears to be as polished a game as Half Life 2 was for shooters – nothing new,
but a refinement to existing mechanics that almost whispers, ‘we’ve arrived.’
Verant has never really exhibited much design vision. EQ itself was an extension of DikuMUD, a text-based MUD
Brad McQuaid ran before EQ. Brad ported that design – flaws and all – right over to EQ. He and Smedley
didn’t even bother fixing some of the obvious broken mechanisms, like camping. Of all SOE games, Star Wars:
Galaxies probably has had the greatest ambition, but unsurprisingly, it was the product of a defecting EA team
originally tasked with a Privateer Online title, after a successful run with UO.
Does anyone get the feeling that SOE tried to really grow the market through innovation? Can you
look at SOE’s games and say they really tried to assimilate the meta-lessons of the genre – the community, the emergent
behavior, the tension between cooperation and competition – and approached the genre tabula rasa (as Richard Garriot
claims he’s trying to do with Tabula Rasa)?
Or do you look at the lineup and conclude that they wanted to grab real estate in the new world of MMOGs and fell back
on the same trite conventions that stagnate the retail games business? Planetside (FPS, but MMOG!),
Sovereign (RTS, but MMOG!), the cancelled EverQuest Online Adventures (EQ, but PS2!), Star Wars: Galaxies (UO,
but Star Wars!)
OK, some of that is oversimplified. EQ PS2 is a great idea (how do we get console players into this
genre?) But they were outmaneuvered by Final Fantasy IX – by a company that had ZERO experience in this market
(but a big brand – kinda like WoW).
And SW:G is an interesting game, though it has failed to catch fire and reach even EQ levels. Even with an
ailing franchise, a Star Wars MMOG has the potential to ignite the imagination of everyone who’s ever wanted to fly a
Corellian smuggler’s ship, or heft a lightsaber.
So, when Smedley says “they keep us honest”, what he’s really saying is, “they are kicking our asses so badly that the
Sony mothership is asking what the hell is going on, and my team is sending resumes to Blizzard.”
He writes, “They’ve opened our eyes to styles of gameplay”? They may have opened Smedley’s eyes, but I guarantee
that his team’s been talking about this stuff for YEARS. Literally.
He goes on, “What this means is that making future online games is a big business that is going to be increasingly
competitive. I think that’s good for you, and good for us. It’s going to ensure great games get made… and I can tell
you we’re in this for the long haul.”
When someone says they ‘welcome competition’ and names a competitor, you know that reading between the lines, they’re
thinking “holy crap, these guys are going to take food out of my kids’ mouths.” Once the market leader is giving
props by name and saying “competition is good”, they’re already psychologically braced for Second Place.
Do you remember when EA’s senior marketing exec said “you get what you pay for” with ESPN 2K5’s $19.99 games? Do
you remember how fast EA paid off ESPN to switch sides?
Does Smedley’s quote here sound like a mission statement, or a plea to customers and management to keep SOE (and
Smedley) in it for the long haul?
Another Smedley gem:
“Well let me throw out just a few of the things we’re thinking about here at SOE.”
Translation: we have some new ideas beyond recycling EQ, I swear.
The ideas Smedley throws out are hardly new – they’ve been implemented in harebrained fringe ‘games’ like Second Life,
and many MUDs. Is he trying to be provocative?
“I at least want to start this dialogue and stir the pot a little. We’re very interested in your ideas about where
things go from here.”
Translation: “We have no clue what our creative vision is going to be (don’t we have a CCO named Koster around here
somewhere?) and we might want to take the temperature of our users to dictate our direction… oh, that’s called design
by committee, and policy-making by polls. Doesn’t that substitute for vision?”
_________________________
What do you think? Is Smedley showing his hand too early? Is SOE running scared? Or is this just a nice gesture
to the MM community? Have any of you written a response to Smedley with ideas of your own?
