Op/Ed: Stop Blaming the Techies!
by Alphaville Herald on 10/02/04 at 4:01 pm
By Anonymous B
Enough is enough. After reading several posts and comments in this blog, I just had to chime in and say you people are badly misdiagnosing the failure of TSO.
TSO is not failing because of EA tech people, it is failing because the suits in marketing and legal don’t want it to succeed. Blackjack and Video Poker and custom content would be near trivial exercises for EA techies. Those objects and features are not being added to the game for the simple reason that the suits don’t want them added to the game. Why, you ask? The thing you have to understand about TSO is that it is fundamentally a marketing safety play. The marketing suits at TSO were scared to death that North Americans would take to MMORPGs like Koreans have and that people would stop buying offline games. Their solution? Stake a presence in the MMORPG market, but starve it so that it doesn’t cannibalize the offline franchise. There is no way that the objects in TSO were ever going to be more interesting than the objects in offline sims, not unless MMORPGs independently caught fire. It’s for this reason that the marketing suits don’t want to pull the plug on TSO either. They want to keep TSO on life support in case broadband integration sends North Americans scurrying into the online gaming world (and EA is hoping that never happens).
The situation is not so different from when General Motors bought the public transportation companies in California and then proceeded to dismantle them. General Motors wanted people to buy cars, because that is what they made. Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, EA makes computer games that are sold in little boxes. They make a lot of money selling those things (about 2 billion dollars annually in revenue) and MMORPGs are a threat to that way of doing business. EA can’t afford to ignore the MMORPG market, but it also doesn’t want to contribute to its growth either. The best solution (this is how marketing suits think, I kid you not) is stake a presence in the market, be careful not to contribute to its growth, and steal as much business as possible from competitors.
So far I’ve told you what the marketing suits are thinking, but the suits in legal are worse. They despise MMORPGs for the simple reason that every customer who logs on is a potential lawsuit waiting to happen. No matter how finely you craft the EULA, you cannot insulate yourself from the kinds of inane things that 80K or 100K or 1 million subscribers are apt to do to each other in the game. Children running virtual brothels are the least of the worries here. Legal is scared to death about potential liability from an in game meeting that leads to a real world stalking or abduction or worse. With offline games, EA can control everything that can happen within the game. TSO is another kettle of fish, and it would be a much messier kettle of fish if they added more gambling objects or… worst of all … custom content. There will never be custom content until such day as the offline franchise begins to lose a significant number of customers, the online franchise must be called upon to bring back the customers, and the only way they can do this is buy supplying custom content. This is EAs worst case scenario.
So this is the drama being played out at EA. The legal suits would just as soon pull the plug on TSO today. The marketing suits want to keep it alive, but only on life support, as an emergency safety play to protect against the growth of MMORPGs. The suits at the top of the corporate ladder just want everyone to shut up and make more money, which means that what resources go to technical development (and believe me, it is a pretty thin R&D allocation across the board) will not go to TSO. Trust me, this is not the fault of the techies. They are doing what they are told to do. So please get off their case.
Lady Julianna
Feb 10th, 2004
Has the ring of truth. Smiling at the techies. Techies, ever think of running away and building your own adult game? Big smile.
Lady Julianna
Feb 10th, 2004
Has the ring of truth. Smiling at the techies. Techies, ever think of running away and building your own adult game? Big smile.
TSKELLI
Feb 10th, 2004
Trenchant and telling, it seems to me!
kelli
denorae
Feb 10th, 2004
Uru Live was cancelled recently, and was followed by a very heart-felt outpouring of disappointment and chagrin from the fans. Many people really loved the game, in a way that doesn’t seem to be as present in TSO. “The legal suits would just as soon pull the plug on TSO today.” How many people would be really disappointed if that happened? I’m not saying it’s a bad game or anything, I’m just wondering, is there anyone who is really personally passionate about TSO?
TSKELLI
Feb 10th, 2004
oh i am just new but if i were you i would not confuse the kvetching with a real intention to leave. it is the interaction with other people that keps people in TSO, the personal relationships formed, virtual yet still real. people complain, but many remain because of these relationships, and that is one of the nice things about the game. if EA cancelled the game tomorrow, there would be many upset people!
but that is just my 30-day perspective, LOL.
kelli
Dyerbrook
Feb 10th, 2004
Ooooh I love conspiracy theories! You rule, Anonymous. Now what’s the name of that Korean game so I can move over there?
CherryBomb
Feb 10th, 2004
Pfft! If EA could trade every single one of their off-line customers for an on-line customer, they would do it in a heartbeat. Getting that customer to fork over $10 a month instead of making a single purchase is the “suits’” Holy Grail. The problem is that the market for those players has been limited to hard-core game players and fantasy types.
TSO was a good idea at the core: “Bring on-line gaming to a mass market”. It seems like the game designers turned off the creative side of their brains after that insight. TSO is simply poorly designed, as a game. It’s full of designs that were partly implemented and abandoned, like neighborhoods and property categories (for the most part). I get the impression that there is a revolving door at the chief designer’s office. There doesn’t seem to be any clear direction, here.
RB
Feb 10th, 2004
I personally would not care if TSO was shut down tommorrow. It’s just another game we are playing, And if TSO were’nt here we’d all be playing something else.
Of course “disappointing sales” and “not living up to expectations” would be the excuse for such action.
- RB
m. tovar
Feb 10th, 2004
suits propose. engineering disposes.
engineering is the ultimate arbiter of what is and is not feasible. what engineering cannot or will not do, is not going to happen. this is why the universe created product managers. product managers are there to arbitrate and negotiate, like in bad divorces, between engineering and suits. all suits. including the queen of suits, the queen’s lackeys, and the baby suits. even the suits in marketing. even the suits in legal. that is what product management does.
a company short sighted enough to prefer shrinkwrap to online is a company with a long-term vision problem.
a company that would refuse to implement feature/functionality sets described as anonymous b describes them is a company that anonymous b should consider leaving before it becomes roadkill and takes his or her career with it.
furthermore no one should be overly amazed at the paranoia of corporate lawyers. it is their job to live two houses down from the madhouse.
TSKELLI
Feb 11th, 2004
it is humorous how every problem on earth always comes down to blaming the lawyers! ah well, we are disppopinted with an online game … uhh, must be the LAWYERS who are to blame.
as a corporate lawyer, i can tell you that it is *never* the lawyers who *drive* a certain buiness decision. the lawyers advise of risks, propose workarounds or reasonable limits and generally try to structure things so that corporate objectives are met (ie, the shareholders make money) while not exposing the company to an unreasonable risk of liability (because that could cost the shareholders moneyt). its a risk management exercise.
everyone in a large corporation just loves to duck behind legal to take the flak for their own problems, but the reality is that the lawyers are *not* the ones running the company. from my perspective it seems that EA made some serious errors of *business* judgment with this game in the pre-marketing phase, and then decided to cut and run when the initial sales phase went poorly as compared with forecast. did the lawyers probably advise the company that this or that could create liability risks – probably. but EA isn’t being run by the lawyers, people. it’s a gaming company. please stop blaming the lawyers for everything in the world that you don’t like.
kelli
m. tovar
Feb 11th, 2004
tskelli you’re correct.
i have never seen a business decision about product driven by legal.
Maria LaVeaux
Feb 11th, 2004
Denorae:
“Many people really loved the game, in a way that doesn’t seem to be as present in TSO. “The legal suits would just as soon pull the plug on TSO today.” How many people would be really disappointed if that happened? ”
I respectfully beg to Differ on this point. I think Many Playing right now WOULD be disappointed. There may not be a monumental number playing just now, but the ones that are play regularly and have been for some time. They could just as easily move to another game platform, so if they Don’t love being in TSO, Why don’t they? In the end, there is nothing MORE disappointing than an Unfulfilled potential. The Potential for TSO’s success has always been there, It is not the players lack of love for the game that has contributed to Poor numbers (We are the Market they are seeking, NOT the creators of the Market.), but the Corporation of EA, Lawyers who say “Too Risky” Executives who say “Doesn’t justify expense” Advertising executives who say “Can’t locate our target market” Designers who say, “I gave you the idea, the hard part is done, just make it work” and techs who say “Not enough time, and not enough money to make it work”. The simple facts seem to be, They themselves lacked Vision for their own product. When Astronomical profits were not realized over night, they shortsightedly abandoned plans that would, in the Long term, Give them those profits.
Success is a Team effort.
Unfortunatly, so is Failure.
Note to kelli, Sorry chere,, but the lawyers ARE part of that team. They are there to share profit from the successes, they Cannot Divorce themselves from it when there is Failure.
Maria.
Beau
Feb 11th, 2004
I played TSO for nearly a year. I have 2 accounts. On Xmas eve I downloaded Second LIFE.
SECOND LIFE IS BY FAR SUPERIOR TO TSO. Custom content, real economy, players own the objects they create, fun people to chat with, ability to roam around and explore, it has IT ALL.
I recommend you all go DL Second Life today. I did and havnt even seen the TSO log in screen since the day I did. This reminds me, I better call and cancel that those TSO account today before Im billed again.
3 Million in cash a Tiger and 2 Cheetahs are just going to get DELETED.
TSKELLI
Feb 11th, 2004
M. Maria –
You are right, it is true that the lawyers are a part of the team, of course, but ultimately we are the advisors, not the decision makers. We advise, we propse, and business management disposes … sometimes they take our advice, and sometimes they do not, LOL. To the extent that we give bad advice (can mean either overly cautious or overly swashbuckling depending on the result), and the company suffers as a result of that, of course we are to blame for that, not divorced from the decision making process. the extent to which we have input — and the extent to which our input is actually informing the decision made — really varies a lot depending on what the decision relates to. i work for a brand company myself and, while every company is different, here we have the most impact on things that directly relate to liability (litigation, of course, but in this case also things like the TOS) and much less influence generally on product-type decisions.
i have the sense in this case — and this is just a gut feeling, mind You — that the real issue here was poor market research, poor initial execution relating to the launch, and a poor decision as to what to do to fix it. it seems to me that EA cut the fudning for TSO very early on, before the lawyers may have gotten into serious hand-wringing about what may be happening in the game and the potential for EA to have liability relating to that … although it wouldn’t surprise me at all if EA legal advised *against* allowing custom content. It seems likely to me that poor legal advice was given at some point that may have encouraged some of these poor business decisions, and it seems even more likely to me that this may be encouraging decisionmaking now in light of the recent publicity (my guess is that the lawyers are more involved with TSO now than they have been at any other phase of the product’s history because of the publicity) but i think that the poor decisions relating to this game seem to me as mostly poor product management decisions, rather than legal decisions. Enron, well, that was a case of *really* poor legal decisions! (there are some there that should be disbarred), but not the case here, i think.
But that is just how it looks from where i am sitting
kelli
TSKELLI
Feb 11th, 2004
“SECOND LIFE IS BY FAR SUPERIOR TO TSO. Custom content, real economy, players own the objects they create, fun people to chat with, ability to roam around and explore, it has IT ALL.”
Beau –
i’m glad that you like SL. Everyone likes different things, and some like SL.
i have been in SL since December (before i came to TSO) and for me at least it is relatively boring and relatively inaccessible. SL is fascinating in theory, and it is fun to roam around and look at all of the interesting creations that other people have made. but to me it seems that the main, if not the only, aspect to SL is the aspect of creation, and that is hard to do because even using Linden Lab’s simplified script, it really involves a programming excercise, you have to program in the script in order to really create great objects well … and i don’t find that accessible or fun. i suspect if i were a computer programmer i would have a lot of fun in SL, but i am not. i have found the social aspects of the game very muted, to be honest. there are often very few people on line there, it seems that a lot of poeople build and then don’t spend a lot of time in SL because there isn’t that much to *do* there once you are done with your creative work .. to me. so while i think that SL definitely appeals to some people — particularly if your main focus and interest is online creativity –, it doesn’t particularly appeal to me in terms of the “fun factor” and so i don’t find myself spending much time there, even though i was there before i was in TSO (unlike most).
kelli
RB
Feb 11th, 2004
Beau, I will gladly take those items off your hands if you are deleting. ANY city. Contact me. Click the link in my name. Thanks =D
- RB
<3333
Feb 12th, 2004
TSo will shut down soon.
second life is a horrible game
the best online game that offers
*custom content
*large player base
*constant updates cars,games
*events everyday
*not boring
*skill development
*voice chat
*your own music
*beautiful 3d graphics
is There..its an amazing game so beautiful
Beau
Feb 12th, 2004
I tried playing There. But they only let you register between the hours of 11-4 oclock I think. They never sent me an email “approving” my membership. Talk about not being accesible.
LM
Feb 12th, 2004
Um… Doesn’t EA, the owner of Maxis and hence TSO, make Ultima Online, one of THE most successful online games on the market today?
This seems to punch a big hole in the main theory of the anonymous reporter who claims that the powers that be want TSO to fail, and have some kind of abhorence to online gaming.
While it IS true that the problems with TSO do not reside with the “techies” — I assume the reporter meant the programmers when using this term — I just don’t buy his or her reasoning regarding the WHY of the failure. It does not ring true at all to me.
I think that what has happened is that “The Sims” (the original, offline version) was “ported” over to an online environment, and that this has severely limited its design. It is older technology, and my guess is the database design is flawed in such a way as to also severely limit any real expansion possibilities, such as custom content.
And I remember reading something from (Gordon or Will?) on the old boards that was in response to the request regarding being able to “walk” through neighborhoods or to a friend’s house. Basically, he admitted that due to a fundamental design choice, this would never be possible with TSO (as it is currently implemented).
Blackjack and Poker? I think it’s likely that the way those were to be implemented left room for massive “exploiting.” After the experience with Maze, which was the way I made my fun and fortune (and I did not cheat), management has decided not to release them.
I played TSO since early Beta — late September of ’02 — and loved it for a looong time. I still have my account there, but have visited only a couple of times in the last several months. I play SWG now — which is deeper and wider and richer than TSO in many ways. It is a true 3D environment, you can view it in first person OR watch yourself, you can customize your avatar to an incredible extent, you can create things yourself that you can use in-game. Combat (woohoo! danger!), chat, socializing, missions, the war, theme parks, rewards… The two things that TSO offers over all of this are the ability to actually design, build and easily decorate a house, and the sense of touch while interacting with another avatar. The latter it IS something I really do miss in SWG. Hugging there is “just passing through” each other’s avatars, looks silly and leaves one feeling a little cold. TSO is warm. Too bad you can’t combine the two worlds…
Well. I have rattled on long enough. I think TSO is having trouble for many reasons, not the least of which is a lack of sustainable game play. The goals are reached far too quickly, there are not enough tools in TSO to continuously “make your own fun,” and the interactions, while warm, have hardly been augmented since the game’s inception. It is primarily a social “game” and to ignore this aspect (the interactions) is, in my opinion, foolish.
LM
Evan
Feb 13th, 2004
“I tried playing There. But they only let you register between the hours of 11-4 oclock I think. They never sent me an email “approving” my membership. Talk about not being accesible”
============================
This statement is no longer true.
Evan
Feb 13th, 2004
“I tried playing There. But they only let you register between the hours of 11-4 oclock I think. They never sent me an email “approving” my membership. Talk about not being accesible”
============================
This statement is no longer true.
Evan
Feb 13th, 2004
Oops, sorry about the double comment. Don’t know why it did that.
Carnildo Greenacre
Feb 13th, 2004
If you want a game where “the techies ran away and made an adult game”, try SecondLife. It’s over-18 only, it’s got custom content (most of what’s in there is player-created content!), and better, any content you make, *you* own the rights to — with every other MMOG in existance, any content you create is owned by the company running the game.
As for the assertion that the only thing to do is create, that’s false. Recently I hosted a road race across a sizable part of the world, and I know that at least half of the people involved purchased the vehicles they used, rather than making them.
Maria LaVeaux
Feb 16th, 2004
My toy and i have recently begun exploring Second life. I think we have our home if TSO fails.
I repeat that, IF TSO Fails.
I love this realm, and the people in it, and i won’t leave it until Maxis shuts down the server around me
It is funny, there is one other who has said this as well, it is odd to think of He and I being the last ones standing in Alphaville. (Cheeky smile)
The Interview with Don Hopkins posted elsewhere is a very telling indictment of EA and it’s attitudes from an Insider.
As i said elsewhere, Failure is a Group Effort,, EA–GO TEAM!!
Maria.
toy
Feb 18th, 2004
toy has created in SL now and loves the creativity, bought some property alread but needs to learn much more before building, toy enjoys learning so that in itself is a huge plus