Post-Launch: Infancy and Toddler Years

Post-Launch : Infancy and Toddler Years

The learning continues post-launch.

Learning to Crawl, Walk, and Run: Running the Game

Funcom's ability to learn, adapt, and rise to the challenge has amazed me. We have grown a CS department and reorganized and changed the development team from having a long-term focus into having a short- term focus (patches). We have also adapted to cutbacks in the staff to cater to the loss of customers. Still, the pace only seems to increase.

I haven't really digested these last post-natal months to as great a degree as the pre-natal months. I guess others are better suited to talk about them. What I can say is that running a game is different from making a game. You have to have both long-term and short-term focus as you leave the womb. Every step matters, but you have to have a destination.

Learning to Speak: Communicating About Changes

I think this really took us by surprise ”not so much that communication with the player is important, but to the degree it matters. Online games change post-launch; at least, that is what people partially pay for. The rule here is that the bigger the change, the more detailed the information. People want predictability!

I think we have also been flabbergasted by what might be seen as "nerfs," or changes that are seen as disadvantages to the players. Let me give you an example. After launch, I realized the cost of increasing one skill for one profession (class) was too high. I wanted to make it cheaper. "Nice!" I thought, "People are going to be so happy with the reduced cost!" In my mind, it was as if someone reduced my mortgage rate. I was thrilled ”not so in the collective minds of the players, though. It was as if they had bought an expensive Mercedes and, when driving away from the place of purchase, saw in the rearview mirror the price on that same model being halved! They wanted their money back! The reduction in cost was seen as a "nerf," although I was quite sure people would love it.

Another interesting example would be when we increased the availability of an item in the game. All the people who had already gotten one, using much more time, were very pissed off; we had "nerfed" the uniqueness of that item.

I guess we have learned to become paranoid on behalf of the players. The players spend more time in AO than with almost any other leisure activity; it is almost no longer a game. It is life and competition and social classes and gender and culture and all those other things that belong to the real world. Above all else, it is time invested. Life is short. We have no time to waste!

Anyway, if we invest the time to explain to the players, "This is our problem; we would like to do this or this or this," they are normally very sensible . They dislike imbalance and cheating as much as we do. The players are intelligent , and it is their world ”their future.

Well, I think this is it for now. The future and life of Rubi-Ka is alive and developing quickly. Writing a post-mortem on an online game in the middle of its life is silly, but at least it's a post-natal scriptum, or something. We have had our terminal disease, as Archbishop Tutu recommended in the quote at the beginning of this tract . I hope we take nothing for granted.