The Other Side Of The Door

Continuing the "riffing on the news" theme from yesterday and as Jeromai mentioned in the comments, Mike O'Brien has left ArenaNet. This is kind of a big deal, seeing as how he co-founded the company. He's been with it for what seems like forever. His leaving is almost like taking down the sign over the door. And yet in a way it's also kind of not so big a deal after all. We've barely heard a word from him for what feels like a couple of years now.

He's leaving to start a new company called Mana Works. There's a lot of that going on these days. Paeroka at Nerdy Bookahs has an excellent, fully researched post up with all the details on just who's going to be working there, along with some speculation on what they might plan on doing.

There's clearly a lot going on here that no-one's going to talk about. Paeroka lists the eight people who have apparently jumped ship from ANet to follow Mike O'Brien to the sunlit uplands of independent development. That's a significant defection, especially coming off the back of the massive job cuts imposed by NCSoft earlier in the year.

When we learned that NCSoft had brought the curtain (or was it the guillotine?) down on a number of unspecified new projects I wasn't particularly concerned or, indeed interested, other than for the usual human concerns over the impact it would have on the individuals concerned. As far as Guild Wars 2 was concerned, my feeling was that a renewed corporate focus on core activities could only be to the benefit of that game and its players.

I didn't know then and hadn't heard since, until I read it in Paeroka's post this morning, that one of those cancelled projects might have been Guild Wars 3. Now that does make a difference.

GW2 is seven years old. As we are all coming to understand, seven years is barely into middle age for MMORPGs. The market is saturated with games that date back a decade, a decade and a half, twenty years, even. We all tend to get worked up over the occasional "sunsets" but few of us give a thought for the plethora of games drifting through a seemingly eternal twilight, neither growing towards the light nor shrinking into the darkness.

A long while back ANet claimed they planned to run GW2 indefinitely as their only ongoing MMORPG (the original Guild Wars having been officially shunted into maintenance mode). All that dithering with "cadences"  and "seasons", shuttling between a "Living Story" and a "Living World", that was ANet trying to figure out how to keep the ship afloat. They had to. There were no lifeboats.

Except apparently there were. Mike O'Brien may have been building one that could have launched, sometime, on a course for an undiscovered land, which might or might not have come to be known as "GW3".

Baby, it's cold outside.

Well that, as they say, is a pisser. While it's self-evident that GW2 could, and no doubt will, carry on largely as-is for many years, my personal feeling is that its future lies in the cruise ship trade. It long ago ceased to be an expeditionary vessel, headed away from the safety and security of the shore towards an unknown destiny beyond the horizon. These days it's a super-annuated hulk, living out its days as a half-heartedly refurbished tour boat, visiting only the best-known, most familiar ports.

Whose to say whether a new MMORPG from ArenaNet would have been any better? After all, the fine promises Mike and his team made before GW2's launch came to nothing and his custodianship was, to put it mildly, uneven. Even so, I'd have liked to have seen it.

And maybe we will. The Mana Works website currently consists of a single page that reads "This website will return October 9th." I await that date with bated breath. There's also a sub-reddit, whose strapline, as quoted by Paeroka, reads: “We aim to create worlds to live in, skills to discover, and adventures to share with friends."

The Kotaku piece makes the point that the eight defectors, all of whom comprise the collective that "amounted to the early development team for a new Guild Wars project, potentially Guild Wars 3", didn't take any of the work they'd done with them. Like NCSoft would have let them!

I'm guessing that they also won't have any rights or access to the intellectual property that comprises the Guild Wars franchise, despite Mike O'Brien having co-created it all. As far as I can tell, gaming stil resides somewhere in that nebulous legal hinterland that was known in the comics industry as "work made for hire".

Years of legal battles, particularly by Jack Kirby and his estate eventually saw that tradition broken. Kirby lost his claim but new writers were able to sign contracts that gave them royalties and rights, sometimes including ownership of the characters they created, which they were then able to take with them to other companies when they left.

The upshot of that was comics writers and artists becoming millionaires. Also a lot of very bad creator-owned comics. Freedom does not always equate to quality. For good or ill, that kind of freedom only seems to accrue to video game developers if they're canny enough to own the company that makes their games. Which may explain why so many of them leve to start their own studios.

Onwards and upwards

Regardless of the legal issues, the Mana Works tagline suggests Mike and the rest of his freedom-loving crew will be staying in the virtual world business. Whether that's in the form of an MMORPG or a plain old RPG it's a fair bet it will have something of the feel of Guild Wars about it, even though I'm certain any overt references to that I.P. will be assiduously avoided.

As I was saying yesterday, older creators tend to polish and burnish their ideas. They don't usually spend much time or effort on coming up with new ones and why should they? Those that try usually end up embarassing themselves and alienating their audience. (Yes, I know I always link to that clip. That's because it's always true. Also because I'm old so I have no new ideas).

If Mana Works would care to come up with a small-scale MMORPG-like game that reminds us all strongly of games their CEO made in the past, well that would be perfectly fine with me. As I also said yesterday, there's absolutely nothing wrong with elder creators refining and perfecting their art for the pleasure and enjoyment of the audience that grew up with thier earlier works and would like some more, please. I'm looking at you, Brad...

If I had to bet on a horse in the non-existent race between Playable Games and Mana Works, on the equally non-existent evidence of what they're doing now and the rather more solid form book of what they've done in the past, I'd probably give it to Mike O'Brien by a nose. His project at least sounds less abstract and more feasible.

I hope they both make it over the finishing line. We could do with more passion projects by committed creators, regardless of their age or origin.

Lockbox Apocalypse : GW2

A few days back, when I posted about the addition of new mount skins to GW2's Gem Store cash shop it was mostly with the intention of examining the emotional disconnect I was experiencing between the concepts of "Mounts" and "Mount Skins". In retrospect this seems somewhat like pointing out an unusual species of squirrel leaping from the branches just before a falling oak tree crushes you to death.

As it happens, at the time I wrote the post, I was blissfully, not to say naively, unaware that the topic was even a matter of particular controversy. It was only after Jeromai drew my attention in the comments to the fire raging on the forums that I became belatedly aware of the crowd brandishing pitchforks and flaming torches.

The "Official Mount Adoption Feedback Thread" started by GW2 Communications Manager Gaile Gray has now dropped to page two of the forums, albeit not before it grew to more than seventy pages containing nearly three thousand comments. It would probably still be top of page one and growing if it hadn't been for an intervention by ANet CEO Mike O'Brien, who stepped up personally on Friday to try to get things back under some sort of control.

Blue is the color.

Unfortunately, far from dampening down the fire, his peculiar "Message About The Mount Adoption Certificate" merely served to pour gasoline on the flames. The full text is too lengthy to reproduce here but the gist appears to be "Thanks for complaining. We thought it was a good idea but maybe it wasn't. We aren't going to change anything but next time we'll try to finesse things so it doesn't look quite so much like an obvious cash grab". Or, in his exact words:

"Microtransactions can be polarizing, and we’ve received both positive and negative feedback on the license. We won’t change the existing license in a way that would invalidate the investment players have made, but I want to confirm to you that our next planned mount skin releases will focus on individual sales like the Reforged Warhound and bundles like the Spooky Mounts Pack. We will not add any skins to the currently available Adoption License, thus not pushing down the odds of acquiring any one skin in that set.

We appreciate the thoughtful feedback many of you have provided, and that you hold us to high standards for monetization."

Unsurprisingly, this has satisfied almost no-one. The new thread resulting from Mike's non-apology can't quite match the size of the previous one but it's still near the top of page one and growing, with less than half as many posts so far but even more page views.

A lot of the conversation isn't particularly edifying. There's a deal of the usual to-and-fro between a relatively small number of ultra-committed opponents or proponents that these threads always see. Filtering out the trolls and professional complainers, however, it seems clear that, at the very least, ANet risks losing a deal of good will over this.

Or so you would think from reading the forums. Looking for some further context I went to Reddit. Couldn't really find anything apart from a thread about Wooden Potatoes destroying a Mount Adoption Certificate in his stream. Some good jokes in that thread but not much salt other than a few people calling the OP out for disrespecting Wooden Potatoes.

Starbound top and center.

So much for anecdotal evidence and reportage. How about a witness statement?

Last night, for no better reason than someone called it in map chat, I decided to go do Triple Trouble. I've been two achievements short of a meta there for months but I'd stopped bothering the Wurm after the last several "organized" attempts turned out to be a complete shambles.

This time was much, much better. Organized by QUTE, everything went very smoothly. All three heads came off and died. I went with Crimson, having first remembered to join the escort party (thanks to a sanity check via Dulfy, despite having been told by two people, in answer to my question in-game, that I didn't need to). I got the Phytotoxin Enthusiast achievement I was missing and the kill on the Crimson head. All I need now is a single kill on Amber and I'm done.

Before all that, however, there was half an hour of standing around the campfire at Firthside Vigil waiting for a critical mass of players to be taxied in, squads to be formed and so on. While we waited we were entertained by aerial displays from a squadron of multi-colored griffins including the undeniably impressive if utterly bizarre Starbound,.

I wasn't expecting it to be quite this big.

Also present was a green bunny skinned as a frog and the only mount skin I really like, the Twin Sands jackal. In short, there were a lot of people riding mounts skinned up from the recent and supposedly unacceptable loot box sale.

What's more, they all seemed to be very pleased with their purchases, to the point of wanting to show them off at every opportunity. With a full map and a lot of newer players (judging by the questions being asked) I didn't hear a single negative comment about mounts or skins from anyone.

That was also my experience in Lion's Arch, the traditional home for GW2's never-ending fashion parade. A lot of chatter about the new mount skins and all of it excited and positive. While the forum threads may be filled with vitriolic complaints and threats to quit, the response in game and on Reddit seems to be quite the opposite.

At the very least, the visual evidence within the game seems to be that these things are really selling. What's more, I would note that at time of writing I have yet to see even one player mounted on a 2000 Gem Reforged Warhound, the only mount skin available as a single, direct purchase.

It adds a whole other dimension, doesn't it?

Maybe that's because the Jackal is the least popular and least useful of all the mounts and no-one rides them anyway. Or maybe it's because 2000 Gems is significantly above what the market will bear for a single mount skin right now. I imagine it's a little of each. 

Either way, it certainly seems people are keener to pay 400 gems for a random skin than 2000 for this specific model. I know I would be.

I'm relatively neutral on the whole lockbox issue: I agree one hundred per cent that there are some serious concerns that need to be addressed over the accessibility of quasi-gambling activities to vulnerable individuals and minors but other than that I don't have any particular problem with items being available either only for real money or via a form of randomization or, indeed, both those things together.

Unless and until regulation applies I think we can safely say that developers will continue to make their decisions on how far to go with this approach based on how much money it brings in. If lockbox sales are outweighed by lost revenue from people leaving the game to avoid them then we'll see fewer lockboxes. If not, then we can expect such sales to continue apace.

Polly want a cracker!

When it comes to these particular lockboxes, I have more of a problem with what's in them than how they're sold. The addition of mounts to the game had an immediate and, to my mind, unflattering effect on the visual landscape. If we're to expect a steady stream of garish and bizarre mount skins - and we are, since that's clearly what sells - it doesn't bode well for what little immersion we have left.

Oh, well. It's no more than  bringing the look of Tyria in line with the looks of Azeroth and Norrath. I guess if I really wanted visual consistency I'd go play LotRO.

As for the commercial future of GW2, it would appear from the first financials since Path of Fire that Gem Shop sales will have to take up most of the heavy lifting over the next year or two. Expect ever flashier skins and even sneakier sales strategies.

I think I'll put my gold in tar and feather futures.

How We Live Now: GW2

Unlike most MMO developers, GW2 doesn't do Producer Letters. (Edit: Oh, wait, now they do!) Officially, that is. There is, nevertheless, someone in charge, an individual who sets the tone and announces the direction for the game.

For a long while that was Colin Johanson. He fell on his sword after Heart of Thorns failed to perform as well as expected. His replacement, who was supposed to be taking on the role only for as long as it took to find someone to do it permanently, was Colin's "boss" Mike O'Brien, one of the three people who created ArenaNet back in 2000 and the only co-founder still working there.

As each episode of The Living World arrives, ANet host an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit. Since Mike's been in charge he's tended to open the proceedings with a statement that can be read as his Producer's Letter.

They don't tend to be very revealing or even interesting, unlike some of Colin's more explosive statements. The current one from a day ago doesn't divulge a whole lot of facts or plans but tonally it says a lot about where the game is now and where it's likely to go in the next year or two.

I found it to be both a reassuring and a depressing read. Also annoying and frustrating. There's an unmistakable tone of satisfaction that borders on smugness. Here are some quotes that should give an idea of what I mean:

"I want to take a moment to celebrate the journey we’ve been on together this year.

I think with Season 3 we’ve hit a really good balance.

I think and hope that this year’s releases have been the best work we’ve ever done.

I think we’re finishing this year in a good position."

From that I take it that Mike has the business in the shape he wants it and we are likely to see things carry on much as they have been for the foreseeable future. That's good to hear, in terms of the health and longevity of the game, but somewhat unnerving if, like me, you feel GW2 has largely been spinning its wheels since Colin left.

Not that you'd know it from this AMA. For all Reddit's reputation as a bear pit, it's obvious why ANet prefer to host discussions there rather than on the forums. The AMA is stuffed with easy set-ups, soft questions and fawning. To read it you'd think the game had nothing but happy, docile fans.

The official forums tell a very different story. Comments on the feedback thread for the current LS episode are more nuanced. Many people are happy but by no means all of them. The praises and pans run about 50-50, with the negative comments mostly focusing on the gameplay and the narrative:

"Probably the weakest episode to date, in fact of all the Seasons.

I’m sorry, but if I had wanted to play a puzzle game, I would have bought a puzzle game instead of this game.

Surprisingly disappointing. I feel like the trailer tricked me.  

This episode left me saying why? why? why? Do you switch writers literally every episode? I felt like none of them made a coherent story and that reveal was not shocking but left a feeling of " this was dumb waste of time"

The real problem for me, though, comes not from Mike's - arguably complacent - satisfaction in a job well done or his understandable preference for chatting with a friendly audience rather than taking on a hostile one. No, it's some of the structural changes that have been made under his watch that concern me:

"We’ve always been good at shipping things, but with our renewed focus on quality above everything, we’ve had to get better at not shipping things. We now develop new content and features with a default assumption that they won’t ship, and then if they turn out great, we proactively decide to ship them".

Pre-launch, the mantra was Iteration. Everything had to be done and done again until it was done right. That ran completely counter to what has become the prevailing mode of the industry, the "bash it out now and tart it up later" ethos of Early Access and it inevitably slowed the whole process to a crawl.

If Iteration seemed to take forever, imagine how much more delay "not shipping" must add. GW2 already feels like one of the slowest-to-react MMOs I've played and it's infamously one of the most tight-lipped. Now we can just imagine them all, hunched over keyboards in their double-locked security cells, working on projects we'll never see, while problems in the game that have persisted for months and years go unaddressed.

Not an encouraging picture and one with which I have little affinity. I hugely prefer to get my hands on something rough but functional now, the chance to play around with it while it gets smoothed and polished, rather than wait months and months to get something that's supposedly "the best work we’ve ever done" and yet which turns out to be, as one comment in the official thread ironically puts it, "a solid 3/10".

When it comes to World vs World, considered by most aficionados to have been in free-fall for at least a couple of years, the following assertion raises a very hollow laugh:

"With PvP and WvW...the community owns the game modes and chooses what we work on...our goal this year was to develop more incrementally, test with the community on Live, and take feedback every step of the way". 

I can't speak for PvP players but WvW regulars, as they express their feelings on the forum and in the various chat channels in game, mostly feel ignored, not listened to and sometimes actively trolled by the developers. It would probably be not too far from the truth to say that WvW fans play the game mode despite the development attention it gets not because of it.

For all that, GW2 is clearly a stable, successful MMO. It's about to launch its second expansion and we'd better hope its a good one because the guy who's been in charge of development there, Mike Zadorojny, is about to take over the direction of the core game. If, reading between the lines, the new Xpack doesn't do a HoT:

"You’ll see a lot of him in the lead-up to the expansion, and then he’ll join the Live side too, and I expect he’ll eventually take these reins". 

At this stage I'm sanguine both about where things are and where they're headed. This is not the GW2 we were promised before launch, nothing like it. The Manifesto was torn up and burned long ago. This isn't even the GW2 of Living Story 1, an era when, as Mike O'Brien now claims to regret,

"Guild Wars 2’s content model [was] all about exciting events happening in the world" and "we went for the literal version, constantly shipping changes to the existing world".

Yes, we complained about it then but be careful what you wish for, as they say. Instead of something approximating a "Living World" we got a series of Unliving Tableaux, each "a slice in time" in which every map is zip-locked, a museum exhibit that never changes and never will change.

The original GW2 project was to create an ever-changing world, a dynamic environment in which no two players would have the same experience and no two sessions would play the same way. The current orthodoxy is

"It’s a game, after all...a game that doesn’t need reinvention but mostly needs a steady stream of great content, so we can focus on delivering great content."

I get it. It's just a game. I won't take it any more seriously than it deserves.

Now entertain me.