Project Horseshoe reports posted
The various reports from Project Horseshoe are posted. I was in the group working on the online games. You may notice that the major initiative there is to create a Wiki that attempts to summarize current best practices in the industry: http://www.onlinegamebestpractices.org. We hope to have this Wiki populated to a first pass soon, and then open it to general contributions from the industry.
You’ll also notice that among the goals in there is to get the Rights of Players revised into something that fits today’s climate, and then get it adopted by companies. So if you want to help out in that process, feel free to start right here on this thread!
Definitely read all the reports, though — Dan Cook has already posted a further exploration of the eminently sensible stage gate process that the industry ought to be using for new product development.
Fascinating reading, Raph. I’m amazed how many parallels can be drawn to consumer Web product development.
I, for one, am certainly looking forward to exploring the Wiki when it becomes available.
That bulletpoint on “service is not a cost-center” is truly ironic… after all, isn’t that (service) what online games really sell?
I was somewhat surprised that, in the “Building Innovative Games that Sell” report there was almost no exploration of the phenomenon of viewing each new title to be developed from the viewpoint of a “handcrafted masterpiece”. It seems to me that many of problems described (one-time greenlighting process, unwillingness to spend time/effort on demos/vertical slices, reliance on authoritative opinion) actually stem from that viewpoint.
These are essentially collections of integrated components, from code to models to sound effects. Couldn’t some of those components be re-used from time to time, at least in the design evaluation stage? The bulletpoint in “O.P.R.A.H.” re: high development/deployment/operation costs ties back to the same question, of course.
So essentially what the O.P.R.A.H. and “Building Innovative Games That Sell” reports are saying is that the gaming industry is pretty far behind the curve of the software product industry as a whole from the perspective of maturity of process, and that it is WAY behind product-delivery based industry in general in terms of how it researches, plans and executes its product strategy. You guys seem to have a handle on the issues and some good ideas on the goals you must achieve in order to address them. The focus on standards and interoperability seems to me to be particularly important for defraying costs on individual titles, and for freeing up your resources to better focus on the customer-service and market-differentiation strategies that are so lacking in the current environment. However, given the cultural barriers within the industry, those will be tough to achieve.
Based on my own experience (in the finance technology sector), such efforts only succeed when companies delivering to the market find the cost of not participating in a standards group or interoperability effort too high. Getting one or two of the 800-lb gorillas on board is probably a crucial step. Yet I didn’t see anyone from Blizzard (for example) listed as a participant on any panels. They are the dominant force driving the market right now, at least by several measures: number of subs, $ profit, etc. Why aren’t they involved? Did they refuse to participate? Or were they not asked? Microsoft and Turbine are big presences, to be sure, but they clearly have not mastered the MMO space yet, and hardly have the credibility to drive a standards/best practices/interoperability effort in this particular industry.
Also, for games that I am guessing probably hit their market goals AND which had people at the conference (e.g., Daniel James/Puzzle Pirates and Andrew Tepper/ATitD, perhaps), did you spend a lot of time talking about the planning and execution of your product strategies, or were games such as these too artist-driven to have even had product strategies?
The section “Lack of reliable, shared success criteria” from the “building games that sell” is obviously of interest to me since thats our space.
The article painted the current practices as um….not very efficient? (is that the kind way of putting it?:)
I wouldn’t expect the market leader in sales to spend a lot of time with these issues. Why change what you are doing, when everyone is chasing you? My personal experiences with trying to change the corporate culture of a very small company proved to me that cultural change really is hard, even when everyone knows it needs to happen. It has to be a priority from the top, and everything can’t be a priority. Market trailers are more likely to innovate to catch up, but the process is far from painless.
So, Raph, given your view of dinosaurs and your current project, how do you feel about the greenlighting process as described here? Would a 100% to 150% improvement in marketplace success do anything to save the current setup? And your new project seems to be running in the common mode at the moment, namely silent and internal. Are you doing anything to seek more customer feedback in the early stages of project creation, at least anything that you are willing/able to talk about?
I like the greenlighting process described here, and actually, it’s basically what I do myself when working on game ideas for the little games I make for fun.
100 to 150% is nowhere near enough.
My new project is not at all running in the current mode, and you will be seeing us getting way more customer feedback in early stages. 🙂