38 replies to this topic

[Strayed]

So in a video from GDC Europe 2013, Microsoft's Kevin Perry discusses and evaluates the issues he faced when making Age of Empires Online and highlights the mistakes he made and what he learned from them.

It is pretty interesting and frankly a bit scary. From just it looks like he's saying that if you mess up it's exceptional hard to recover plus you need to get proper full features in game early rather than later otherwise you'll lose your chance to keep the game alive later.

Thoughts?

[LaserAngel]

I was thinking about using this for podcast material. I know most of my friends have watched it already.

[BillTheTurnip]

There is a lot of information in this video that relates directly to the development of MWO. Everyone who plays MWO should watch this.

[Igorius]

Enlightening and terrifying. Some of those quotes.

"Annoy your base at your own peril."

"Don't launch with a $20 buy-in and no content."

[LaserAngel]

Igorius, on 07 November 2013 - 02:24 PM, said:

Enlightening and terrifying. Some of those quotes.

"Annoy your base at your own peril."

"Don't launch with a $20 buy-in and no content."

I think at this point the community word of mouth is the marketing budget for MechWarrior: Online. I have been told there are ads elsewhere but I have them all blocked so I never do see them.

[IceGryphon]

Strayed, on 06 November 2013 - 07:13 PM, said:

Thoughts?

It's over, let go......

[Igorius]

LaserAngel, on 07 November 2013 - 02:26 PM, said:

I think at this point the community word of mouth is the marketing budget for MechWarrior: Online. I have been told there are ads elsewhere but I have them all blocked so I never do see them.

I've seen an ad once on Sarna, but that was on a tablet with no ad block on it.

[Wrenchfarm]

I watched that video earlier. Eerily reminiscent of MWO and a terrible sign for what's to come. I hope the folks at PGI watch it and take the lessons learned to heart.

[Rather Dashing]

[LaserAngel]

Wrenchfarm, on 07 November 2013 - 02:36 PM, said:

I watched that video earlier. Eerily reminiscent of MWO and a terrible sign for what's to come. I hope the folks at PGI watch it and take the lessons learned to heart.

It pains me to say this but it's not too late.

[DeathofSelf]

AOE online was my intro to the horrid world of F2P, F2P needs to die

[Alex Wolfe]

Very good "read", and a rare chance for a glimpse into inner workings (and failure) of a game, something players are not usually privy to.

Also, ominous.

Edited by Alex Wolfe, 07 November 2013 - 06:13 PM.

[Roadbeer]

Lots of food for thought in there PGI.

Watching the video, I see many, MANY parallels... I'd recommend you watch it twice Russ/Bryan.

[Zanathan]

I've just finished watching the entire video and to be fair to PGI, some of the items mentioned they have covered already. I mean one of the items they mentioned was in game currency and real money currency (which AOEO did not have at launch).

Having said that there are lessons to be learned here:

• Avoid high price points
  
• And by extension, avoiding business models based on sale of very expensive, slow to create content at a high price (I don't know if it is expensive to generate mechs but if it isn't this may not be an issue for PGI)

• Efficient marketing - engaging customers and utilising them to promote the game and this was achieved by being transparent to the playerbase, explain what you are doing and why (withholding sentity information if required)

Something else that is important to note is once they launched on Steam, their player base tripled and if MWO ever does release on Steam, I hope PGI have stuffed as much content as possible before doing so as opposed to the launch we've just had.

[Vassago Rain]

>minimum viable product

[Alex Warden]

the f2p model might have been ONE problem with AoE:O, but by far not the only reason why it failed hard. putting this all on the f2p looks like an excuse to me. they made manymany mistakes from which they can´t recover. all in all it is a very poor try to jump on the "make all classical PC/ Computergames a free browsergame and soak some money out of them" train ....

[Sougard]

Sister thread on Mechwarrior Tactics forums. It has a reply from an IGP member.

https://www.mwtactic...-the-wrong-way/

[Heffay]

Very interesting presentation. Thanks for sharing.

[Roadbeer]

Alex Warden, on 07 November 2013 - 11:53 PM, said:

the f2p model might have been ONE problem with AoE:O, but by far not the only reason why it failed hard. putting this all on the f2p looks like an excuse to me. they made manymany mistakes from which they can´t recover. all in all it is a very poor try to jump on the "make all classical PC/ Computergames a free browsergame and soak some money out of them" train ....

I don't think you watched the whole thing. His summation was the changes to their F2P model, in the long run, didn't change anything and his post-mortem was that they should have done the HARD thing and change their production model.

[Heffay]

Roadbeer, on 08 November 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

I don't think you watched the whole thing. His summation was the changes to their F2P model, in the long run, didn't change anything and his post-mortem was that they should have done the HARD thing and change their production model.

Didn't he also say he didn't have the budget to do that?

There are a number of things in that presentation that PGI managed to do right in the first place (monetization issues specifically), and even releasing a minimally viable product can be recovered from. CW is the first step in the improvement of the production model. Beyond that... MWO doesn't have levels, so I'm curious as to where expansion packs can come into play. Clan launch can probably be made a reasonable expansion pack. And there are enough events in lore to use as a basis to expanding gameplay as well, but... how? It's a tricky (and expensive) question. Single player campaign?

New modes aren't really *that* big of a change in the production process, since it's still the same 12v12. So beyond single player mode and community warfare, what other changes can they make to get legitimate expansions?